Starting with snow white

Once Upon a Time 
merged realism with fantasy.
Once Upon a Time
re-presents various tales, familiar fairy tale figures, and 
motifs. Where these characters and their adapted fairy tale histories (or former tales) are 
revealed through individual episodes, a stable narrative thread for the series exists in the 
American reality which the characters have been displaced into. In a town called 
“Storybrooke,” (not unlike Willingham’s “Fabletown”) these characters or fairy-tale 
types are presented as “real” individuals. In its blend of realism and fantasy, viewers are 
further engaged in what Claudia Schwabe refers to as a “third reality,” where 
“contemporary fairy-tale reinventions synthesize quotidian reality with 
supernatural/magical reality, forming a new reality with magical influences” (295). The 
realism presented within, as well as the more complex characterization of figures such as 
Snow White or the “wicked” Queen (another light nod to the feminist recuperation of the 
tale) promotes a new level of audience participation. Moreover, insofar as viewers gaze 
upon and enter into this “new” magical reality, they might also find themselves 
negotiating the “tension between the Disney canon and the show’s innovative retellings” 
(Hay and Baxter 319). However, as much as one might argue that Disney’s “classic” 
Snow White 
maintains a presence in a viewer’s experience of this adaptation, so too 
might more recent narrative departures or realistic presentations of consumer culture and 
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I use the term “fractured fairy tale” not to indicate a simple parodic use of a tale, but instead to represent 
the breaking of multiple tales and redeployment and/or combination of the characters and motifs within to 
create a new adaptation which unifies these disparate fairy tale figures and elements. 
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Willingham’s series published its last issue in 2015. 

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desire figure in—not only Willingham’s, but potentially Coover’s or Barthelme’s, as 
well. In this way, the redeployment of a successful “fracturing” of the tale creates the 
space for multiple 
Snow White
tales to emerge, reawakening what Bacchilega refers to as 
a “fairy tale web” of magic
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. 
In highlighting this new form of 
Snow White 
patterning, however, I do not mean 
to suggest that all of Disney’s and/or other contemporary versions function in this way.
Several young adult novels produced in recent years are baseless, taking 
Snow White 
or 
Fairest 
only in name to coerce a market readily consuming fairy tales. From an alternate 
angle, animation and marketing geared toward Disney’s younger audiences continues to 
groom new child-audiences with the “classic” Disney structures and figureheads.
 
Although the animated cartoon series 
Sofia the First 
(2012)
 
might be understood 
to have progressively employed the “fractured fairy tale” form, as well, its manipulation 
of this contemporary tool soon becomes evident as characters from Disney’s own 
“classic” library frequently come into play. Briefly, 
Sofia the First 
centers on a series of 
adventures undertaken by the titular character. However, when Sofia (the young princess 
from humble origins) encounters challenges that are insurmountable, the magical amulet 
that she wears around her neck enables an earlier Disney princess to appear, offering 
advice and counseling the younger princess into action. The (elder) Disney Princess 
(whether Snow White, Cinderella, or another), now positioned as something between a 
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Cristina Bacchilega contends that “it may be helpful to think of the fairy tale genre today as a web whose 
hypertextual links do not refer back to one authority or central tradition. This early-twenty-first century 
‘fairy tale web’ has woven into it—inside and outside of the academy—multiple, competing historical 
traditions and performances of the genre as well as varied contemporary revisions in multiple media” 
(Bacchilega and Rieder 25). 

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mother figure or fairy tale helper, instructs Sofia, gently guiding her into the mold of the 
princess that she “should” become. In this way, Disney’s traditional “civilizing process” 
and “classic” version are once again activated under the pretense of contemporary 
modeling for young girls (