The Heroic Fairy Tale Villain Application of Vladimir Propp’s formalist schema to the creation of a revisionist cinematic fairy tale in which the traditional villain is transformed into an anti-hero. Scott Hamilton B.E., Dip. Film & Television Production. Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts (Research). School of Creative Practice Faculty of Creative Industries, Education and Social Justice Queensland University of Technology 2021 Keywords Screenwriting, screenplay structure, feature film, revisionist fairy tale, character, archetype, hero, anti-hero, villain, protagonist, antagonist. i Abstract Recent trends in the Hollywood film industry have seen a rise in revisionist fairy tale films in which the traditional literary story villain has been transformed into a cinematic anti-hero. Although many of these commercial blockbuster films have been financially successful at the box office, they are often criticised for their reliance on the Hero’s Journey structural approach of Christopher Vogler, which is a mainstay in Hollywood hero-origin style narratives. This creative practice-led research analyses this character transformation construct and addresses this criticism by formulating a new approach to screenplay structure. This is achieved by utilising the formalist schema of literary Russian fairy tales outlined by Vladimir Propp in Morphology of the Folktale—which has thus far primarily been used within Film Studies academia as an analysis tool of pre-existing film texts and not as a screenplay development tool—and mapping it to Syd Field’s three-act structural paradigm, which is the dominant narrative structure in mainstream Hollywood cinema. Transformation of the villain to anti-hero and application of this new structural approach was used in the writing of this exegesis’ creative work The Devil’s Symphony, a feature-length dramatic screenplay based on the fairy tale The Pied Piper of Hamelin. Analysis of contemporary Hollywood revisionist fairy tale films informed the iterative process of script development alongside the application of Propp’s 31 narrative elements. These elements were mapped to Field’s notion of the three-act structure for feature film screenplays. The Devil’s Symphony was submitted to various international screenwriting competitions to test the efficacy of the creative practice. The screenplay placed highly in a number of well-regarded screenwriting competitions, including winning the prestigious PAGE International Screenwriting Awards in the action/adventure category. Reflecting on the iterative process of preparing the screenplay for different competition entries revealed how Propp’s morphology can be effectively mapped to Field’s three-act structural paradigm to create a new approach to the revisionist fairy tale screenplay, and its advanced application for facilitating potential franchises. ii Table of Contents Keywords .................................................................................................................................... i Abstract ......................................................................................................................................ii Table of Contents ..................................................................................................................... iii List of Figures ............................................................................................................................ v List of Tables ............................................................................................................................ vi Statement of Original Authorship ............................................................................................vii Acknowledgments.................................................................................................................. viii 1. Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 1 2. Contextual Review ................................................................................................................. 5 2.1 Understanding the Roles of the Characters ...................................................................... 5 2.1.1 Archetypes: Heroes, Anti-Heroes, and Villains ........................................................ 5 2.1.2 Protagonists and Antagonists vs. Heroes and Villains .............................................. 7 2.1.3 Anti-Hero Protagonists vs. Villainous Protagonists .................................................. 7 2.1.4 Heroic and Anti-Heroic Allies ................................................................................... 8 2.2 Structural Approaches to Screenwriting .......................................................................... 9 2.2.1 Syd Field: Three-Act Structure.................................................................................. 9 2.2.2 Christopher Vogler: The Hero’s Journey ................................................................ 11 2.2.3 Vladimir Propp: Morphology .................................................................................. 14 2.2.4 Story Structure Similarities: Propp vs. Vogler vs. Field ......................................... 19 2.3 Comparative Analysis of Pre-existing Texts .................................................................. 20 2.3.1 Maleficent (2014) .................................................................................................... 21 2.3.2 Pan (2015) ............................................................................................................... 24 2.3.3 Frozen (2013) .......................................................................................................... 26 2.4 Summary and Implications............................................................................................. 28 3. Methodology ........................................................................................................................ 29 4. Discussion of the Creative Approach .................................................................................. 31 4.1 Transforming the Villain into an Anti-Hero .................................................................. 31 4.2 A Tale of Two Villains: the False Villain and the True Villain ..................................... 33 iii 4.3 Establishing the Hero Protagonist .................................................................................. 34 4.4 Mapping Propp’s Morphology to Field’s Paradigm ...................................................... 34 4.5 A Proppian Approach to Plot and Structure ................................................................... 37 4.6 Iterative Screenplay Development ................................................................................. 41 5. Creative Artefact: The Devil’s Symphony .......................................................................... 45 6. Conclusion ........................................................................................................................... 45 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................ 48 Appendix A: The Devil’s Symphony: dramatis personae ........................................................ 56 Appendix B: The Devil’s Symphony: morphological outline .................................................. 57 Appendix C: The Devil’s Symphony: screenwriting contest placements ................................. 60 Appendix D: The Devil’s Symphony: screenplay..................................................................... 61 iv List of Figures Figure 2.1. Syd Field’s Paradigm (Field, 2005, p. 21)............................................................. 10 Figure 2.2. Christopher Vogler’s The Hero’s Journey (Vogler, 2007, p. 8). ........................... 12 Figure 3.1. Action Research Methodology. ............................................................................. 29 v List of Tables Table 2.1. Functions of Christopher Vogler’s Hero’s Journey Archetypes. ............................ 13 Table 2.2. Vladimir Propp’s 31 Functions and Designations. Adapted from Morphology of the Folktale (Propp, 1968, pp. 26–63). .................................................................................... 15 Table 2.3. Propp’s Spheres of Action of the Seven Dramatis Personae. Adapted from Morphology of the Folktale (Propp, 1968, pp. 79–80). ........................................................... 17 Table 4.1. Proposed Alignment of Vladimir Propp’s Functions to Syd Field’s Elements. ..... 35 Table 4.2. Propp’s Sphere of Action First Constituents aligned to Field’s Act I Elements. ... 36 Table 4.3. Distribution of Propp’s 31 functions when Function XIX (Liquidation) is mapped to Field’s Plot Point 2 in a Single Move Tale. ........................................................................ 36 Table 4.4. Main Story Elements of The Devil’s Symphony. .................................................... 37 Table 4.5. Morphology of The Devil’s Symphony Cold Open/Action Prologue Sequence. .... 40 Table 4.6. Updated Main Story Elements of The Devil’s Symphony....................................... 44 vi Statement of Original Authorship The work contained in this exegesis has not been previously submitted to meet requirements for an award at this or any other higher education institution. To the best of