I have received many questions in regards to pointe shoes. Many of these questions came from youngsters who are driven to experiment before it is their time. They are pushed by their classmates to take such steps so that they can join a certain group of able bodies in order to differentiate between themselves and others, as many dancers do. Additionally, society has a hand in it by giving them a limited amount of time. The pointe shoe is just a tool (instrument) and nothing more, yet somehow they have the idea that there is something more to it. Therefore, I wanted to know the motivation behind it. I had to ask myself could it be that the teachers are pushing such instruments in order to keep their students, whether those students are ready or not? Are they so greedy that they are willing to sacrifice everything for a buck? Do they say to themselves that these children will not become dancers anyway, so let them try it at least once? Or, is there something else involved, seeping from deep within the culture —a Cinderella complex? We should not forget that we live in a society where the word education has lost its meaning; where studying art is not part of the regular school curriculum but an after school program. There are so many people attempting to do the same task that it is a random act when someone actually succeeds, not a matter of training that was lovingly attained. And, this is the reason why the U.S. is unable to produce excellent dancers with any regularity. When I converse with my sister who is a concert pianist about such matters, she claims that everyone requires a certain environment to be good at something. Some become excellent because they were raised in a bad environment. Others need an environment that has certain regularity structured within it. Does this mean that those that succeeded despite coming from a bad environment would they not have the opportunity of achieving the success that they achieved if we, as a society, attempted to level the plane? Would Nureyev, for example, not have become Nureyev if it were not for desperate circumstances in his childhood? Does this mean that we should look the other way from subduing anguish from the world in case of taking away a potential opportunity from few whom may raise themselves by their bootstraps above all? Afterall, isn’t this itself the Cinderella story coming to life? Aren’t they the people that we look up to and admire for their achievement? When searching for an answer to these questions one will find many different answers that seem logical for the people that live in certain political circumstances and each seem to make a logical argument in support of their political need. However, the recent turmoil of rapid change, especially in industrial countries, has put a certain spin in the culture so that it appears as though the culture has looped back on itself and the Western idea of progression has seemingly come to a halt. What is the cause behind this? What is the fascination of people with Cinderella, which perpetuates a sale? Is there a connection between the story and how people behave? What is our preoccupation with small feet? In order to understand, to see, whether there is a connection we have to look back at the history of Cinderella. And, by opening our eyes and truly understand what Cinderella stands for, we may not then be as susceptible to the drudgery we are exposed to daily and be able to recognize a gimmick when we see one. Learning about Cinderella and what it represents through its multitude of variations, far from the misconceptions people may have about it, might help them to realign themselves, face reality and see the world for what it really is and not what they want it to be. We also need to have some understanding of folklore history. It would help us to understand where we came from, where we should be going and recognize the direction that has been imposed upon us via corporations force-feeding what appears to be our culture back to us. In this paper, I shall attempt to explain why we do the things we do in order to acquire a piece of so-called happiness. Ironically, the key to recognizing the true path we should take is by trial and error and by being aware of the difference between the two forms of happiness: 1) self-induced and 2) imposed upon. Sometimes it is difficult to recognize between the two and the only way to differentiate between them is by experience. However, in this process we should remember that “culture is a living, active process: it can be developed only from within, it cannot be imposed from without or above” (Fiske: 23), otherwise it is not a true culture.
History of Folklore
How has the meaning of folklore changed from the time William Thoms in 1846 invented the word “folklore” to our time? In 1846, they called “folk” those people who were not washed or educated (Cosentino). That meant that “folk” communicated about their past or their future via speech. Therefore, every child was adversely effected and inaugurated into society through their parents.
The folk were once thought to comprise the nation as a whole but with the development of urban civilization they survived only as an unlettered, uneducated, and marginal stratum of society—the peasantry
(Clark: 147, 253).
The question is why did the study of folklore become so prominent in the early 19th century? It started because nationality did not really exist until the French Revolution, which ultimately led to Napoleon Buonaparte to declare himself as emperor and attempt to take over Germany and other countries. It was here where the Grimm brothers in Germany asked what makes us German and their answer was our folklore. They saw folklore as being incorporated with culture and they equated culture with it (Cosentino).
