For any story, it’s important to quickly establish the boundaries
of your story. The first few scenes should set the tone, and
inform the audience what sort of things are and are not possible. People bursting into song, talking animals,
magic; these are all things that audiences are willing to suspend their
disbelief for, but not if they’re suddenly presented halfway through the movie. Disney’s return to full length animated
movies with Cinderella has a lot to
set up, and it does it very smoothly and quickly.
Cinderella
begins like Snow White, with a literal
storybook opening. A brief narration establishes
Cinderella’s backstory. As is typical of
Disney princesses of the era, she possesses nearly unlimited optimism and is a friend
to all living things. The opening scene
is easy to overlook, but it conveys a lot of information about the movie very
quickly. As the movie begins we see she
lives at the top of a tower, both separated from, and above the rest of her
family. The view moves into her room, sparsely
decorated with secondhand and broken furniture.
Patches spot her bed sheets.
These visual cues set up her current position as a servant in her own
home. It speaks to the attitudes of the
Stepmother, only allowing Cinderella to use what has already been thrown away
by them.
Next, Cinderella is woken by a pair
of birds. They don’t speak, but they are
wearing bits of clothing. This in
addition to their actions establishes that the animals are intelligent. A fact quickly reinforced as we see many
other animals acting with greater than natural intelligence, including the mice
who can even speak. Once awake,
Cinderella quickly moves into singing “A
Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes”, thus marking this as a musical movie,
where people break into song.
Within five minutes of the film
opening (including credits) the audience is set up to expect a fairy tale
musical in which animals are intelligent and songs are commonplace. This is clearly not the reality of our world,
but because these facts are established so early on the audience has no problem
believing these things for the rest of the movie. This sets the tone for the rest of the movie,
and gives the viewer a frame of reference for what is and is not possible.
Much like Snow White before her,
much of Cinderella’s strength is in her ability to make friends. Her freeing Gus from a trap then clothing and
naming him demonstrates her kindness and her ability to make friends with even
those others would ignore at best, and consider pests at worst. This friendship with the animals pays off
throughout the movie, but especially at the end where they free Cinderella just
in time. While Cinderella might not seem active, it was her actions early on
that set her up to succeed later when she’s otherwise powerless.
Gus also provides the role of
outsider, giving the other characters an excuse to explains things to
audience. This role is very common in
stories and is often filled by the protagonist, when they are suddenly thrust
into a new situation by the plot. Since
Cinderella is already in an established situation, not having a character to
explain things to could result in characters speaking to each other in unnecessary
detail about things they already know. This logical inconstancy that can take
the viewer out of the native.
When Cinderella goes down to the
kitchen she finds Bruno, the dog, dreaming of chasing Lucifer, the cat. After singing about how great dreams are, she
now chides Bruno for his dreams and tells him that his dream is bad. This is an ironic mirror of her own
situation, as her dreams are suppressed by the Stepmother, so she is doing the
same thing to Bruno. But, ultimately it
is Bruno following his dream and chasing Lucifer that literally frees
Cinderella to follow her own.
The magic of the fairy godmother
is a sudden shift in what is an otherwise non-magical world. Presenting magic this late in a story can be
problematic, but Cinderella has a few
things helping it out. First of all,
it’s not unreasonable to expect the audience to familiar with the genre of
fairy tales. And magical intervention is
a common occurrence in them.
Additionally the characters themselves treat the magic as something
unusual and exceptional. Because it’s novel to them, it’s okay for it
to be novel for the audience as well.
The audience doesn’t feel like they should’ve known like something like
this was possible.
How to start a story is an
important consideration, with many factors to balance. Cinderella
is an excellent example of how to quickly give the audience an understanding of
what sort of story to expect. When someone
comes into a story for the first time, they come in willing to accept things
that would otherwise be illogical. This
brief openness allows the writer to create fantastic worlds. But this period of acceptance is quick to
close. An early foothold is necessary
for people to take a story seriously. Without that solid foundation, you risk
losing the reader later.
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