Unbirthday Tea Party: “We’re All Mad Here” Event Recap

Our 4th annual Unbirthday Tea Party brought in a wide variety of Alice fans and fairy tale fans alike. Everyone knows that our research team is mad about fairy tales, and we wanted to share that passion by discussing the portrayal of madness in Alice in Wonderland adaptations across time. As the audience enjoyed tea and cookies, Erica and Lauren tag-teamed their way through a discussion of the original novel and early film adaptations, then followed up with an overview …

Prince Harry to Marry Former Sleeping Beauty

Five years before Prince Harry proposed, Meghan Markle was already a fairy tale princess. The American actress, best known for her role as Rachel Zane on the legal drama Suits, guest starred as Sleeping Beauty in a 2012 episode of the crime drama Castle. In the episode “Once Upon A Crime,” (season 4, episode 17), Markle’s character kills a man in a hit-and-run while leaving a fairy tale-themed costume party. She then kills two witnesses to her crime, leaving them …

OUAT Premiere Screening — Event Recap

Once Upon A Time. At the end of a six-season run with a well-established finale, on the brink of a new curse to reset season 7, we meet as viewers, as scholars, as audience members and fairy tale enthusiasts, to discuss this show’s past, present, and future. Is Once Upon A Time a high-profile breakthrough for the widespread audience appeal of fairy tales for all ages, moving them out of the realm of children’s media? Is it a harebrained concept that uses …

Once Upon A Time Event: October 13th!

The BYU Fairy Tales & Television Group is having an event and we would like you all to join us! As you read about in Erica’s post, season 7 of Once Upon A Time is going to look a little different. After the two-part, tied-in-a-bow season 6 finale titled “The Final Battle,” which ended with a minute-long montage of all the characters smiling fondly at each other, which itself came after an episode with a WEDDING which also happened to be …

Henry Mills, Child in Distress

Written by Erica Smith, one of our new team members! The traditional fairy tales which Once Upon A Time adapts often cast women in the role of damsel-in-distress. Since Once Upon A Time is structured around empowering the adult woman, Henry, a male child, steps in whenever the story calls for a “damsel” character. Targeted at older viewers, the show’s core cast is built mostly of adults in their thirties. Snow White and Belle (Beauty), vaguely youthful in storybooks and …

Once Upon a Time and the Fairy Tale Stereotype

Once more, here is a guest post from Dr Rudy’s 394r Applied English class, this time from Cortlyn Mckay.   In contrast to many fairy tale adaptations being made today, the TV show Once Upon a Time begins with the happily ever after: the pilot episode opens with Prince Charming kissing Snow White, awakening her from her sleeping curse. The couple is then married, an event that usually ends the fairy tale rather than beginning it, breaking a stereotype that …

What Are You So Afraid Of? A Rapunzel Analysis.

This is the second in our guest post series for the summer from Dr. Rudy’s 394R class, this time written by Heidi Grether. We hope you enjoy! We’re all familiar with the story of Rapunzel, right? A girl, a tower, and a whole heck of a lot of hair. But the shocking part of this tale isn’t necessarily the fact that she is named after lettuce or miraculously avoids headaches, but that it is so vastly underrepresented in television. Compared …

Follow the White Rabbit

The following is a guest post written by Erica Smith, who was enrolled in Dr. Rudy’s 394R class Winter Semester. This was a final writing assignment for Applied English Visualizing Wonder: Fairy Tales and Television. We hope you enjoy!   When Lewis Carroll’s novel, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, was published in 1865, it was received as a delightfully absurd children’s story. Disney’s 1951 Alice adaptation  features lighthearted, fanciful musical numbers. In “A World of My Own”, Alice’s envisions her ideal mad world, …

Fairy Tales on the Small Screen: Summing up the Salon

Not so long ago, not so far away, a group of project participants and like minded individuals gathered to discuss the classic salon topic of fairy tales and this newfangled invention of television. Well, maybe television is not exactly bleeding edge, but it would certainly be foreign to those creating the genre of fairy tales in salons in the 18th and 19th century. We replicated these social and educational gatherings to celebrate and discuss what might be the end of …

Fairy Tale Salon : Event on October 20!

We will be having a wonderful event next week in 4101 JFSB where we hope to have some cool conversations about fairy tales and television and their interesting relationship. It’s a salon, so there will be great discussion and some refreshments and we hope that you all come and contribute and join in! From 5 to 6 pm on Thursday, October 20th, we will be on the fourth floor of the JFSB having a great time! Below is an interview …