Cinderella, a tale of redemption. Or: Cinderella, a tale of redemption? [The Audacity of Cinderella, by Rebecca Reynolds, 4/15/2015 via The Rabbit Room at www.rabbitroom.com]
Dear Ms Reynolds,
You ask why it is that we find the story of Cinderella hither and yon. You speculate that perhaps it is because people everywhere need this story to lift them out of the cinders of their life. Might I also speculate? My theory is that, as with most of the Grimm tales (all?), we are given a myth, a story overladen with layers of meaning reaching into ancient times, ancient religions, and that as myths tend to do, they reach across cultural divides and poke at something quite in common, and that they are an expression of peoples everywhere. Myth comes from some touchstone to human existence that might crop up from the fertile crescent, the Indus valley, and the Nile...one could throw in the Mississippi and Yangtze as well.
You write: "Somewhere along the way, our worlds grew dim, we got discouraged, and we forgot how much the fairy tale meant." You say that you had grown cynical, but this seems to have picked your spirits up...because now you see--as you once did as a child--that a gracious good can come out of a good heart, and not be quashed by a cynical attitude.
I thought you might have put in an Amen in there somewhere.
You rake Hegel through the cinders (or at least his "fidgety spirit" but you graciously do allow that "quite a bit in Marx's time...needed critique.") and Derrida (for his dependable undependability and defying of narrative norms). But you seem overly concerned that deconstruction, with all its messy search for truth and all, leads to uncivil behavior. You show us what can happen when teenagers become obsessed with deconstructive intent: Grand Theft Auto! And worse: Shrek!
Though you might find that a predictable consequence, I personally do not. I wonder if these uncivilized behaviors are not in fact modeled on a hopelessness that comes from deep within a quite uncivilized society, a society that prizes power over fairness, a society that rewards unethical behavior (as long as it results in a billionaire's salary), a society that no longer sees justice for all, but does imprison--or shoots--the mentally ill (because, after all, they're sick). A society that allows health care to be a source of profit for corporations.
So I see Grand Theft Auto as a result not of the tearing down of walls through Derrida, Marx, and Hegel, but rather a failure by society to use the tools of Derrida, Marx, and Hegel. Is not Power and the lust for power--which they would examine and re-examine--at the root of this rising evil? And were not these the very men of genius that would/could save us from that lust of power? I think so.
Your pure narrative, I have to say, is not so pure. The telling of the story Cinderella is not pure, simply because you want it told as you first heard it as a child. The tale is one of ancient myth, full of soundings of fertility cults, of the Demeter/Persephone sort. It is also full of the truth of our everyday existence: and this existence is chock-full of death and life, of evil and good, of trickery and grace. It is a messy thing, life. A narrative that misses this untidy portion of life by portraying it as a simple tale is not a ray of light; it mistakes nostalgia for truth, it casts false shadows because it fears to see life as it really is.
I have not seen the movie, though I do intend to one day. Viewing it, I will still hope that the director will deconstruct the tale in order to reveal truth (something that all true artists do). I will still hope the voices of Derrida and Hegel whisper into his ear. I will hope that you, Ms. Reynolds, just got this whole thing wrong and that you were merely seeing through glass-slipper eyes.
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