Not another Cinderella.

  There's one word that comes to mind when I think of all the Cinderellas I have seen: relatability. Blogger is telling me that's spelled wrong, but I have a pretty good feeling so I'm going to leave it. Now, I don't believe in pumpkin carriages or beautiful dresses out of nothing, but I do understand the feeling of being looked over. I intimately know that hope that someone will come and give me everything I wished for. We all know what it is to want to be loved. Cinderella plays on all these feelings. These and some perhaps less admirable ones; I don't think I'm alone in sometimes wishing I were completely financially secure.
  These elements remaining consistent but other things changing in the story bring us new perspective with each adaptation. My favorite adaptation is definitely when Brandy played Cinderella on television. I sang "In My Own Little Corner" for weeks. Suddenly, Cinderella wasn't a blonde haired/ blue eyed doe. She was Brandy. Who, at the time, I thought was pretty awesome. And her prince was Filipino-American actor Paolo Montalban! He. was. handsome. The very idea that Cinderella could be anyone was brand new to me 1997, and I loved it.
  As narratology theorists we can identify and examine these unique qualities in each adaptaion. What do they mean to our reality? What do they say about us? What this 1997 adaptation said to me was that there was a whole world of talented people out there I had never seen. Brandy wasn't just R&B; she was an artist. Period. I think we need more Cinderellas and the like, because they always show us how what we have become, sometimes what we want to be, and forever what will remain the same.