Once, in a class long ago (like last year), I was asked to reflect on the 2015 remake of Cinderella starring Lily James and Richard Madden. This prompt immediately made me think of Barbara Smith's "Narrative Versions, Narrative Theories." At first because of the passage where she discusses Marian Roalfe Cox's "uneasy feeling … that if she had continued her labors long enough, all stories would have turned out to be versions of Cinderella." Cox uncovered 345 versions of Cinderella, and following scholars added several hundred more to this list. Today, a case could be made to add even several hundred more, if one accounts for all the various movie versions, which almost convinced me that all stories could be traced back to Cinderella. However, I think the best point that Smith makes, in regards to versions or variations or adaptations, is that "particular retellings—and thus versions—of those narratives, constructed, as all versions are, by someone in particular, on some occasion, for some purpose, and in accord with some relevant set of principles."
All the various Cinderellas in all the various forms ever were constructed for a particular purpose, even if it's because Kenneth Branagh has run out of Shakespeare plays to turn into films. For example, I think that the enduring popularity of Cinderella in the United States speaks to its "bootstraps" mentality. Cinderella is a poor girl in an awful situation but because she works hard and is still very nice despite every reason not to be, she is rewarded with riches and happiness. If that ain't the American Dream, I don't know what is, especially for women, who for so long were relegated to a situation similar to Cinderella's, sometimes minus the evil step-family. This interpretation might not be the sole reason that Cinderella is being adapted today, but I think it could definitely apply to the 1950 Disney version.
Similarly, all the versions of Cinderella's story are read or viewed through different perspectives, which makes the meaning taken from Cinderella, or any other oft-adapted story, endless. What I enjoy or take from a Cinderella probably will not be what the person sitting next to me enjoys or takes from the same version. I see it as subtle propaganda for a very traditional American Dream, an interpretation that others might not agree with or even choose to see as valid. This difference in adaptation reasoning and interpretation is, to me, what Smith was getting at in her article.