Fairy Tales Transformed?: Twenty-First-Century Adaptations and the Politics of Wonder

2. Double Exposures: Reading (in) Fairy-Tale Films

2Double Exposures Reading (in) Fairy-Tale Films Each of us constructs our own personal mythology from bits and fragments of information extracted from the media flow and transformed into resources through which we make sense of our everyday lives. henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture In the twenty-first century, we tell, receive, retell, reject, recall, look for stories, and are touched, surprised, repelled, inspired, and mobilized by them in what Henry Jenkins has described as convergence culture, “where old and new media collide, where grassroots and corporate media intersect, where the power of the media producer and the power of the media consumer interact in unpredictable ways” (2008, 2). Focusing on American Idol, The Matrix, Star Wars, and Harry Potter as cases of transmedia storytelling in which fans are actively engaged and involved, Jenkins’s project discusses the relationship of media convergence with participatory culture and collective intelligence, stressing the need to learn and apply “new participatory skills through our relation to commercial entertainment ” (257) and advocating a politics of “critical utopianism,” which he contrasts to the “critical pessimism” of media critics whose main thesis is that media concentration can only disempower consumers. Convergence culture, of course, does not guarantee democratizing media just as even the largest media conglomerates do not fully control the affective economics , multiplatform avatars, and user-generated content of their entertainment 74 ▪ Chapter 2 products. Story power flows—though not equally—in more than one direction. For instance, as I write this in January 2012, the first season of the ABC television series Once Upon a Time is being broadcast internationally, including in Canada, Argentina, the Philippines, Italy, and Estonia; within the United States, the series is not only watchable online thanks to Hulu.com, but ABC also has set up a constellation of “experiences” for its fans, including photos “behind the scenes” taken by Ginnifer Goodwin (who plays Snow White), bios for the various characters and actors, and Twitter and Facebook discussion of questions such as, “Who is the mysterious new stranger?” This transmedia or multiplatform storytelling is not simply ancillary to the show, because each activity can serve as a point of entry into the narrative and also contributes in specific ways to its knowledge and appreciation. Fan blogs have since then multiplied. This transmedia storytelling also encourages fans to “assume the role of hunters and gatherers, chasing down bits of the story across media channels, comparing notes with each other via online discussion groups, and collaborating” (Jenkins 2008, 21) to make meaning together of the Once Upon a Time storyworld. Fans’ reactions and responses surely influence writers and producers; at the same time, the series’ producers are also setting up the terms or protocols of the “official” conversation. On their web page, Adam Horowitz, cocreator and executive producer, is quoted as stating, “Snow White was the first movie I saw as a child—and in many ways it is ‘ground zero’ for Fairy Tales . . . it was my introduction to storytelling”; interestingly, this is the “blurb” for the book Once Upon a Time, illustrated by Kevin Tong, available for purchase to “re-acquaint yourself with the stories and characters you know and love” and “bring your family together to rediscover the magic.” Does this language sound familiar? It is no surprise perhaps since the highly diversified and powerful Walt Disney Company owns the ABC Television Group. And yet again, this does not mean that corporate convergence can or will gobble up viewers’ and fans’ imaginations , especially because—rather than in spite of the fact that—it capitalizes intertextually on allusions to much-loved-and-despised Disney fairy-tale films and princess merchandise as well as to the mythically popular TV show Lost (to which Horowitz and Ken Kitsis also contributed). Referring, somewhat sweepingly , to “folk culture” as emerging “in a context where creativity occurs on a grassroots level” (2008, 325), Jenkins asserts the significance of a “grassroots convergence” when he observes optimistically: “the modern mass media builds upon borrowings from folk culture; the new convergence culture will be built on borrowings from various media conglomerates” (141). This chapter does not focus on fairy tales in social media or on fan culture.1 Rather, my overall question is, how does thinking of the fairy-tale genre as a web Double Exposures ▪ 75 whose hypertextual links participate in convergence culture impact my understanding as a folklorist and cultural critic of the genre’s remediation in...