Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales Paperback(3)

story: Mirror Mirror and Snow White and the Huntsman. This year, 2013, has already seen releases of Jack the Giant Slayer, Oz the Great and Powerful, and Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters—none of which were spectacular successes. Will that stem the cinematic tide?

Probably not. You can still expect Frozen, a Disney-animated film of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen,” to open late in 2013.

Maleficent, starring Angelina Jolie as the villainess from Disney’s Sleeping Beauty is due out 2014, as is a live-action Cinderella directed by Kenneth Branagh. Also scheduled for 2014: a film version of Steven Sondheim’s fairy tale mash-up musical Into the Woods. In March 2013, the Boston Globe estimated the number of fairytale slated to be released between 2012 and 2014 at twenty.

Unless intended specifically for children, these twenty-first century revampings often go back to the darker roots of the stories. Heroines are seldom passive victims and inequality in general is often battled along with other evils; some are extremely violent and overtly sexual.

There are probably more theories of why fairy tales are enjoying their current resurgence as there are fairy tales resurging: it’s merely a public-domain path for the entertainment industry to capitalize ? 13 ?

? Introduction: Ever After ?

on the post-Harry Potter boom in fantasy; fairy tales offer an escape from our economic doldrums and unsettled times; they aren’t an escape at all, but horrific confrontations; most movies are reworkings of fairytale tropes anyway, so this is really nothing new; pop culture has a tendency to infantilize (as with superheroes), this is another way to do it; fairy tales provide both heroes and heroines, villains and villainesses and provide a focus on a female, but with plenty of room for violence and SFX that appeals to the male demographic; they are iconic, we have a built-in nostalgia for them, and familiarity breeds easy marketability; when Disney played with and cleverly twisted its own concept with Enchanted, it made Hollywood reconsider the trope (and, yes, there are rumors of an Enchanted 2) . . .

Who knows what makes a trend? After all, for the last four decades or so there have been myriad academic theories, explanations, and not always civil debate about fairy tales themselves.

Nowadays fairy tales are assiduously studied, interpreted according to differing philosophies, mined for inner meaning, psychoanalyzed through various filters, and hotly debated. Fairy tales can be seen in many—often antithetical—ways. There are those who consider them morally deficient, others as means to enforce traditional morality.

They are seen as sexist or feminist; timeless or products of a specific time and event; nationalistic or universal; hegemonic or subversive; eternally relevant and totally irrelevant; metaphoric or allegorical; considered as art or dismissed as tawdry entertainment; too scary and violent or a safe way to deal with primal fears; they appeal to us because they give us hope or they validate what is real . . . ad infinitum.

This anthology, however, has no agenda other than to present

new fairy tales written by some talented authors. I gave the writers no definitions or boundaries. I simply stated that traditional stories often started with the phrase used as the title—“once upon a time”— but fairy tales have always resonated with the reader’s own time and place. They have power and meaning for today and tomorrow.

Contributions could be new interpretations of the old or an original story inspired by earlier fairy tales.

? 14 ?

? Paula Guran ?

I also invited each author to say something about the writing of their story and/or what fairy tales meant to them. I think you’ll find the comments introducing each story far more illuminating than what I have provided here.

For the last few months, I’ve been keeping this treasury of wonder, if not locked up in a tower, at least all to myself. Now it is time to allow you to experience these wonderful new fairy stories and their marvelously varied ever afters.

Paula Guran

June 2013

Online Sources for Fairy Tales Old and New

Cabinet des Fées (www.cabinetdesfees.com) celebrates fairy tales in all of their manifestations: in print, in film, in academia, and on the web. Also hosts two fiction zines.

Endicott Studio (endicottstudio.typepad.com) is an interdisciplinary organization dedicated to the creation and support of mythic art.

Their Journal of Mythic Arts appeared online from 1997 to 2008. Site includes essays, stories, and musings on folklore, modern magical fiction, and related topics.

SurLaLune Fairy Tales (www.surlalunefairytales.com) features forty-nine annotated fairy tales, including their histories, similar tales across cultures, modern interpretations and over 1,500 illustrations..