An “interesting mash-up”: A Cinder for a Brave New World

1. An “interesting mash-up”: A Cinder for a Brave New World HUM 2085: Film and Television Adaptation Summer 2013 Dr. Perdigao June 20, 2013

2. Rapunzel in the New World • Enchantment • Wish-fulfillment for child (“The Juniper Tree,” “Snow White,” “Briar Rose”)

4. Briar Rose in the New World • http://glcmajoramodule.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/sleeping-beauty-dakota-fanning-186415_1920_1649.jpg • http://www.justjared.com/2006/12/07/dakota-fanning-vanity-fair/ • http://www.bigfishgames.com/blog/walkthrough/dark-parables-curse-of-briar-rose-collectors-edition-walkthrough/

38. Echoes in the Brothers Grimm’s “Cinderella” • Loss of mother • Magic in tree • “The Juniper Tree” • “True” and “false” bride (83) (“Little Brother and Little Sister,” “The Goose Girl”) • 3 days of wedding

39. Cinderella Stories • Metamorphosis and the reveal • “Rise” • Beauty, “truth” • Perseverance, self-sacrifice • Identity: race, class, gender, sexual orientation • Class, gender conflicts • Hans-JorgUther’s description of the Cinderella “type”: “a prototype, characterized by a combination of industriousness and beauty. Often she at first appears as an insignificant heroine of lower class origins, but she is predestined to social advancement” (125).

40. Recasting Cinder (no pun intended with the foot plot) • Marissa Meyer’s Cinder (2012) • http://www.marissameyer.com/ • http://www.marissameyer.com/book/book-one/ • Scarlet (2013) • Cress (2014) • http://www.enchanteddoll.com/galleries/cinderella2/cinderella2.html

42. Exposition • New world, New Beijing “From ground level, New Beijing was a mess . . . But from here, atop the cliff and three stories up, the city was beautiful” (129). • Dystopian world • World War Z . . . IV • Dystopian storyline as “cautionary tale,” back to the world of folk tales, fables, fairy tales • 126 T. E. • The moon has been colonized • China as the world’s largest superpower • Plague • Automobile from “second era” (46)

43. Exposition • Part I, Chapter One • Beginnings • Dismemberment • Deconstruction of story, as body • Later surgery: “It was as if someone had copped her down the middle, dividing her front half from her back half, and then put her cartoonish image into a medical textbook” (82). • Child’s song— “Ashes, ashes, we all fall down!” (4) • Place of fantasy, child’s play (Peter Pan) • Plague, issue of class, “No longer can we claim this disease is relegated to the poor, rural communities of our country. Letumosis threatens us all” (26).

44. Reframing • Maria Nikolajevawrites, “Fantasy is an eclectic genre, since it borrows traits not just from fairy tales, but from myth, romance, the novel of chivalry, the picaresque, the gothic novel, mysteries, science fiction, and other genres, blending seemingly incompatible elements within one and the same narrative” (139). • In Secrets Beyond the Door, Maria Tatar writes that stories “are constantly altered, adapted, transformed, and tailored to fit new cultural contexts. They remain alive precisely because they are never exactly the same, always doing new cultural work, mapping out different developmental paths, assimilating new anxieties and desires” (11).

45. Identity Crisis • Cinder as “other” • Not just class and gender but her humanity called into question • Cyborg • 36.28% of her body is mechanical; alterations at age 11 • Organic and mechanical: “A girl. A machine. A freak” (126). • Cinder’s role—as servant, test subject, more than Cinderella • Another character? “Wakey, wakey, sleeping beauty” (74). “Ah! Juliet awakens” (78). • More Sleeping Beauty? Nainsi

46. Identity Crisis • Loss of identity • Recast role • Reconceiving the body: “With her face shimmering with too much powder and her lips painted horrifically bright, Adri almost looked like a reproduction of herself” (21). • “But being Lunar and being cyborg are not mutually exclusive” (176). • “To be cyborg and Lunar. One was enough to make her a mutant, an outcast, but to be both?” (178). • “If Dr. Erland was right, then everything she knew about herself, her childhood, her parents, was wrong. A made-up history. A made-up girl” (179).

47. Typifying and Resisting Type • Cinderella for the future • Perseverance, resistance to plague • Fight for survival • “Red warnings flashed across her vision until, in an act of cyborg self-preservation, her brain forced her to shut down” (68). • Subversion of storyline—no desire to go to the ball: “She wouldn’t fit in at a formal ball anyway. Even if she did find dress gloves and slippers that could hide her metal monstrosities, her mousy hair would never hold a curl, and she didn’t know the first thing about makeup” (32). • “If Cinder’s body had ever been predisposed to femininity, it had been ruined by whatever the surgeons had done to her, leaving her with a stick-straight figure. Too angular. Too boyish. Too awkward with her heavy artificial leg” (34).

48. Typifying and Resisting Type • More practical heroine • Gender-bending at beginning with Prince Kai, also in disguise, idea of “mechanic” • “You’re not quite what I was expecting.” • “Well you’re hardly—what I—um” (8). • Attempts at escape (Ever After) • “Perhaps you’ll meet a girl at the festival,” said Torin. “Have a whirlwind romance, a happily ever after, and have no more worries for the rest of your days” (113). • Retelling as subversive plot

49. The Price of Magic • Place of magic, as Lunar • “I am not talking fate or destiny. I am talking survival. You cannot let the queen see you” (179). • “Lunars were a society that had evolved from an Earthen moon colony centuries ago, but they weren’t human anymore” (43). • Magic vs. science: “Claiming it to be magic only empowers them” (238). • Disguise/revelation • The mirror—banishment; small hand mirror at dinner • “A mirror filled the wall. Her own face stared wild-eyed back at her . . . They’d taken her gloves and her boots and rolled her pant legs up. She was not looking at a girl in the mirror. She was looking at a machine” (78). • “Imagining the headless voice on the other side of the mirror, watching, laughing at her vain struggles, she froze and tried her best to hold still” (84).

50. Spellbound • “But she was not afraid of the mirrored surface, not afraid of her own reflection. She couldn't understand what Levana and her kind, their kind, found so disturbing about it. Her mechanical parts were the only disturbing thing in Cinder’s reflection, and that had been done to her on Earth” (190). • “A week ago, I knew exactly who I was, what I was, and maybe that was a worthless cyborg, but at least I knew that. And now. . . now I’m Lunar, I’m a Lunar who supposedly might have magic but can’t use it, and now there’s this insane queen who for some reason wants to kill me” (239). • “What you’re saying is that I’m becoming Lunar for real. Magic and all” (244). • “Lost” princess • Evil queen • Princess Winter: “They said she had forced her stepdaughter to mutilate her own face because, at the sweet age of thirteen, she had become more beautiful than the jealous queen could stand” (43).