The survival of the modern economy depends on a neverending stream of consumption. This is why cars do not last as long as they used to, it is why the cost of a new television is not significantly higher than the cost of television repair, and it is why restaurants continue to proliferate across the map, hopping from retail corner to retail corner to chase families down before they can get home and cook their own meals. This trend began in the wake of the Great Depression; while it was largely the mobilization of industry for World War II that brought the country out of its long economic malaise, the boom after the war would not have been sustained without the creation of the military-industrial complex and the service industry. The arrival of easy credit and sophisticated marketing created whole new species of needs for the American public, and entire industries were born to meet those needs and come up with even more when those needs had been met. The global corporations that grew to meet those needs came to dominate contemporary life. The movie Network was one of the first to point out the fact that corporations were already more important than countries, as entities of economic power. When it comes to choices of consumption, and the role that consumption takes on in the life of the individual, corporations depend on consumers continuing to purchase at high levels (Ritzer). The Disney Corporation has long been complicit in promoting this trend, as many of its films show. Just one example is the animated film Cinderella.
The Disney Corporation, perhaps more than any other, stands as the prototype of the modern consumer culture. Even though Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck have not appeared in any new features for decades, they are two of the most well known and popular characters on the entire planet, thus showing the influence that Disney exerts over popular culture. Many of the Disney-produced films, including Cinderella, have been written to present a well-known fairy tale. Audiences take in these stories as pure entertainment; however, the scriptwriters have also included elements in the story that inculcate the values of commodity fetishism in the viewer. Walt Disney understood the value that pure entertainment could bring, but he also understood that, within the communication taking place, there could also be the instruction of morals – and of economic habits (Giroux). While the propagandistic cartoons that appeared during World War II served a (mostly) patriotic purpose, the underlying subtexts in such works as Cinderella also show a more capitalist agenda at work (Bell et al.).
Commodity fetishism is a complex topic, and with films like Cinderella, there are several different layers to unpack. One of the more obvious ones, to serve as a point of departure, is the sexism at work within many of the films. The bodies of the women in the films become sexualized through the animation process. Cinderella is not the only Disney animated film in which this takes place; Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Pocahontas, Beauty and the Beast, and The Little Mermaid all feature beautiful heroines. While there are attractive villains as well, such as the narcissistic queen in Snow White, for the most part the villainous women are unattractive. Consider the stepsisters in Cinderella, who receive all sorts of favor from their mother, but who are much less attractive. Cinderella has a much more slender figure, which allows her to fit her foot quite easily into that glass slipper. Her stepsisters’ feet are swollen and fat, too big to slide into that glamorous shoe. This lack of attractiveness goes past the feet, though; they are plump, their skin is not quite as fair; their eyes are not as clear and doelike. Going past appearance is the fact that Cinderella, while not gladly, dutifully accepts her lot as the performer of domestic tasks in the house. She wears her apron and does as she is told; when she meets her prince, she comes across as a dutiful wife-to-be. Combining those traits with her beauty, it is clear that she is no Katniss; instead, she is as ethereal as the beauty of a night that fades at midnight. Bell et al. has argued that this sort of setting leads to a society based on gender differences. Byrne et al. describe Disney movies as containing right-wing and imperialist concepts. While there are other films, such as The Lion King and Pocahontas, that express those concepts more overtly, the fact that the materially successful white male (the prince) finds his love by sending his assistant around to see which woman fits into a highly impractical shoe. The glass slipper is a vehicle for holding and displaying Cinderella’s beauty.
Another way in which Cinderella carries out commodity fetishism is through the attitudes of the stepmother and stepsisters. Even though they live at a higher material standard of living than Cinderella, they are never happy; they just want more and more. However, the marketing of the movie itself also served to perpetuate the capitalist ideal. While most movie companies release their films to DVD and leave them available for purchase, Disney has always handled their releases differently. The stories are released as “special editions” every seven years or so, allowing for interest in the movies to build. When the release date comes, they are snapped up quickly. When Cinderella was released in 2005, for example, there was an entire legion of preschool-aged girls who had never seen the story on the screen. Instead, they had been subjected to a barrage of ads and products featuring Cinderella in just about every conceivable area of life. More than 250 products, ranging from toys and clothing to stationery, accessories and home furnishings, had appeared in the months prior to the DVD release. Disney had set up Cinderella-exclusive boutiques inside every location of Toys “R” Us in the United States, as well as promotional displays in every Wal-Mart. Such various companies as Mattel, Home Depot, Kellogg’s and Jolly Time Popcorn all joined on as promotional partners in the effort to prepare the nation’s toddlers for the release of this DVD (Thomas). The image of the princess in culture formed an attachment among young girls, who then would want to buy them – and want to look like them, just as the Disney Corporation wanted them to.
The crucial part of forming the princess culture was making little girls decide that they wanted to look like Cinderella. This spawned line after line of accessories and dress-up outfits. However, the Cinderella who they wanted to look like was not the ragged peasant doing her stepsisters’ bidding; instead, she was the belle of the ball, complete with gown, jewels and even the glass slipper. Other Disney heroines, such as Belle and Snow White, had some cute outfits. However, it was Cinderella who stood far and above the others, as, rather than being the “fairest” of them all, she was the “fanciest” of them all. It wasn’t enough to look like a fancy princess, either; toddler girls dreamed about looking just like the Cinderella from the Disney movie. That meant pale white skin, blonde hair, blue eyes, and a gauzy, powder blue gown.
