Hollywood Cinderella Dream And Gender Identity

Through comparing the ancient folktale Cinderella to the modern representation of Cinderella in Hollywood's movies, this paper argues how the traditional gender conventions are produced and reproduced in the field of mass culture and how its influence the construction of gender role.My first chart psychologically studies several important motifs in folktale Cinderella and finds the center of this story is not virtue as people usually imagine but beauty and power. As a perfect model of beauty, Cinderella reflects the ideal what women should be in the patriarchal society. Women should be pretty and team. Those women who can reach this standard will be rewarded by male society and get power and happy. On the contrary, those who do not obey it will be punished exiled out of the society. Basing on the present rule to built gender-identity, will make women become more and more passive and submissive. Their development of personality will be restraint tightly.My second and third charts study two movies Petty Woman and Working Girl, which are the modern representations of the folktale Cinderella. Most motifs that have appeared in Cinderella are reserved in these movies. Although the backgrounds in movies are very different from the folktale and two modern Cinderella also have more freedom than the old one, but the main reasons that they can get the success remain their pretty and sex appeal. In the development of these stories the men's powers are the decisive factors that control the whole situation. Therefore, we can say that these movies just copied the traditional myth about beauty and power.My final chart argues that the impetus to build a beauty-and-power is men's desire. The images of perfectly beautiful women are the production of patriarchy, which are born from men's imagination. For a long time, beauty is the most significant value of women that decides who are valued and who are not because women are always regarded as objects of men's desire. Consequently if we want to construct the subjectivity of women, we must break the beauty-and-power myth firstly.