Specifics of Film Interpretations of the Fairytales

Abstract

Interpretation of fairy tales, including both folktales and literary tales, surpasses philological and folkloristic research to enrich other intermedial aspects. The phenomenon of traditional oral narratives is closely connected with intermediality: literary, musical and scenic adaptations and their influence on the reception of traditional tales by listeners and readers. The intermedial study of fairy tales refer to a wide range of different arts such as musicals, animations, opera as well as ballet and pantomime (Haase 2008: xxxvii). They take part in the feedback of contemporary sociocultural environment (Bendix 1997). Folktales and fairy tales have manifested themselves in extraordinarily diverse ways, not just in oral and literary narratives but also in theater, puppet plays, music, dance, illustration, advertising, comics, graphics, television, film, and hypertextually on the internet. In some forms, they may appear as full-fledged narratives, but they appear as fragments, motifs, allusions, and intertexts too (Bacchilega 1997; Greenhill 2010).

The narrative structure of folktales has been the subject of much speculation. Folktales drawn from a single culture, or group of related cultures, seem to be built upon a small set of patterns. Such restriction in form and content is at the very least intriguing; it is especially interesting in light of mankind’s ability to tell almost any kind of story with an infinite variation of setting, character, plot, and phrasing. Folktales encode cultural information that includes, for example, the basic types of people (heroes, villains, antagonists), the good and bad things that happen, or what constitutes heroic behaviour and its rewards.

The narrative structure of a folktale can be the subject of various interpretations and speculations.

Each fairy-tale adaptation will be read with the purpose of elucidating the dynamics of the relationship between the textual treatment of the fairy tales and their visualization. What is the relationship between fairy tales and other arts?

The present paper is a part of the project “Fairy Tale and Music: Intermedial Study of Georgian Narrative and Musical Genres” [FR-23-2808], supported by Shota Rustaveli National Science Foundation of Georgia (SRNSFG). The paper deals with the specifics of cinematic adaptations of fairytales.

The fairy-tale miracle signifies the initial conflict, the tragedy of which it transforms into happiness. From this follows its special mechanics: the magic of the fairy tale does not shock. Rather, the fairytale miracle occurs naturally because it guarantees the recipient's expectations of a happy outcome. If we take the realistic theme of the fairy tale and the unbelievable miraculous thing together, the magical fairy tale can only be described as honest. In trivial stories, such as those offered in magazines and TV series, the real laws remain intact, but the difficulties are only solved in an apparently realistic way. The fact that doctors act like fairy-tale helpers or the princes marry the nurses is a credible story, but remains an illusion. The magic things in fairytale films must therefore also be treated as a matter of course.

In order to describe the film adaptation process of the fairy tale in more detail, some questions must be clarified:1)    Which features of the fairy tale are so essential that they can be adopted across all media (cinema, television, theatre), and which component of the fairy tale is media-dependent to become more expressive?We can imagine the essential features of the fairy tale, which exist independent of the media, on a deep structure in which the material and structural characteristics, meaning and idea of the story are anchored. In this model, the expressive matter of the medium in which the story is told is located on the surface, where our perception also begins. If one medium is transformed into another, the meaning of the message should be inscribed as completely as possible in the deep structure, to which one’s own interpretation is then added. The surface structure is different in various media. References:  

Bacchilega, C. (1997). Postmodern Fairy Tales: Gender and Narrative Strategies. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997.

Bendix, R. (1997). In Search of Authenticity: The Formation of Folklore Studies. The University of Wisconsin Press, 1997.

Greenhill, P., Matrix, S. E. (eds.). (2010). Fairy Tale Films: Visions of Ambiguity. University Press of Colorado; Utah State University Press, 2010.

Haase, D. (2008). The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Folktales and Fairy Tales, Vol. 1–3. Edited by Donald Haase. Greenwood Press, 2008.