If ever a reminder that all writing has a specific audience and that a writer must be cognizant of that audience, the journal articles for this week's class serve as that reminder. Or perhaps these articles are correctly in line within the frame of this class considering it has taken a distinctly "Disneyesque" tone, and it is I who am out of tune for I have not, and do not intend to watch "Everafter." I truly believed that this was an Intro to Folklore course, however, what has transpired through these articles are something wholly different. How is it possible to gleam anything remotely usable by a layperson reading John Stephens' article "Utopia, Dystopia, and Cultural Controversy..." It is obvious that the intended audience is not a student of an intro course, but rather an audience who is quite familiar with the films "Ever After" and the Grimm's film version of "Snow White."
It is evident the audience by the lack of plot summary and reflection, as Jenna Jorgensen attempts to do in her article. Yet even the Jorgensen article fails to conjoin an overarching theme of what this class is supposed to perform by way of learning folklore. The use of the fairy 'godmother' is a trope continuously used within American media, but so are other tropes which connect to the magical "knowingness" of the African-American as the other, or of immigrants being hard working. How is it that this particular ideal of the "godmother", Cinderella, and Snow White a constant within the Intro course? Is there something I am to thoroughly understand, which I would not by examining other examples of fairy tales?
It is an extremely shortsighted view to bring the fairytale down to its film counterpart. And it is disappointing that tomorrow will be another discussion of Disney.
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