Writers have been retelling or fracturing fairy tales for a long time. Now the film & TV industry have gotten into the fray big time, with two Snow White movies releasing this spring and a couple of fairy tale-inspired TV shows. The one that I’ve been faithfully following is Once Upon A Time.
Storybrooke, Maine is your average idyllic New England small town–with one difference. Every inhabitant is a fairytale character, brought into this world by the Wicked Stepmother from Snow White (Snow White, again! What’s with the popularity of that particular fairy tale this year?). They remember nothing of their former lives, and they’ve been trapped in time for 28 years, ruled over by Mayor Mills, aka Evil Queen. No one comes to Storybook, and bad things happen to anyone who tries to leave. The Evil Queen’s revenge on Snow White (now separated from her Prince, and a school teacher) is complete. Until the day the mayor’s adopted son brings his birth mother into the small town–and time moves forward once more.
Er, I mean this of course:
While the framing story is that of Snow White, Once Upon A Time draws from a number of fairy tales, blending them so that they are all part of the same tapestry of events. These are fluid fairy tales, fairy tales without boundaries, where Hansel and Gretel find themselves at the Gingerbread House on an errand for the Evil Queen, Cinderella bargains away her first-born child to Rumpelstiltskin for a chance to go to the ball, and Beauty’s Beast is–well, I won’t spoil that little detail here. Secondary characters get their own subplots, and backstories are fleshed out. Each episode has a Fairy Tale Land thread and a Storybook thread, which, for the most part, work well together, revealing not only the changes happening in Storybook but also the mysteries of the past (like why the Evil Queen enacted such a bizarre curse on everyone in the first place–which is a season-long, if not series-long, mystery).
The writers pepper the Storybrooke narrative with little clue as to the true identities of its inhabitants. Snow White is Mary Margaret Blanchard, Rumpelstiltskin is Mr. Gold, and the Evil Queen is Regina Mills (thus making me believe that she’s the original miller’s daughter from Rumpelstiltskin, and is yet another indicator of how fluid the boundaries of the fairy tales are in this show). Because the Queen has replaced everyone’s memories (breaking up relationships she found offensive, I suppose), their happy endings have turned into never-afters. Cinderella is a pregnant teen whose boyfriend’s father won’t let him see her. Hansel and Gretel are the results of a brief fling. And Snow White and her prince may feel they belong together, but he’s married to someone else, and their attraction only bring lies, betrayal and heartache.
There are some parts of the worldbuilding that are hard to swallow. If everything’s stayed the same for 28 years, why has the mayor’s adopted kid managed to grow up while his schoolmates haven’t aged a day? And I only realized a couple of episodes ago that the creators of Lost are behind this series, so I’m not at all confident that they can keep the storylines under control and nail the ending.
Do you watch Once Upon A Time? What do you think of it?
Jenny and I have been watching it. It’s interesting, has potential, but I’m not terribly happy with the execution. I didn’t realize that the creators of Lost are behind this; it may account for my gripes with the show. Have you noticed that the fairy tales in the flashbacks always seem to end in tragedy? How is Storybrooke so much worse when their lives were already miserable? It’s hard to sympathize with the heroes when they keep betraying/screwing up/goofing up 🙂 However, I’m a big fan of Robert Carlyle, so I’ll pretty much watch it for him as Mr. Gold!
Yeah, they do, don’t they! I’m assuming, though, that since the flashbacks are part of a larger story, they will have a happy ending when Snow White has her happy ending in Fairy Tale Land. I just don’t know if the writers can make the Evil Queen’s revenge justifiable when her motivations are revealed (I mean, killing off the people she hates, yes… but moving them to a new world? wiping their memories so they don’t even *know* what they’ve lost? why is that satisfying to her AT ALL?)
Mr. Gold is my favorite character, too, in both Fairy Tale Land and Storybrooke. What other roles have you liked him in?
He was Dr. Rush in Stargate Universe and Gaz in The Full Monty. Fun fact- I saw The Full Monty *with my mom* when she dropped me off at Dartmouth in ’97! We’ve seen some strange movies together…
Robert Carlyle! I have to watch this show now! I love him.
Funny this show should come up now. A friend was just telling me about it this past weekend, and how much she thought I would like it. And now your post here has me intrigued. I’ll have to see if the eps are available on the internet.
There sure does seem to be a bunch of versions of Snow White popping up this year!
Yes, you can find them online at abc’s website.
http://beta.abc.go.com/shows/once-upon-a-time
I am following Once Upon A Time. I’m really hooked. I find the way they have tweaked and weaved the fairy tales into the present day is very interesting. The prior comment about the fairy tales having tragic events is true of Grimm fairy tales–Grim.
*nod* They’ve gotten better at weaving together the two storylines as the season has progressed, I think. It’s especially interesting now that the modern-day characters are starting to remember their past lives.
It’s true that the Grimm tales had more tragic elements; I meant that Storybrooke doesn’t seem like much of a punishment for these people if their lives were already awful. For many of them, life may even be better for them in Storybrooke from what we’ve seen so far 🙂
Hi, Rabia–
Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I don’t have a TV, so I’ve never seen this show. Might have to see if Netflix has it. Fracturing fairy tales is a hobby for me and a couple of my siblings. I’ve been back in fairy-tale mode myself, as a writer, for a couple of years. It must be zeitgeist.
Lost, the TV show, was a blatant rip-off of Bob Mayer’s novel series ATLANTIS. He kept the story lines under better control. He has brought out one or two new books in that series since the end of the TV show. Not sure how they tie in to the older stories. Anyway, it’s no surprise that the perpetrators of Lost are now ripping off fairy tales. At least when you, um, pay homage to a fairy tale, no living writers are cheated.
And I love fairy tales–something that didn’t happen till I became a mother. As a kid, they bored me stiff.
Your banner image is beautiful. My best to your designer. 🙂
I never saw Lost, but from what I gathered, the ending was rather unsatisfactory. That seems to be a problem with big series with lots of twists and turns and mysteries–they don’t tie up loose ends very well. I’m sorry that a writer’s storyline got ripped off, though. 🙁
Thanks for the compliment! The image was off a stock picture site, but my sister-in-law designed the site and incorporated the image. She’s got a fantastic aesthetic sense and she’s a great photographer, too: http://www.robincornett.com/
Ack! It knows that I’m outside the USA and won’t let me watch 🙁
Boo. I know it’s on Hulu, too. Can you watch on that?
Once Upon a Time hasn’t been screened in Australia yet, but they’ve been advertising it like crazy for months! I’m really looking forward to it.
Hope you have fun watching it!