The Blue Beard myth from two opposite views: Gustave Doré and Cindy Sherman

Abstract

In 1862, Gustave Doré illustrated the story of Blue Beard for Perrault’s compilation, a didactic story by the patriarchal discourse. In 1985 Cindy Sherman makes the interpretation according to the version of the Brothers Grimm published as Fitcher’s Bird (1992). Sherman turns the story around and breaks the spell that hides reality. The theoretical basis is based on the criticism of Jacques Rancière who invites us to be active spectators to recognize the ethical turn of aesthetics and politics, and Jack Zipes, interested in the fantasy and magic of these stories, and how through they have fostered ignorance, what Rancière calls “the optical machine that forms the looks in illusion and in passivity”. Likewise, feminist theorists such as Amelia Valcárcel or Iris Marion Young, are an indispensable aid to ratify the criticism of a chauvinist society.