Grimm Realities

Book excerpt: Through its six-season run, television's Grimm used the extraordinary to illuminate the complexity of the ordinary. Drawing on the Brothers Grimm folklore, the series crafted an enchanted present to illuminate social and ethical challenges facing Western--in particular American--culture at the beginning of the 21st century. This collection of new essays explores Grimm's critique of identity and justice in the modern world contexts of race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, environmentalism, genre and heroism, with a focus on the show's disruptive adaptation of fairy tales and reinterpretation of the police procedural in a fantasy landscape.