Updated Project Proposal

What is your project about?
The chosen theme of my Context of Practice essay and supporting practical work is that of fairy tales, aligning with my love of children's books and narratives. A fairy tale is defined by being a short story, of nursery standard, that is filled with enchantments and the supernatural, with a hero or heroine overcoming supreme obstacles to reach a happy ending, and filled with a recognisable shared language of symbols, images and motifs. I will be focusing on the tale of Little Red Riding Hood and how it has changed over time through a feminist lens, concentrating on the symbol of the wolf and what that means through themes of being a sexual predator, being a sign of a dangerous man with animalistic tendencies, and so on. (this last part is going to change and not well written at the moment but I need to research more!)

What are your case studies? + images – visual references
My case studies will be 3 different versions of the tale. The earliest known tale originating from Italy which is very violent, Grimm's tac which is the most popular, and Angela Carter's feminist retelling.

What are you hoping to find out?
I am hoping to find out more about the origins of the story of The Little Red Riding Hood, any feminist retellings, theories and opinions of the text and why the symbol of the wolf was used. I want to learn more about the powerful symbol of the wolf as the oppressor and the predator and how the story has culturally impacted and restricted women’s expectations and ideals of romance and life goals, and how women are subjected to lesser roles of passivity, dependency and self-sacrifice. I am hoping to find out more about the origins of the story, feminist retellings and why the symbol of the wolf was used.

What texts are you using?
- Beckett, S.L. (2008) Red Riding Hood for All Ages: A Fairy-Tale Icon in Cross-Cultural Contexts. Detroit, Michigan: Wayne State University Press.
- Warner, M. (1995) From the Best to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers. 2^nd Edition. London: Vintage.
- Trials and Tribulations of Little Red Riding Hood: Versions of the Tale in a Socio-Cultural Context
- Marshall, E. () Stripping for the Wolf
- Little Red Riding Hood - Werewolf and Prostitute
- On Anazlyzing Fairytales - Little Red Riding Hood
- Women Who Run with the Wolves - Clarissa Pinkola Estés? Perhaps?

Key Points

- What a fairy tale is and why they exist
- How powerful the symbol of the wolf is and why it is used in stories
- How feminism has retold and reinterpreted the Red Riding Hood story, reinforcing women's right to choose and indeed choosing the wolf instead!

Key Words / Phrases and Definitions

• Fairy Tale: something resembling a fairy story in being magical, idealised or extremely happy
→ Folk tales: a story originating in popular culture, typically passed on by word of mouth
→ Regional? Country-based? Small communities?

• Narratives: a spoken or written account of connected events; a story

• Feminism: the advocacy of women's rights on the ground of equality of the sexes
→ Advocacy: public support for or recommendation of a particular case or policy
→ Equality: the state of being equal - especially in status, rights or opportunities
→ Liberation: set someone free from imprisonment, slavery or oppression
→ Women's rights, human rights, 

• Wolf: A wild carnivorous mammal which is the largest member of the dog family, living and hunting in packs. Used figuratively to refer to a rapacious, ferocious, or voracious person or thing. 

• Predator: An animal that naturally preys on others. A person who ruthlessly exploits others, i.e. a sexual predator.

Project Proposal

The chosen theme of my Context of Practice essay and supporting practical work is that of fairy tales. A fairy tale is defined by being a short story of nursery standard that is filled with enchantments and the supernatural, with a hero or heroine overcoming supreme obstacles to reach a happy ending, and filled with a recognisable shared language of symbols, images and motifs, passed down from generation to generation.  Not just existing in books or illustrations, fairy tales are widely popular through movie adaptations bringing them to a wider contemporary audience. I am interested in the women of these stories – the mothers, nurses, cooks and caregivers who shared them at the fireside, how female characters are portrayed within the tales with still-harmful stereotypes and archetypes in both books and movie adaptions, and how they have culturally impacted and restricted women’s expectations and ideals of romance and life goals, and how women are subjected to lesser roles of passivity, dependency and self-sacrifice. Through my initial research I have found a number of books and academic discussion in videos that provides a fantastic source of secondary research, covering the topic of fairy tales from a feminist standpoint along with a number of feminist fairy tales written by women and older tales rewritten by a female point of view and with the woman having agency and power. For primary research I have discovered two exhibitions that would benefit my project and I would like to visit, one based around fairy tales and fairy tale illustration and the other on feminist art.

