Sexual Politics in Fairy Tales. Part 3

So here's the final installment folks -

Maleficent – Mark 2, 2014

Jolie is the star vehicle and she certainly has presence, a stillness that is intense and mesmerizing.  She looks amazing – just like her earlier animated version in the flesh. However the story-telling is confused, the film over-produced and the musical score bombastic. If a voice-over can be heavy-‘handed’, this is it.

The script is frankly a mess. Linda Woolverton who has written such classics as The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast, as well as the unfortunate latest version of Alice in Wonderland, here revels in formulaic battle-scenes and psycho-babble.

It begins with Maleficent who isn’t evil but really good. Words obviously mean the opposite of what they say. She lives in a place named The Moors which are not windswept open and uncultivated, but green, watery and forested, crowded with creatures who all love each other and practice equality. The other country is seemingly open and barren, dominated by a big castle where a king who loves battle, rules with iron and lots of chaps in armour.

Throughout there is a tension playing out between good and evil; the 2 countries, the 2 sexes, (the male betrays and violates the innocent female ),  and the 2 generations – the bad, mad  father who cares nothing for his daughter and the wronged, yet maternal Maleficent protecting, despite herself, the young vulnerable girl.

We follow Maleficent’s story from carefree, winged childhood to betrayal and hideous violation. The removal of her wings, which gave her freedom, power and joy, is shocking, and in true fairy-tale gruesome tradition. This is probably the most authentic moment in the film. But there is no-one else in the story to counter-balance her power and give ballast to her role. The real evil-doer, the King becomes a cipher of crazed paranoia. The raven side-kick, who Maleficent tyrannizes, is just a comic-book caricature who never has a chance to act because the special effects keep getting in the way.

 Aurora is a blonde baby doll whose sweetness irritates. The poor girl flits aimlessly about with no parental guidance or education from her real parents or from the surrogate selfish, silly, fairy women. Maleficent’s guardianship takes the form of keeping her physically safe and watching her pat tame, fanciful creatures. Even the Barbie fairy tale movies grappled seriously with authentic activities that would help the princess’s debut into adult life.

If one definition of maleficence can be characterized by that horrible marketing phase – ‘It’s all about me”- I think this is a huge unredeemable fault of the film.

This is one woman’s movie, and it is literally all about her. The other side never has a chance against Jolie’s star power, and the script skews it this way as well. The script gives a twist to the famous kiss of true love which might help resolve Maleficent’s dilemma (kind of), but leaves the pretty boy prince, solely a decorative character. Once he’s bundled offstage by the fairy mothers, the male side of the cast has no place to go into the future.  

  Because the young man didn’t bring ‘true love’ to Aurora, then their future together becomes very problematical. When he grows up, if he succumbs to power and greed his behaviour could easily become a carbon copy of the older generation father. The prince represents an ongoing threat, for he may well turn and betray Aurora as Maleficent was herself betrayed.

Aurora is never truly woken from her ‘sleep’ of ripening through metamorphosis into sexual flowering and womanhood. In discovering Maleficent’s wings and helping return them to their rightful owner, she plays a service role, not that of an individuated person. She has been reconciled with the older woman who cares for her, but an authentic transformation into womanhood requires a separation from the mother figure and an awakening into one’s own body.

In the older traditional narratives, a wedding allowed for a satisfying open ending that gives the possibility of hope between the 2 sexes, the 2 countries and the 2 generations.

 

The film ends after the iron king is well defeated in clichéd battle by Maleficent and her dragon. Back home in the’ Moors’, Aurora and Maleficent are happy together in their fantasy world of female power and solidarity.

Presumably the three squabbling, self-involved fairy mothers are as ineffectual and powerless as ever they were, in this dream of female community.

Words once again belie the reality, for despite the voiceover assuring us that tyranny is over, Maleficent is firmly in charge of both countries, both genders, both generations.

In sole charge. Power and gender issues are certainly not resolved. Any power remaining in the hands of one boss, does not create equal rights for the whole community, despite all the smoke and mirrors of CGI shape-shifting.

