I am having trouble structuring my Cinderella review especially since as I continue to write it it's getting longer and longer so I am moving it to Sunday. For now I don't want to go another schedule day without doing something for you guys so I decided to talking about one of the most disturbing scene in any Disney movie ever.
Whenever you hear about disturbing scenes in a Disney movie you typically think of the death of Simba's father, the death of Disney's mother or the entirety of the Hunchback of Notre Dame but to me is in the original 1950 Cinderella movie Cinderella in order to go to the ball takes her mother's old dress that was retrofitted by the mice into a gown but sadly the wicked stepsisters rip it apart until she's basically left in nothing but the equivalent of medieval times underwear. To this day I can't watch Cinderella without fast forwarding through that scene or just outright skipping the scene all together.
The scene is played very fast, with harsh music to accompany it and it's basically framed like either an intense beating scene or a rape scene. Yet that isn't what to me at least makes it so disturbing and gut wrenching. It gets worse when you think about what happened prior.
Cinderella ever since she was child has been basically turned into a house slave, she's locked away from civilization only knowing of the world inside her family manor (remember we never see or hear of Cinderella every going outside her family estate so it can be safe to assume she is locked away from the outside world.) She sleeps in a dingy attic with only the mice as her friends and everyday is given basically a thousand chores from her step-mother who is evil incarnate and just seems to give her a lot of chores because she finds pleasure in seeing her suffer. She also has to serve her two ugly, dim-witted sisters who also enjoy working her to the bone. And yet through all of that, through all the abuse and isolation she still manages to not only find some outlets of happiness be it singing or dreaming, finds some friends even if it's in the animals but managed also to stay a good and hopeful person.
Cinderella through all intensive purposes should (justifiably) be a cold hearted person who does her chores but is overall uncaring. Yet even when she clearly hates doing the work she still endures through it and remain polite to her step family and puts others before her. Remember when she rescued Gus from the Cat, she had a ready-made shirt and hat for him and since the other mice all have ready made clothes as well you can infer she's done this a million times for other mice. She hopes for a better future and believes despite all of the hell she's gone through it will come someday.
When the invitation for the ball comes Cinderella see's this as a chance for a better life but she can't go until she finishes a list of chores that's at least four feet tall but also a nice dress. She has the dress one of the few remaining things of her dead mother but it's not what you would call up to ball standards. Yet she can't focus on that because she has to work on her human size list of chores, which she manages to accomplishes even though by the time she gets back to her room she pretty exhausted at that point. The mice decide to refit the dress for her because not only has she been nothing but kind to them by protecting them from the cat, feeding them and clothing them but because she is their friend making the dress now a symbol of their friendship. When she gets it she's not only elated she can now but grateful as well.
So when she goes down to tell her step-mother and sisters she can go what do they do, they rip not only the dress which contains alone memories of her long dead mother or even her friendship with the mice. but of what keeps her going and what makes her truly better than either her step mother or her step sisters- her kindness and hope. Once they violently rip it apart probably bruising her in the process Cinderella finally breaks. Through out all their abuse she's managed to keep her chin up throughout the whole thing but now they've finally pushed her over the edge and she can't take it anymore, they've (the step mother and sisters) won.
Thankfully she gets her happily ever after once the fairy godmother shows up so it's all good.That's my analysis of the Cinderella dress ripping scene and see you Sunday for the review.
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