Collages inspired by Barbara Kruger

I created a series of collages marrying feminist Barbara Kruger's distinct conceptual visual language, brand and immediacy with that of classic Disney Princesses in their various states of being pretty objects and secondary to their own stories. Meshing the modern and postmodern. Why Barbara Kruger? There were a number of key phrases and words that stood out to me in my previous book research that I wanted to do something with and Kruger immediately came to mind with her strong use of type.

Identifying the use of Futura Bold Oblique or Helvetica Ultra through some quick investigations, I wanted to emblazon these slogans in her style. I think these are pretty successful outcomes and really highlight the docility of Disney Princesses, often sleeping, cooking and tending to men.

Contextual Research of Barbara Kruger

"Barbara Kruger is an American Conceptual artist known for her combination of type and image that conveys a direct feminist cultural critique. Her works examine stereotypes and the behaviours of consumerism with text layered over mass-media images. Rendered with black-and-white, red accented, Futura Bold Oblique, inspired by the Constructivist Alexander Rodechenko, her works offer up short phrases such as “Thinking of You,” “You are a captive audience,” and “I shop therefore I am.” Like multimedia artist Jenny Holzer, Kruger uses language to broadcast her ideas in a myriad of ways, including prints, T-shirts, posters, photographs, electronic signs, and billboards. “I'm fascinated with the difference between supposedly private and supposedly public and I try to engage the issue of what it means to live in a society that's seemingly shock-proof, yet still is compelled to exercise secrecy,” (http://www.artnet.com/artists/barbara-kruger/)

Here are a few examples of Kruger's most popular works. The bright red snappy slogans emblazoned across black and white imagery give immediate thoughts and connections to tabloids, drawing focus to the text with the image in the background - sometimes grainy or distorted.

The red is quite interesting for my project and could draw in emotions and a connection to Little Red Riding Hood? 

If this was a route I were to take I would need to be careful of things such as plagiarism vs inspiration, editing my ideas enough that they become my own, crediting sources (which I will add to my bibliography) and more accuracy to the original works such as a border and graininess of the black and white imagery for a more authentic Kruger look.

Bibliography... so far!

• Beauty and the Beast. (1991) G. Trousdale and K. Wise [Film]. United States: Buena Vista Pictures.
• Beckett, S.L. (2008) Red Riding Hood for All Ages: A Fairy-Tale Icon in Cross-Cultural Contexts. Detroit, Michigan: Wayne State University Press.
• British Library. (2016) Angela Carter's Wolf Tales ('The Werewolf', 'The Company of Wolves' and 'Wolf Alice'). Available at: https://www.bl.uk/20th-century-literature/articles/angela-carters-wolf-tales (Accessed: 14th November, 2019).
• Carter, A. (2010) Angela Carter's Book of Wayward Girls and Wicked Women. Great Britain: Virago Press
• Cinderella. (1950) Directed by C. Geronimi, H. Luske and W. Jackson [Film]. United States: RKO Radio Pictures.
• Myths and Legends. (2016) '48-Snow White: Killer Queen' mythpodcast.com, October 31st. Available at: https://www.mythpodcast.com/4268/48-snow-white-killer-queen/ (Accessed: 14th November, 2019).
• Owens, G. (2012) ‘History of Fairytales.’ YouTube Video, 18th December. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIFOlQU56FY (Accessed: 7th October, 2019)
• Oxford Academic (Oxford University Press). (2018) ‘Fairy Tale: A very Short Introduction | Marina Warner.’ YouTube Video, 25th June. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LK1wn_Zzy_4 (Accessed: 13^th October, 2019).
• Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. (1937) D. Hand,  W. Cottrell, W. Jackson, L. Morey, P. Pearce and B. Sharpsteen. [Film] United States: RKO Radio Pictures.
• Talks at Google. (2018) ‘Marina Warner: “Fairy Tale: A Short Introduction” | Talks at Google.’YouTube Video, 18^th April. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zop-QPDlnFw (Accessed: 13^th October, 2019).
• To The Best of Our Knowledge. (2018) In The Company of Wolves. Available at: https://www.ttbook.org/show/company-wolves (Accessed: 13th November, 2019).
• The University of Sheffield. (2017) ‘Marina Warner in Conversation – On Fairytales.’ YouTube Video, 8^th May. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKSeHHgzjns(Accessed: 13^thOctober, 2019).
• The University of Sheffield. (2017) ‘Marina Warner in Conversation – On Myth.’ YouTube Video, 8^th May. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K97Tupt77r8 (Accessed: 13^th October, 2019).
• Von Franz, M.L. (1997) Archetypal Patterns in Fairy Tales. Tornoto: Inner City Books.
• Warner, M. (1995) From the Best to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers. 2^nd Edition. London: Vintage.
• Zipes, J. (1986) Don’t Bet on the Prince: Contemporary Feminist Fairy Tales in North America and England. 2^nd Edition. New York: Routledge.
• Zipes, J. (2012) The Irresistible Fairy Tale: The Cultural and Social History of a Genre. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
• Zipes, J. (1993) The Trials and Tribulations of Little Red Riding Hood. New York: Routledge.