In 19th century, folklorists were concerned about the origins of a culture and folklore was considered a clue (Cosentino). Likewise, origins of a folktale was of interest: “The early scholarly interest in the tale of Cinderella, as in folktales generally, was in trying to discover the oldest form of the story and to trace the development through time of the different types of the tale” (Dundes: ix).
Nineteenth century folklorists thought of folktales as deterioration of myths. Therefore, the goal of the “folklorists was to reconstruct the original myth form of European folktale” (Dundes: 31). Most often they assumed that folktales and myths had Indic origins. They arrived at this from the study of philology, comparing Indo-European languages and attempting to find the root and basic language most European languages seemed to be derived from (Dundes: 58).
For, of the tree that grows in the garden where God walks in the cool of the day, the wise men westward of Iran have partaken of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, whereas those on the other side of that cultural divide, in India and the Far East, have relished only the fruit of eternal life. However, the two limbs, we are informed, come together in the center of the garden, where they form a single tree at the base, branching out when they reach a certain height. Likewise, the two mythologies spring from one base in the Near East. And if man should taste of both fruits he would become, we have been told, as God himself (Genesis 3:22)—which is the boon that the meeting of East and West today is offering to us all.
(Campbell: 9)
Nineteenth century reconstructionist folklorists such as W.R.S. Ralston followed the same pattern as Perrault in preparing folktales for “civilized consumption” (Dundes: 31). Ralston believed in the Grimm brother’s deduction that fairytales were a deterioration of myths (Dundes: 31). However, early folklorists, like the Grimm brothers, having prepared the folktales for civilized man, changed the folktale format. One cannot with any certainty discern which part of the folktales were accumulated directly from the orator and which part had been added to the story by the Grimm brothers themselves. We do know that certain documents have noted that the Grimm brothers were influenced by newspaper articles and in the 2nd edition of their fairytale book they had altered and/or eliminated certain stories. However, the Grimm brothers stated in the 2nd preface of their book, Nursery & Household Tales, that they did not alter any of their stories:
So far as the manner in which we collected is concerned, accuracy and truth were what counted for us above all. We did not add anything from our own resources, nor did we embellish any events and features of the story itself. Instead we tried to relate the content just as we had heard it.
(Tatar: 220)
This was in response to allegations that they had altered their stories. Additionally, the accuracy of the information from the Grimms’ informants came to be questioned by writers such as John M. Ellis who had stated that the Grimm brothers did not really extend themselves in researching their material, but had received much of their stories through close relatives and friends.
Marginal handwritten notes in the first volume of the first edition assigned names to the texts, and these names should immediately have made it obvious why they had been withheld from the public; they represented almost exclusively the brothers’ close friends and their families.
(Ellis: 26)
In this case, then, nationalism, which the Grimm brothers were heavily involved in, took priority over scientific research and collecting. For people in the 19th century, it was the beginning of regionalism and by it identifying themselves with a specific group and specific ethnic background. This method was eventually used by other nations to identify them with certain folklore, a means by which to separate themselves from others. Nationalism came from the romantic idea that civilization was “divorced from nature” and that without nature man was nothing. Then, there was the question of who was closer to nature and, of course, it was primitive man. Hence, it was the literate urban man who pursued folklore to rejuvenate nationalism and their culture (Oring: 5) through studying the folklore and folktales of the peasants.
Another method that was used by anthropologists was the unilinear system that came to form an idea that man was progressing through time –savage to barbarism and then finally to civilized. This means that the savage is beneath barbarism and their understanding of these terms was therefore different in the 19th century than ours today, where the two terms are virtually the same. What it means to be civilized is to follow some norm. Therefore, civilization is universal whereas culture is particular (Cosentino). This idea had its start in 1860 when the Darwinian view was published, which had tremendous effect on the folklorists of the day (Cosentino). “[E. Sidney] Hartland, like most of his British colleagues of that era, was greatly influenced by the Darwinian theory of evolution” (Dundes: 58). Their understanding of the “survival of the fittest”, that those individuals who are on top deserve to be there because they are the strongest, also extended itself to their understanding of folklore and folktales. Hence, the folktales that have survived are the survivors of folklore and folktales of the past.
