ANIMAFEST SCANNER IX | SYMPOSIUM FOR CONTEMPORARY ANIMATION STUDIES | PANEL 3 GENDER AND DIVERSITY

Twisted Tales - Animated Fairy Tales with a Twist for the Children of the Present - Sara Božanić (CEO, Institute for Transmedia Design, Murska Sobota, Slovenia)

PANEL 3: GENDER AND DIVERSITY
TEATAR &TD
08/06 WED 15:55-16:25

By presenting the stigmas within the familiar narratives of fairy tales, we raise awareness for the stigma in question and educate children and parents on how to “de-stigmatise”. Twisted Tales is an entire entertainment and teaching universe that offers a new and empowering perspective on the well-known stories and characters from fairy tales, adapting them to modern times and themes. Fairy tales, as originally written, were perfectly suited to the subject of stigmas. It is only in the more recent sanitised re-interpretations that their valuable lessons have become lost. The modern versions of fairy tales like Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Snow White are very different than their originals. Instead of important life lessons, they teach girls to wait for a prince to save them. Stereotypes like passive women with dubious life goals (i.e. to marry a rich white man) were not always part of the tales, either. Twisted Tales rewrites fairy tales with an eye to lessons for a world of empathy and understanding and without bias of the stigmas in question. The message to young audiences is that nothing can stop them no matter what stigma they individually need to overcome, whether it’s physical, mental, racial, social, or gender based, or whether it’s due to external pressures like bullying. Why? Because kids who have been stigmatised get to learn how to overcome the stigma and be stronger and wiser! Twisted Tales are told through the medium of webisodes (6 x 15 min), a TV series (26 x 12 min), AR Books, AR experience, and an educational program for kids, teachers, and parents. The universe is from the outset, developed and executed through contributions from both children and their parents.

Sara Božanić is a designer, a CEO of the Institute for Transmedia Design, whose wide-ranging participatory projects centre on education and engagement. Ideas inhabit varied media and platforms as a vehicle for engagement, using co-production as a form of collective action that encourages diverse audiences to think critically and act creatively.