Jstor Articles:
- Stripping for the wolf: Elizabeth Marshall
- Little Red Riding Hood - Werewolf and Prostitute
- On Anazlyzing Fairytales - Little Red Riding Hood

Book Research: Don't Bet on the Prince

Keywords

• Restriction

• Willing Bondage

• Passivity

• Dependency

• From hearth to nursery

• Mother 

• Domesticity

• Servitude

• Masculine supervision
• Conformity
• Oedipal ambiguities
• Male power
• Relegate
• Total reliance

Quotes

Feminism and Fairy Tales

Karen E. Rowe

"...such alluring fantasies gloss the heroine's inability to act self-assertively, total reliance on external rescues, willing bondage to father and prince, and her restriction to hearth and nursery."

"In short, fairy tales perpetuate the patriarchal status quo by making female subordination seem a romantically desirable, indeed n inescapable fate."

"...continue to glamourise a heroine's traditional yearning for romantic love which cultivates in marriage."

"...folklorists counter any casual dismissal as folktales are mere entertainment by arguing that they have aways been one of culture's primary mechanisms for inculcating roes and behaviours."

"These tales which glorify passivity, decency, and self-sacrifice as a heroine's cardinal virtues suggests that culture's very survival depends upon a woman's acceptance of roles which relegate her to motherhood and domesticity."

"They transfer from fairytales into real life those fantasies which exalt acquiescence to male power and make marriage not simply one ideal, but the only estate toward which women should aspire."

"The idealisations, which reflect culture's approval, mane the female's choice of marriage and maternity seem commendable, indeed predestined."

"In short, fairy tales are not just entertaining fantasies, but powerful transmitters of romantic myths which encourage women to internalise only aspirations deemed appropriate to our 'real' sexual functions within a patriarchy."

"Indeed, fairy tale fantasies come to seem more deluding than problem-solving."

"Fairy tales, therefore, no longer provide mythic validations of desirable female behaviour; instead they seem more purely escapist or nostalgic, having lost their potency because of the widening gap between social practice and mantic idealisation."

"An examination of a few popular folktales from the perspective of modern feminism not only reveals why romanic fantasy exerts such a powerful allure but also illuminates how contemporary ambiguities cloud women's attitudes towards men and marriage,"

"For the ageing stepmother, the young girl's maturation signals her own waning sexual attractiveness and control."

"Fairy tales, therefore, do acknowledge traumatic ambivalences and during a female's rite of passage they respond to the need for both detachment from childish symbioses and a subsequent embracing of adult independence. Yet, this evolution dooms female protagonists (and readers) to pursue adult potentials in one way only: the heroine dreamily anticipates conformity to those predestined roles of wife and mother. "

" ...reward these heroines or patient servitude or dreamy waiting."

"She trades her independent selfhood for subordination."

"Subjection to masculine supervision and denied any true independence."