This Disney movie is an international blockbuster and Angelina Jolie has a huge world-wide fan base. Many women admire her as a movie star, as well as her leadership of social and political issues, not to mention her personal life in the roles of mother and lover. Her movies then, become an extension of her and her ideas, which I suspect she intends them to be. Mostly she plays the female action heroine, a kick-ass sex object, a strong woman albeit in conventional Hollywood terms.  And this movie is no exception. Here she plays a famous animated anti- heroine who intimates that ‘it’s ok to be all about me’.

But I think she, as well as the female script writer Linda Woolverton, have ultimately failed in their responsibility to the public and especially to children viewers. The movie is a muddle, but there’s one strong theme we take away from it.

The film suggests that maleness and femaleness are fundamentally opposed and always attempt to take power away from each other. This is a terribly problematic proposition and certainly not a feminist principle.

It’s a disturbing finger on the pulse of gender politics in America today.

Sources

The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood by Charles Perrault 1696 (from Classic Fairy Tales 1922)

Little Briar Rose in The Complete Grimm Fairy Tales. 1944

From the Beast to the Blonde by Marina Warner. 1994

Spinning Straw into Gold by Joan Gould 2005

Grimm Tales for Young and Old by Philip Pullman 2012

Sexual Politics in Fairy Tales. Part 2

Myths of Female Malevolence from the Dark Ages to Disney’s Maleficent 2014. Part 2

 

The Sleeping Beauty and the Bad Fairy

The cycle of fairy tales (Snow White, Rapunzel, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty) that pin a picture of female hatred and cruelty onto the older woman, whether mother, wife or hag, began with Apuleius (born AD124). His story in Latin, Cupid and Psyche opens with the Goddess Venus ordering her son Psyche to destroy her rival in beauty.

“Venus was the first – and maybe the worst – of tyrant mothers-in-law, and she had Psyche beaten for daring to sleep with her son” (1530)

Over the course of centuries, oral story tellers kept this original tale alive, elaborating and turning part of it into different stories.

In 1528 Sleeping Beauty first emerged in its present recognisable form. During the 16^th and 17^th centuries the men publishing this story didn’t mince words about its terrifying evil –doers, both male and female.

In one of its earliest versions written by Italian Giambattista Basile, and 60 years later in France’s Charles Perrault’s 1697 story, The Sleeping Beauty in theWood features adultery, rape and bigamy on the part of the king involved. The king’s cannibal mother (or wife) is depicted as an ugly infertile ogress who likes eating the fresh meat of little children. Briar Rose is the name of the vulnerable, innocent heroine who bears twins named Aurora and Day. The king ineffectually hides his younger family from the ogress, and they narrowly escape a horrible death at the hands of the jealous older woman (whose social and financial position is threatened by the beautiful newcomer).

When the Grimm brothers published Little Briar Rose in the 19^th century, they edited out the grisly ending of the original Sleeping Beauty, ending with an unmarried prince’s kiss - a satisfying Victorian conclusion for children who were becoming more and more the target of these older folk tales.

I suspect that because we moderns have become accustomed to categorising fairy tales as children’s stories, we have forgotten how to read their underlying symbolism. So here is a digression about some of the symbolism in the Grimm’s story:

Little Briar Rose features 13 fairies, one of whom is not invited to the baby girl’s Christening feast. The 13 fairies represent the 13 lunar months of the ancient pagan calendar and the 13^th month is the dark, winter solstice that signals death and regeneration. The changeover to the 12 month solar calendar meant the 13th month was eliminated and forgotten. In this story, the lunar ’spirit’ is insulted and angry.

We ignore the death hag at our peril for she is immanent in life. She returns as the old lady at her spinning wheel (one of the Fates) ensuring Briar Rose is pricked by her spindle, despite the efforts of her loving parents. It causes a little blood – symbolising the girl’s onset of puberty which of course is part of the natural aging process. This is overseen by the older woman who knows from experience the mysteries of the female body and its sexuality .The old lady is also teaching the younger girl the art of spinning – “woman’s work” of the time.

