Television has long been a familiar vehicle for fairy tales and is, in some ways, an ideal medium for the genre. Both more mundane and more wondrous than cinema, TV magically captures sounds and images that float through the air to bring them into homes, schools, and workplaces. Even apparently realistic forms, like the nightly news, routinely employ discourses of "once upon a time," "happily ever after," and "a Cinderella story." In Channeling Wonder: Fairy Tales on Television, Pauline Greenhill and Jill Terry Rudy offer contributions that invite readers to consider what happens when fairy tale, a narrative genre that revels in variation, joins the flow of television experience.

Looking in detail at programs from Canada, France, Italy, Japan, the UK, and the U.S., this volume's twenty-three international contributors demonstrate the wide range of fairy tales that make their way into televisual forms. The writers look at fairy-tale adaptations in musicals like Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella, anthologies like Jim Henson's The Storyteller, made-for-TV movies like Snow White: A Tale of Terror, Bluebeard, and the Red Riding Trilogy, and drama serials like Grimm and Once Upon a Time. Contributors also explore more unexpected representations in the Carosello commercial series, the children's show Super Why!, the anime series Revolutionary Girl Utena, and the live-action dramas Train Man and Rich Man Poor Woman. In addition, they consider how elements from familiar tales, including "Hansel and Gretel," "Little Red Riding Hood," "Beauty and the Beast," "Snow White," and "Cinderella" appear in the long arc serials Merlin, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Dollhouse, and in a range of television formats including variety shows, situation comedies, and reality TV.

Channeling Wonder demonstrates that fairy tales remain ubiquitous on TV, allowing for variations but still resonating with the wonder tale's familiarity. Scholars of cultural studies, fairy-tale studies, folklore, and television studies will enjoy this first-of-its-kind volume.

 

Pauline Greenhill is a professor at the University of Winnipeg.

 

Pauline Greenhill's profile page

Jill Terry Rudy's profile page

Jodi McDavid's profile page

Ian Brodie was class valedictorian and graduated in 1996 with Honours in Religious Studies. After earning an MA in Religious Studies at Memorial University, he turned his attention to folklore. Since 2005, he has taught Folklore in the Department of Heritage and Culture at Cape Breton University. His doctoral dissertation is a folkloristic study of stand-up comedy.

Ian Brodie's profile page

Emma Nelson's profile page

Ashley Walton's profile page

Don Tresca's profile page

Patricia Sawin's profile page

Christie Barber's profile page

Jeana Jorgensen's profile page

Brittany Warman's profile page

Kirstian Lezubski's profile page

 

Steven Kohm is an associate professor at the University of Winnipeg.

 

Steven Kohm's profile page

Kristiana Willsey's profile page

Andrea Wright is presently counsel to the Commission of Inquiry into the Actions of Canadian Officials in Relation to Maher Arar, specializing in national security and human rights, and the comparative study of accountability mechanisms for security intelligence in democratic countries. A graduate of the Faculty of Law, McGill University, she has practised with McCarthy Tetrault in Toronto, and has been involved in a number of public law projects and conferences. At the time of the presentation of her paper in this volume, she was counsel to the Canadian Human Rights Commission, litigating statutory human rights, Charter, and administrative law cases in both official languages before numerous courts and tribunals, including the Supreme Court of Canada.

 

Andrea Wright's profile page

Shuli Barzilai's profile page

Linda J. Lee's profile page

Claudia Schwabe's profile page

Rebecca Hay's profile page

Christa Baxter's profile page

Cristina Bacchilega's profile page

John Rieder's profile page

Kendra Magnus-Johnston's profile page

"Channeling Wonder's chapters present a variety of styles. While some readers might find it makes the purpose of the book a bit ambiguous, I believe this is the book's strength, as it offers a broad understanding of the different fields where folklore can find its niche: ethnographic observation, descriptive review of fairy-tale-based television shows, art history, cinema, theoretical analysis, and methodology, etc."?Genia Boivin, Folklorica

"Channeling Wonder, a recent addition to the prolific "Series in Fairy-Tale Studies," published by Wayne State University Press, is truly a pioneering book. The collection of essays edited by Pauline Greenhill and Jill Terry Ruddy proposes to fill a long-standing lacuna within both fairy-tale and television studies by examining televised fairy tales, which have so far received little scholarly attention, especially in comparison to their cinematic counterparts. . . Channeling Wonder successfully lays the groundwork and provides fuel for further research."?Nada Kujund?ic, International Research Society for Children's Literature

"Greenhill and Rudy make a clear case for the need of a sustained investigation of the televised mediation of fairy tail, and the contributors do not disappoint in answering this call. . . Fairy tale and folklore scholars will find much to appreciate in this book, and scholars of television more broadly should welcome the sustained readings of reality television and children's programming through a different lens."?S. Pepper, Northeastern Illinois University, CHOICE

"There is little written in the area of fairy tales and television studies, so this is an important and particularly welcome collection to redress that dearth."?Mikel J. Koven, University of Worcester

"Anyone interested in the great impact of fairy tales on television, or how television has exploited fairy tales, must read the fascinating seventeen essays in Channeling Wonder: Fairy Tales on Television, edited by Pauline Greenhill and Jill Terry Rudy. Though it is next to impossible to cover all aspects of fairy-tale adaptation through commodified television including commercials, the essays provide helpful critical interdisciplinary approaches and perspectives that will enable readers to grasp key developments in national and international TV fairy-tale series. This is a pioneer book, and I hope the beginning of more fruitful analyses to come."?Jack Zipes, Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota