Jack Zipes Interview

Jack Zipes is a professor of German and Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Minnesota. For decades, Jack has worked extensively on the cultural importance of fairy tales, and his numerous books include Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion: The Classical Childrens Genre and the Process of Civilization (1988), Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales, Children, and the Culture Industry (1997), and When Dreams Come True: Fairy Tales and Their Tradition (1998), Sticks and Stones: The Troublesome Success of Childrens Literature from Slovenly Peter to Harry Potter (2002) -- all published by Routledge. Kiddiematinee.com is pleased to have the opportunity to discuss fairy tales and childrens cinema with Jack, and this interview was conducted by e-mail with questions supplied by Rob Craig and Doyle Greene. DG: What led you to develop an academic interest on the cultural significance of fairy tales? JZ: I was always a reader of fairy tales, and I have always been drawn to experimental and metaphorical writers from the German romantics (Novalis, Tieck, Eichendorff, Hoffmann) up through Kafka and contemporary writers such as Angela Carter, Robert Coover, Tanith Lee, and A. S. Byatt. These are all writers who transform the ordinary into the extraordinary, the usual into the unusual. I wrote my doctoral dissertation on the romantic hero in German and American literature and compared works by Kleist and Melville, Tieck and Hawthorne, Poe and Hoffmann, and so on. When I began teaching at NYU in 1967, I developed a course on German fairy tales and also became interested in childrens theater and literature. The anti-Vietnam War movement was in full bloom, and the university was changing so that I could introduce innovative courses. The more I realized how culture in the broadest sense influenced the thinking and values of the young, the more I wanted to study how fairy tales as the core reading and viewing material of the young played a role in their socialization. RC: In this respect, how did you first become interested in world fairy-tale cinema? JZ: I began publishing essays on fairy tales and theater in 1968. When I moved to Milwaukee to teach at the University of Wisconsin in 1972, I founded a childrens theater and began to develop a strong interest in media as well. I became firmly convinced - and still am - that you cannot study literature and the reception of literature in isolation. Everything must be analyzed within a socio-cultural historical context. In our day and age, the tales of the Brothers Grimm cannot be understood unless you know something about Disney, film, and the culture industry. My very first full-length book, Breaking the Magic Spell: Radical Theories of Folk and Fairy Tales, includes a few chapters that focus on film and fairy tales.

JZ: Most children today, at least in America, dont read fairy tales. They watch them on TV or in a movie theater. I work as a storyteller in elementary schools, and nine out of ten children know nothing about Charles Perrault, the Brothers Grimm, or Hans Christian Andersen or even L. Frank Baum. Their initiation into the fairy-tale realm is through film. This is not to say that children do not read fairy tales at all. Some do, but most children are exposed to fairy tales through film, video, and the computer. This is the great difference in the evolution of the fairy tale from its European origins to the present. The mediation of the stories is no longer through parents and storytellers in communities but through print, the anonymous narrator, and visuals. In addition, American writers and publishers have radically changed the plots and characters of the traditional tales and/or created fascinating and boring new tales. The changes range from an inane puritanical sanitization of the traditional tales - an insipid endeavor to protect children from the horrors of reality - to remarkable and provocative innovation that challenges children to think for themselves. The recent Shrek films are good examples of such innovation while the run-of-the mill Disney films and even the Shelley Duvall adaptations of Faerie Tale Theatre dumb down children. If they protect them from anything, they protect them or blind them from using their own imaginations and own thinking to question the world around them.

RC: Which fairy tale films do you think best follow the letter or spirit of their original source material? JZ: I dont think we should use terms such as original or authentic when we talk about fairy tales. Nor do I think that artists should follow the letter or spirit of the original because we really dont know exactly what the original and authentic tales were like. They were and are part of a very long oral tradition that has evolved over thousands of years. Of course, it is possible to take a printed text, that is, a literary fairy tale written by Perrault, the Grimms, or Andersen, and compare it with the cinematic version or with some other text that came after it and remark upon the transformations. These transformations will depend on changes in the tastes, values, and politics of a culture over time. Just as storytellers keep changing their tales each time they tell them, even when they are telling the same tale, we are at liberty to make changes that address our personal and social issues. Whenever I study fairy-tale films, I look for originality, experimentation, social commentary, and unusual acting and representation. While he was alive, Jim Henson generated great changes in the fairy-tale film. His TV series, The Storyteller, now a DVD, is one of the most brilliant interpretations of how stories were told and can be told today. Not only did he and his associates provide fascinating insights into the tradition of storytelling, but they used the montage technique, puppets, camera angles, the estrangement technique in ways that drew out new meanings from the tales, if one can ever really produce something new in this world. Henson also produced two feature-length fairy-tale films for TV and many Muppet Baby versions that are extraordinary. There are also a number of fairy-tale films for adults such as Matthew Brights Freeway or the Broadway musical Into the Woods that break from the original source material and yet are true to the tradition of what storytelling should be today because they open up questions about the function of storytelling. By the way, I dont like to make a distinction between fairy-tale films for adults and fairy-tale films for children. It is a spurious distinction that was not made until the late 19th century and has been detrimental to children and furthered the hypocrisy of adults.

RC: Are their any universal or enduring messages which fairy tales, or their cinematic counterparts, tend to emphasize? JZ: The best fairy tales and fairy-tale films deal with the human condition and survival. One of the reasons that we keep returning to fairy tales after we have heard, read, or seen them since our childhood is that they touch on vital and relevant issues in our daily struggles and endeavors to control our destinies. We all want to become kings and queens, that is, to be powerful enough to rule our lives and the world around us. However, we may have many obstacles because, first of all, we are born powerless, and second of all, we may be born into a poor family and be the youngest child in this poor family. There may be many other problems. Our parents may die when we are born, or they may be abusive parents who abandon us. We may have siblings who hate us. We may be of the wrong sex and wrong color. We may be sent to a heinous relative. These problems are the stuff of fairy tales, and its no wonder that we keep repeating them because most of the problems we experience as we try to become narrators of our own lives are depicted in fairy tales with the hope that we shall resolve them and can come out on top. DG: How have fairy tales evolved over time, specifically from their European origins to their American versions, especially in film?

DG: In contrast, which fairy tale films do you think are the least successful adaptations, and why? JZ: The least successful adaptations are those that pretend to have the interests of the children and family at heart. I dont like to keep targeting the Disney films, but with some exceptions, they are among the most insipid adaptations of fairy tales and there are many more like them on the market. Aside from criticizing them for their sexist and racist tendencies and for creating stereotypical and boring heroes and heroines, I dont think these films are honest. By that, I mean they dont deal seriously with the issues children confront. Nor do they provoke them to think about their lives and who is responsible for causing so much misery in this world. They flatten and smooth over conflict, candy-coat it, and then sell it as a commodity. Most fairy

tales have become commercialized in our present day and age. RC: What are some of your favorite fairy tales films? JZ: I have already mentioned the films of Jim Henson and the Shrek films. I also think that Tom Davenport has produced some remarkable films, and there are films such as The Princess Bride and Ever After that are worth seeing. What is interesting is that numerous films and TV shows incorporate fairy-tale motifs in them so that it is difficult to talk about a pure fairy-tale film. I am preparing to teach a course on the fairy-tale film, and while doing research I have discovered numerous films from the Eastern European countries and experimental films by David Kaplan, a young filmmaker in New York that have become favorites. But my favorites may not appeal to other viewers. Taste plays an important role here, and one of our favorite pastimes in America is to argue over films. RC: Which fairy tale films do you think remain influential and important, and hold up especially well today?

