Brigham Young University
by Jill Terry Rudy
A prompt for this symposium asks, “How has storytelling evolved in the face of advancing technologies?” As a folklorist, I remind us that changing communication technologies serve to foster and extend storytelling capacities. In this presentation, I share and expand ideas from my “Overview of Basic Concepts: Folklore, Fairy Tale, Culture, and Media” in the Routledge Companion to Media and Fairy-Tale Cultures (2018). Much of what folklorists have studied since the nineteenth century involves orally shared expression requiring people to gather close enough to hear and be heard. What is more folkloric than stories at bedtime or around a campfire? Communication technologies may appear to evolve from oral communication to writing implements, to printing presses, photographic images, moving and talking pictures, audio and televisual broadcasting, and digital computing and handheld devices. Considering “Cinderella” (ATU 510A) retellings over centuries shifts thinking of these technological changes away from hierarchies and advancements. As I have written, we can “insist on recognizing human beings as communicative omnivores whose expressive media overlap and expand rather than supersede and replace” (2018, 4). Fairy-tale retellings teach that storytelling happens with all new media. The shifting and continuous forms, functions, and media of fairy tales repeatedly, and pleasurably, help folks navigate harsh realities with fantastic possibilities.