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This study examines the idea of fairy lore (faery) as a modern concept with personal and humanistic overtones transmitted through mass media phenomena such as films. Analysis of the relationship between folk and popular culture has become increasingly sophisticated and has widened our appreciation of the ways in which mass-culture audiences use tradition to shape popular culture. Fantasy films draw on recognised traditional elements, but the significance of these elements has been mediated through nineteenth-century interpretations of fairy lore. Contemporary audiences are more likely to be exposed to such legends and beliefs in the context of mass media than by any other means, and visualisation of fairies in fantasy films is closely linked to these modern interpretations of traditional material. For cinema audiences, the idea of faery is no longer a traditional and immediate response to experience, it already carries overtones of nostalgia for the past, childhood innocence, utopian societies or sexual discovery. However, personal response and exegesis of this material, reinforced by repeated viewing, access to Internet sites and related activities such as role-play and merchandising, means that the interactions of these virtual communities can transmute and insert themselves into daily life through a shared appreciation of fantasy worlds. The ways in which these consumers of mass culture resemble or differ from a folk audience presents an interesting arena for understanding folklore as a living contemporary phenomenon.
In 1997/8 the Royal Academy of Arts staged an exhibition of Victorian fairy paintings (Maas, White and Gere 1997). Such retrospectives often provide a platform for wide-ranging discussions about the subject in question, and this one was no exception. Art historians, musicians and folklorists were asked to comment on aspects of fairy lore, and in particular the development of visual representations of fairies. [1] Fairies had been enjoying something of a popular renaissance since the 1990s. Fairy-themed merchandise was readily available in new-age shops, and several specialist shops appeared that offered fairy-themed products exclusively. [2] Fairies also became a topic for popular magazine articles. The journalist and social commentator Christopher Hitchins compared interest in fairies to the, then current, American interest in angel sightings (Hitchens 1997, 204-10). The Royal Academy Exhibition went on to other museums-the Frick Museum in New York, the University of Iowa...