Hartland was convinced that folk narratives had also evolved, and he even went so far as to suggest that ‘a process analogous with that of natural selection, which we may call traditional selection,’ was largely responsible for determining which version was transmitted from one generation to another.
(Dundes: 58)
But, how has the above notion of folklore changed in our time? If folklore is created from breaking from the norm (Cosentino), does the following definition help us to understand what folklore is: “Materials…that circulate traditionally among members of any group in different versions, whether in oral form or by means of customary example” (Brunvand: 5). There has been a shift of meaning of folklore in recent years to mean that even one item of connection forms folklore. Folklore is not individual but if it is it has to be picked up by others. That means at least by one other (Cosentino). Folklore is social. “In some sense, for something to be folklore in an urban society, it must be touched and transformed by common experience—ordinary humans living their everyday lives” (Oring: 16). And, whereas in the past it was the study of “them” versus “us”, it is now the study of “us” (Cosentino). Oring used philology to define what folklore means and found that much of the weight and meaning of folklore lies on the word “lore”. “Folk can refer to any group of people whatsoever who share at least one common factor” (Dundes 1965: 2). For Oring, “folk” refers to human and nothing more (1). Folk groups can be identified by its common factor based on ethnicity, occupation, kingship, religious beliefs, sex, age, etc. (Oring: 1). When Dundes tried to identify “lore” he resorted to giving a long list that started with “myths, legends, folktales”…and ending with “customs” (e.g. Christmas, Halloween and Birthday). However, Oring comments that these are common denominators for potential lores. Where in the past folklorists studied the myths and fairytales to try to arrive at the origin and what potential meaning it may have, today folklorists have extended the meaning of lore to cover an array too long to mention and seemingly have even managed to find new ones.
What do folklorists do? They collect, categorize and analyze folklore (Cosentino). Whom do folklorists study today? The folk groups, for example, the Spanish, Italians, Yuppies, etc. These people identify themselves with food recipes; therefore, genre is a marker that can be recognized through “foodways”, for example, Chinese food. Different genres can be recognized through song and dance, belief, foodways, medicine and festivals (Cosentino). Today, folklore is everyday life and can be seen in such films as Garlic is as Good as Ten Mothers and Pizza, Pizza Daddy-o. In films such as the mentioned above, the ethnic groups are recognized, specifically through their genre even though sometimes it appears to be stereotypical markers. Robert Orsi in his book, The Madonna of 115th Street, mentions that an odor can act as a marker; the odor can emphasize which neighborhood one is walking through. Pungent odors of specific foods, when they are prepared on a specific day such as festivals, can create an aura that is recognizable if there has been a prior experience associated with it (Orsi: 47). Folklorists today recognize childlore as the only universal folklore where everyone has experienced it. That means that everyone has experienced an “alternative universe” (Cosentino) at least one time. In the 1968 film Pizza, Pizza Daddy-o, folklorists studied childhood as if it was a new country. From the point of view of a Social Darwinist, childhood was seen as “savage and neurotic”. It was a period that the child had to go through to arrive at adulthood. The authorities now recognize childhood as practically autonomous, with its own folk group; that is, they have their own dyad and recognize outsiders (etic).
Nowadays, people are not interested in the origins of culture or of folklore but in its psychological reasoning. In the 19th century, folklore was not studied holistically. At that time, they thought of it as a broken jewel that needed to be put back together and that that could be accomplished through comparative method. Their goal was to get to “Ur”, that is, to get to the origin or original (Cosentino). All myths, folklore and fairy tales have a basic structure and pattern and this pattern acts as a road map in order for the people to derive meaning for their lives. Occasionally, through passage of time or major calamities, the myth loses its luster and the people begin to look elsewhere for meaning. Very often they do not start from scratch, but adjust the old one so that it would better fit the new circumstances. This is Claude Levi Strauss’ basic theory. He suggests that myths more resemble a collage. The pieces are moved around to create a new form (myth). Hence, the theory is known as Bricolage. Each piece in the collage then has its own unique shape and design which distinguishes it from the rest. This means that folklore has variations.
