Remix Storytelling

When I was little, Disney's Cinderella was my favorite movie. I mean, ever. At age three, I watched the movie every single day and never got tired of it (which is more than I can say for my mom). Even now, eighteen years older--and with the ability to recognize the issues in some of Disney's works--I still adore that movie. But now I'm aware of the rich history behind the simple fairy tale.



Fairy Tale Remix

This semester, in my Fantasies of Childhood literature class, we traced the origin of Cinderella in detail. In 1812, the Brothers Grimm published their first volume of folk tales. But these weren't original; they were based on the brothers traveling the countryside, talking to peasants who had heard stories passed down. The original folk tales were passed down orally, and they were MUCH darker...the Grimms were Christians, and they cleaned up the stories' most gruesome and sexual elements.

But they didn't cut out ALL the good stuff. The original Cinderella story resonates with danger and a twisted morality. When Cinderella's father thinks she's climbed up a pear tree to escape a search party, he chops the tree down. Correct me if I'm wrong, but this isn't a typical show of fatherly concern. The stepsisters, meanwhile, are so desperate to fit the glass slipper that one girl chops off her big toe, and other other slices off a chunk of her heel. (Disney wisely chose not to include that part.) And in the end, the stepsisters show up at Cinderella's royal wedding, and her pigeon friends--cheery, chirpy bluebirds in the Disney movie--swoop down and peck the stepsisters' eyes out.

This was the story that the Grimms recorded. Most likely, the original (spoken) tale in the German countryside was even more gruesome. As years passed, the Grimms toned down the darkness in some of their fairy tales--they cut out the mutilation at Cinderella's wedding, for instance.

But most people don't know that the story reaches back even further. In 1634, Neopolitan soldier and government official Giambattista Basile wrote about a young girl named Cenerentola, which shared the common features of a wicked stepmother and stepsisters, a magical transformation, and a missing slipper. And some decades later, in 1697, folklorist Charles Perrault wrote the version most familiar to us today: a fairy godmother, a pumpkin transformed into a carriage, and glass (not golden, like in the Grimms' version) slippers. There are even some who argue that Cinderella dates back to classical antiquity: an ancient Greek historian, Strabo, wrote of a girl whose sandal was carried away by eagles. The king found it and, intrigued by its beauty, sent out messengers to find the girl who fit the mysterious sandal.

This was written more than 2000 years ago.



Cinderella in the Modern World

Most of us know the Disney version best. Under closer examination, this sugary G-rated movie is a prime example of remix storytelling. Disney pulled the fairy godmother and glass slippers from Perrault's version; they lifted the bird-helpers from the Grimm version. And they sanitized it all, to make it appropriate for very young audiences. And versions of Disney movies (based on century-old stories, based on even-older oral folk tales) are STILL being created--look at Mark Rosman's "A Cinderella Story," starring Hilary Duff in 2004, or even "Beastly," starring Alex Pettyfer and released just this year. It's overwhelming to think that new works of art are still being created on the foundation of a simple story from 1634.