The 13^th fairy ‘curses” the girl to her fate – no female can escape her body’s metamorphosis from girl to woman.

However menstruation happens when girls are still too young for sexual awakening and having a baby. Thus an incubation – a ”sleep” -  is in order, from which in due time she shall be awoken by the right man. The ability to make a baby is a huge wake-up of both body and soul. In Perrault’s story the sleeping girl is not kissed by the man – she is already awake; awaiting him because he’s arrived in the right place at the right time.

 “It is you my Prince. You have tarried long” she says to him. The sleep for 100 years signifies a whole cycle that has to occur before she is ready.

Not just young girls, but all of us experience a time in our lives when we need solitude and stillness, a slow ripening into self-hood, before we are quite ready for the next metamorphosis. It comes about organically and from the inside out. A prince doesn’t have to conquer and rescue us – the natural processes will ensure the right thing/opportunity/person will turn up when we are good and ready. The thorn hedge that grows up around the sleeping world of our castle is a necessary protection we need to support our innocence and vulnerability.

Maleficent - Mark 1, 1959

The 13^th fairy is Fate and sometimes that is malign and cruel like Death can be. In 1959 Walt Disney named this fairy Maleficent. Spiritual heir to the Grimms, Disney first tapped into fairy tales for the movies and masses with his awesome Snow White 1937. The rest is history. He has managed to deeply implant female malevolence into the imagination of children and their elders world-wide, with his marvellous animated portrayals of bad older women who endanger and destabilise Disney’s idea of the “natural” order – ie the patriarchy. His evil queen/witch is ‘unnatural” in her jealousy and unmotherly rage.

In an inspired re-write of the 19^th century story, Disney positioned Maleficent at the centre of his re-relling of Sleeping Beauty. He changed the focus into a duel between the witch (who turns herself into a dragon) and the young hero, for possession of the heroine.

In 1959 the Cold War and a sexist gender-power imbalance were both deeply entrenched in American consciousness. The movie’s conflict is pitted between Good and Evil. America felt it needed saviour male heroes to fight victorious against the wickedness of the external ‘Other’. In Sleeping Beauty evil takes monstrous female form, preying upon the helpless young, desirable heroine (ignorance equals ‘Good’). Her survival depends upon a royal hero rescuing her.

There are other older women in this movie, as in the recent Maleficent. The 3 fairies present at the Christening are bumbling silly girl/women.

They become mother-substitutes for Aurora (Briar Rose no longer, she has taken on the name of her baby in the older story). Unlike the full-size Maleficent, these fairies are small in stature, so are deemed incapable of bringing up a child. They shape-shift into adults, but their stupidity makes them just as incapable of motherhood.

In both the 1959 and 2014 movies, Sleeping Beauty serves a humble domestic apprenticeship in the woods, whilst really raising herself.

Snow White also does a domesticity stint in the forest with small guardians – the more famous 7 male dwarves. But although both children’s’ minders are small, the dwarves are savvy to the Queen’s power and give solid advice and strategies to their darling Snow White. Aurora’s brainless female stewards clearly know nothing of sex and power that their sister fairy Maleficent so overtly symbolizes. Disney’s subtext is deafening – “don’t listen to your stay-at-home mothers girls; they may be good hearted dears, but are completely unable to protect you from the real and dangerous forces at work in the outside world.”

Before Women’s Liberation, the feminine ideal was that motionless sleeping princess waiting until the prince comes along to stimulate and arouse her. Snow White in her glass coffin and Sleeping Beauty in her chamber, are powerless and inert.

The prince, dressed in red cloak and feather, armed with the sword of Truth and his shield of Virtue, fights Maleficent turned dragon and of course wins the victor’s princess-prize. (The three ridiculous mother/fairies who were unable to protect their foster-daughter, were easily able to free their ‘son” and arm him with Truth and Virtue – (good mothers always know how to empower their sons).

Thank goodness we may think, for a makeover - even if it’s taken until 2014.

To Be Continued....

