There's something in the present that is finding new sustenance in the old old storylines of fairy tales

Once upon a time in my childhood for example, there was Disney's frothy snow white

But now we have a darker adult self-realized snow white in the Huntsman

all these years

All I've known is darkness

But I have never seen a brighter light than my eyes just opened

I know that light burns in all of you

The last few years have seen multiple renditions of snow white and Hansel and Gretel

As well as frozen Disney's updated take on the snow queen

There are overt fairy tale themes in hit tv series like true blood, grim and once upon a time

To uncover what all of this might be saying about our time we turn to Maria Tatar

She's an expert on classic fairy tales and legends and on how they help us work with things like fear and hope

These stories she says have survived by adapting across cultures and history

They are carriers of the plots we endlessly rework as we weave the narratives of our lives

There's the great once upon a time which is a marker. It says this is not the here and now

You can let your imagination run wild you can go in places that you'd be scared to go otherwise

You can say things that you're afraid to talk about you know and in just mysterious ways

You come to an understanding or a resolution not a resolution

I should say because you have to keep working through things

I'm going to tip it and this is on being

Maria Tatar is a professor of Germanic languages and literature at Harvard University

where she also chairs the program in folklore and mythology

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