Walt Disney's “Cinderella”: Morally Corrupt and Biased?

Walt Disney’s “Cinderella”: Morally Corrupt and Biased? For over fifty years, the magical tale that is known the world over as Walt Disney’s “Cinderella” has been passed down from generation to generation, in particularly as a popular bedtime story request from youngsters. Even more so, over the past three decades it has even become a staple in almost every young child’s home video collection. While Walt Disney’s classic offers children a land to explore their imagination, and even a young female figure to look up to, are we as parents and society as a whole exposing our young ones to the most morally upbeat and appropriate rendition of the classic tale? With Walt Disney’s take on “Cinderella” being an animated motion picture, most notably targeted towards a younger audience, it seems perfectly fine for the film to be chock-full of whimsical scenes of magic and lots of eye appealing imagery. One will also notice that in Disney’s take, he seems to associate the antagonist/villain roles with “ugly” characteristics, such as being fat or old and wrinkled. In Walt Disney’s adaption, he clearly states that “the ugly stepsisters were powdered, pressed, and curled” (641). While using these descriptive yet sometimes misleading methods to captivate the younger audience, it seems to overshadow the more important themes, age old sayings such as “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” and “it’s what’s on the inside that counts”. On the contrary, Charles Perrault describes Cinderella’s dress as “a dress of gold and silver cloth” (626), and her footwear as “a pair of glass slippers, beautifully made” (626). Perrault never describes the stepsisters as fat or ugly, and establishes their “mean” qualities based upon their actions. Because Perrault’s spin on the classic tale is written and not expressed visually, it allows the reader to run rampant with their imagination, granting them the opportunity to formulate their own perception of what “beautiful” is. After all, we all have

Cited: Perrault, Charles. “Cinderella”. Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum. Ed. Laurence Behrens and Leonard J. Rosen. 11th ed. Boston: Longman, 2005. 624-628. Print. Grant, Campbell. “Walt Disney’s “Cinderella””. Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum. Ed. Laurence Behrens and Leonard J. Rosen. 11th ed. Boston: Longman, 2005. 641-642. Print.