ERIC Number: EJ1245676
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2018-Sep
Pages: 12
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: EISSN-2043-6106
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Available Date: N/A
Popular Culture's Enduring Influence on Childhood: Fairy Tale Collaboration in the Young Adult Series "The Lunar Chronicles"
Lykissas, Alexandra
Global Studies of Childhood, v8 n3 p304-315 Sep 2018
Fairy tales have a long history of providing educational morals for young women, particularly children. The lessons from older fairy tales have long influenced the metanarratives regarding how women should act in our culture and contemporary versions are no different. Contemporary adaptations of these fairy tales, however, have moved the genre beyond restrictive metanarratives and are now offering new solutions to 21st-century problems like authoritarian rulers. In Marissa Meyers' "Lunar Chronicle" series (2012-2015), the characters interact and work together to overcome the villain. This "collaborative fairy tale" is a new type of fairy tale adaptation in which the characters work together instead of focusing on their individual happily-ever-afters. My article uses postmodern and feminist literary theories along with close-reading literary analysis to examine how this young adult series shows how young adult literature has become political and is able to address adult problems in ways that are easier to process for younger readers. I focus on how the series uses the character of Levana to examine how authoritarian rulers maintain control over the populace, in order to show how the characters then work together to overthrow Levana to free the people from her oppression. This series uses collaboration to show the reader how to resolve possible problems within their own lives. Working in community then becomes as a solution for young adults who may feel disenfranchised or lonely in our increasingly divisive world. Cooperation also becomes a transgressive move against the tendency to become segregated from those around us.
Descriptors: Adolescent Literature, Young Adults, Females, Fairy Tales, Social Problems, Social Justice, Feminism, Postmodernism, Cooperation, Authoritarianism
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
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