Never has fantasy been more commercially successful. Yet it is not obvious that it has become more imaginative. Long before the rise of the modern novel, fairy tales provided generations of listeners and readers with images of transformation, justice, adventure, and hope. They offered something more than entertainment. They opened windows onto worlds that differed fundamentally from the one immediately given.

Today fantasy is more popular than ever. Global audiences consume vast fantasy franchises through books, films, streaming platforms, video games, theme parks, and merchandise. Yet the question remains whether contemporary fantasy still performs the same cultural function as the fairy tale tradition from which it emerged. The answer may be less reassuring than many admirers of modern fantasy suppose.

The contrast between L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and contemporary phenomena such as Wicked and Harry Potter reveals a profound transformation. What was once a vehicle of utopian longing increasingly functions as an extension of consumer culture. Imagination survives, but its social and philosophical horizon has narrowed dramatically.

To understand this transformation, it is useful to begin with two thinkers who devoted considerable attention to the significance of fairy tales: the philosopher Ernst Bloch, and Jack Zipes, author of Once upon a Time There was Truth: or, Why We Need Fairy-Tales (2026).

For Ernst Bloch, fairy tales are among humanity’s most important cultural achievements because they preserve what he called the “principle of hope.” Bloch’s philosophy begins with a simple observation: human beings are never entirely at home in the world as it exists. We experience hunger, injustice, alienation, loneliness, and mortality. Yet we also possess the capacity to imagine conditions different from those immediately present. Human consciousness reaches beyond what is toward what might be.

This orientation toward possibility is not accidental. It constitutes one of the defining features of human existence. Fairy tales therefore matter because they express what Bloch called the “not-yet-conscious”—those unrealized possibilities latent within both society and ourselves. They give symbolic form to desires that existing institutions cannot satisfy. The castle beyond the mountain, the hidden kingdom, the sleeping princess, the talking animals, the magical helper, the youngest child who succeeds where the powerful fail—all represent more than narrative devices. They embody hopes that reality has not yet fulfilled.

For Bloch, the fairy tale is fundamentally utopian. It points beyond the world as presently organized. This is why fairy tales often invert ordinary social hierarchies. Peasants become kings. Animals become teachers. Children outwit adults. Giants fall before insignificant opponents. The impossible becomes possible. The fairy tale reminds us that reality need not remain what it currently is.

Jack Zipes extends this insight historically and politically. Against approaches that treat fairy tales as timeless literary artifacts, Zipes emphasizes their origins in popular culture. Fairy tales emerged among ordinary people whose lives were frequently characterized by hardship, exploitation, and political powerlessness.

The stories expressed desires that could not be realized within existing social arrangements. For Zipes, fairy tales historically performed a critical function. They kept alive........

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