Sexual Politics in Fairy Tales

Myths of Female Malevolence from the Dark Ages to Disney’s Maleficent

I have been informed by reliable sources (the younger generation) that a blog must be short and punchy. This latest piece is not short, but hopefully punchy. I started writing it as a review of Disney's Maleficent and it morphed into a much larger topic. So I present it to you in three parts and hopefully you will keep reading. 

Angelina Jolie made headlines around the world when she co-chaired a World Summit to end sexual violence in conflict.  Simultaneously she has championed her role in Hollywood’s latest fairy tale blockbuster Maleficent, as being part of this mission to tackle violence against women. However I find the juxtaposition between Jolie’s clarion call against the evil of rape and the sexual politics within Maleficent, to be at odds. There is a large gulf between them that is disconcerting to bridge.

 In real life, Jolie is a celebrity/leader spearheading a fundamental feminist issue.

She is speaking out against rape as a tool of war, encouraging women who have been sexually violated to give testimony to help end the culture of shaming and blaming women for sexual violence against them. Confronting the right to rape - masculine power in its most brutal form - is a job for the brave. Brava Angelina!

In the movies, I also admire Jolie’s audacity in grappling with the mythology of evil in Maleficent, but think her title role obscures rather than enhances her political headlines.

Maleficent means ‘evil-doing’ or ‘malice’. It’s a magnificent word that Walt Disney named the Bad Fairy in his 1959 version of the fairy tale Sleeping Beauty. Maleficent 2014 is a revisionist version of the Sleeping Beauty story that re-positions the strong older woman centre-stage. In explaining her villainy however, the movie also exploits it, no doubt for purposes of selling to a public used to feeding off violation and mutilation of women as a matter of course in their entertainment.

Marketing Angelina Jolie in the lead role, the billboards focus on her beautiful malignancy. They show her sprouting devil’s horns and giant wings; an effective female icon of the Christian Devil. Goat’s horns and bats’ wings – all she’s missing are the cloven hooves.

Predatory and sensual in black with a starkly white face, she’s startlingly similar to Snow White’s nemesis, Disney’s 1937 evil Queen.

On the billboards and as Maleficent, Jolie is a myth-maker, blurring boundaries and shifting cultural assumptions that swirl and collect around the symbol of the wicked witch. She’s calling up the older collective fear of devils and witches, in the hope of rehabilitating an age-old stereotype of feminine power.

She’s not alone in this feminist redress. The staged Musical Wicked, presents us with the backstory of the Wizard of Oz’s all-time favourite characters. Old ideas are cleverly and irrepressibly reformulated about the terrible, green witch that scared so many children generations earlier. I applaud any and every attempt to combat embedded misogyny, but feel Jolie’s Maleficent  is not in the same league as the triumphant sisterhood of Wicked. Whether her attempt succeeds in revamping our concept of female evil, is yet to be seen.

Certainly fairy tales and movies are a good place to start pushing for cultural change. Hollywood churns out myths of sex-role stereotyping in the guise of entertainment for the global masses. Hollywood lies at the very heart of the current beast that heroines like Jolie are tackling.

The Wicked Witch – Gender-specific Evil

Long before the days of cinema and blockbuster movies, stories have always been told with pictures that illustrated them.  And our culture tells the old stories over and over, tweaking them to suit the times. New images, new technology, but the same themes play again each generation. Like a toxic thread woven through the centuries, is the stock character of the ugly witch.

She is the bad older woman who eats children; the wicked stepmother or mother-in-law who mistreats the heroine. She holds and perpetrates the idea of female malignancy. In the Middle Ages, her myth suited the purposes of the woman- hating Christian Inquisition, when thousands of ordinary women were hounded and burned. But the Jezebel idea has never really gone away.

For an idea to be so popular and long-lasting we must assume it is has some founding in social facts as well as human psychology. If malevolence is part of the human condition, then its mythology should point a cultural finger at who, why, where and how it occurs. Humans tell themselves religious and secular stories to both horrify and heal themselves of evil.

For 2000 years Christians have been very gender specific about their evil-doers.They gave their God’s adversary a masculine version – the Devil. But the female equivalent of evil wasn’t imagined so much in demon form; rather it was part and parcel of just being a human woman. Any woman who broke the social codes or who attempted to assume too much power, was named a monster or a witch.