COP2: Research

 Fairy tales weren’t written for children originally and had adult themes and beginnings. Little to do with fairies. A large number of fairytales were written in 17th century France. Tales told and retold now are far older in origin. Edited and changed ver time as they ere written and translated, removing drier aspects. Fairytales were created by women rebelling against society, they were not written for children. When asked to name authors of fairytales, most would answer The Grimm Brothers of Hans Christian Andersen. Throughout history, fairytales have been women’s stories passed down orally from mothers and grandmothers. When the tales began to be a literary form, the output from female authors vastly exceeded that of the male authors. The Grimm brothers collected their tales from peasants and died them to suit their audience. The Grimm brothers saw how the tase bewitched young readers and “fixed” things; tales became softer, sweeter, with greater morals  Hans Christian Andersen was an intelligent boy who enjoyed stories fostered from his mother’s superstitions. Andersen’s tales were all original creations in comparison to the Brother Grimm’s endless source of folklore. The oral tradition of the fairytale came long before the written page. Tales were told or enacted out from generation to generation. Disney’s 1937 classic Snow White and the Seven Dwarves put the written page on the screen and established fairytales as a movie genre. Fairytales have their own lives each with their own eccentric qualities. The same story will have different lessons for each individual who listens. The effects of what we learn will last for a lifetime.

My thoughts: The introduction was too long, it was 1 minute and 33 seconds long taking up a huge chunk of time that could be used for information. Audio was patchy. It was very muffled to started with, becoming clearer towards the end. Images chosen were pixelated. The narrator wasn’t engaging enough with his delivery and could have emphasised certain words to keep audience interest. Sentences ran on together and he could have slowed down his pacing. Despite these flaws, the content was thoroughly captivating and I’m keen to learn more regarding fairytales - particularly the women creating them and why men took these stories for own profit and gain. The content was well written and thought provoking to take notes from and highly quotable as a starting point for my own work.

Fairy Tale: A Very Short Introduction

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LK1wn_Zzy_4

- 1: A fairytale is a short story filled with enchantments that is classic and familiar, often nursery standard . Cinderella, Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty.
- 2: “Fairytale” is a generic narrative term for a certain kind of enchanted story that takes you to another world, a secondary world as Tolkien called it. For example, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” by Shakespeare is a fairytale play.
- 3: One of the characteristics of both a fairytale and the fairytale genre is that is often imagines a previous teller. The story that you are hearing now is a variation on something of the past.
- 4: Fairytales are written in a shared language of symbols and images. We know we’re in fairytale territory when we have “blood fading on the snow” or a red apple that might be poisoned or birds that sing or an enchanted castle. There’s a repertory of picture motifs.
- 5: The fairytale can enter very dark places. Mothers die at the beginning of fairytales. Stepmothers are cruel. Siblings can fight. Tyrants murder people, parents abandon their children. These are very, very difficult areas that the fairytale goes into. It has made them a tool for many people to return to look at how we can cope with the tests that life presents us with.
- 6: Fairytales are not only mobile across cultures ad across time but between media. We remember the first fairytales we heard from the pictures. (that’s true!)
- 7: The media through which fairytales travel spread not only in book form as illustration and print and on the human voice but above all through the performed media. Film has played an enormous role in the distribution of fairytales with Disney’s Snow White (1937), one if the most watched films in the world - still.
- 8: A dominant characteristic of the fairytale is almost too obvious to say. It’s enchantment and supernatural. But the supernatural is there to help us hope because another feature that’s really important is that the end of the story holds out consolation that whatever horrors have been described they are going to come to an end.
- 9: On the whole, even children know this is a made up world where anything can happen because it’s been invented but it does not command the deep commitment of belief.
- 10: The heroes and heroines overcome their destinies which are terrible. The ragged skivvy in the hearth is going to become a princess, the feckless boy who never does anything right who is booted out by his parents turns out to be the hero who kills the giant. There’s a spirit of heroism in the humour of the tale and very often a fairytale undercut itself at the very end. So, for example in the conventional ending of a fairytale which is, “well they all lived happy and content while we sit here picking our teeth.”

My thoughts: This is quite a short and snappy video on the 10 things that make up a recognisable fairytale. It was well edited, well paced, Dame Marina has a clear knowledge and understanding on the subject, a very warm and welcoming presence and is a pleasure to listen to. Some thing were repeated, such as "enchantment,"which didn't particularly need to be said over and over and some of this is very surface level and introductory. It's a good starting point for my research but I'm not sure if I will draw much from it for physical creation of work or academic writing, as it is rather simplistic.

