Sunday, March 30, 2014

Disney Symposium

How cool is it that the BYU English Symposium had a panel called: "A Whole New World: Disney, Adaptation, and the Americanization of Fairy Tales"? Pretty much, really cool.

The paper that helped me the most was "From Adoration to Antagonist: Father Figures in Popular Cinderella Tales" by Jenna Cooper. It was about the father-role in Cinderella book and film adaptations. One of her examples was Ella Enchanted! She wrote not only about how fairy tales are retold, but also about gender roles. Needless to say, this was a very helpful paper for me to listen to.

Cooper wrote about how Hollywood fairy tale adaptations have to adapt to the movie watching culture, which has little connection to the traditional tales. Novels have the power to be more literary and can thus connect audiences more easily to traditional fairy tale literature. She made the point that films tend to have a father role who is loving, supportive, and vital to Cinderella's determination and success, whereas books usually portray the father as a demeaning antagonist more like the original story of Cinderella. Because really, who would marry such a wicked woman as Cinderella's step mother?

I loved listening to what Jenna Cooper had researched and collaborated and found it really helpful to hear very similar ideas from a completely different angle. After the presentations, I approached her and asked her a few questions and explained the paper I have been working on. She agreed to let me see the entirety of her paper while we both expressed our love for the novel Ella Enchanted.

I don't know why I have never gone to the English Symposium at BYU before.

1 comment:

  1. So glad you found a relevant connection (as well as a person interested enough in a common work to give you some feedback on your own paper, perhaps).

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