ABSTRACT
This chapter intervenes in a long-running debate among Marxist critics about the political functions of folk and fairy tales. In particular, it seeks to test Marxist arguments about the ideological value of utopianism in fairy tales by investigating the representation of wish fulfillment in a range of literary and media texts that draw upon Märchen, including the novel Nervous Conditions (1988) by the Zimbabwean writer Tsitsi Dangarembga, Dangarembga’s short film Kare Kare Zvako (Mother’s Day, 2004), and the 1991 Disney film Beauty and the Beast. Among the theoretical perspectives considered in this chapter are those presented in the work of Ernst Bloch, Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, and Jack Zipes.
