My most recent reading into fairy-tale adaptation and re-structuring was Bacchilega's 'Postmodern Fairy Tales' (1997). All references in this blog post will refer to the first chapter form this book, titled 'Performing Wonder.' In Bacchilega's own words, 'this book explores the productions of gender, in relation to
narrativity and subjectivity, in classic fairy tales and re-envisioned
in late twentieth-century literature and media for adults.' (4) The first chapter functions as an introduction to her frameworks of analysis, including but not limited to feminism, postmodernism, and semiotics. It paves the way for more detailed analysis of specific fairy tale texts later in the book, which I will not delve in to at this point in time. Citing famous works by the likes of Zipes, Calvino, Carter and Warner; this piece offers an interesting divergence in opinion from other fairy tale theorists, and Bacchilega is not afraid to comment on and criticise the views of her predescessors.
The beginning of the chapter places Bacchilega's understanding of the difference between Zaubermarchen and fairy tales in opposition to my own; she emphasizes their contrast and places more importance on the media they are told through than I think is important: 'the classic fairy tale is a literary appropriation of the older folk tale' (3), which is true to an extent but not of pure vital importance. I personally see fairy tales as being a branch of marchen, or a section within its varied bounds, rather than a seperate but similar entity as Bacchilega seems to. She also focuses on the presumption that fairy tales are written with a child audience in mind, 'serving, more often than not, the civilizing aspirations of adults' (5), which from my previous readings I have found not to be the case. Instead, it seems which fairytales were written and performed for a mature audience, now modern adaptations have re-positioned then in their child-friendly re-workings as for a younger age group instead.
'Fairy stories play a role in education. Not only are children encouraged to retell or dramatize them in schools, but college students encounter them again in across-the-curriculum readers and in courses on children's literature and folklore.' (2) This I do agree with, though again I think it is symptomatic of modern interpretations and retellings rather than based on the original intentions of their writings.
Without specifying any particular adaptations, Bacchilega notes the prominence of appropriation by writers and tellers of fairy tales. 'The fairy tale, which provides well-known material pliable topolitical, erotic, or narrative manipulation. Belittled, yet pervasive and institutionalized, fairy tales are thus produced and consumed to accomplish a variety of social functions in multiple contexts and in more or less explicitly ideological ways.' (3) This is where the postmodernist structure for examining recent fairy tales and tellings comes in; Bacchilega suggests that the dual function of them both analyzes their original intertext's social project, and also re-inscribes them with new semiotic meanings relevant for a modern age (ar at least, this is how I understood her meaning!) In some instances of adaptation, tales 're-place or relocate the fairy tale to multiply its
performance potential and denaturalize its institutionalized power' (23). 'Re-vision is not merely an artistic but a social action,
suggesting in narrative practice the possibility of cultural
transformation' (23)
'the fairy tale magically grants writers/tellers and readers/listeners access to the collective, if fictionalized past of social communing, an access that allows for an aparently limitless, highly idiosyncratic re-creation of that "once there was."' (5) In admiration of Carter's focus on fairy tale telling as a means to subvert opression by opressed peoples, Bacchilega metions the importance of the tale in all social classes as a liberator of expression and opinion: 'the fairy tale proves to be everyone's story, making magic for all' (6). The problem arrises when the writer or narrator does not take responsibility for their personal situation's influence, and instead presumes a 3rd person objective position. Different narratives between folk tellers and fairy tale writers often symbolize 'different needs and aspirations for different social groups' (6) which is important to understand when reading from a diverse group of tales.
A theory suggested in this chapter I find to be particularly interesting, and I have not come across it yet in any form. It is to do with the prominence of a naturalized magic within folk and fairytales which goes unacknowledges by either the characters within a story or the narrators themselves. 'We know that in folk and fairy tales the hero is neither frightened nor surprised when encountering the otherwold, receiving magic gifts, holding conversations with animals,or experiencing miraculous transformations. The numinous is artfully made to appear natural' (9) The question being, is this to disguise its artifice and social project? Bacchilega states the fairy tale is imbued with 'that magic which seeks to conceal the struggling interests which produce it' (7). The wonder of the wonder-tale is accepted by the readers/ listeners with a suspension of disbelief, and its purpose is to disguise the politics of the telling, and also to make the consumer more easily accept it without question, as they do with magic.
Carrying on this line of thought, it is applied to a feminist perspective in Bacchilega's analysis. 'This disguise seems doubly pervasive and dangerous when assumed by tales centering upon the experiences of women.' This is because of a 'long tradition of representing women both as nature and as concealed artifice' (9) like the concealed artifice of magic. It becomes symbolic of the construction of women in fairy tales: to go unquestioned in their representations.
'Women are commonly identified as being closer to nature than to culture, which in a patriarchal system makes them symbolic of an inferior, intermediate order of being'. 'Assosication of woman with nature paradoxically produces the artifice of 'femininity,' both as naturalizing make-up and as representations of womanly 'essence.' (9) Returning here to the idea that for men, the conflict of women's artificiality vs. true nature/form is an often recurring topic within fairy tales and their adaptations (see: Disney's representation of villainous women as made-up, concealed, and fake)
Reference:
Bacchilega, C. (1997). Postmodern fairy tales. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
