Guilty pleasures and the 3Rs in the Cinderella trope: revisiting, reviewing, and/or resisting the fairy tale in film and new media
Guilty pleasures and the 3Rs in the Cinderella trope: revisiting, reviewing, and/or resisting the fairy tale in film and new media
From the hit Youtube video Cinderella vs Belle: Princess Rap Battle (2015) with 100+ million viewers starring Sarah Michelle Gellar, pseudo-medieval fantasy Ever After (1998) with Drew Barrymore, and gender-swapping musical comedy Cinderfella (1960) starring and produced by Jerry Lewis, to Disney’s own highly profitable live-action film Cinderella (2015), this particular fairy tale has never seemed more popular. It has seen constant revisions, re-imaginings and many made-for-tv films in recent years e.g. A Cinderella Story: Christmas Wish (2019), A Cinderella Christmas (2016) etc., with marginal changes for a less dated take. Given growing public awareness about the #MeToo movement and public discourse on different forms of inequality, not just gender, what does this mean for modern viewers on old and contemporary depictions of Cinderella on film? Will this particular rags-to-riches fairy tale be consigned to history sooner rather than later? Its core message and theme of femininity amid suffering, or in the case of Cinderfella, packaged 1950s boyish masculinity amid ‘suffering’, remains largely intact even in the 21st century. The only difference, depending on the zeitgeist, is how far the character of Cinderella is given the space for growth and development in the film itself. Using film critic MaryAnn Johanson’s popular criteria for evaluating the portrayal of females in films, and Angela McRobbie’s feminist argument about creative labour anxiety from her 2016 book Be Creative: Making a living in the new culture industries, this paper looks at the different evaluations of female representation in the Cinderella films vis-à-vis new theorising of social trends, and argues for the centrality of pleasure in reception, amidst (mostly) tokenism in female agency, representation and sexuality. By suggesting that pleasure regains the centre stage, this paper proposes an addition to current forms of viewing, and consuming modern fairy tale romances in their seemingly ever-increasing depictions.
Tan, Karen
7d8c0413-99db-4ba6-a2a6-bfc7b361047b
April 2021
Tan, Karen
7d8c0413-99db-4ba6-a2a6-bfc7b361047b
Tan, Karen
(2021)
Guilty pleasures and the 3Rs in the Cinderella trope: revisiting, reviewing, and/or resisting the fairy tale in film and new media.
9th Annual British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies (BAFTSS) Conference: Time and the Body in Film, TV and Screen Studies, University of Southampton, Southampton, United Kingdom.
07 - 09 Apr 2021.
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Conference or Workshop Item
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Abstract
From the hit Youtube video Cinderella vs Belle: Princess Rap Battle (2015) with 100+ million viewers starring Sarah Michelle Gellar, pseudo-medieval fantasy Ever After (1998) with Drew Barrymore, and gender-swapping musical comedy Cinderfella (1960) starring and produced by Jerry Lewis, to Disney’s own highly profitable live-action film Cinderella (2015), this particular fairy tale has never seemed more popular. It has seen constant revisions, re-imaginings and many made-for-tv films in recent years e.g. A Cinderella Story: Christmas Wish (2019), A Cinderella Christmas (2016) etc., with marginal changes for a less dated take. Given growing public awareness about the #MeToo movement and public discourse on different forms of inequality, not just gender, what does this mean for modern viewers on old and contemporary depictions of Cinderella on film? Will this particular rags-to-riches fairy tale be consigned to history sooner rather than later? Its core message and theme of femininity amid suffering, or in the case of Cinderfella, packaged 1950s boyish masculinity amid ‘suffering’, remains largely intact even in the 21st century. The only difference, depending on the zeitgeist, is how far the character of Cinderella is given the space for growth and development in the film itself. Using film critic MaryAnn Johanson’s popular criteria for evaluating the portrayal of females in films, and Angela McRobbie’s feminist argument about creative labour anxiety from her 2016 book Be Creative: Making a living in the new culture industries, this paper looks at the different evaluations of female representation in the Cinderella films vis-à-vis new theorising of social trends, and argues for the centrality of pleasure in reception, amidst (mostly) tokenism in female agency, representation and sexuality. By suggesting that pleasure regains the centre stage, this paper proposes an addition to current forms of viewing, and consuming modern fairy tale romances in their seemingly ever-increasing depictions.
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Published date: April 2021
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9th Annual British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies (BAFTSS) Conference: Time and the Body in Film, TV and Screen Studies, University of Southampton, Southampton, United Kingdom, 2021-04-07 - 2021-04-09
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Local EPrints ID: 499147
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/499147
PURE UUID: d794291d-bc08-47f9-807e-3af14f24e2e3
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Date deposited: 11 Mar 2025 17:30
Last modified: 12 Mar 2025 02:27
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Author:
Karen Tan
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