When Fairy Tales Collide: Collaborative Fairy Tales as Postmodern Feminist Discourse in 21st-Century Novels, Graphic Novels, and Visual Cultur

This dissertation examines how contemporary fairy tale adaptations have been adapted to address twenty-first century political and social concerns. I analyze contemporary fairy tale adaptations from The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer, Indexing by Seanan McGuire, Castle Waiting by Linda Medley, Fables by Bill Willingham, the television show Once Upon a Time, and the Disney film Into the Woods. Specifically, using postmodernist and feminist theories, I examine how these adaptations have transformed original stories that focused on individual desires into adaptations about character collaboration. I show that twenty-first century variants have characters come together in order to solve problems related to leaders who seek ultimate power and to work to resolve issues related to societal expectations and individualistic desires. I argue that these adaptations are a new type of fairy tale called the "collaborative fairy tale." I conclude that these adaptations suggest challenges to authoritarianism and governmental control through collaboration and working together. By showing how popular culture can be political and critical of our leaders, particularly in a post-9/11 context, my research expands how we think about fairy tales and other types of adaptations. This project encourages fairy tale scholars to think about contemporary fairy tale adaptations as being more complex as they address twenty-first century concerns in ways that show these narratives are more than fractured tales.