In a previous post, we went over how Cinderella was modernized in the first few decades of the twentieth century in pre-television cinematic featurettes. The 1950’s brought a television boom. By 1953, half of all American homes owned a TV set. Sadly, the small screen Cindys of fifties haven’t survived in a form that’s currently accessible. Televised Cinderellas of the 1950’s include a 1957 broadcast of the Rodgers and Hammerstein adaptation and a Cinderella ballet, neither of them realistic or …
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Cinderella: the Modern Woman, 1922-1944
Classic. Old-fashioned. Anti-feminist. Cinderella seems to belong to a bygone world of ball gowns, but for the past century, she has been modernized at least once a decade by the magic of television. Our oldest database entry, not just for Cinderella but any tale type, is a silent, black-and-white cartoon produced by Disney in 1922. Instead of waltzing the night away in a ballgown, Cinderella shows up to the ball in a flapper dress and dances to ragtime; a thoroughly …
Can Black Fairies and Mermaids Save the Remake Machine?
It’s no great secret that audiences are weary of live action remakes and reboots. If we measure the live action Disney age as starting in 2010 with the release of Alice in Wonderland, they’ve now been at it for ten years and show no signs of stopping. We can only assume Disney will continue this trend until it stops paying or until they run out of things to remake. They’ve effectively robbed their future selves by spending the last ten …
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Why You Miss Mushu So Much in the New Mulan
The new 2020 live action Mulan featured many departures from the 1998 animated version, but one stands out. Her trusty dragon friend, Mushu, has been axed, to the dismay of many fans. Mushu added a dash of comic relief to this children’s war film and filmmakers wanted a more serious tone for the live action reboot. His levity was also seen as trivializing Chinese culture. While Mulan’s love interest Li Shang was successfully cleaved into two characters, the unromantic Commander …
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Four Secrets Allusions to The Ballad of Mulan in the Live Action Remake
Both the 1998 animated Mulan and the recent live-action remake draw from an ancient Chinese poem entitled The Ballad of Mulan. This poem is not as well-known to audiences as the European texts that serve as fairy tale fodder for other movies. Western audiences are primarily familiar with the story through the animated film and may miss the allusions that help to shape the 2020 Mulan. These shout-outs add character depth and underscore the gender themes of the classic Chinese …
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Why Mulan Can’t Empower Other Women
The recent release of the live action Mulan has generated a buzz on whether this new film’s plot and character changes constitute a step forward or a step back for women. Filmmakers made the controversial decision of cleaving Li Shang’s character in two. Her romance with a commanding officer was seen as a problematic power dynamic, though both the animated Mulan and the live one had very little actual romantic interaction with him due to her cross-dressing. The new film …
The Return: An Ongoing Transformation
In fairy tales, transformations from one creature to another are wonderful and instantaneous. Change is rarely so instantaneous or painless in reality. We have been working behind the scenes to prepare a fairy godmother worthy transformation of the Fairy Tales and Television project. We at the FTTV are excited to announce that we’ve returned to our home here on the blog and at our website! Things around here will be in process of changing for the next few months as …
Drizella’s Revenge: Cinderella’s Stepsisters Step Out of the Shadows in Once Upon A Time
Ella Enchanted author Gail Carson Levine said of Cinderella’s Stepsisters, “If I had been around when “Cinderella” was first concocted, I would have argued against two stepsisters. We don’t need two! In the fairy tale they’re indistinguishable.” Indeed they are. Groupings of three are common in fairy tales. Cinderella’s stepsisters function to provide two failed attempts at fitting the shoe before Cinderella is successful, just as the Wolf blows down two house before meeting the brick house pig and the …
Fairy Tale Feminism: Bring Back the Knights in Shining Armor
“Are there any men in this show?” my dad asked. He’d walked in on me watching a scene in season two of Once Upon A Time, where Emma, Snow White, Mulan, and Sleeping Beauty team up for adventures in the Enchanted Forest without a man in sight. I explained that yes, Snow White was married to Prince Charming, who was currently handling problems in another realm. I was a bit irked that I had to justify this fairy tale girl …
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Nostalgia and Fairy Tales
Ever wonder why there are so many fairy-tale remakes out right now? It’s not because the original was terrible. It’s because the nostalgia hit is a powerful thing, and it’s a very easy way to make money. Millennials in particular are the target audience for people who want to capitalize on nostalgia. It’s an odd feeling, considering that millenials were born barely over twenty years ago. Twenty years is nothing in the grinding wheel of time, but in that twenty …