DG: K. Gordon Murray, who is kind of a patron saint to Rob and myself, is often considered the man who essentially invented the kiddie matinee in the 1960s. Among his most successful and positively surreal kiddie-films were his dubbed Mexican fairy-tale adaptations. Could you comment on any Murray imports you might be familiar with? JZ: Well, truthfully, though I may have seen some of the Murray productions when I was young, I have become acquainted (or re-acquainted) with the Murray fairy-tale adaptations only recently thanks to you and Rob. I have now seen several of the German and Mexican films, and I am flabbergasted - flabbergasted because they are unusually good and very interesting from a historical and cinematic perspective. I could spend hours discussing them, and to discuss them, one would have to separate the Mexican from the German. Moreover, one would have to compare the Murray West German fairy-tale films of the 1950s and 1960s with the East German DEFA films of this period. So, to be brief, let me say that the Rodriguez Little Red Riding Hood trilogy is so inventive and hilarious that I hope it will be given greater distribution in the world. It is to Murrays credit that he discovered and adapted these films for an American audience. There is no doubt that the Mexican films are surreal. Moreover, they have a peculiar innocence and raw quality that make them enchanting - they captivate because the tricks are so apparent, the characters so hilarious and unassuming, the plots so obvious, the slapstick so clever, the landscapes, so bizarre, and the meanings, so straightforward that I found myself constantly impressed by how inventive and creative they were and how they imparted a sense of innovation. I am also particularly taken by the way Rodriguez continually calls for communal action and justice. The West German films are also fascinating, and each one would have to be evaluated on its own merits. Some are also banal. One important feature that I noticed is that they metaphorically address the postwar problems in Germany in significant ways. Two examples: Genschows Hansel and Gretel harps on the theme of poverty, hunger, and famine, and his interpretation of the fairy tale adds numerous new elements that point to a reunification of the younger starving generation with the older generation - obviously, a parallel could be drawn with the Nazi generation and the young generation. More to the point is that Genschow combines stark reality with fantastic scenes to produce a compelling film that opens up questions of hunger, abandonment, and community. Another film, which I thought was unusual, was King Thrushbeard. Though somewhat kitschy and hoaky, the film addresses the question of the taming of the shrew in a more critical way than most. It is definitely not a feminist film, but it does mock male power, particularly the king and his minister, while making a case for a gentle love and depicts a king who is guided by the court jester, who cares a great deal for the young princess. All the West German films are somewhat contradictory but the comic acting is amusing and the plots so implausible that the end effect is good, that is, there is always something serious beneath the comedy that is in need of a happy resolution.

JZ: Difficult to answer because there are several that could be considered influential and important for different reasons. To give you an example. Cocteaus Beauty and the Beast is undoubtedly very influential and important because it serves as a model or taking-off point for most of the post 1945 adaptations of Beauty and the Beast. However, I myself am not terribly fond of it and believe that the film is over-rated and that Cocteaus interpretation of the tale is flat and confused. Another example: all of the early Disney films are important and influential including black-and-white films in the Laugh O Gram series of 1922. It all depends on what you mean by influential and important. In France, for instance, there is an amazing film Le roi et loiseau, (The King and the Bird) created by Paul Grimault, a great animator, and written by Jacques Prevert, a gifted poet and writer. It is very influential in France and is a genial interpretation of Andersens The Shepherdess and the Chimney Sweep. It is a classic fairy-tale film in the best sense of the term, but it is not known in America because there is no English version as far as I know. Everything depends on distribution, and since American companies dominate the market, some of the very best and most important fairytale films from Europe, Asia, and Africa never get to be known. I should mention, of course, The Wizard of Oz, which is one of the most important American fairy-tale films because it has almost mythic proportions and implications in America - and with good reason. In all its aspects, The Wizard of Oz, which has had an impact on such great writers as Salman Rushdie, is influential and important. Interestingly, however, it is not important on the Continent and in other countries. That is, its cultural significance and influence are connected to America. RC: To what might you attribute the big postwar growth of childrens films in general, and especially fairy tale cinema from Europe: East Germany, Russia, Czechoslovakia, etc? JZ: A crass answer - money. Money and more money. The second reason, particularly in regard to Eastern European countries, is that corporations and governments realized that the film was a powerful means - Hitler and Mussolini demonstrated this - as spectacle to influence and condition the young before they could start to think critically. Most of the Eastern European fairy-tale films complied with the state ideology, although many of them were also interestingly subversive. (Most politicians are stupid when it comes to the arts, and the fairy tales often mocked them.) In the West, the fairy-tale films were not as ideological, at least not explicitly ideological. But as entertainment, as divertissement, they were used and still are used to divert children (and adults) from thinking about the real problems of poverty, exploitation, abuse, etc. The ideology promoted by fairy-tale films and everything associated with TV and the cinema is consumerism. Films are made to get children to consume more and more of the same, not to mention adults. The childrens cinema market is huge, and every film corporation is trying to dream up something new to make money off the dreams of children.

