The tale of Cinderella is a story of glamour and
envy intertwining, where the story of a girl escaping her hardship to achieve
her dream life has been the subject of envy for many in the real world. An
adaption of Charles Perrault’s work in 1679 (a period when social ideas were
vastly different), produced with Walt Disney own personal 50s-era ideology,
“Cinderella” is affected by gender stereotypes, where women’s goals of security
and escape still lies with the wedding ring, and were still considered a glamorous
dream.
Breaking down Cinderella among the deep structures
that are stated by Paul Wells in his book, Understanding animation (2002), Cinderella
is an animation that is defined as a visual adaptation of a fairytale, hence, the
forms and style of animation that is used lies within those boundaries. To be
more specific, it has to carry an aura of fantasy for the story, and did so
through the image of the fairy god-mother figure and the talking animals. Along
side that, it still has to make characters that are important to the tale,
relatable to the audience hence why Cinderella and the step-mother are animated
and behave very human-like. It is this mixture of realism and fiction through
the medium of different animation style that forms the “formal” genre of
animation. Alongside that, it also has a
clear portrayal of what is “good” and what is “evil” through clear visual cues
that help indicate who are the heroes and heroines and who are the villains. This
lead to the other genre of animation that Cinderella would fit in: political
where the story of Cinderella seeks to glamourize that the good is always more
beautiful than evil, and that in the end, good always beats evil.
Going into more detail, this separation between
good and evil is effectively portrayed through the use of signs and symbolism .Take
the image of Cinderella herself, she is usually described as wearing brighter
clothing, in many cases , white, a symbol of purity and righteousness. She has
beautiful golden locks, with big blue eyes, fair skin, red lips, v-line jaw and
beautiful forms. She was all in all the standard of beauty. This kind of
symbolism is also portrayed in other characters, such as the fairy god-mother
whose old features, roundish figure symbolized her kind and loving nature or
the carriage and horses that Cinderella rode to the ball, which carries an aura
of nobility and glamour. This syntagmatic relationship in the end forms the glamorous
face of the “good” within the story.
In stark contrast to that, we have the step-mother
who is considered by many to be the most terrifying villain, yet the most
normal among them, having no power or magical ability. She is portrayed as
always wearing dark high-neck dresses, with half-closed piercing eyes that
follows you, raised eyebrows and a darken aura that spread over her in the
scenes she appears, which effects even the backgrounds. Moreover, her pointed
chin and big nose reminisce that of an evil witch, yet she always carrier a
proper lady-like form. This is a symbol for her antagonistic nature – one who
is not only vicious but calculated. She doesn’t need magical power because she
is smart and she can take away anything she wants from the protagonist and she
plans to take advantage of that every moment she gets. It is this realistic
description of the human nature that
make her all the more terrifying to Cinderella and the audience. Then, we have
the step-sister , whose rounded faces
and big noses are more of a symbol for arrogance and idiocy and signifies their
spoiled nature. This is why they served a more comedic role for the story: “The stepmother’s
purpose in the film requires her to be more realistic in design because
she has to be a believable character that you relate to on the level of a
real human being.’ The same with Cinderella and the Prince,… The
stepsisters, the King, and the Grad Dauke are largely comic characters,”
( Solomon,2015, A Dream Is A Wish Your Heart Makes,
p. 61.)
This clear and distinct separation of good and evil
ultimately serves one purpose, is that to glamourize the “Good”. If we go back
to the start of the topic, the qualities that forms the bases for the genre
that Cinderella (the animation) would
be, put Cinderella ( the character ) in the position of glamour , beauty and
social status in the view of the audience . Aspects like the way she is
animated, her personality and and most prominently , her appearance (the
shimmering effects that is seen on her dress and heels literally makes her the
physical description of being glamorous ) all constitute to building her as a
figure that is enviable. On the other hand, there is the struggle ending in
Cinderella achieving the dream and live happily ever after. This then again put
her in the position envy for many. In
the story itself, it is her glamorous traits are what had captured the
attention of the Prince in the first place. This created envy among her family
members. One could even say that this envy has existed even before Cinderella’s
appearance at the ball.
If we look back and take Berger’s quote into this
context: “Glamour can not exist without personal /social envy being a
wide-spread emotion..” so you see a single subject of envy ( that is Cinderella ) , being placed as
the center attention causing mass interest and envy no doubt. The envy are
present more clearly within the step-family, where the 2 step sister tried
their hardest to fit the slipper, linking back that to Berger: “He
lives in the contradiction between what he is and whet he would like to be.”. The
sister here doesn’t know what they actually lack. They want to be the apple in
the Prince’s eyes yet they lack the proper grace, qualities, and the physical
attractiveness that one should have. Instead, they are fed by the glamour which
their step-mother had groomed into them which convinced them otherwise
The opposite
can be said for real life where Cinderella is adored by her audience, who sees
her as representation of a dream life that they want to have. People strive to
be their own Cinderella, but we rarely see they’re condemned for that, although
it is safe to acknowledge that the glamour of Cinderella can hardly be
replicate as it is accomplished by “magical” forces and therefore represent
only the idea of it , albeit a noble one ,just like Postrel
(2013) explains: “Glamour does not always connect to social envy … as many of
the resentments and hostilities of true envy are missing from glamour….glamour
maybe an illusion , but its rarely a mean or vicious one…” (Postrel V, 2013,
The power of Glamour, p.31-p.32). This type of envy would be along the line
described by Christian Hughes (Hughes, C; “The equality of social envies” –“
Sociology” vol.41) as benign and
emulative envy. The idea of the competing forms of envy once again present
itself as a counter to Berger’s point of view. A further counter would be to
applied Berger’s point of people becoming fully conscious of the contradiction,
and in turn participate in the overthrow of the establishment that created it (1979,
Way of seeing) to the context of the step-family . By this definition, It is
the step-family that should rise up to overthrow the governing system ( that
good always trumps evil, being beautiful is more desirable than ugly ) and to
present them with more equal abilities , let’s say in this case, they are not
treated as the bad guys by their physical appearance ,which of course obviously
would not work at all from a moral standpoint.
Having said all of this , it should come as
little surprise that the modern
corporation would take advantage of people’s desire to become their own
Cinderella, presenting themselves the fairy godmother who would bestowed on
masses the “magical transformation” they so desire, through magic like “fast
fashion”-
things that would follow the same trend and style of high-end products but on a
much larger scale and lower prices, hence people who envy can compete with the
enviable, which would be along the lines of notion supported by Gundle: Berger J, 1972 ,
Ways of seeing , p. 131 ). And truly, what better figure is there to represent
this than Cinderella and her tale.
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