Porter being cast as the Godmother was a very calculated gesture and look. So, now I am saving you.” Here, the Godmother is a figure of kindness returned. When asked by Cinderella why the Godmother is helping her, the reply comes swiftly, “Baby, you saved me. If you are so inclined, you can read this as a metaphor for queerness, and the burst of beauty awaiting one after the cocooned life in the closet. When time comes, the cocoon bursts into a butterfly, which transforms into the Fabulous Godmother. She empties a drawer to make space for the worm, and watches the caterpillar spin itself into a silken cocoon, marveling at the beauty she saved.
The Fabulous Godmother is a monarch butterfly that emerged from the caterpillar which Cinderella saved from being stung by a spider in the opening sequence. Some would argue Godparent would be more gender agnostic, but at this point, we are just playing semantics-semantics.) Porter introduces himself to Cinderella as "Fabulous Godmother," and is thus noted in the end credits as well. (For some reason, everyone is referring to the character as "Fab G," something barely mentioned in the film. In this 2021 adaptation by Kay Cannon, Billy Porter brings his Pose energy to the character - a gender agnostic nurturing figure, divorcing gender from caretaking, a Fabulous Godmother, not a Fairy Godmother, booted with Jimmy Choo. In many other retellings of the Cinderella story, the fairy godmother is a manifestation of her own dead mother. There was something grim and real about Perrault’s moral here - that whatever your talents, and however egregious your hopes, you will need someone with connections to move up in life. The role of the fairy godmother in Perrault's Cinderella was conceived as that similar to a godmother - of bestowing care and convenience upon their godchild.
Versions differed - with the pumpkin turning into a carriage, the fairy godmother, and the glass slipper added to the French version in the late 17th Century - but the frame story struck a chord. A folk tale about a Greek slave girl who marries an Egyptian king, compiled around the time BCE became CE, it has become a trope that travelled into the Arabian Nights, the Chinese Ye Xian, the Italian Pentamerone, and Charles Perrault's French Cendrillon. But were we not promised camp excellence? Or was that a misplaced expectation - for Billy Porter’s camp-by-association to rub off on a story so old, dated even, that the only people reviving it are big studios confident that glittering outfits, a swirling, hypnotic camera, quick and tight edits, and a beautiful, sauceless star at the center of the familiar droll will be enough?Ĭinderella is a story that changed with the times. Unintentional perhaps, but the most queer thing about Cinderella was the choir that sung in the background of a father-son spat, “Balls are fun.” Indeed. Queer Gaze is a monthly column where Prathyush Parasuraman examines traces of queerness in cinema and streaming - intended or unintended, studied or unstudied, reckless or exciting.
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