My dissertation paper for my Master of Film Studies degree (USyd) was titled:
The Wonder Zone: Heterotopic Spaces in Fairy Tale Films.
I know right, what on earth does that all mean? Well unless you are an academic you are probably not that interested, so in short I used French Philosopher Michel Foucault’s concept of heterotopias as a broad framework of analysis to contest the space of contemporary fairytale films. I then devised a conceptual space, ‘The Wonder Zone’ as a critical reading strategy to investigate new modes of perception in the current proliferation of fairy tale films in the digital era.
The Wonder Zone constituted three spaces of enquiry; the iconic, the liminal and the spectacle. The paper examined the heterogeneous layers within these there nominated spaces to articulate an identifiable system of signatory codes, aesthetic strategies and industrial dynamics that are contributing to the current modes of the cinematic tale of wonder.