RC: Did you personally attend any kiddie matinees, and what do you think of that particular 1960s phenomenon? JZ: I was born in 1937, and by the early 1960s I was in Germany where I spent five years studying and teaching at the university. Therefore I mussed the kiddie matinees. When I grew up in the 1940s and 1950s, I went to the movies almost religiously on Saturdays and would spend three to four hours watching westerns (Hopalong Cassidy, Roy Rogers, Gene Autry and cartoons). I also went to see all the Disney films. DG: In America, Walt Disney has become synonymous with fairy tale and childrens cinema. What are your thoughts on the Disney empire and its films? JZ: I have written extensively about Disney in my books, and though I am very critical of the Disney ideology, the corporation, and the empire, I also think that one must give Disney himself credit as a creative artist. I may not like the formulaic films that he began producing in the late 1930s because they are so repetitive and stale, and I may not like his very elitist and sexist perspective of the world, but he was inventive and developed techniques of animation that have had a lasting and important effect. What is regrettable is that

the Disney corporation under Walt and his brothers rule became ruthless and secretive in its practices and pretended to represent virtuous family values just to make more money and spread their own corporate messages and values. Again, one must be very careful in critiquing the Disney films because first of all there are hundreds of them and because some of them are truly interesting and important. But all in all, the Disneys and their corporation became missionaries and spread their divine corporate word through their films, theme parks, and merchandise.

RC: To what might you attribute the overall dearth of fairy-tale cinema in America, at least until the 1980s, with the Cannon fairy tales and Shelly Duvalls Faerie Tale Theater? JZ: In my opinion, I think that the Canon fairy tales and most of the films in Shelly Duvalls Faerie Tale Theatre are deplorable. Of course, there are a few exceptions. For instance, I think The Frog Prince with Robin Williams and Terri Garr is a gas and an inventive interpretation of the Grimms tale. One of the reasons the film succeeds, of course, is due to the brilliant acting of Williams and Garr. But almost all the Duvall films are star-studded flops, boring and self-serving. In contrast, there are the important and interesting experiments of Davenport and Henson during the 1980s. In the post-war period from 1945 to 1970, that is, to the time of the anti-war movement and counter-culture movement, the Disney fairy-tale films reigned supreme and many short fairy-tale cartoons were also popular. In addition, there were some fairy-tale films for adults that were produced and had limited success. I think that the rise of the feminist movement in the early 1970s brought about a great critique of the traditional fairy tales and also a challenge to the canonical fairy tales so that there was first a questioning of sexual stereotypes along with racial stereotypes, and this led many artists and publishers to re-think their position on fairy tales and led to new books and gradually to new films during the 1980s and 1990s. Up until the late 1960s, America was very complacent, and the status quo in culture was sexist and racist. Things began to change in the 1970s, and though the dominant current in American popular culture within the culture industry is still conservative, there is still room for debate and innovation. Fairy-tale film production is a contested cultural field in which artists, writers, and produces manifest their values and beliefs in imaginative ways. The imagination of people is always used to comprehend what is happening in the world and how it can be changed. Unfortunately, corporations have also discovered that the imagination can be instrumentalized to serve their vested interests, and their films often seek to govern our imaginations. So, perhaps we can speak about fairy-tale films that endeavor to chain us to the status quo and keep our minds conditioned to become good consumers, and about fairy-tale films that endeavor to liberate our imaginations and minds so that we can decide on alternatives to the status quo. RC: Do you think the fairy-tale cinema tradition is being carried on today? JZ: It depends on what you mean by fairy-tale cinema tradition. I believe that fairy tales will always be with us in all kinds of forms. If we go all the way back to Georges Melis at the end of the nineteenth century to the current Dreamworks production of films like Shrek, there is no doubt in my mind that the fairy-tale cinematic tradition will continue to grow and spread along the two currents I mentioned above: status-quo films influenced, let us say, by Disney, and liberating films along the lines of Grimault, Henson, and Davenport. I think we must also bear in mind that video films, DVDs, and the Internet will play an important role as media in this tradition. Whatever the case may be, we need fairy tales in all their forms because they offer hope that the world need not be as dark and gloomy as it presently is. There is illumination in fairy tales and fairy-tale films, rays of truth, that shine through the lies and hypocrisy of the rulers, those ruthless and arrogant kings and queens, who seek to dominate the world with their rigid values and beliefs.