Date of Completion

5-6-2016

Degree Type

Honors Thesis

Discipline

English (ENGL)

First Advisor

Alexandra Neel

Abstract

Once upon a time, the Little Mermaid watched her Prince marry another woman, the Sleeping Beauty was raped by a Prince and woke up from her deep slumber to find out she was the mother of twins, the Little Red Riding Hood never made it out alive, and Goldilocks broke her neck jumping out of a window. This project examines original fairy tales and how they have changed over the years through various adaptations in media and film. The purpose is to find an answer to the question of why these sugarcoated changes have been made over time. In order to answer the question, several earlier versions of fairy tales will be examined, along with how they have been adapted into popular culture and how their modern day interpretations differ from the original source. Research should show that popular culture turns fairy tales into stories with happy endings that will be easier to monetize, straying away from the original sources that were intended to teach young children a lesson. The project will conclude with the research being used to write an adaptation of a fairy tale into a feature-length film that stays as true to the story of the source material. This adaptation is intended to depict that fairy tales can still be monetized and appeal to general audiences, even if they are strict adaptations of the original source in all of its gruesome glory and hard-to-swallow truth.

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