Cinderella – Bitch Flicks

Vintage Viewing: Lotte Reiniger, Animation Innovator

Part of Vintage Viewing, exploring the work of female filmmaking pioneers.

Lotte Reiniger: It’s a Snip

Born in Berlin in 1899, Lotte Reiniger became fascinated by Chinese silhouette puppetry. Beginning her film career working on intertitle designs for Paul Wegener’s Rumpelstiltskin’s Wedding at the age of 16, Wegener introduced her to a collective of animators. At first, Reiniger created special effects sequences for German expressionist films such as Rochus Gliese’s Apocalypse and Wegener’s The Pied Piper of Hamlin. Reiniger had developed and refined her own technique for completely animated films by 1919’s Ornament of the Lovestruck Heart. In 1921, Reiniger married Carl Koch, who became her producer and camera operator, while Reiniger was responsible for concepts, storyboards and silhouette cutting. In 1922 she made Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, demonstrating the magic of Grimm’s fairy tales and the appeal of princess stories, years before Disney abruptly switched from masculine cartoon heroes like Mickey Mouse, to folklore princesses.

A still of Prince Achmed, showcasing its multiplane silhouettes

Reiniger transcended the flatness of silhouette animation by pioneering the multiplane Tricktisch (trick table), in which layers of glass are inserted into a table so that images with layers and depth can be shot through the table’s central hole. Walt Disney’s U.S. patent (no. 2,201,689) for his own multiplane camera would strongly resemble Reiniger’s earlier design. Far from patenting her own work, however, Reiniger wrote and filmed tutorials on her techniques, with a passion for spreading the art of animation. In 1925, Lotte Reiniger completed three years of labor on The Adventures of Prince Achmed, a fully animated feature film drawn from the folklore of the 1001 Nights, followed by 1928’s half-hour Dr. Dolittle and his Animals. That’s over a decade before Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarves received an honorary Oscar for screen innovation. Reiniger’s visionary contribution continues to receive little recognition in official histories of animation.

Despite this woman’s major significance to the development of the art of animation, Disney would make a notorious company policy that excluded women from creative work in his company. Reiniger, meanwhile, fled Nazism in the 1930s, losing all her original prints (watching copies of copies means we lose a lot of the fine detail in her originals). However, with her small team of collaborators, she continued animating in her distinctive silhouette style, adding color backgrounds to later films, finishing a long and productive career with 1980’s The Four Seasons. The longevity of her career speaks to her skill in carving out and developing her own unique niche and flavor, which survived competition with rival animators who were working on an industrial scale.

Cinderella – 1922

Many feminists find the tale of Cinderella problematic, because of the role that Cinderella plays in accepting her own servitude and being rewarded for this passivity. Reiniger solves this problem in her film’s first frames. We see a speeded-up portrait of Reiniger’s hand and scissors cutting out the figure of Cinderella, before the little figure seizes the scissors for herself. Cinderella will cut the scenes of her own fantasy jaggedly from the film’s black background, as a dress-maker cuts the pattern of their outfit. Is it because the wicked stepsisters pull the tail of their caged bird that Cinderella has a bird army at her disposal? These scenes are far more faithful to the original Grimms’ fairy tale, where birds helped the heroine sort the lentils from the ashes as one of the impossible tasks she was set before she was allowed to go to the ball.

Reiniger also anticipates Disney’s habit of rewarding his virtuous heroines with armies of animals that substitute the girls’ own agency. If Cinderella is the one cutting out her bird army, does this mean she identifies as a caged bird herself? Are the rolling eyes of her stepsisters a true representation, or has Cinderella mischievously cut their silhouettes as grotesques to express their inner ugliness? The farcical padding of the thin stepsister’s bust, and the girdling of the overweight one, show a sharp female eye for the constructed nature of female beauty.

