The Postfeminist Cinderella Narrative in Crazy Rich Asians

Abstract

"Based on Rosalind Gill’s argument on 'postfeminism as a sensibility,' Georgina Isbister coined the term 'postfeminist fairy tales,' a subgenre of fairy tales that incorporates and reconfigures both traditional and feminist fairy tale discourses in popular postfeminist culture. She defines postfeminist fairy tales as fairy-tale-like stories that depart from 'traditional fairy tale forms in [their] incorporation of postfeminist twists on the fairytale’s transformations of the self-the realization of the ideal true self,' a woman capable of 'having it all (education, career, economic independence, love, and family).' This article investigates how Jon M. Chu's Crazy Rich Asians incorporates features of postfeminist fairy tales by changing the characterization of the main female characters and altering the ending to a 'happily ever after' one, as well as through Rachel’s quest to search for her “true self” via her journey to the East, specifically to Singapore."