History of Cinderella
As Jack Zipes states, “What we today consider fairy tales were actually just one type of the folk-tale tradition, namely the Zaubermarchen or the magic tale, which has many sub-genres”(Zipes: 334). Every fairytale exists on two layers. There is the surface layer, which is the story itself, and then there is an underneath layer that has a specific structure. The surface layer is concerned with the origins of the culture, where folklore was considered to be a clue, which means that the characters in the story are effected by the culture that is being told. For example, the Italian Cinderella is going to be an Italian girl. This concept is known as oicotypification. Dundes states:
It is a commonplace that folklore changes as it moves from place to place and is transmitted from generation to generation. Each group or individual may alter an item of folklore to make it fit local social or psychological needs. But most changes are unconscious, or at any rate unselfconscious.
(Dundes: 294)
Why use a fairytale? Because it implies magic and growing up, itself, is magical. The Cinderella story parallels this concept closely.
Fairy tales, Angela Carter tells us, are not ‘unique one-offs,’ and their narrators are neither ‘original’ nor ‘godlike’ nor ‘inspired.’ To the contrary, these stories circulate in multiple versions, reconfigured by each telling to form kaleidoscopic variations with distinctly different effects. When we say the word ‘Cinderella,’ we are referring not to a single text but to an entire array of stories with a persecuted heroine who may respond to her situation with defiance, cunning, ingenuity, self-pity, anguish, or grief. She will be called Yeh-hsien in China, Cendrillon in Italy, Aschenputtel in Germany, and Catskin in England. Her sisters may be named One-Eye and Three-Eyes, Anastasia and Drizella, or she may have just one sister named Haloek. Her tasks range from tending cows to sorting peas to fetching embers for a fire.
(Tatar: ix)
Oral transmission of fairytales was not bound and fluctuated in meaning, form and structure and readily reflected common wishful thinking (Zipes: 336). But, inherently, it helped both females and males develop an internal map to cope “with personal anxieties, family conflicts, social frictions, and...frustrations of everyday life” (Tatar: xi ). The freedom came to an end when the fairytales were written in text form and this is the main reason why certain fairytales became more prominent than others. As people became literate and began to have access to books, it was inevitable that fairytales would play a significant role, since man’s view began to change in the 15th century (Renaissance) about whether children were little adults—a view that had a significant effect on the treatment of children. And, as the time went by, children were provided material that was specifically for them, which included fairytales. In this way, the manner in which the story was told changed invariably. The most important part involved in the oral tradition of fairytales, of course, was the gathering of the community in order to hear the story and the storyteller as showcase: “One of the results stemming from the shift from the oral to the literary in the institutionalization of the fairy tale was a loss of live contact with the storyteller and a sense of community or commonality” (Zipes: 341). The “shift from the oral to the literary” fairytale was the beginning of separation in terms of social class, which came about between the “haves” and the “have nots,” enabling some to be able to educate themselves, become scholars, and seclude themselves from others (Zipes: 335). For these scholars, the value of myths and fairytales changed drastically. Some began to see them as a way of connecting themselves with the past and, hence, nationalism was created. Some saw it as a way of a historical guide. And, yet, others found it as a means to finding what humanity is all about. “Differentiating between tales belonging to different countries, and thus differentiating between the countries themselves, has become standard practice” (Haase: 356).
Alan Dundes devised the study of folklore and fairytale into two categories: literal-historical and symbolic-psychological. The first looked for historical events or customs in the fairytales, whereas, the second looked into the stories for metaphors or codes (Dundes: 98). A good example of historical is given by Professor Bourboulis, who identified bride-show as a custom that seemed to appear in Cinderella. A bride-show is referred to as a custom where a king would order for eligible young girls to appear at the court so that his son, the prince, may choose one of them as his wife. In Dundes’ work, he gives examples of “bride-shows in Byzantium, in Russia, and in China” (98). Therefore, the bride-show custom was passed on from fact into folktale. Bourboulis, inspired by an example of a Southern Indian Cinderella, compares and contrasts the European Cinderella with the Indian version. He emphasizes that the European Cinderella has a “suffering girl, a meeting with the prince, a flight, a lost shoe, a shoe test and a marriage,” whereas in the Indian tale, the prince acquires the female shoe by accident and seeks to find the owner in order to marry her. The point Bourboulis makes is that in the European version, Cinderella is known to the prince because she attends the ball, whereas in the Indian version she is unknown to the prince and that he was inspired by the beautiful shoe alone (Dundes: 99). Hence, these two stories are of two different types.
