Whereas the original folk tale was cultivated by a narrator and the audience to clarify and interpret phenomena in a way that would strengthen meaningful social bonds, the narrative perspective of a mass-mediated fairy tale has endeavored to endow reality with a total meaning except that the totality

sometimes assumes totalitarian shapes and hues because the narrative voice is no longer responsive to an active audience but seeks to manipulate it according to the vested interests of the state and private industry.

and expansion of capitalist industry. Therefore, the bourgeois establishment had to make it seem that the fairy tales were immoral, trivial, useless and harmful if an affirmative culture of commodity values supportive of elite interests were to take root in the public sphere. In the early stages of capitalism, the imagination had to be fought and

The end result is not an explosion or revolution. Literature and art have never been capable of doing this and never will be.

Originally the folk tale was (and still is) an oral narrative form cultivated by non-literate and literate people to express the manner in which they perceived and perceive nature and their social order and their wish to satisfy their needs and wants.

The resistance at first to the fairy tale during the Enlightenment stemmed from the tales' implicit and explicit critique of utilitarianism. The emphasis on play, alternative forms of living, pursuing dreams and daydreams, experimentation, striving for the golden age—this stuff of which fairy tales were (and are) made challenged the rationalistic

necessity to change them.12

and expansion of capitalist industry. Therefore, the bourgeois establishment had to make it seem that the fairy tales were immoral, trivial, useless and harmful if an affirmative culture of commodity values supportive of elite interests were to take root in the public sphere. In the early stages of capitalism, the imagination had to be fought and

Paradoxically the magic power of folk