This week's princess is Cinderella. Last night I watched the film with a few of the girls I lived with. After viewing Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs last weekend, Cinderella was a breath of fresh air. Something about the later movie is just a lot less dark and forbidding.
First off, after screening the movie at the Delta Zeta house, all of us watching the film agreed that we felt Cinderella was a more independent and autonomous character than Snow White. There's no distinct reason that this would be true, though I at least give Cinderella credit for having the good sense to marry up (versus Snow White, who was already a princess when she obsesses over the prince). The Magic Kingdom by Steven Watts describes the Disney studios intent with this movie to portray the "ideal woman" of fifties America--buxom, sweet, compelled to marry soon and marry well, ready and able for life in the domestic sphere, etc. The Cinderella character fit this mold completely, which makes me curious as to why she seems more independent than Snow White. These ideals of mid-century femininity were sharply contrasted with Disney's villainous characters' traits, who were completely selfish, vain, unhappy, bitter women (pg 330).
Speaking of villains, another aspect of the film that one of my friends noticed while we viewed it is the similarity in the evil stepmother's voice to Maleficent of Sleeping Beauty. This would not be so notable except that I did a little digging today out of curiosity, and they are played by the same woman. Nice catch, Courtney!
Cinderella was Disney's first full-length animated feature post WWII and post animator's strike. The film had been in production since even before the war, but due to limited credit during wartime and Disney's other debts, the project was halted until the later forties. The film was Walt Disney's big hope to get his studio back on track after a tumultuous decade. Luckily, Cinderella proved to be a smash hit, and made enough money to put Disney Studios back on its feet.
After re-watching the movie last night, I wonder if Cinderella's idyllic womanhood is a product of this time period (1950), the years when women were settling back into homemaking after time spent working in "men's jobs" while many were away at war. It seems as though, based on my reading of Watts and the AFI catalog entry, that the Cinderella movie set the tone, in many ways, for postwar America, so maybe Cinderella herself set the tone for postwar womanhood? Also interesting in Watts is his reference to the writers and animators who'd felt they'd put an unusual amount of "spunk" into her character, and who felt that her appearance was, while attractive, fairly typical. Was this emphasis (which I as a 2010 viewer had a hard time distinguishing) important to make the film more entertaining or to make Cinderella more the picture of the perfect woman? Again we're back to the damsel vs. villain dichotomy. As Cinderella is to the perfect woman, the villains seem to be to the antithesis of this "acceptable" womanhood. Watts writes, "Throughout the 1950's the studio populated its movies with vivid countertypes to illustrate persistent threats to the feminine ideal" (pg 330). In doing this, was the studio telling American women (and, not to be forgotten, American girls) that there was no middle ground? No excuse to ever think of oneself first or overtly stand up for oneself? I did find it slightly problematic in the story that Cinderella never takes a stand directly to her attackers, though admittedly she gets to snub her nose at them in the end (which of course she would never do as the perfect lady she is).
All sexist conspiracy theories aside, Cinderella is at least an important part of the American myth, especially American sports stories. The "Cinderella Story" has in recent history been thrown around much like Horation Alger-esque terminology of the past to describe incredible athletic feats and turnarounds. ESPN Classic even features a show called "Cinderella Stories", where athletes who've come out of nowhere to achieve success are featured. Of course this is a lovely opportunity for Disney to double dip, since the company owns ESPN, but the sentiment remains.
More to come later this week. Next week's movie is Sleeping Beauty.
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