A female body was deemed in itself, a vessel of impurity unless it was Immaculate like the virginal Mary (Good). Female sexuality tempted men away from virtue – curious Eve (Bad) was the impetus for Original Sin. A women was malignant because she was old (read ugly), marginalised (poor or financially dependent) or unmarried, childless or infertile. Those who broke out of the conventions of womanhood were regularly vilified as bad girls, vamps, whores, bitches. The news headlines constantly confirm this is still a world-wide, tragic reality for many millions of women today.

Angelina Jolie herself is a bold woman, who because she is also a beauty has managed to etch out a particular niche in the masculine world of celluloid. Having already played ‘bad girl’ roles, modelling herself as a witch in Maleficent is a kind of next step for her movie career. Stepping out of the customary constructions of womanhood always eventually secures a woman the title of ‘monster’.

The Fairy-Tale and its Tellers

Fairy tales have been around for a long time and are really folk tales – stories of the people. So they are a good place to begin looking at the bad girls and good girls to find out how evil is defined and why.

I love the old stories because they use allegory packed full of symbolism and vivid imagery that go to the heart of our humanity. Their characters are cast out of home, get lost in the deep forest, slay the dragon, and meet the wicked witch or terrible ogre who will grind their bones to make bread. They take us deep into dread and then help us discover through kindness, bravery and love how to transform and regenerate ourselves.

Their wisdom is taken from the natural world and applied to human behaviour.  Frogs, spinning wheels, apples, hags, shape-shifting and certain numbers arise frequently, and are incorporated into the West’s cultural heritage as a symbolic language. These symbols - whether of rose or raven - have been employed and re-employed by each generation over hundreds, often thousands, of years.

  They should translate easily into movie form because film works on the same deep subliminal levels as the fairy tale does. But I can only think of three contemporary movies that have made the older stories really come alive. Mirror Mirror 2012 and Red Riding Hood  2011. 
Both have intelligent, amusing, coherent acting and scripts, accompanied by vivid visuals. 
The Spanish black and white Blancanieves 2012 set in 1920’s Seville was mesmerising, magical and utterly memorable.
 Frozen 2013 is not a re-write fairy tale, but nonetheless is a wonderland of visual symbols and great characters who resolve through transformation the challenges that fate and life throw at them, carrying us into our own hearts. It’s a classic 21st century fairy tale with a great musical score.

 Yet fairy stories aren’t just archetypal.  Historical realism is usually obscured in fairy-tales, by that “once upon a time” opening sentence. However they are in fact, stories sprung from a specific time and place. Each re-telling at each historical period reflects and highlights the social mores and concerns of that time.

They tell of power struggles that their listeners would have been intimately familiar with, for they were rooted in the social, legal and economic histories of marriage and the family.

The old wives who told the Mother Goose stories were chronicling evil mothers-in-law and step mothers, but also kind godmothers representing older women. They indeed often vilify the older woman, and overlook the absent father’s abdication of parental responsibility. However total financial dependence on a man in one’s life, when one has no legal or property rights of one’s own, has always led to terrible abuses in family and communal life. The story-tellers were giving their listeners information, testimony, advice and hope about how to survive in a cruel world stacked in particular against young dependant women.

Fairy tales arose from an oral culture and the tellers were largely illiterate. Oral traditions were handed down by mostly women, but until the 20^th century, it has been men who have been in control of the written word. When the Grimm brothers published their 19^th century tales, they were recovering and re-telling stories told to them by women. As our culture became more literate, and books, radio, film and TV became more prevalent, the masculine voice has been in total charge of these folk stories. The female voice speaking its experience has been written over and obscured.

The patriarchal bias of western culture has had carte-blanche in its telling of the folk tale for mass audiences.

The intent of the story teller is vital when considering the content of the tale. The teller of the tale shapes the ‘goodies’ and baddies’ for their own propaganda purposes. Male authors, script-writers, artists, animators and directors have all reflected their own misogyny and the women-hating culture that we have inherited today. 

To be Continued.....