The Politics of Magic

Shen’s interpretive analyses and rigorous enquiry into so many of these fairy-tale films reveals a cumulative insight of
immense value.

~Helen Goritsas, New Review of Film and Television Studies

Shen's clear, accessible language and her informative and formal — but not stilted—writing style make this study a wonderful resource for a wider audience of readers.

~Claudia Scwabe, Journal of Folklore Research

The author has a clear, yet effective and sophisticated writing style. The book is appropriate for the general public and undergraduates through academics. It is of interest to those engaged in film history, to German Studies and Slavic Studies scholars, and also anyone interested in children’s literature and genre studies.

~Sonja Fritzsche, Monatshefte

What Shen provides [. . .] is the indispensable background, the larger context, against which scholars might want to analyze individual films more closely. For scholars of fairy tales and folklore more broadly, Shen's book provides a compelling history of the way in which the GDR drew on the fairy-tale tradition in order to further its own ideology, suggesting once again the malleability of these texts.

~Anjeana K. Hans, Western Folklore

Qinna Shen’s monograph is a major contribution to the study of this important but all-too-often neglected genre of East German film production. Clearly written and with numerous illustrations, The Politics of Magic offers the reader a fascinating insight into the cultural history of these important films. By integrating individual case studies (many of which draw on detailed archival research) into an overarching history of the genre, Shen has produced a study that will be essential reading for film scholars and cultural historians alike.

~Seán Allan, head of German studies, School of Modern Languages and Cultures, University of Warwick

Firmly grounded in a contextual, diachronic, and transnational approach, Shen's analysis of numerous fairy tale adaptations alongside their original sources makes it a valuable resource that will have many wondering why they had not paid more attention to more of these films sooner.

~John Lessard, German Studies Review

One of the best-kept secrets of the Cold War was the magical production of remarkable political fairy-tale films in East Germany. Now, however, the secret is out with the publication of Qinna Shen's excellent book, The Politics of Magic: DEFA Fairy-Tale Films. Shen studies the complex development of more than forty films from the 1950s to the fall of the Berlin Wall, and she also provides insightful social and political analyses. Indeed, one of the most interesting ways to understand the cultural history of the German Democratic Republic is through the DEFA fairy tales, and Shen's study is the first comprehensive work to accomplish this.

~Jack Zipes

The Politics of Magic is a highly readable and intelligently constructed study of a cherished tradition. As a nuanced critique of the 'red' fairy-tale film, the book brings to light the complexities of a genre that for too long has been dismissed as 'mere propaganda.'

~Sonja Fritzsche