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Finding Love and Fulfilling Dreams
47
who make the most of the opportunities available, together with help
from both men and women, to positively alter their lives, and seem
far more liberated. Indeed, many of the Cinderella stories reworked in
recent rom-coms affirm important changes in giving heroines wider
narrative ambitions than meeting Mr Right, even if they are somewhat
restricted by generic limitations.
Tellingly, however, even where feminist critics have discussed
these films, they don’t seem to have paid much attention to them.
For example, while Kim Snowden describes
A Cinderella Story
and
10
Things I Hate About You
as ‘Cinderella-style rags-to-riches’ stories aimed
at teenage and early twenties female viewers which appear to draw on
feminist ideals (with protagonists evincing greater interest in educa-
tion than relationships), she erroneously states that ‘these characters’
ambitions are invariably derailed when romantic dilemmas supersede
them’ (2010: 161). In both cases, however, their greatest ambition is
going to college, which they accomplish, proving that even in roman-
tic comedies romance is not necessarily the priority. Zipes’ dismissal of
modern Cinderella films emerging in the 1980s and 1990s as ‘remakes
with a faux feminist touch’ (2011: 174) is similarly cursory, contending
that ‘they patch up the narrative in response to the changing role of
women, but they still insist that Cinderella uses her talents and beauty
in a public spectacle so that she can impress a young man and wed him’
(2011: 174). In fact, many narratives dispense with marriage, as we have
seen, and heroines rely more on their ‘talents’ than looks to secure a
love interest, overtly updating his ‘beauty contest’ claims.
The critical negation of these films is a frustrating matter, failing
to acknowledge where interesting revisions are apparent, and almost
wilfully misreading examples to voice continued disapproval. As
Donald Haase argues, in place of the negativity that often emanates
from applying feminist criticism to fairy tales, we need ‘approaches that
discern the ideological ambiguities and textual complexities inherent in
texts that paradoxically both reject and rely on the fairy tale’s power to
define gender’ (2004: xiii). Although residual concerns about ‘proper’
feminine conduct are apparent in some of the examples assessed,
appearing to regard feminist impulses with suspicion in narratives
keen to humble ‘haughtiness’, together with a vilification of ambitious
older women (affirming a tendency to repeat some problematic fairy
tale tropes), these ideas have also been questioned in films like
The
Proposal
and we need to give credit and recognition where it is due,
acknowledging progressive features – and their causes. While rom-coms
have a tendency to be sentimental wish-fulfilment fantasies featuring
48
Fairy Tale and Film
outlandish plots and fairly predictable outcomes, some response to gen-
der politics is clearly evident, particularly modern-day Cinderellas who
balance romantic desire with career aspirations, affirming the positive
influence of feminist criticism and changing expectations. The pursuit
of a feminist Cinderella (as Christy Williams has put it) may sound like
an implicit contradiction, particularly where romance serves as a wom-
an’s ultimate means of deliverance from life’s difficulties, yet what is
commonly held to be the oldest tale in existence is enduringly popular
not only in the appeal of its rags-to-riches plot but the way its heroine
overturns expectations. Classic versions may depict this as scrubbing
up well and attracting an affluent partner, but modern variations ask
that she proves herself as more than a pretty face, adding elements of
the tale type ‘The Clever Peasant Girl’ (ATU 875) in attracting admira-
tion for her mind also. Female writers and critics have played a part in
reshaping such tales for a modern sensibility yet, as we have noted, a
woman behind the script, or even the production, does not necessar-
ily guarantee a progressive film – while the ability of male writers and
directors to voice recognisably ‘feminist’ ideas further suggests a need
to despatch with simplistic ideas about gender, ideology and attendant
affiliations. Kenneth Branagh, chosen to direct Disney’s new live-action
version of ‘Cinderella’, has notably claimed the tale has universal appeal
because ‘everybody identifies with that underdog story, we are her and
we want her to succeed against all odds and believe that goodness can
win out ... and that doesn’t suggest that life is only worth living if a rich
man comes along’.
28
While this point might easily be dismissed as ‘lip
service’ to feminist concerns, it affirms the passive princess has indeed
had a makeover, thanks in part to the criticisms voiced over the past
few decades and resulting changes that have arisen. Acknowledging
such developments is an important and necessary undertaking, inviting
us to re-evaluate our assumptions about male and female roles, affirm-
ing them to be more dynamic and diverse than the few archetypes
with which we are most familiar, with a message that need not speak
to one gender alone. As Zipes admits, ultimately Cinderella’s power
lies in an aspect we can all identify with: ‘a constant utopian need,
especially on the part of the disadvantaged in society, to reshape the
prescribed plots of our lives’ (2002b: 205) and it is this potential for
positive transformation – and its relevance to male as well as female
characters – that is the subject of the next chapter. If female aspirations
clearly extend beyond romantic ideals – partly affirming changes cre-
ated through the women’s movement, as much as the increased sense of
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