Argument has been made on the glass slippers found in some versions of Cinderella, for example, in Perrault’s version. Some have argued that Perrault had mistakenly written ‘verre’ (glass) instead of ‘vair’ (fur) when describing Cinderella’s slippers (Dundes: 110). And with that, the glass/fur slippers theory slipped into the summary of Cinderella’s story found in the Encyclopedia Britannica:
In the English version, a translation of Perrault’s Cendrillon, the glass slipper which she drops on the palace stairs is due to a mistranslation of pantoufle en vair (a fur slipper), mistaken for en verre.
(Reprinted in Dundes: 111)
If the slippers were meant to be made of glass, then Paul Delarue would contend that the wearing of glass shoes is equated with being a virgin, its fragility as exemplified in Jewish wedding ritual where the groom crushes a glass under his foot—for good luck (Dundes: 111). Delarue does not believe Perrault made an error between the two homonyms and as proof contends that one could find glass slippers occurring in other cultures where such homonyms do not occur (Dundes: 112).
R.D. Jameson, looking for the meaning of the Cinderella story (Dundes: 73), mentions a Chinese version that was written by Tuan Ch’eng Shih in the 9th century and what seemed to be the oldest written Cinderella. Ch’eng Shih had said he received the story orally from a cave man (Dundes: 85). Jameson writes that we cannot proclaim this to be the oldest Cinderella since certain aspects of the story do not follow logically and that it seems to be put together from various stories. For example, Sheh Hsien, having returned from the ball, was found by her stepmother at home hugging a tree (Dundes: 79)—this serves no purpose other than just mentioning it. Jameson is stating that the story was oicotypified in order to make Cinderella and her surroundings acceptable within the culture. One of the most important features of the Cinderella fairytale is the preoccupation with small feet and, as A. Lang states, such preoccupation could not have occurred in a shoeless society. Additionally, the fact that the step-sisters had to cut off their toes in order to fit the shoe is an indication of how small the shoe must have been (Dundes: 103). Even in Chinese culture, foot bondage occurred only with the upper class, not everyone; otherwise, no daily job would have taken place because it would have involved excruciating pain. “How can you be graceful when you cannot walk?” (Dundes: 104) Further, such bondage had taken place no earlier than the 5th or 6th century at best. And, from Egyptian examples mentioned in Dunde’s book, one could emphatically arrive at the conclusion that Cinderella is an old story that predates the 5th century, prior to the act of feet bondage that had started in China. Also, such ideas contradict the concept that folklore moves from the lower class to the higher class. They made no reference as to why such ritual had started. The only reference was made to the endpoint in the 18th century, where they found small feet to be beautiful and, hence, the reason why they practiced foot bondage at that time. However, this does not explain why it had started and no idea would persist with such precision throughout time. I submit that such practice had started because men wanted to have control over women they possessed. Further, that it showed that their women did not need to work, which was a sign of royalty and divination; however, neither of the above can be found with any accuracy within the Cinderella versions that I have read.
Another 19th century folklorist was E. Sidney Hartland, who was devoted to Darwinian thought and natural selection. He stated that, not unlike in real life where change occurs and creatures live based on their strength and ability, the fairytales and folktales were also affected by a similar concept. “It was the traditional selection, Hartland avowed, that tended to ‘eliminate the ruder and coarser, preserving and refining, not necessarily the more credible, but the more artistic’” (Dundes: 58). Hartland concerned himself with the issue of animal as a witness, the guide, and he even categorized certain fairytales based on regional changes, where parts of an animal was returned as an insignia that Cinderella was killed, indicating regional differences. For example, in France we find the dog’s tongue and in Spain, bitch’s eyes, returned as a proof. Hartland was involved in comparative studies between Cinderella, Catskin and Cap o’Rushes, not unlike Marian Roalfe Cox.
