Myth and fairy tale as national narrative strategies

Political leadership is not only described through institutions or policies, it is narrated through culturally familiar storytelling structures. I argue that American and Russian media construct presidential authority using two different narrative genres: myth and fairy tale.

In American political culture, presidential figures are typically framed within mythic narratives. Myth presents a hero whose actions establish a new order. The mythic hero acts independently, reshapes reality, and embodies the collective identity of the nation. In contemporary media representations, this structure connects presidential authority to the frontier tradition and to earlier figures of exceptional individual agency.

In Russian political culture, presidential authority is more often narrated through the structure of the fairy tale. The fairy-tale protagonist does not create a new world but moves within an already existing one. Rather than acting as an autonomous founder, the protagonist receives assistance from external forces and restores stability after disruption. Authority appears as protection, mediation, and restoration rather than transformation.

These two narrative strategies produce different expectations of leadership. Myth emphasizes initiative and heroic agency, fairy tale emphasizes guidance, endurance, and the intervention of protective forces.

This argument is developed in Chapter 7 of Trump and Putin in Media Mythologies (Routledge).

Agency in myth and fairy tale

A key distinction between the two narrative forms concerns agency.

In myth, the hero acts, and his actions create a new reality and establish norms for the community. In fairy tale, events happen to the protagonist. The character moves through situations structured by helpers, trials, and transformations that restore an existing order rather than founding a new one.

Because political storytelling adapts to culturally familiar narrative expectations, these differences shape how presidential authority becomes intelligible to domestic audiences.

Gendered narrative logics of myth and fairy tale

Myth and fairy tale differ not only in structure but also in their underlying gendered models of agency.

Myth typically presents a masculine narrative structure, it emphasizes strength, autonomy, and world-transforming agency.

Fairy tale, by contrast, often operates through a feminized narrative logic, his success depends less on individual initiative than on guidance, helpers, and intervention from outside the self. Authority appears not as conquest but as protection and mediation.

This contrast helps explain why American presidential storytelling frequently adopts mythic structures connected to frontier masculinity, while Russian presidential storytelling more often follows fairy-tale patterns in which authority restores balance rather than founds a new political world.