ABSTRACT
Fairy-tale television (FTTV) holds three crucial things in common: wonder, storytelling, and domestic troubles and triumphs. Like fairy tales, television accompanies viewers during life’s journeys bringing encounters with others’ trials and quests—fictional and non-fictional. FTTV explores the aesthetics, and politics, of wonder through the key acts of social relations, justice, and storytelling with which we form our everyday lives, over a lifetime. We give a historical perspective that advocates noticing and pondering the social and cultural contexts of telling and viewing fairy tales. We explain our own orientation to FTTV and share an across-the-decades review of FTTV programming, ranging internationally and centered in Canada and the United States. We conclude by offering a brief encounter with key theoretical directions and approaches shared by fairy-tale and television studies in order to point out some ways of thinking, knowing, and acting made possible with FTTV.]
