Ailn Tocons Bosco Introduccin a los Estudios Literarios Traductorado en Ingls

1 cuatrimestre 2016

A Critical Story, from Ashputtel to the Modernised Film Adaptation:

Negative Critics do not Define the Success of an Adapted Film Version

An adaptation, seen by the perspective of it as a formal entity or product, is an

announced and extensive transposition of a particular work or works (Hutcheon 2006: 7). In the
case of A Cinderella Story by Mark Rosman, the transposition involves a shift of medium: from
the classic fairy tale called Ashputtel by the Grimm brothers to the film version. From the
perspective of an adaptation as a process of reception, it is a form of intertextuality as Gerard
Genette defines:

Por mi parte, defino la intertextualidad, de manera restrictiva, como una relacin de

copresencia entre dos o ms textos, es decir, eidticamente y frecuentemente, como la
presencia efectiva de un texto en otro. (Genette 1989: 10)

In other words, there is a repetition of a text within another text, yet with a variation
through creativity that makes the adaptation a derivation that is not derivative (Hutcheon 2006:
9). The variation in the film version by Mark Rosman relies on the modernising aspect of the
story: Ashputtel is now a teenager of our times whose life is unbearable because of her
stepmother and stepsisters, but then she meets someone who makes her believe that things
can change (with some help and effort). Even though the main plot stays practically the same,
the setting is necessarily modern and the perspective on the characters and their actions as
well.
Of film adaptations like A Cinderella Story, experts seem to state a standard so high that
barely anyone would be able to reach:

In both academic criticism and journalistic reviewing, contemporary popular

adaptations are most often put down as secondary, derivative, belated, middlebrow, or
culturally inferior. (...) The move from the literary to the filmic or televisual has even been
called a move to a willfully inferior form of cognition. (...) It does seem to be more or less
acceptable to adapt Romeo and Juliet into a respected high art form, like an opera or a
ballet, but not to make it into a movie, especially an updated one like Baz Luhrmanns (1996)
William Shakespeares Romeo + Juliet. If an adaptation is perceived as lowering a story
(according to some imagined hierarchy of medium or genre), response is likely to be
negative. (2-3)

Nevermind the experts opinion, there seems to be a contrastive, and generally positive,
opinion of such film versions from the audience itself:

There must be something particularly appealing about adaptations as adaptations.

Part of this pleasure, I want to argue, comes simply from repetition with variation,
from the comfort of ritual combined with the piquancy of surprise. Recognition and
remembrence are part of the pleasure (and risk) of experiencing an adaptation; so too is
change. (4)

In A Theory of Adaptation, Hutcheon raises a paradoxical issue: adaptations are

considered inferior and secondary creations, yet they are so omnipresent in our culture and
increasing steadily in numbers (4); within this context and by observing that Mark Rosmans
production had a positive reaction of the audience and a negative reaction of the critics, we can
affirm that a film can be successful even though it might be negatively criticised by the experts
that consider it an inferior and secondary creation.

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To start analysing and justifying this affirmation, first we will look at the main differences
(variations) between the film and the fairy tale that make the film attractive for the audience. The
modern setting is certainly one of the most appealing aspects of the film, it brings the fairy tale
to our reality and we find ourselves wondering how the producers will manage to bring all the
original elements of the fairy tale to a setting so unlike the original. In fact, the film starts by
acknowledging the fact that it is a reinterpretation of the classic fairy tale:

Once upon a time, in a far away kingdom, lived a beautiful little girl and her
widowed father (...) Okay, it wasn't that long ago and it wasn't really a far away kingdom. It
was a San Fernando Valley, and it only looked far away because you could barely see it
through all the smog. (A Cinderella Story, 2004)

The modern aspects of Samanthas, our new Cinderella, ordinary life and troubles give the
audience a sense of proximity that the fairy tale does not: we know fairy tales are just stories
and that they are not likely to happen to us, whereas we relate to Samanthas money struggles
and general preoccupations because they are part of our world nowadays. The main difference
is in the reinterpretation of the character that portraits Ashputtel. She is no longer the frail girl
that waits for her Prince to come home and rescue her. Samantha proves to be much stronger
than that, as she goes to the popular boy, our new Prince, and tells him:

