My Brain Scratching Affair With Disney Movies Presents: Cinderella (VII)

As I’ve previously written in the first installment of this series-long ‘editorial’ (if you will), the following posts are created to air out more or less, ‘adult’ grievances and flush out underlying (as well as obvious) themes that I’ve found while watching these childhood movies over again.

*Please Note: I do not ‘blame’ Disney for any of my findings, as these are films based on very old fairy tales, however, as Disney animated them I will continue to say ‘Disney’ as a reference. **Also, not all cartoons animations of childhood fairy tales were the brain child of Disney, so I will attribute the production companies accordingly.*

After a very long break, I’ve decided to return to my wonderful franchise with the ever-shallow Disney flick, Cinderella.

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So the first question I had, after looking back at the film, was why didn’t Cinderella’s dad have a will? For a man who cared sooo much for his little girl — and had to endure the death of his own first wife — how could be be so careless? Yes, I can grasp the fact that maybe life insurance policies didn’t exist, but the WILL has been around since the dawn of time. What would’ve happened if Daddy Rella died  before he married Lady “Bitch Face” Tremaine? Cindy would’ve just became a penniless ward of the state. Daddy missed the ball on that one.

Next, Cinderella was better than most children, because I couldn’t understand how she could stand years of mental and physical abuse. I mean, first she got kicked out of her nice room — and we still don’t know what it was turned into — forced to live in an attic, and then do ALL the housework?  She didn’t have a third cousin on her mother’s side to run away to? If I were Cindy, the first thing I would’ve done was moved out of the place and moved in with a close friend of the family or something. Make a living out of cleaning and singing and do the damn thing.

Third, who the hell is Lady Tremaine’s baby daddy?

 

I love how every single Cinderella movie leaves out any kind of back story of her previous husband/baby daddy. Did he divorce her? Was he even a Lord to give her a lady title? Did she kill him for the money and then moved on to her next target?

And just how did Cinderella’s pops died?

I smell foul play — especially from Lady “Bitch Face” Tremaine.

Also,  why was it that the ONLY animals that could coherently talk in Cinderella were the mice? We can understand everything they say, but Bruno was left to grunt and growl like a regular dog, the birds had to chirp their words, Lucifer meowed, etc. Did Disney just run out of money to hire actors to speak for them?

And what about all this baby fever the King had?

If he wanted a baby around so much, why didn’t he just remarry (what the hell happened to his wife in the first place? Disney and these damn “dead wives”!) and have a baby of his own. He was freaking KING. He definitely could’ve done that. His eldest son still would’ve been his successor and when he croaked, he could leave his new wife to raise to new prince/ss.

Oh, and please let’s not get me started with the fact that Anastasia and Drizella were so ugly, they couldn’t have even been drawn to look like humans…

They look like straight cartoon characters — no bust, half-moon eyebrows, the works. Furthermore, their dad must’ve been one unattractive dude to produce THOSE faces. That’s probably why Bitch Face killed him. #ISaidIt Side note: who names their child “Drizella”? You know what, let me leave that alone because people name their children worse…

Another thing that killed me was Cinderella’s shoe being able to fit only HER foot.  You mean to tell me, that not one OTHER person in that entire kingdom was a size 4 1/2?!

Furthermore, who the eff uses a shoe as a means for identification?! Like come on, the prince can’t be that dumb. Why didn’t he round up all the blondes in the kingdom between 5′ and 5’5″ and then work from there? So you mean to say if a red-head or a girl with a pixie cut fit the shoe, then that was the girl from the ball? If I was Cinderella, I would’ve been offended. This dude thought she was SO beautiful, but couldn’t remember her features enough to have a sketch artist draw a photo so he can send his goons out to search for her. Laziness… and straight disrespectful.

Now here we go with the thematic portion of today’s head scratcher:

Theme One: You Need to Know Who You’re Marrying

Cinderella’s dad made the ULTIMATE mistake when he didn’t check who the hell he was marrying before bringing Lady BF Tremaine into his house with her two fugly children. Yeah, he thought he was bringing in mother figure for his daughter, and thought she’d be compassionate because she has kids of her own. Yeah, NO! This is a culture of #TeamMe and he should’ve known better to think that that woman would ever consider Cindy as a part of her family. Furthermore, Cinderella should’ve probably thought twice about marrying Prince Charming. If he couldn’t even remember what she looked like, can you imagine what else you would forget? Can you imagine if Cinderella went missing? He would probably have to give the guards her shoe to place on all the dead bodies in the kingdom to see if she was dead too.