Naturally, this desire led to monster profits for the Disney Corporation. Not only did the packaging clearly separated its contents from any generic pretenders, through the exclusive use of the names “Disney” and “Cinderella” (not to mention the Mickey-ears logo), but the price points separated the clothing from the contenders as well. At the time, buying that gown ($65), the “glass” (plastic) slippers ($16 – at least you got the pair instead of just the one that the prince found), with a plastic, blingy wand just in case you stayed out past midnight ($12) would set you back almost $100 in total. Of course, if you didn’t have enough cash on hand to make your daughter an instant princess, you could also buy cheaper Cinderella trinkets, ranging from hair ties to T-shirts to tiaras to socks to bathroom accessories. If you did have enough money to finance the whole experience, though, you could bundle up your daughter in that nylon finery and treat her to a “live” party for princesses at Walt Disney World, with none other but Cindrella as your hostess, just for several more hundred dollars. On site at the park, this experience was quickly followed by the princess breakfast (either in Cinderella’s Castle or in the Royal Banquet Hall at EPCOT) and the Cinderellabration show, which played several times daily to full houses of worshipful girls. In total, girls have a total of 2 billion possible hours of exposure to the Disney Princess experience (Thomas).
This fascination does not end when childhood ends, though. Many people are married each year at Walt Disney World, and the most popular theme is that of Cinderella. Brides are carried to the castle in a glass carriage, pulled by four horses. There is a Swarovski crystal jewelry line that includes that same choker and bracelet that the movie made famous.
It is, of course, worth noting how far the Disney experience has taken viewers from the actual tale of the peasant girl who becomes a princess. The young girls who dream of being Cinderella have absolutely no idea about her true story. They have no idea that it was her kindness and modesty that allowed her to transcend her humble beginnings and to reveal the cruelty and materialism that were such an important element of the lives of her stepmother and stepsisters. Instead, Cinderella was just a really kind-looking woman, a supermodel whom they could emulate, at least in terms of appearance. While the real Cinderella did have elements of her personality in common with the courageous Katniss, this bland ideal had more in common with Vanna White than with the brave archer from The Hunger Games. Indeed, many of the young girls who have decided that they just have to look like Cinderella end up acting a lot more like her stepsisters, insisting on the authentic gown, the authentic tiara, and the authentic experience. Girls as young as two or three would fight over the number of Cinderella accessories they had, or who had the prettier accessories. During play dates, they would fight over who got to be Cinderella, and they would hound their parents for ever more additions to their boxes of Cinderella products (Thomas). Rather than a role model for kind behavior and modest living, Cinderella seemed to have become the deist queen of a world populated with beautiful objects, all of which were sparkly and many of which were expensive. However, there was no moral attachment to this experience. Walt Disney may have wanted to teach a lesson with his stories, but the only lesson to be gained from this line of products was that the one who had the most would be the winner. For the preschool-aged girl, the brand of Cinderella was indistinguishable, and as vertically aligned to extend into her future, as the brand of Nike had become for elementary school-aged boys.
Karl Marx defined commodity-based fetishism as “a characteristic of the economic world where goods are not defined through their real value, they would gain from their pure utility, but instead from an artificial value indoctrinated by society” (Keller). In other words, time spent on labor plus material cost is not the value of a product. Instead, the meaning of that product in society determines its value. Within the capitalist system, it is this meaning that frequently drives prices in inexplicable directions, as in the case of Cinderella memorabilia. The goods no longer fill a material need but instead a symbolic need. The consumer measures the worth of a product, then, more affectively and symbolically rather than practically. The power of Disney is that it has made itself an object of desire; however, the pleasure of that desire only comes from the creation of the desire not the fulfillment (Fjellman). It is not the acquisition of the Cinderella gown or the tiara that brings satisfaction; ironically, it is the wanting of the Cinderella gown or tiara that fills a basic need. If that were true, then having the gown or tiara would be enough; that acquisition would not immediately be followed by a demand for other products, other trinkets, other experiences. The three-year-old who has the Cinderella costume would not then scream for pajamas and a dinner plate. Instead, she would be able to move on, her desire having been sated. She would not grow up to dream of a wedding in which she was pulled to the castle door by a replica of the same carriage that rescued Cinderella from the terrible life she had with her stepmother and stepsister. Of course, that carriage was fueled by the magic that comes from humility and modesty; it was those characteristics that brought her the pity of her fairy godmother. If you buy that wedding package at Walt Disney World, there is no such magic. Instead of a wand, you must have a credit card; instead of magic, your cart is powered by four horses. Your experience does not end at midnight; it lasts as long as your credit limit.
Works Cited
Bell, Elizabeth, Haas, Lynda and Laura Sells. From the Mouse to the Mermaid. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1995.
Byrne, Eleanor, and Martin McQuillian. Deconstructing Disney. London: Pluto Press, 1999.
Fjellman, Stephen. Vinyl Leaves. Oxford: Westview Press, 1992.
Giroux, Henry A. The Mouse that Roared. Oxford: Rowman & Littlewood, 1994.
Keller, Sabine. “Disney and Contemporary Life.” http://www.arasite.org/skelldis.htm
Marx, Karl. Das Kapital. http://home.+-oneline.de/home/mlwerke_6/me23_000.htm
Rojek, C. “Disney Culture.” Leisure Studies 12: 121-135.
Thomas, Susan. Buy, Buy Baby: How Consumer Culture Manipulates Parents and Harms Young Minds. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009.
