Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Jack Zipes identifies Disney as usurper of the fairy tale for his own mean after identifying a long list of others. The problem with Zipes' essay is that he builds a vilified Disney from a few facts, but mostly from his own imagination. Zipes throws around psychological terms haphazardly, seeming more interested in twisting details to support his own preconceived notion of the fairy tale. He describes the oral tradition of the fairy tale as one that is classless and free to everyone, calling the revisions into text and film and more elitist and manipulative. What he fails to note is that the revisions reached a much larger audience than the original obscure tales. Also, Zipes' view of the reinvention of the fairy tales as a sort of hijacking flies in the face of a large part of artistic expression of using a tried structure to express new things.
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I definitely agree with you. Disney simply gave us a glimpse into his own interpretations of the fairytales and was able to show them to many more people than before.
ReplyDeleteI see the same flawed approach that Zipes takes when looking at Disney's fairy tales. Zipes approach is more accusatory and close minded, almost to the extent of strawmaning the issue, rather than giving an unbiased interpretation of Disney's work before critiquing it.
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