Channeling Wonder

<p>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 <em>Channeling Wonder: Fairy Tales on Television </em>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.<br />  <br /> 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 <em>Cinderella</em> anthologies like Jim Henson’s <em>The Storyteller</em> made-for-TV movies like <em>Snow White: A Tale of Terror Bluebeard </em>and the <em>Red Riding Trilogy</em> and drama serials like <em>Grimm</em> and <em>Once Upon a Time.</em> Contributors also explore more unexpected representations in the Carosello commercial series the children’s show <em>Super Why!</em> the anime series <em>Revolutionary Girl Utena</em> and the live-action dramas<em> Train Man</em> and <em>Rich Man Poor Woman.  </em>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 <em>Merlin Buffy the Vampire Slayer</em> and <em>Dollhouse</em> and in a range of television formats including variety shows situation comedies and reality TV.<br />  <br /> <em>Channeling Wonder</em> 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.</p>