W.R.S. Ralston, not unlike other 19th century folklorists, studied, catalogued and prepared folktales for the “civilized consumption”. He further believed that folktales came from myths when they had deteriorated through time. He was concerned with the historical reconstruction of them, using the “English anthropological evolutionary approach” (Dundes: 31). Even though Ralston was not a solar mythologist, he discussed it in length, comparing it with lunar mythology. In his paper, he discuses variant European Cinderella stories and surmises, from the shear numbers, that the brutality involved in the story, in respect to surgically adapting the daughters’ feet to the shoe or eating the mother in the form of human or a cow, must be part of the original story (Dundes: 36). Further, he questioned whether the glass slippers were actually part of the original story and emphasized that France is the only country that has glass slippers as the main part of the fairytale. And, “even in France itself the slipper is not always of glass” (Dundes: 37).
Disney’s first film version of Cinderella is not an oicotype of Cinderella, although many disagree. The reason that the first version of Disney’s Cinderella is not an oicotype is that there is no specific characteristic that amplifies her to be of a specific ethnicity. This could be due to the application of a very popular standard of Cinderella, namely Perrault’s version, in the making of this film. But, the second version of Cinderella which was made recently, is most definitely an oicotypification since it brings the story to life using mannerisms of the year 2000, reflecting it into the past, where Cinderella becomes the most outgoing, open, helpful, non-discriminating character who can seemingly exist and understand people from a variety of different social backgrounds. This is wishful thinking on the part of the writers for the second version of the Cinderella made by Disney (Cinderella II). The change was made only for financial gain and there seems to be no ideological reasoning behind it. Even in the first version, comparing it with what appears to be an oral version, Cinderella seems to be very sweet, lacking certain masochism and even though in certain versions she is able to communicate with the animal world, her ability seems to be specific to a certain animal and not all animals. Since many people worked on the Disney film, it had the effect of having the best of what Cinderella can offer without the negative connotations. And, this is what is lacking—the film is not balanced and the oral traditions of the tale are very quick to clearly point to this.
Disney employed the most up-to-date technological means and used his own “American” grit and ingenuity to appropriate European fairy tales. His technical skills and ideological proclivities were so consummate that his signature has [obscured] the names of Charles Perrault, the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, and Carlo Collodi.
(Zipes: 332)
To compare Disney’s first version of Cinderella with the oral version, which I have never heard before and that my knowledge comes from written material, one has to make a decision which written version one is going to make comparison with. And, knowing that some of the folklorists had manipulated the story to make them more palatable, immediately means that they are not really from oral tradition.
As more and more folklore began to appear in print, the shift from oral to written or literary style caused changes…Writing allows an author to edit, revise, and ‘correct’ his text. And so it is that some children in Western cultures come to know fairytales only through children’s books rather than from traditional storytellers.
(Dundes: 294)
Cinderella, I believe, came about out of social conflict, which was prominent and very much visible before the 1st century. The antithesis of cultures in the Middle East, at war with one another, and even with themselves, is a conflict to ‘have’ or ‘have not’, which is the prominent part of the Cinderella story. It is the idea that when you desire little and when you least expect it, is the point of achieving success. Hence, the Cinderella story continues to be an internal dialogue that drives to make a personal success acceptable. The fairytale mirrors the hope that many people with difficulty bear within but do not dare to show, as though showing it will curse the person. Men such as Christ, Mani and Mohammed (especially Islam from the 7th-10th century) and many more in-between, idealized the idea that to be poor is the way to get to heaven; but, much of the cultures in this area were proud of exhibiting and showing off their wealth without shame. Good examples of this can be found in historical records as Islam moved eastward and encountered cultures that such way of life was acceptable and attempted to reverse it. Historically, even within Islam, Mohammed himself rose from cinder to power and was neglected by his relatives since he had lost his parents at youth; hence, he was raised by a Bedouin woman and later by his uncle. Islam was a social revolution that came about through wishful thinking, that poor people should not suffer. Cinderella also exhibits such wishful thinking more than anything else and it is the oicotypification that generates and changes the story and, hence, makes certain aspects of the fairytale meaningless.
