Ambivalence of Antiheroes in Modern Film Fairy Tales for Children

This article seeks to contribute to the debate about understandings and interpretations of modern film fairy tales aimed at children and family audiences. The main focus of the research is on the way traditional folklore and fairy tale antagonists are transformed into heroes/protagonists in postmodern entertainment film genres. The qualitative research results are drawn from an adapted V.Propp's methodology. Conclusions and concerns for media effects are considered. On the example of two modern films in the genre of fairy tales the author analyzed the erosion of the traditional binary oppositions of the tale – those that were considered marked positively (hero, good king), perform negative functions and vice versa. Indeed, both films use a postmodern narrative device – to turn traditional heroes into villains, and villains into heroes. This gives the viewer the opportunity to take a fresh look at the characters – heroes whom we have considered to be good are capable of evil, and antagonists, on the contrary, can do good. The media texts used for analysis are far from unique, the same trend is reflected in Shrek (2001), and its subsequent parts (in the second film, the main villain is Fairy Godmother), a Russian animated series Princesses (2018) (the magic school principal is Koschei).