Rather than a fairy godmother, the apple tree growing from her own mother’s grave clothes Cinderella in finery. In a cruel twist, the Prince finds her at her mother’s grave after the fairytale clothes have fallen from her, and is unable to recognize her without her artificial finery. The plan to marry the first woman who fits Cinderella’s abandoned shoe flies out of a courtier’s head as a magic bird–a sly dig at its birdbrained logic? Such witty details are a trademark of Reiniger’s work. Notice the tiny figure of a man on the minute hand of her great clock, and a lady on the hour hand. Though the man moves 60 times as fast, he constantly passes the lady by, just as the prince overlooked Cinderella without her finery. The gruesome slicing off of her foot’s excess weight by the stepsister, to fit the slipper, is a detail kept from the original story, that adds to Reiniger’s darker tone. Only magic birds can provide the prince with the right answer, for fortune favors the unscrupulous. But with a “Snip!” that fate can be changed, when a girl is wielding her own scissors. Her physically abusive stepmother can only huff and puff and blow herself apart. The price, however, is to pass forever the unreal imaginary space of “fairyland.”

Soundtrack Suggestion: Evanescence “Bring Me To Life”

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kku75vGDD_0″]

Papageno – 1935

1935’s Papageno uses the new technology of synchronized sound to the full. Mozart’s playful classical music from comedy opera The Magic Flute is brought to life by Reiniger’s rhythmically animated fantasy interpretation. Long before Disney’s Fantasia, Reiniger, a fan of the hyperreal arts of shadow theater and opera, showed that animation could be used to popularize supposedly elite art forms like opera.

Mozart designed The Magic Flute as a popular entertainment, not an elite spectacle, and Reiniger’s “silhouette opera house” restores that sense of accessible magic with her sprightly bird catcher and his magical pan pipes for charming the birds from the trees, who lives in lonely longing for a female counterpart. The film also showcases Reiniger’s development of multiplane depth in her use of detailed backdrops. Great care must have been required to exactly synchronize with the music, as when the parakeets play the bells while Papageno swings on vines and pictures his bird friends as the women that he wished he could charm. From giant snakes to an attempted suicide, this adaptation doesn’t shrink from the darker undertones in Mozart’s libretto and music, while the freedom of animation brings talking birds and a dashing, ostrich-riding heroine to life, enriching the musical fantasy, just as the classic music of Tchaikovsky’s ballet Sleeping Beauty was brought to more literal life in Disney’s 1959 film of the same name. Working with few collaborators, Reiniger may not have achieved such a lush result, but her work clearly shows her visionary grasp of the medium’s potential.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCR-GFKmMGU”]

Thumbelina – 1954

Hans Christian Andersen’s Thumbelina told the tale of a tiny girl grown from seed to be a companion to an old woman, Reiniger has her Thumbelina born spontaneously and magically from a flower, beholden to none but herself. Without parents to guide her, Thumbelina explores the world and resists all attempts at coerced marriage in her own search for her soul kin. Kidnapped by a bullying toad to be a bride for her son, Thumbelina prays for release from her lily-pad prison and is rewarded by the intervention of kindly fish who tow her to shore, along with a sympathetic butterfly, the first hint of Thumbelina’s kinship with creatures of the air.

After an autumn feeding on berries and playing with the woodland animals, Thumbelina finds herself freezing with the coming of winter and seeks shelter with an apparently kindly, motherly mouse. In exchange for her home, Thumbelina does housework for the mouse, but the mouse attempts to use her leverage to emotionally blackmail Thumbelina into accepting marriage with the neighboring mole, who can bribe Thumbelina with necklaces and jewels that mark him as a good match. Under the pressure of her debt to the mothering mouse, Thumbelina accepts a ring and allows herself to be pushed into bridal regalia, but a late migrating swallow helps her to fly away after hearing of her despair at the upcoming wedding. In Andersen’s original tale, discovering a fairy prince who is her own size makes Thumbelina’s happy ending, reinforcing the idea that Mr. Right must be the ultimate reward. In Reiniger’s retelling, Thumbelina discovers a whole fairy community, who fit her with wings so that she can join them as an equal. It is the final vision of Thumbelina dancing in a line with other fairies that makes Reiniger’s happy ending, not a romantic resolution. In asserting Thumbelina’s right to reject unsuitable suitors and search for her own soul kin, the fairy tale takes on its feminist edge. Thumbelina may be vulnerable, but she struggles for her own desires throughout the tale.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDojanzKKmw”]