Excorporation/Incorporation
"Despite the disciplinary use of the body to incarnate and intextuate the law, the body remains a desperately insecure site for social control" (Fiske: 94). However, one can look at the way women live their lives and see that there is something wrong with that statement. A woman's body is a good example of a body controlled by society. I had been looking for an example, separate from China’s version, to explain Cinderella's small feet, in order to counter it and dismiss it as false. And, I found it in the fashion news, discussing women's shoes in America, each pair valued starting at $500. I knew I had found my example. However, they did not discuss it in a way that I am doing so here. The shoes, some having 4" heels or more, meaning that it reduces the area under the foot at least by 1/3, gives the impression that the foot is much smaller than it actually is. In fact, Americans are obsessed with women's small feet. And, it shows itself, as an extreme case, when children desire to make use of pointe shoes not as an achievement of virtuosity but as an enactment of growing up. One could use the historian-folklorist logic that uses the Chinese example to explain away the Cinderella’s small feet and arrive that Cinderella could have had its start even in Europe and Russia. By early 19th century, female ballet dancers added the length of their feet to their legs and reduced the area under their feet by approximately 5/6 by using pointe shoes and applying ballet technique to be graceful. The romantic ballet even went as far as showing women as a creature between life and death, for example, La Sylphide and Les Sylphides. One, therefore, could come up with the idea that a beautiful woman is a dead woman or a near-dead woman who is bounded to earth minimally, even in the physical sense (like models today). When the price of shoes for women can skyrocket to thousands of dollars, one could simply say that the Cinderella story has come true, at least for some American women. This is a social conflict that resurfaces itself in a form of obsession with feet, which is a method of "social control" that minimizes movement, reduces stride and causes swinging of the hips in order to make a forward step, giving an impression that she is light on her feet, and which potentially had its start in Europe and Russia, at least where Americans are concerned. Even though the woman’s body might be contested (Fiske) in the physical realm and the percentage of women who might purchase +$500 shoes is small, the fact remains that a multitude of women to be, in youth, are dreaming of being Cinderella. The fact that they might not have the power to purchase such shoes with any regularity does not diminish the fact that if they could, they would do so. In the 1970’s, for example, where more women were concerned about their womanhood and their connection with nature, perhaps a reflection from the 60’s, they purchased smaller cars, which cost less and damaged the environment less also. But today, as women become more active in jobs that in the past were male-dominated and with it they also achieve status and economical success, they too have put aside their connection with nature and more often purchase large vehicles, namely SUVs (Sport Utility Vehicles), to show their ability and equality with men. Are the women more susceptible than men to be directed by advertisements? Are they more susceptible by the feedback loop directed from the society? Women have bought into the concept of small feet. They associate beauty with it. And, if a 20 or 30 year old woman is unable to differentiate between a choice that is self-induced and the one that is imposed from the outside, what are the chances that a youngster or a teenager would be able to resist social pressure? Then, who is choosing what direction we have to take as human beings if it is not self-induced? Are we automatons who cannot refuse a good gimmick whether produced by society or by a corporation bent on making money no matter the cost on society? That brings us to the concept that “we are all living in the Bronx.” How is that possible? It is possible because what seems to be the culture that we live in is actually warped by the corporations’ need to make its quota. It makes use of advertising techniques to loop back and accentuate portions of the culture and with it create images and sounds that are difficult to block. Many of them have proceeded not only to use the culture to make a sale but actually produce an environment which pays the participants, creating an atmosphere of party and with it a feeling of freedom from rules and regulations that are established by society. These participants knowing that they are being taped, momentarily live their lives more exaggerated and take steps to be seen. Hence, they will do things that they normally would not do. These corporations that are involved in such activities are actually altering the society. That means, instead of the culture moving from below to above, it is actually moving from above to below. But, it has the feeling that the reverse is true. During these parties, it provides banners with the company name, which gives the impression that it is with the people and one of them. It uses multiple techniques to bring about the desired success, which is making the sale. We all live in the Bronx because if it were not for such tactics we would have never have heard about hip hop, breakdancing or bombing (tagging) unless we lived in major cities like New York and had to make use of the subways and public transportation systems. The culture is warped because the merchants of cool are responsible for making sure the advertisement does not look like an advertisement. They invest millions of dollars to find out who is “It”. They have such people as “cool hunters” and “culture spies”. Programs such as MTV and reality shows, even the creation of instant performers in American Idol, suggests that we are no longer patient people. The value of creating something from hard work and good training has lost its meaning and is not valued. We rely on looks and being able to copy other’s work instead of producing something original. How is this type of marketing not abuse? The marketing is so that what you want is what they have. This, in turn, creates the feedback loop. The culture is performing to be seen out of context. In truth, when folk is presented as performance, it loses its true meaning. It is nothing more than a gimmick. The corporations’ continuous repeat of same material and the desire of people to be recognized and seen has created an atmosphere where normalcy is not within the hands of the people, but in the hands of those who have something to sell. Instinctively, we are battling it. Fiske calls it the “guerilla warfare”. For example, when we wear a pair of jeans until it falls apart and has many holes, we are doing our part; we “excorporate” the jeans. But, the merchants of cool, through their advertisements and gimmicks, “incorporate” the practice as part of their item for sale and, hence, produce jeans that have holes. In effect, the corporations are making the full effort to reverse that which has been part of our lives and which gave meaning to it, copied it and through incorporation produced what seems to be our culture force-fed back to us again. Teenagers assume that they are actually creators of new fads. They think that they are “It”, but in fact they are manipulated.
