Self Evaluation of Stories Within Stories

There was a lot more that I wanted to do with this paper that there wasn’t time or space for. I am pleased with how this went, going through the different modules, but I would have liked to include extra video links and discussion to other intertextual references besides the oral fairy tales, like those to Enchanted and Disney’s Snow White and Cinderella.

I was also limited by the fact that the series is not yet over, and so the investigation and analysis are ongoing. There is a pattern beginning to emerge—or a potential pattern—in wardrobe color design as Emma becomes more of a foil for Regina and Mary Margaret is evolving into a more colorful character, starting to wear bright colors as she steps out into sexual exploration. The character of Ruby (Red Riding Hood) intrigues me, as it is one of my favorite fairy tales, and one with vast intertextual references, but her story has yet to be addressed on the show.

The longer the series goes on, the more performance analyses will be able to be conducted, as well. In setting the main background of the story, only two of the seven episodes have focused on characters outside of Snow White’s story.

I considered a Snow White focused paper, considering the various remediations of the story, or focusing completely within the paper solely on her, but Regina was more fascinating at this point. Another angle I considered was looking at it from a criticism throughout of the dichotomies within, or tracing a theme through each episode. For deeper analysis of those to stand alone, though, I felt like I needed more episodes. The same goes for Rumpelstiltskin/Mr. Gold. A theory I considered exploring was him as a trickster character with reference to Loki and Coyote, and an examination then, of the remediation of classical myths.

I feel the paper fell a little short in outside theoretical sources. I referenced a lot of what we discussed, but the sources themselves did not seem to lend much to this particular paper, as, in the end, it was a close reading of the source material using skills I learned in both my MA class and this class without application of specific theoretical frameworks except text/work and intertexuality and television and culture analysis. I would have liked to tie in more specific theory, but felt, in the end, that the analytical skills served me best in a close reading.

On a technical front, my goal was to have it as more of a hypertextual project, and that is where I can see it going in the future. My technical skills failed me a little here, and working within the framework of WordPress, I had difficulty getting the same sort of circular hypertextual presentation I would have liked, where you could trace Snow White’s journey through each analysis, or Regina’s, or read each form of analysis—whether on a theme, or a performance or a visual cue (i.e. tracing the color red through its various iterations in the series). I think the material is mostly there in the paper to do that, but I haven’t ever worked with linking short lexias and webbing out a project that would link the way Patchwork Girl did. That is something I would like to teach myself, and then come back to this project in the spring, after the first season is over to create a hypertext project based upon it rather than just the straight forward web page presentation I have now. I may start working on that with what I have, but I really feel that some of the answers to the questions in the story need to be resolved before it can be the project I envision in the end.

Overall, though, I’m pleased with how it came out. I think I managed to address each area of the course, and looking at it that way rather than just a collection of plots and themes and straight literary analysis was really interesting and helped me find a far greater depth in the show than I originally anticipated when I first started watching it.