Carving out their own unique niche in the filmmaking world was one way for women to resist mainstream pressures that were pushing them out of the directing craft. Lotte Reiniger can lay claim to being the greatest silhouette animator. In the USA, avant-garde, arthouse film was pioneered by Maya Deren. Next month’s Vintage Viewing: Maya Deren, experimental eccentric.

Brigit McCone began her film career making stop-motion animation with play-dough, writes and directs short films and radio dramas. Her hobbies include doodling and watching animations that are supposed to be for kids.

‘Ever After’: A Wicked Stepmother with Some Fairy Godmother Tendencies

This guest post by Emma Kat Richardson appears as part of our theme week on Bad Mothers.

Let’s face it: Ever After is pure fluff. Sure, as a late ‘90s girlhood staple, it’s been deified by 20- and 30-somethings old enough to remember when Drew Barrymore was touring with Hole and flashing David Letterman. And yes, there is some feminist gravitas about the film that makes it stand out; a streak of personal empowerment runs through this hip retelling of the classic, demur Cinderella tale. It was the perfect interpretation of a decidedly not-feminist fairy tale for the Girl Power! generation.

Revisiting Ever After now is a bit like biting into a Hot Pocket after 10 or more years of not having done so; it’s a bit more plastic than you last remembered. The shiny Hollywood gloss that decorates Ever After from head to toe becomes more transparent with age. To its credit, the film does a relatively competent job of co-opting the look and feel of a real Renaissance setting, but this doesn’t prevent the acting from being frequently overwrought, the plot devices predictable and contrived, and the fact that everybody speaks with a British accent, despite living in France. (No Francophile worth her weight in, well, Francs, would stand for it!)

That said, there is one compelling element to this fairy tale that makes it well worth a closer look: the utterly fascinating dynamic between Cinderella and her “wicked” stepmother.

As an orphan of common origins, Drew Barrymore’s spunky protagonist, Danielle de Barbarac, is forced into a life of servitude to her father’s widow, the Baroness Rodmilla de Ghent, and the Baroness’s two natural daughters, Jacqueline and Marguerite. As Baroness Rodmilla, Anjelica Huston is equal parts breathtaking as she is fearsome, as cruel as she is oddly sympathetic. Disney never could have dreamed up such a multi-layered villainess. Together, the two lock horns in a continuous battle for control over personal fortune and fate. It’s far from a healthy relationship, and Rodmilla is far from a nurturing force. Even toward her own daughters, she’s spiteful and manipulative; throughout the film, she continuously taunts Jacqueline about her weight, and spends a considerable amount of time trying to push Marguerite into bed with the prince. (Not that Marguerite is exactly unwilling; she’s certainly inherited more of the toxic elements of Rodmilla’s personality.)

And then, there are hints at Rodmilla’s background that suggest more substance than one-dimensional wickedness. For one thing, she’s a noble woman who appears to have married Danielle’s father, a man far below her station, out of love. The de Barbaracs are not nobility; before she met Prince Henry, Danielle had never been to court. Her father, Auguste, is a country gentlemen of modest means and one small manor farm for property. On the other hand, the baroness brings with her a title and riches. Presumably she is a dowager baroness, since she has two daughters but no baron to keep her swathed in rich furs. We see more evidence of their love when Danielle tends to Rodmilla in her most intimate moments – brushing her hair before bed, sharing heartache over the memory of Danielle’s father, who died of a heart attack when she was just 8. “Did you love my father?” Danielle inquires earnestly. “Well, I barely knew him,” is the restrained reply. “No go away, I’m tired.” Visibly moved, Rodmilla stifles a tear and looks off into the distance, sobered.

