Cautionary Tales and Consolatory Fables - Fairytales and the Horror Film

This doctorate project proposes to investigate the meaningful parallels between folk/fairy tales and the horror film, both of
which provide accessible narrative frameworks through which a culture mediates its norms, values, and popular
anxieties. This secondary research will take full advantage of the wonderful Cambridge Centre for Film and Screen as
well as the valuable folklore resources at the Haddon library, and will fall loosely into two categories: * First, it will
address the common formal attributes between fairytales and horror films, including flat/archetypal characterisations,
meta-fictionality, and the symbolism of magical objects. It will also highlight the common receptive contexts for each
genre, such as how Anderson's theory of self-correcting folklore can be applied to horror franchises. * Secondly, it will
investigate the important social and cultural contexts of both horror cinema and folk/fairytales. These involve a common
involvement in rites of initiation, the communication of moral taboos, and the expression of popular phobias. This project
builds on the recent popularity of folk-horror theory, but expands it in vital and necessary ways; and investigates the
important theoretical claim that the folk narrative is not lost alongside pre-literature cultures, but rather survives in
modern media filmic reincarnations that maintain the vital social function and instrumentality of folklore and fairytales.