Fairy Tales Re-Imagined at ACMI

Today was the first day of the Fairy Tales Re-Imagined symposium at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image. This morning I was surprised to find a cinema full of several hundred eager participants.

The first session described a spectacular online documentary project from the ABC called Re-Enchantment. There were two sessions involving the author and director Sarah Gibson- also a Jungian analyst (can't say I've met one before)- who brings amazing psychological insight to readings of fairy tales. I'm now keen to see her three-part documentary series Myths of Childhood.

The second session focussed on the Little Red Riding Hood story, particularly wolves and the idea of devouring and being devoured. I was spellbound by the artwork and history presented by printmaker Jazmina Cininas, who undertook the Girlie Werewolf Project as part of her PhD at RMIT. Her striking images appear in this blog post.

According to Jazmina's research, there were numerous girls and women who rode wolves from the 16th century, which was a crime when practiced by females. These records flowed through to some lesser known examples of purported female werewolves, with Jazmina's own works taking much from the historical circumstances of women's imagined devious relationships with magic (for instance, imagery of particular plants and flowers, such as hemlock, associated with she-wolves and witches). It was a revelation to find girl werewolves almost five centures before the Ginger Snaps films.

The final session concentrated on the Cinderella story and its place in contemporary culture. Meredith Jones from The University of Technololgy Sydney read the tale into contemporary makeover culture, from reality television trainwrecks like The Swan to Michael Jackson and Lad Gaga. I was intrigued by the connection between Meredith's argument that makeovers foreground the process of becoming, just as fairy tales give us pleasure through the process of the heroine becoming the princess (rather than how wonderful the prince might be as a husband, the children that may issue as a result etc.). What happens during "ever after" is not important.

This session also included an absolutely fascinating and rich paper by Peter Mitchell (also from UTS) on the significance of the "light shoe" for women, to shed light on ubiquitous glass slipper. I haven't spared much thought about the evolution and importance of footwear, apart from footbinding and the repercussions of high heels on poor feet and the ability to remain upright, but I was humbled into the realisation that the history of dress has major implications for the construction of gender. I really had no idea that men also wore high heels at court, and that they did symbolise power in terms of adding height to the wearer.

Tomorrow promises sessions on the use of fairy tales in creative works and the enticingly titled "The Forbidden Room: From Bluebeard to CSI". It was suggested today that the contemporary crime drama is a modern way of confronting death in the same way as the fairy tale did in the past, so I'm keen to hear Catherine Cole's paper "Death as Entertainment". I think my enthusiasm perhaps proves the point already.

Winnipeg here I come! Girls, Texts, Cultures Symposium

I have become used to "girls" being a fringe, underappreciated realm of study. I almost have responses ready when people ask "so, you teach children?" (like the airport security attendant who was rubbing my clothing and bag down for traces of explosives a fortnight ago), and I've accepted that prestigious universities will take the candidate with the publication on Henry James informed by the philosophy of Agamben rather than girls' genre fiction.

Given this acceptance, I didn't expect to be invited to a symposium at a university on the other side of the world in order to speak and listen to other scholars on the subject. I've generously been invited by Professor Clare Bradford, who is the current recipient of a prestigious Trudeau Fellowship, to attend the 'Girls, Texts, Cultures' symposium at the University of Winnipeg in October. A quick Wikipedia check (only for initial checking, not for actual "research", students) revealed I'd be heading to the coldest city in the world with a population above 600,000. So perhaps it's warmer than Siberia, then.

I know I'll be joining Dr Kristine Moruzi, who has just taken up a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Alberta (hooray!), Professor Mavis Reimer (from the University of Winnipeg) and a range of other international scholars from gender studies, education, psychology, sociology and international development.

I've put in an abstract to speak about British books and magazine stories about Australian girls. I have a list of a dozen or so such books written by British authors to confront at the State Library. But where will I find the time for that as Lindsay Lohan has just entered jail and I must maintain a candlit vigil by the television in order to await news of her potential early release.