Please choose a contemporary (past 30 years) version of one of the fairy tales we have studied for class and critically analyze how that version of the fairy tale reflects our current cultural values in a specific way (see Thesis section for more details).
What is a cultural value?
A cultural value is the commonly held standard of what is right and wrong, acceptable and unacceptable, important or unimportant in a given society at a given point in time. Cultural values can change over time as the culture changes. For example, the importance of women's contributions in the workplace and their right to equal wages for equal work is a current cultural value that most of the US holds but did not always hold in the past. Other cultural values stay fairly consistent over time. For example, in the US, a hard work ethic is a cultural value that has remained fairly consistent over time.
Please note that not everyone within a given culture or place will hold the same values. For a paper like this one, you have to generalize somewhat, and it can sometimes be helpful to acknowledge which values are held by which groups. For example, those who might consider themselves politically liberal will likely hold certain cultural values that those who consider themselves politically conservative do not.
Your version of the fairy tale can be Disney, Angela Carter's rewrites, something from a TV show like Once Upon a Time or Grimms, a film like Freeway that rewrites the Little Red Riding Hood story, etc. It may be from one of the books we read for class (as long as it's from the past 30 years), or you may find it out in the world somewhere.
*Please note that although Angela Carter's tales are over 30 years old I am allowing them for this assignment.
*Please also note that you will be required to get professor approval for any version of the fairy tale that we did not read for class. If you do not get approval, your paper will receive a zero.
In your essay introduction, you should be able to tell your reader which of the following categories your version of the fairy tale falls under. Please note that most contemporary fairy tales will belong to two of these categories.
Feminist Revisionary (or other forms of revisionist tales)
Revisionary tales are intended to redress issues in earlier versions that are no longer culturally in vogue, particularly issues related to social justice such as gender or racial equality. For example, Maleficent is a revisionist tale that rewrites the Sleeping Beauty myth by focusing on making Maleficent a complex character instead of an evil villain.
Conservative
Conservative fairy tales (like many Disney tales) continue to press a moralizing message on children, and often present very traditional moral messages. An example would be a film like Walt Disney's Beauty and the Beast, which presents a double standard for men and women that women must look past appearances when dealing with a "monstrous" man, but themselves must be both morally perfect and externally conventionally beautiful.
Postmodern Mash-Up
The postmodern mash-up combines multiple fairy tale characters (or timelines) into one story, often with at least part of the story set in the present day.
You should also be able to explain in your introduction who the intended audience is (adults or children), and how the story differs in any significant ways from versions of the fairy tale that have come before. You should introduce the author of the fairy tale version and what genre it is (film, TV show, YA book, movie, etc).
Your thesis should:
1) Articulate the specific cultural values that your version of the fairy tale represents, and how it demonstrates those values. Below are two different examples to make this really clear!
EX: Walt Disney's Maleficent, an updated version of Walt Disney's 1950 film Sleeping Beauty, is a feminist revisionist tale that demonstrates the current cultural value of sisterhood and women supporting other women, as opposed to younger and older women being pitted against each other as enemies.
EX: Angela Carter's The Tiger's Bride, a feminist revision of Beauty and the Beast, demonstrates the current cultural value of women embracing their sexual nature, of accepting their "inner beast" and calling the shots as far as their own sexual boundaries are concerned.
Your essay will require lots of cited examples from your version of the fairy tale to support your thesis, and may also require a few examples from some of the other versions of the story you read when contrasting any points between the two.
Your paper also needs to have at least three critical, scholarly resources in addition to the stories/films you are analyzing (so, four sources total), which should also be cited carefully. Please find these through the library's database. You will likely want to research the fairy tale itself, and in some cases the specific version may also have critical sources on it (such as Disney). You should check the essays in the back of your Norton book to get an idea of some fairy tale critics you might want to look up.
The paper should be 3-4 full pages in length, double-spaced, MLA style. It should have a strong title and a Works Cited page (which doesn't count toward your 3-4 page count total). We will go over all of these criteria in class and we will work on your paper step-by-step, together.
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