Amazon’s ‘Cinderella’: too big for the right, too small for the left
Currents
Amazon has amassed quite the résumé. Sure, they engage in some monopolistic anti-competitive practices, and their work environment leaves plenty to be desired. But who among us can truly say they’ve never made someone pee in a bottle, or unfairly promoted their own brand to the searching masses? The tech giant rules the e-commerce kingdom atop a mountain of their competitors’ skulls. They have revolutionized consumer expectations, branched out into grocery stores, and been industry leaders in innovation. The latest notch in their belt may be the most impressive: Amazon has united the political left and right — in hatred of their new musical adaptation of Cinderella. Anything that can bring the politically leftmost 15 percent of society together with the rightmost 15 percent in bawling tantrums is most assuredly doing something deliciously right.
Cinderella is a folktale as old as the hills. The first written version was the story of Rhodopis, recorded about two thousand years ago but probably even older, about a Greek slave girl who marries the king of Egypt. The story has been told and retold throughout the world. The most influential European versions are from Giambattista Basile (1634), Charles Perrault (1697), and the Brothers Grimm (1812). The details vary from version to version, but the basic plot remains consistent: a lowly girl toils in obscurity, attracts the notice of someone in power, then ascends from the bottom rung of society to the top through marriage to royalty. It was a tale set in feudal monarchical societies where women had no rights, heredity was damn-near destiny, and upward mobility was so difficult that storytellers had to resort to magic to make it seem plausible. Most of us grew up having seen Disney’s Cinderella from 1950. A fine piece of animation, and faithful to the thrust of the early modern European renditions — it did not question or challenge feudalism, sexism, or the like. Disney’s Fairy Godmother represented a kind of noblesse oblige. The more liberal 1998 film Ever After, inspired by Cinderella, has the heroine, played by Drew Barrymore, debating the merits of monarchy with the undercover prince.
Amazon’s Cinderella takes it further. Ella, played by Camila Cabello, is an irrepressible go-getter, an aspiring entrepreneur, dreaming of being a successful dressmaker and singing about overcoming challenges, facing fears, and striving to achieve her goals — bucking against an antiquated world that would keep her in the home. The film challenges traditional gender roles, criticizes feudalism, and belts out the virtues of individuality with an ear-to-ear grin. The casting is very diverse, the story has explicit social commentary, and the style is so 2021. It captures the feel of wokeness, the aesthetic of postmodernism, but wears it only as clothing, all the while retaining its old-school liberal soul. The film depicts a colorful cast of flawed but ultimately decent characters, such as Pierce Brosnan’s King Rowan and Idina Menzel’s Stepmother Vivian, both seemingly set in their stuffy traditionalist ways, who eventually come around to more open-minded views. The overarching theme is to be your own person rather than fill the roles others would force upon you. It’s vintage 2010 “you do you” vibes, and it’s refreshing as hell.
Billy Porter as the fairy godmother (Kerry Brown/Amazon)
The makers of Cinderella threaded the needle beautifully between modern sensibilities and liberal values, but in doing so they have also illustrated that there is no pleasing some people. This free-spirited Cinderella does not sit well with either of our political extremes, because neither wants a society where people are free to do what they want so long as they aren’t hurting anyone. The far-left and -right don’t want free thinkers, and they certainly don’t want individuals. What they want are conformist zombies dutifully obedient to their illiberal orthodoxies. Earning the united disparagement of these extremists is the highest possible endorsement, and Amazon’s Cinderella, whatever else one may think of it, deserves praise on these grounds alone.
What paleocons just cannot get over are the casting choices. To them, diversity is indistinguishable from woke ideology. The National Review panned the film as “radical” and “ruthlessly woke,” saying the casting choices “purposely avoid traditional, Anglo-Saxon whiteness, which Hollywood now considers ‘supremacist.’” They took particular aim, as all right wing critics of the film have, at Billy Porter’s charmed portrayal of the Fairy Godmother, the genderless sass master “Fab G,” calling it insulting. They even went so far as to say “Cinderella’s ‘glass ceiling’ aspirations suggest social revolution.” Here’s the bow tie–to-English translation: “Boo empowered women! Too many people of color! Too much LGBTQ!” They see these groups as a threat to straight white men. Amazon’s Cinderella is fundamentally liberal — that is to say, it advocates an MLK-style equality, where we are all one people in this together, not the more threatening zero-sum equity of the radical left that seeks to take from the “oppressors” to give to the “oppressed.” But because the hard right is apparently incapable of seeing past the diverse surface to the inner individualist landscape - which some of them might actually appreciate if only they had the mental discipline to look a little deeper - it is completely lost on them.
Left-wing critics maintain that the movie is pro-capitalism, pro-wealth, and insufficiently woke. The Daily Targum indicts Cinderella, as only leftists can, as being “capitalist-adjacent,” declaring that the diverse casting “ring[s] laughably hollow, considering Amazon has faced multiple lawsuits revolving around sexist and racist harassment.” The review does nothing but trash the film, offering zilch in the way of thoughts for what might have been done better outside of vague lamentations that Cinderella was not a black lesbian. This stuff is beyond parody, but sadly representative of current far-left discourse. Meanwhile, The Independent was incensed that Cinderella has a “voracious appetite for capitalism,” “only works to better her own life,” doesn’t team up with other female characters, and lacks “solidarity or sisterhood.”
Honestly, if you haven’t figured this out yet: There is no winning with these people. If Cinderella dutifully accepts the prince’s hand to become princess, she is embodying the traditional female role of needing a man to rescue her, and being an objectified trophy and marginalized broodmare. If she turns down the prince in favor of her career, she’s being a “girlboss” who displays strength only by imitating men, who benefits from the oppressive system instead of overthrowing it. And if she gets the best of both, which, spoiler alert, she in fact does, that just won’t do either. What would Cinderella have to be for the far left to approve? Let’s take inventory of our notes here: Cinderella should be a black trans disabled lesbian immigrant who joins forces with the other women of color to stage the most glorious protest the world has ever seen, where they sing a hip-hop version of the Soviet “Trololo” song, whose vibes are so powerful it overthrows the entire society and ushers in a woke communist utopia. But of course, it would still be made by the evil Amazon, and anyone without a life could still troll through the entire permanent records of everyone in the cast and crew for heretical transgressions. The game is rigged, folks. The ammunition for discontent is endless for the person so motivated, but there are few attitudes more sophomoric than confusing perpetual discontent with intellectual sophistication.
What the far-left wants Cinderella to be would not be Cinderella, not in any way shape or form. What the far-right wants is a carbon copy of classical tellings, in which case there would be no point to making the film in the first place. Amazon’s film is neither of those.
Cinderella is ultimately a children’s story. When adults shriek at each other over the messages of the film, they do so because younger, impressionable viewers may be influenced by them. And the themes in this Cinderella — of hard work, pursuing your dreams, overcoming fear and anxiety, being your own individual person, perseverance in the face of challenges, and thinking outside the box — are ones any parent or society should be thrilled to impart to the next generation. It’s joyous liberal propaganda, and in these illiberal times, that’s exactly what we could use a little more of.
Cinderella (2021)
Rated PG. Running time: 1 hour 53 minutes. Watch on Amazon.