Jouissance
If life is a dividing factor between what is art and what is non-art, would it matter whether the progression is driven on a level plane to infinity or whether it is transient in a circular motion and changes its appearance to fit the present culture? If it is in a circular motion, could minute deviations in text (culture) cause the culture to start on a new path or a new circle? Some would argue that as an industrial culture we might be actually living in such circumstances and see nothing wrong with it. But, I suggest that ability to see such minute deviations require sensitivity that is not available to all. Most often, we see the world as advancing forward; we see time not as circular but linear and, hence, culture for most of us is unfolding as such. Also, it should matter to us because the corporations make use of this gap, make use of our inability to recognize and differentiate minute changes in culture, and it creates confusion, imposing its false culture onto us. Whether the text is linear or circular, what is the force behind it? What drives people to choose art over non-art? How do we distinguish one from the other? “Lots of daily life is now understood as performance. And performance is constructed”(Cosentino). It is here that we have to understand the impact and relationship of “jouissance” and “plaisir” as an energy or force that drives the culture forward. It is a relationship of give and take, reciprocity. To understand jouissance, imagine that the culture (civilization) acts as a rubberband resisting the return to the state of nature, a state where the search for meaning has no purpose; that is, there is only existence. This sounds very much like the 'state of nature' explained by Rousseau. Fiske writes that "jouissance is theorized as a moment of pleasure when the body breaks free from social and cultural control" (94). That is, a "break down of culture into nature" (Fiske: 50). Does this mean that one has to follow his/her nature? How does one identify nature from within? If nature is the moment where one loses oneself and of the subjectivity that controls and governs the self, then what is the subjectivity that has to be lost in order to gain such nature? Fiske says that when subjectivity is lost, it is "an escape from meaning" and that by doing so one achieves jouissance or, invariably, "bliss". Does this mean that we are at our best when we are in the state of nature? “It is important to keep in mind the culture/civilization dichotomy. When Rousseau speaks of the natural man, he's using nature in the same way as a 19th century scholar would use "culture": Breaking through or beyond the norms of "civilized" (i.e. official, codified or high) society. Plaisir is associated with civilization and jouissance with culture” (Cosentino). Hence, it is imperative to understand the statement that “we are all living in the Bronx” in this context, that is, between self induced jouissance and socially directed plaisir. We should remember that as long as we are directed how to proceed, or what to buy, even when to buy it, the best we can hope to experience is plaisir and not jouissance.
Bibliography:
1) Brunvand, J.H. (1968). The study of American folklore: An introduction. New York: WW Norton & Co, Inc.
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3) Clark, R.T. (1969). Herder: His life and thought. Berkeley, California: University of California Press.
4) Cosentino, D. 2003 lecture notes at University of California, Los Angeles.
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7) Ellis, J.M. (1983). One fairy story too many. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
8) Fiske, J. (2001). Understanding popular culture (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge.
9) Haase, D. (1993). Yours, Mine, or Ours? Perrault, the Brothers Grimm and the Ownership of Fairy Tales. In M. Tatar (Ed.), The classic fairy tales, (pp. 353-364).
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14) Zipes, J. (1979). Breaking the Disney Spell. In M. Tatar (Ed.), The classic fairy tales (pp. 332-352). New York: WW Norton & Company.
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