Images of contemporary society in two fairy tales: Tykwer's "Run Lola Run" and Jeunet's "Amélie"

This essay considers Tom Tykwer’s 'Lola Rennt' and Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s 'Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain' as examples of contemporary fairy tales focussing on the emancipation of new ‘heroines’ from a pseudo-rational capitalist society. Such emancipation seems possible because of the protagonists’ emotional orientation but also due to their overall superior cognitive behaviour. The study is very original in its combination of cultural and gender perspectives for the comparative analysis of the two popular films, and – although other research has in the meantime followed in the elaboration of gender aspects – the combination of the two perspectives remains unique. Findings include the discussion of key ideas from widely-known studies on capitalism (Weber, Ritzer) and post-feminism (Kaplan, Humm) as potential sub-texts of the films. In particular, the study provides evidence for a cinematic deconstruction of capitalist values as pseudo-rational, destructive and inhuman, a rupture with gendered binaries (the notion of rational/superior males versus irrational/inferior females breaks within the protagonists’ hybridity) and offers alternative readings for marginalised roles, including the representation of handicapped people.