Theme Two: Parents Need to Invest in Life Insurance

I know for a fact my own mother is scared poopless of the term life insurance because it really should be called “in case of death” insurance. But guess what? When you have children, and early deaths run in the family, your behind needs to make sure you have something saved away for your kids’ future. If Cindy’s dad thought more about making sure she was taken care of and less about bringing another female into his house, he would’ve written a will saying that Cindy got EVERYTHING and that Lady T was only there to supervise until Cindy got to marrying age. Then, Lady T could marry her off to the first thing that batted his eyes at Cindy and then she could’ve paid that dowry off, sell the house, and found herself an even richer man… to later kill and inherit his fortunes.

Theme Three: Slave Labor Can Exist in Your Own Home

Cinderella basically ran that house — cleaning, cooking, window washing, tending to the animals, etc. with no pay, no guarantee to her home, nothing. Basically for free. Out of the goodness of her heart, but more so because she was abused. In the beginning of the movie the say that she was treated terrible and humiliated, which means to me they probably broke her like a slave. Yup. Cindy was a slave in her own home. The only thing missing in a cotton field and a whip in Bitch Face’s hand.

Theme Four: Mice Are Still Creepy Ass Pets

I was never a person for mice as pets. They’re small, they get into everything, they breed quickly, they carry diseases, they eat everything… they’re just kinda gross. And the fact that they SPOKE in this movie creeped me out even further and resolved me to the notion that they’re just creepy ass animals.

 

Theme Five: Make Sure You’re Really Over Your Clothes Before You Throw Them Away

One of the scenes that really disturbed me in this movie was the scene where Anastasia and Drizella ripped apart Cinderella’s dress that used a COUPLE scraps from the sisters’ old clothes. I don’t know about you, but it always made me feel dirty… almost like a rape scene. I almost thought they were going to leave her naked on the floor with Bitch Face smiling in the corner. But this just makes my point that you should always make sure you’re really ready to throw your clothes away before you do. These girls really weren’t over their items like they thought they were — or maybe they were just jealous it looked nicer on Cindy than on them. Either way, they weren’t down with Cindy’s rat and bird friends upcycling their scraps to make her a half-way decent dress. So, before you dump away your old clothes, make sure you’re really over them. You never know what gems you could be missing.

Theme Six: Godparents Can Be Really Great in a Pinch

If it wasn’t for Cinderella’s fairy godmother, she probably would’ve just offed herself in that fountain when those skeezers ripped up her dress. But Ms. Bibbity Boppity Boo came and gave her a new dress, pumps, a fresh hairdo, and transportation, and that really made me appreciate having god parents. They’re purpose is to basically help the child when the parent can’t and in this case, Cindy needed all the help she could get. So make sure to show your god parents tons of love. You never know when you’d need them to spot your five bucks for cab fare.

 

Theme Seven: Don’t Let a Man Get You Sprung

If it wasn’t for Cinderella acting all sprung about the Prince when she heard he was looking for her, she probably could’ve avoided that whole being locked in her room waiting for the mice to save the day thing. But her head was so far up in the clouds, she didn’t have enough sense to play it cool and strategize getting out of her in-house slavery. That’s a lesson to you ladies — don’t get so hung up on a man, that you lose all sense and reason and then find yourselves in trouble you could’ve easily avoided.

Theme Eight: Be Nice to Everyone Because You Never Know When They’ll Be Rich Enough to Help You

One, if not the BIGGEST lessons learned from Cinderella is the idea that you should always be nice to people, no matter how much you really dislike them. Hear me out: Cinderella had a beautiful voice, right? If Lady Tremaine had invested money into Cindy being musical, she would’ve had the best singer of the kingdom bringing in suitors (and their money) into that house. As a matter of fact, if Bitch Face treated Cinderella with an OUNCE of niceness, got Cindy a dress for the ball, and let the prince play with her feet, then Cinderella just might have moved the whole damn family into the castle. Instead, she wanted to be a stingy prude. And what did it get her in the end? An old rickety house and two daughters no one wants to marry. Boom.

Theme Nine: No One Likes a Nasty Pussy

I will end this post with the most gratifying scene in this entire movie — Lucifer the Cat’s death. That was the nastiest cat I’d ever seen in my life and I genuinely hated him. When he fell from the tower of the house to his horrific death, I was happy. Pleasantly happy. He caused trouble for Cinderella, he tried to eat her mice friends, he got Bruno in trouble. He was just Damien re-incarnated into a cat. And no one like a nasty cat. Now, if you want to take that heading to mean something else, you can very well do so because I’m all for double entendres and in this movie, it definitely applies.