1. Introduction: Fairy Tales on the Contemporary Teen Screen.- 2. Living on the Edge: An Escape to the Forest in Catherine Hardwicke’s Red Riding Hood (2011).- 3. When Sleeping Beauty Wakes: The Twilight Film Series, Liminal Time and Fantasy Images.- 4. Liminal Communitas and Feminist Solidarity: Transforming ‘Bluebeard’ in Pretty Little Liars (King 2010– ).- 5. Cinderella’s Transformation: Liminality and Style as Subversion in Gossip Girl (Schwartz and Savage 2007-12).- 6. The Mermaid’s Tale: Ultraliminality and Feminist Futures in Aquamarine (Allen 2006).- 7. Conclusion: Rituals of Girlhood Transformed on the Teen Screen.
Athena Bellas is a tutor, lecturer, subject co-ordinator and Honours supervisor in the Faculty of Arts and the Screen and Cultural Studies Department, University of Melbourne, Australia.
This book examines how the fairy tale is currently being redeployed and revised on the contemporary teen screen. The author redeploys Victor Turner’s work on liminality for a feminist agenda, providing a new and productive method for thinking about girlhood onscreen. While many studies of teenagehood and teen film briefly invoke Turner’s concept, it remains an underdeveloped framework for thinking about youth onscreen. The book’s broad scope across teen media—including film, television, and online media—contributes to the need for contemporary analysis and theorisation of our multimedia cultural climate.