The Clock Strikes Midnight On Cinderella
Society is increasingly scandalized by the stories of the past. But here’s why we shouldn’t keep our children from watching Cinderella and other Disney classics.
On a recent episode of the The Ellen DeGeneres Show, the actress Keira Knightley talked about the films she allows her 3-year-old daughter to watch at home. Two she explicitly forbids are Disney favorites Cinderella and The Little Mermaid. Both, apparently, because of their poor representations of women. She said of Little Mermaid:
I mean, the songs are great, but do not give your voice up for a man. Hello!… And this is the one that I’m quite annoyed about because I really like the film. I love The Little Mermaid! That one’s a little tricky — but I’m keeping to it.
Cinderella is also on the blacklist because she “waits around for a rich guy to rescue her,” says Knightley. “Don’t! Rescue yourself. Obviously!”
Now — without sounding deliciously smug — isn’t this (in the parlance of the modern left) a classic case of victim-blaming? Cinderella, a young woman—in some versions, a teenager—lives under the tyrannical regime of her abusive stepmother and stepsisters. She is forced to tend to their every need and locked away in a tower at her wicked family’s convenience. Cinderella would likely have no access to cash or transport, and might even find things harder out in the world she had been isolated from for so many years. Would Knightley tell a vulnerable woman in that position to “rescue herself” if it were happening in real life and not a child’s film? I highly doubt it.
I am, of course, taking this far too seriously. As is Knightley, although she doesn’t realize it. Her response is typical of the new drive among some parents — and Disney executives — to move the portrayal of women on from the “damsel in distress” trope so evident in traditional storytelling. I am sympathetic to this aim. A brief glance at leading female characters in older children’s stories shows a far less varied and developed cast than when compared to their male counterparts. There is nothing wrong with wanting deeper, more interesting female protagonists. I personally welcome that development.
The problem arises when this mutates into a puritanical drive to mastermind the viewing habits of children, cleansing their media diets from any suboptimal portrayals of their race, class, sexuality or gender. Because that is what they fundamentally are—not dismissive, malicious, or shameful, but suboptimal. This is an approach that borders on the absurd. The task would be gargantuan even for parents of boys, let alone girls. Males are almost always the villains in any story—and so by definition are bad role models. If we’re in the habit of curating our kids’ films in an effort to craft their personalities, why not do away with Toy Story? Both of the chief protagonists are self-important, deluded idiots until the final act. Aladdin? An incessant shoplifter who uses monkeys as accomplices — hardly the best example for the impressionable young (Tangled also features a thief: Flynn Rider). While we’re at it, scrap the Borrowers too, another set of problem thieves.
I am, of course, joking. Knightley, however, isn’t, and her position is characteristic of much of the social-justice left. Do we imbibe the values, ethics, and assumptions of the popular art we consume so unwittingly and uncritically that it’s as if we’re empty vessels waiting to be filled? Can children not watch Cinderella without internalizing society’s misogyny? Can adults not read an opinionated article without having their brains scooped out and replaced with the views of the author? I’m not denying the capacity for forms of art, for stories, to influence us. But banning stories containing both good and bad aspects assumes not only that the bad aspects overwhelm the good ones but also that the bad aspects have a kind of omnipotence when it comes to character formation; they ruin the inner development of any human being unfortunate enough to be within earshot of them.
In arguing against the banning of Cinderella, I’m not making the case that the film’s titular character is a perfect role model. Literally, nobody is — that’s the point. Humans are not perfect. We often have flawed and irrational reactions to problems; not everything we do is in our own best interest. The characters in our stories ought to be similarly flawed or risk being nothing more than vacuous moving shapes on a screen. The way we engage and dissect art needs to match the complexity of the world. If a character or story fails to get the world as it is, or the world as it ought to be, this presents us with the opportunity to reflect on what we have just watched. Wouldn’t Knightley, if pressed, acknowledge that reflection on these things is good?
Too often we look for full-formed paragons of virtue when it is traits and characteristics, not whole personalities, that we must treasure and hope to replicate in others. We would do well to emulate Martin Luther King Jr.’s passion for justice—the fact that we ought not emulate his extramarital affairs doesn’t disqualify him from serving as an exemplar of what it should look like to pursue morally significant change in society. Cinderella might not be as headstrong or efficacious as later Disney heroines like Moana or Anna (of Frozen) but she is almost certainly as nice, or nicer. In the version by Charles Perrault, published in 1697, (read the English translation in full here) she is described as a woman with “unparalleled goodness and sweetness of temper.” Are female children’s characters no longer allowed to be sweet and good? Lest a whole generation of young girls tumble, helplessly, back into the clutches of patriarchy and traditional, subservient femininity?
What people like Knightley fail to understand is Cinderella is a fantasy of the best kind, one that promises a profound, natural justice that does not exist in the real world. A woman unrivaled in her goodness — who through her kind nature deserves everything and yet has nothing — wins the affections of the man she loves and ends up in a castle she can call her own, never having to be a slave to others again. Her stepfamily loses their captive, their reputation, and the prestigious marriage they craved. There is no ambiguity here: good wins, evil loses. The battle might not be grand on a civilizational scale, but it satisfies our need to see good, sympathetic characters meet good ends.
Films that depict outdated gender tropes shouldn’t be viewed uncritically. Cinderella is not our modern conception of the best of womanhood: self-determining, self-actualizing, and as free and capable as any man. Children of the 21st century will very easily be able to grasp that fact, simply by virtue of having eyes and ears. But, again, to expect the Disney classics (or other favorites of children’s entertainment) to offer a pantheon of great role models is to ask too much of the genre. There are interesting and intelligent conversations to be had with engaged kids about how things are different now. Because let’s be clear, Cinderella (and most other fairy tales) are based on a time where women did occupy a different place in society—a reality we view far more critically in the West today, and rightly so. To wipe that history from our children’s viewing habits risks presenting an unrealistic view of how our society has viewed women in the past. Why not instead engage these past deficiencies and use them to illuminate how important transcending them has been? Imperfect portrayals, especially when based on history, deserve their space, too. Children can learn from them. They are far more discerning than we give them credit for — and so are we. And, let’s not forget, they are fairy tales, after all.
