Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella: Agency and Possibility amidst Conflict and Wonder

By briefly considering the televised iterations of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammer-stein's Cinderella (as broadcast in 1957, 1965, and 1997) and analyzing the "Impossible/It's Possible" song, this essay investigates social conflict over several decades as signaled by what changes with the story and its production–reception circuit. These adaptations key on the power of possibility and therefore signal ways that agency, as the ability to act otherwise, may be bolstered in the face of cultural conflicts that constrain everyday social and individual experiences.