Grimm and Disney Approached the Cinderella Story.

¶ … Grimm and Disney approached the Cinderella story. Inherent in those differences are very concepts of social construction of knowledge as well as necessary concessions to their respective time periods. Grimm's treatment is a reflection of medieval influences and an emotionally sensitive protagonist who shares a loving relationship with her father and symbiosis and harmony with the natural world. By contrast, Disney's Cinderella presents the protagonist as a tortured soul. Meanwhile, the thematic influences cater to modern sensibilities in the absence of the harsh medieval realities of punishment and physical mutilation.

The plots also reflect significant changes as between the two treatments. In that respect, the contemporary version of the story also had the benefit of multiple adaptations to incorporate modern audience sensibilities. Disney introduces an entirely new character to replace the wench by the fire. The modern versions rely heavily on magic whereas Grimm's reliance on that mechanism is minimal by comparison, another likely concession to modern audience sensibilities and expectations.

Grimm employed subtly whereas Disney exploited visual media, such as by distinguishing Cinderella from her sisters in their physical appearance rather than by the beauty in their hearts in Grimm's style. Meanwhile, Grimm's original version would have been regarded as morbid by later film audiences, whether in connection with the emphasis on the death of Cinderella's mother and on harsh consequences eventually suffered by her sisters.

Grimm's original and the subsequent versions produced in the same time period also reflected links to geopolitical conflicts of the era as well as the general preoccupation with the theme of goodness vs. evil inherent in the psyche of most people within predominantly Christian society. In T.S. Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, the poet uses the protagonist, a frustrated middle-aged man named Prufrock, to criticize the superficialities of contemporary society.

In some respects, the poem suggests that the principled criticisms belie little more than the rationalizations of a man too cowardly to reveal his affections for a women who, he believes, will not reciprocate the sentiments. There are also contradictions apparent in his simultaneous disdain for a society that is preoccupied with superficial beauty view and his self-description that obviously equates his physical appearance as the measure of his worth to the object of his affections.

More generally, Prufrock levies principled criticisms of the disingenuousness of his society's social rituals and practiced scripts from which polite people never vary. Meanwhile, his cowardice is that he makes no effort to deviate from the same script, instead, following it to the letter and then referring to it pejoratively after the fact and in private company. Likewise, he rails against the focus.