Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella and Fairy-Tale Injustice: Overcoming Everyday Aggression

The 1957 and 1997 adaptations of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella make the problems of relational aggression and postracial macroaggression known to vast audiences by highlighting the pain of social inequity. Theatrical elements of staging and set design, along with televisual camera work, show audiences how aggression happens in everyday social exchanges. Recognizing aggressive superiority in the “Cinderella” tale type, and specifically in Rodgers and Hammerstein adaptations, invites thinking with the tale to consider how the televised musical portrays nonviolent aggressive acts as unjust and how they offer redress.