The Voices of the Silenced: An Analysis of the Cinematic Reworking of the Fairy Tales

Abstract

Fairy tales have been prevalent across cultures of the world and have gained popularity among people of all ages. However, they seem to be widely read and admired by the young readers for its content and characterization, which is predominantly a fantastic one. Although the fairy tales seem to have some distinctive regional characteristics but the basic structure of most of the tales remain the same. They share some recurrences in terms of the plot and characters with a little variation owing to the place of its origin. Beautiful princess, damsels in distress, charming princes, knights, the scheming stepmothers, and the wicked witches are some common characters which recur in most of the fairy tales. Popular fairy tales such as Cindrella, Rapunzal, and The Sleeping Beauty also share some common plots, where the female protagonist is caught in misery or distress and is rescued by the prince charming who later marries her. Thus, the story end happily, filling the minds of the readers with happiness and stirring up their world of imagination and fantasy as well. Although these tales of wonder and fantasy seem to be an exploration to the world of magic and enchantments yet they subtly play another significant role. This secondary role of the fairy tales as agents of gender constructs and stereotyping is the matter of concern in this paper. The characters portrayed in these tales belonging to both genders are characterized in such a way so as to fulfill the societal norms of the patriarchs. This results in stereotyping and repetition, which elicits responses among the critical thinkers. The naí¯ve readers fail to perceive the stereotypical representations of the genders, the binaries constructed in the process and the play of the power politics which are covertly presented in the tales. The present paper intends to bring into focus the alternate interpretations of some of the popular fairy tales and their reworking in the cinematic world. Two well-known fairy tales, The Sleeping Beauty and The Frog Prince, and the Hollywood movies Maleficent and The Princess and the Frog, are chosen as texts for analysis. Here an attempt has been made to analyze how the well-known fairy tales have been reworked upon in the movies and how far these movies have been successful in presenting alternate interpretation to the plots and the characterizations as well.