Fairy Tales on the Teen Screen: Rituals of Girlhood

by Athena Bellas

Overview

This book examines how the fairy tale is currently being redeployed and revised on the contemporary teen screen. The author redeploys Victor Turner’s work on liminality for a feminist agenda, providing a new and productive method for thinking about girlhood onscreen. While many studies of teenagehood and teen film briefly invoke Turner’s concept, it remains an underdeveloped framework for thinking about youth onscreen. The book’s broad scope across teen media—including film, television, and online media—contributes to the need for contemporary analysis and theorisation of our multimedia cultural climate.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783319649733
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan
Publication date:	10/10/2017
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	250
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Athena Bellas is a tutor, lecturer, subject co-ordinator and Honours supervisor in the Faculty of Arts and the Screen and Cultural Studies Department, University of Melbourne, Australia.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: Fairy Tales on the Contemporary Teen Screen.- 2. Living on the Edge: An Escape to the Forest in Catherine Hardwicke’s Red Riding Hood (2011).- 3. When Sleeping Beauty Wakes: The Twilight Film Series, Liminal Time and Fantasy Images.- 4. Liminal Communitas and Feminist Solidarity: Transforming ‘Bluebeard’ in Pretty Little Liars (King 2010– ).- 5. Cinderella’s Transformation: Liminality and Style as Subversion in Gossip Girl (Schwartz and Savage 2007-12).- 6. The Mermaid’s Tale: Ultraliminality and Feminist Futures in Aquamarine (Allen 2006).- 7. Conclusion: Rituals of Girlhood Transformed on the Teen Screen.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“The classic fairy tales of Cinderella, Red Riding Hood or Sleeping Beauty may seem to offer the most conventional, conservative monuments of patriarchal culture. But, as Athena Bellas demonstrates in her dazzlingly erudite analysis, the modern ‘teen screens’ of cinema (Twilight, Aquamarine) and TV (Pretty Little Liars, Gossip Girl) produce provocative, ambivalent, sometimes radical responses to and revisions of these myths. Playful and incisive, lucid and subtle, Fairy Tales on the Teen Screen: Rituals of Girlhood heralds a genuine breakthrough in the feminist analysis of popular culture.” (Adrian Martin, Monash University, author of Mise en Scène and Film Style)

“Athena Bellas expertly illustrates that when screen girls activate their voice and gaze in the context of liminality and community, a counterintuitive link between fairy tales and feminism forms. Addressing both broadly popular and niche cult texts, the book reminds us of the power of adaptation, revision, and trenchant feminist analysis. A delight to read!” (Sarah Projansky, University of Utah, USA)