ABSTRACT
Although one could (and perhaps should) consider Georges Méliès, who produced highly innovative féeries at the end of the nineteenth century, as the founder and pioneer of the fairy-tale film, it is Walt Disney who became king of the fairy-tale films in the twentieth century, and though dead, his ghost still sits on the throne and rules the realm. Not only did Disney dominate the field of animated fairy-tale films, but many if not most of his live-action films followed the format that he developed for his animated films-a conventional reconciliation of conflicts and contradictions that engenders an illusion of happiness, security, and utopianism. Naturally, Disney did not do this by himself. He hired and organized gifted artists, technicians, and collaborators, not unlike the industrious virtuous seven dwarfs, who adapted fairy tales for the cinema by creating extraordinary cartoons and also developed the animated feature fairy-tale film in Disney’s name so that his productions effaced the names of Charles Perrault, the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, and Collodi and became synonymous with the term fairy tale. There is scarcely an adult or child born in the twentieth century who, in the western world, has not been exposed to a Disney fairy-tale film or artifact. Our contemporary concept and image of a fairy tale have been shaped and standardized by Disney so efficiently through the mechanisms of the culture industry that our notions of happiness and utopia are and continue to be filtered through a Disney lens even if it is myopic. It seems that myopia has come to dominate both reality and utopia, thanks to Disneyfication, or that we are conditioned to view reality and fairy tales through a myopic pseudoutopian lens.
