Made to Connive: Revisioning Cinderella in a Music Video. From Disney to Arthur Pirozkhov: A Case Study

Abstract

The article focuses on the way in which music videos can subvert and refigure the message of literature and film. The author sets out to demonstrate how a music video entitled “Зацепила” by Arthur Pirozkhov (Aleksandr Revva) enters a dialogue with the recent Disney version of Cinderella by Kenneth Branagh (2015), which, in turn, is an attempt to do justice to Perrault’s famous fairy tale. Starting out with Michèle Le Dœuff’s comment on the limitations imposed upon women’s intellectual freedom throughout the centuries, Filipczak applies the French philosopher’s concept of “regulatory myth” to illustrate the impact of fairy tales and their Disney versions on the contemporary construction of femininity. In her analysis of Branagh’s film Filipczak contends that its female protagonist is haunted by the spectre of the Victorian angel in the house which has come back with a vengeance in contemporary times despite Virginia Woolf’s and her followers’ attempts to annihilate it. Paradoxically, the music video, which is still marginalized in academia on account of its popular status, often offers a liberating deconstruction of regulatory myths. In the case in question, it allows the viewers to realize how their intellectual horizon is limited by the very stereotypes that inform the structure of Perrault’s Cinderella. This makes viewers see popular culture in a different light and appreciate the explosive power of music videos which can combine an artistic message with a perceptive commentary on stereotypes masked by seductive glamour.