Introduction: Fairy tales to digital games: the rising tide of entertainment education

Abstract

Act one: fairy tales are more than true About a century ago, noted British author and novelist, Gilbert Keith Chesterton, who had a gift for using proverbs, metaphors and allegories, wrote: 'Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten' (Chesterton in Medley 2012: 1). Chesterton's pithy sentence celebrates the potential that lurks in stories: the power to attract our attention, spark our imagination, and paint new scenarios of hope; the power to experience vicarious struggles and epic wins; the power to demonstrate how 'monsters'--whether personal or societal--can be overcome, vanquished. It distils the essence of the entertainment-education (EE) strategy in communication, capturing its purposive intent to vanquish societal 'monsters' like gender inequality, domestic violence, malnutrition, and suffering from HIV/AIDS. Chesterton's observations about the power of stories have stood the test of time. For millennia, storytelling, music, drama, dance and various folk genres have been used in societies for recreation, devotion, reformation and instructional purposes. The idea of purposive EE thus is not a new invention--it is timeless. However, EE as a purposive communication strategy is a relatively new concept in that its conscious use in print, radio, television, popular music, films and digital gaming has received attention only in the past few decades (Singhal & Rogers 1999; Singhal, Wang & Rogers 2013). Consider what might happen if 'fairy tales' hitch a ride on popular radio and television genres. Between 1969 and 1971, when Peru broadcast its 448-episode-long telenovela (television novel), Simplemente Maria (Simply Maria), millions of viewers followed the unfolding Cinderella-like tale. Maria, the main character, a poor migrant woman from the Andean region, worked as a maid in a rich city household, barely making ends meet. Seduced by a rich playboy, Maria became pregnant, lost her job and struggled to survive, but retained her 'never-say-die' attitude. She found another job, worked during the day, enrolled in adult literacy classes in the evening, and burned the midnight oil to sharpen her sewing skills with a Singer sewing machine (Singhal, Obregon & Rogers 1994). Slowly but steadily, Maria's struggles turned into small victories and, eventually, into a triumph of epic proportions. Maria became the country's leading fashion designer and married the love of her life--her literacy teacher, Maestro Esteban, to live happily ever after. All in a fictional story! Remarkably, in reality, Simplemente Maria attracted record audience ratings in Peru, making heavy profits for PANTEL, the programme's Peruvian producer. The sale of Singer sewing machines boomed in Peru. Unbelievably, the number of young girls enrolling in adult literacy and sewing classes rose sharply (Singhal & Rogers 1999). When Simplemente Maria was broadcast in other Latin-American nations, similar effects occurred. Audience identification with Maria was strong: she represented a Cinderella-like fairytale model for upward social mobility. What may have explained the audience popularity of Simplemente Maria? The character of Maria, some have argued, embodied the archetypical Cinderella-like heroic struggle against 'human monsters, ill-fortune, and poverty' (Singhal & Rogers 1999; Svenkerud, Rahoi & Singhal 1995). A hero in the classical Jungian sense, Maria does not let the monsters devour her; instead, she subdues and overcomes them. If G.K. Chesterton were to have witnessed the raging Simplemente Maria fever in Latin America in the 1970s, and its unsurpassed popularity with Eastern European audiences in the late 1980s and early 1990s, he would likely be smiling. For in the bowel of such fairy tales, some audience members find the nuggets, the scripts for vanquishing 'monsters'. …