Even though it is me who has no family, no job and no money for college, it is you
that I feel sorry for. I know the guy who sent those emails is somewhere down inside of you,
but I cant wait for him. Because waiting for you is like waiting for rain in this drought:
useless and disappointing. (A Cinderella Story, 2004)

She has relatable objectives in life, she wants her Prince with her, but she knows what her
priorities are. As the role of women has changed throughout the years, it makes sense for
Cinderella to have another attitude towards life and its struggles.
On the other hand, another thing that has changed from the original story is the public
that it is aimed to. For Ashputtel the Grimm brothers had intended an audience with
characteristics that are very dissimilar to those of the film versions audience, it was mainly
aimed for adults:

To begin with, it seems, Jacob and Whilelm Grimm werent interested in an

audience of children. What later in the nineteenth century became Germany was then a
number of duchies and princedoms, and the Grimm collected folktales with the political
purpose of supporting unification by finding evidence of the basic linguistic and cultural
oneness of the German people. (Nodelman and Reimer 2003: 306)

The film, however, was a production aimed at children and, specifically, at teenagers in high
school. Because of this, Ashputtel has violent scenes where she is insulted or her stepsisters
have to cut parts of their feet to make the slipper fit them, whereas A Cinderella Story barely has
any violent content. Moreover, A Cinderella Story aims to a message of hard work and
wilfulness, when Ashputtel aims to a censure of cruelty but also has the political and cultural
intention of the compilers.
On a final aspect of analysis, it can be observed by the critiques the film received that it
was certainly considered as a lowering version:

Even for a fairy tale, ''A Cinderella Story,'' (sic) directed by Mark Rosman from a
screenplay by Leigh Dunlap, fails to make sense. In an environment where looks are

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everything, no one notices that Samantha is far and away the prettiest girl in high school.
Only a blind person could fail to guess the Girl in White's identity when she makes her
entrance wearing a tiny white mask. And a dropped cellphone as a substitute for a glass
slipper simply will not do.
Hollywood be warned: teenagers hate being taken for fools. (Holden, 2004)

However, the films intended audience, the children, received the modernised adaptation of the
fairy tale so well that the film won many awards where the judges were, in fact, children:

The film was nominated for five Teen Choice Awards at the 2005 ceremony,
winning the award for Choice Movie Blush Scene, the same year Duff won the Kids Choice
Awards for Favorite Movie Actress. In 2005, Duff also received a Golden Raspberry Award
for Worst Actress nomination. ("A Cinderella Story", 2004)

Even though the critics were not at all satisfied with the film, the children, the audience it aimed
at, was extremely pleased with the changes the production had made to the original story. What
the critics had seen as a motif of disapproval, the children had embraced with open arms.
In conclusion, we can say that no matter what the critics think of a contemporary
adaptation such as A Cinderella Story, the final and most important opinion relies on the
audience intended. Children were not looking for a perfect rewriting of Ashputtel, they were
waiting for something new, which they had not seen before but they already knew what it would
be about. As Hutcheon said, it is in the variation, the change, where the pleasure takes form,
not the mere repetition of the same old story. Critics expected a fidelity to the original text that
could not be achieved because of the modernising perspective itself. Children embraced the
contemporary setting, it made the story seem real in a way that the fairy tale never was.

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References

A Cinderella Story. (2004). Hollywood.

A Cinderella Story. (2004). Wikipedia. Retrieved 25 May 2016, from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Cinderella_Story#Reception
Holden, S. (2004). FILM REVIEW; Shattered Pieces of a Glass Slipper: A San
Fernando Valley 'Cinderella'. The New York Times. Retrieved from
http://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=950DEFDF143AF935A25754C0A96
29C8B63
Genette, G. (1997). Palimpsests. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Nodelman, Perry and Reimer, Mavis (2003). The Pleasure of Childrens
Literature. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
Hutcheon, L. (2006). A Theory of Adaptation., Beginning to Theorize
Adaptation. New York: Routledge.