Comparing Walt Disney's Cinderella And The Grimm Brothers

Society is an ever evolving element of life, and as society has changed over the years, so has works by authors and directors. As authors and directors gain influence from inspiring sources, they are also gaining influences from the surrounding culture and the time period that they are living in. This may even be subconsciously. New historicism is the theory that explains this and specifically focuses on just how the time period of a work changes and shows how an author's experiences come to life through a work. In Walt Disney’s, Cinderella, the time period glamorizes Cinderella’s journey to happiness while the Grimm Brothers version connects more with reality, teaching that media evolves to what society wants to see.

Looking at the two Cinderella Stories, the Grimm Brothers version is more gruesome while the Disney version desensitizes areas of the story to best suit a wider audience. While the Grimm version promotes more of the broken family scene, Disney makes the broken family scene look more acceptable. With the Grimm version focusing on the fairy godmother aspect being associated with Cinderella’s dead mother, Disney cuts that part out and just focuses on the magic of the fairy

Due to the lack of things such as media, people’s concerns with aspects of pieces of work were not as known allowing the older works to have less influence by the outside world. This is also allowing for the reality and the brutal truth of how life really goes to show.

With Disney releasing their version of Cinderella in 1950, and there being more media communications at this point, Disney was able to adapt their story to appeal to a wider audience. More people didn’t want to see a girl being treated as poorly as Cinderella was in the Grimm version so therefore many aspects of the original story was