Marina Warner in Conversation - On Fairytales

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKSeHHgzjns

"Archetypal", the word archetype is a word coined by Swiss psychologist -. Marina tends to be very critical of him. "I think that, on the whole, the theories of the archetype don't allow enough room for historical change. This is also true of Freud to some extent because Freud's interpretation of the myths is quite... if you think of how he interpreted Electra or Oedipus, these are quite closed systems - a universal application. What I resist n both of them is the idea that there is a fixed set of co-ordinates which we can't get past. The Wicked Stepmother is usually seen as an archetype. The older woman, the vengeful queen, as in "Snow White." Marvellous Disney, terrifying film, which I think is a marvellous film but it shouldn't be seen as a writ (?) for human nature. The wicked Queen in that is an archetypal wicked, older woman. What I argue, in my approach to fairytales, is that this wicked older woman is the product of certain strains and inequalities in social systems. One of the things that used to be the case up until the discovery of penicillin is women died in childbirth. Frequently, very high rate all over the world, or they died of fever and that is something that has changed now. And, when women died in childbirth, the remarriage of widowers in Europe was very high. Of different social classes, too. If there were surviving children, the new wife would come in. Women did not control their property, did not have jurisdiction over their children, so there was tremendous competition for resources. And there's nothing like competition fr resources to turn people against one other.

One of the things that is deeply mysterious and endlessly fascinating about stories is how ancient they are. I always remember a marvellous moment when John Berger, who unfortunately died recently, he did a piece - it was a wonderful talking piece - about the history of art and he took us down into the bottom of the underground. He talks about the cave paintings from thousands of years ago and he described them very brilliantly that when you look at the drawing of a bear or the drawing of a deer, you can smell the animal so vivd. And then he said, "In the beginning there was no fumbling." So, from the beginning of the first human strokes that depicted, it was amazing. Picasso couldn't do as well! That's the same with narrative. Narrative in the beginning, there is no fumbling. Gilgamesh is still one of the best stories ever written and we have little bits of it that come out of the desert and we can add them now to it. Cinderella, I take Cinderella as it's probably one of the most widespread stories, there is a 9th century version... the earliest version I think still yet to be discovered, it may have, since I did my research, been another one but, is ninth century and Chinese. And in this version where she marries a scholar, it's not a prince as there's the values of Chinese society - Tang Dynasty society - and her slipper is gold, not glass. But otherwise it's very similar. The fairy godmother coms in the form of a fish. The Chinese have a veneration for beautiful golden carpe, she's inside the carpe. There are variations but the structure is exactly the same; she's lost her mother, a stepmother comes in, stepmother prefers her own two children, two sisters, and treats her as a servant, beats her, and so on. Doesn't want her to go to the local feast, the golden carpe helps her. But it's very clear from the way the story has been taken down, from a storyteller, that the storyteller knows that the audience knows the story already. He doesn't explain things! So, this is not a new story. This is a shared story that is already shared. And part of the pleasure for that very early ninth century audience was recognising a tory they already knew. So it's already there, its an ancient story. There are classical antecedents as well, in Herodotus I think, there's a trace of a similar Cinderella story. It's there in every kind of culture.

I'm not a archetypal... I don't believe this is hardwired. I don't believe that Cinderella pops up autonomously in this part and that part. Because we all have these stories imprinted in our brains. I believe in diffusion and that's why I'm very interested in networks that carry stories from a well, across a caravan, across the desert, the Silk Road. There are identifiable routes. The seas are very important, the ports are very important. So I believe that people tell these stories and that, in some ways, what's hardwired are the structural elements that people then remember so they can re-embroider it, So the hatred for an incoming mother for earlier children, that kind of thing, remains a structural, almost nodes, around which the memory can build the next version of the story. In Cinderella the most famous version, in the West, is the 17th century French version by ? and in his old age when he wrote down the fairytales and he says that he knew them from servants and from little biddies. He's quite contemptuous. This idea of disparaging the stories while actually telling them at the same time is very structural to the dissemination of fairytales. In one of the very early and beautiful versions the