The Wild Hunt (https://wildhunt.org/tag/jack-the-giant-killer)
There are reasons that stories travel from culture to culture, but Jack has always been something of an anomaly in how widespread and yet contiguous his stories are. He may be from Cornwall, Germany, or North Carolina in a given story, but his character is recognizable and the story is more than likely the same.
Now, everyone knows a Jack tale. There’s the one about the beanstalk, sure, and most have heard a story or two about him in one of his many run-ins with the devil. The details change, but the man is the same.
It has been a several months since the last installment in my series on Hollywood’s witches. Last May I explored the period from 1939 to 1950. During that time the witch evolved from a cartoon hag into a signifier of the empowered, sexualized woman (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs 1937 and I Married a Witch 1942). Now I will pick back up in 1950 just as television enters its Golden Age. During the subsequent eighteen years, the American film industry undergoes radical changes affecting its structure and product. The period ends in 1968 with the death of the Production Code and the birth of an entirely new Hollywood.