ABSTRACT
Any discussion of the fairy-tale film must begin with Georges Méliès, and any discussion of Méliès must begin with understanding how he brazenly incorporated the ridiculous in his art not simply to parody the classical structure and contents of the fairy tale but to broaden our curiosity about the wonder and the enigma of the genre. In Adorno’s brilliant assessment of the significance of the ridiculous in art, he claims that
the ridiculous, as a barbaric residuum of something alien to form, misfires in art if art fails to reflect and shape it. If it remains on the level of the childish and is taken for such, it merges with the calculated fun of the culture industry. By its very concept, art implies kitsch, just as the obligation it imposes of sublimating the ridiculous presupposes educational and class structure; fun is art’s punishment for this. All the same, the ridiculous elements in artworks are most akin to their intentionless levels and therefore, in great works, also closest to their secret.48