While she may have loved her father, she merely tolerated Danielle, which is the most generous possible way of putting it. With his dying breath, Auguste reaches for his scrawny, weeping daughter–not his glamorous new wife, also howling with grief. It is an unintended slight for which Rodmilla never forgives Danielle, and the severity of Danielle’s punishment for this offense is boundless. Yet, Danielle can’t help but try at every turn to please her ceaselessly demanding stepmother. In lieu of any other parental figure, Danielle may have latched on to Rodmilla as the only viable role model in her young, fragile life. It’s possible she even learned how to cultivate self-reliance and independence from the formidable baroness; after all, Rodmilla spends the majority of the movie husbandless, scheming, and maneuvering her way into higher chances and better opportunities. In many ways, Rodmilla and Danielle are more alike than they are drastically different, as every other Cinderella narrative would have you believe. Both are rather unusual women for their era: Danielle is the daughter of a low-born farmer, but she can read and write, and even quote Thomas More from memory. Rodmilla, a woman born to privilege, actively chooses to be single and to make her own way in the world – even if this occasionally involves playing by the rules of the patriarchy, which govern both their lives.

Ever After 1 — I’m the thinking man’s helpless victim, don’t ya know?

But ultimately, of course, we all know how this story concludes. Danielle triumphs over her tormentor, capturing the heart of the prince and rising to a status so high it would have made even the grasping Rodmilla dizzy. Given that, however indirectly, she taught Danielle to follow her heart and live out her ambitions for a better life, can we really write her off as a bad – or, indeed, wicked – mother? Rodmilla is deeply flawed, and far from perfect. She’s narcissistic and hypocritical: “We must never feel sorry for ourselves,” says the woman who spends much of the movie moping about how under-appreciated she is. And yet, the pivotal role she plays in the development of Danielle’s self-actualization cannot be denied. Even more so than in her relationship with Prince Henry, Danielle is indelibly shaped by her stepmother’s influence. Driven to succeed on each of her own terms, these two remarkable women together fill the void left by far too many conventionally competitive mother-daughter dynamics. In the end, karma doles out adequate payback, with Rodmilla and Marguerite being sent to work in the royal laundries, as Danielle becomes queen-to-be through her marriage to Henry. “I only ask that you show her the same kindness she has always shown me,” Danielle says to the king and queen, while debating Rodmilla’s punishment for lying to the queen about Danielle’s identity. Even as Rodmilla acquiesces to her fate, there’s a glimmer of respect in her eye for her long beleaguered stepdaughter. Perhaps she has taught her ward well after all.

Emma Kat Richardson is a Detroit native and freelance writer living in Austin, Texas. Her work has appeared in xoJane.com, Bitch, Alternative Press, LaughSpin.com, Real Detroit Weekly, 944, and Bust.com. She’s enough of a comedy nerd and cat lady to have named her Maine Coon Michael Ian Cat. Follow her on twitter: @emmakat.

Whispers of a House Mouse: Attempting to Disrupt ‘Cinderella’ in 2015

Written by Colleen Clemens.

I took my daughter to see Kenneth Branagh’s live action Cinderella over the weekend, even though before my daughter was born, I swore there would be no princesses.

We knew she was a girl early on but, much to the consternation of those around us, didn’t share the news. I wanted to avoid the “pink tide” for as long as possible. We have a strict “No Barbie” policy in the house. I teach Gender Studies; I rail against the princesses during class hours. But my home isn’t a feminist utopia. My daughter made bracelets instead of bridges with her Goldie Blocks. At this point in her life, she is more interested in accessorizing than engineering.

I was parenting solo that weekend. I had a cold and was exhausted. The movie was cheap, the popcorn and soda for dinner even cheaper. I told myself it was a material issue, that it was a feminist act that I chose my sanity, the promise of her being still and entertained for a few hours worth the exposure to blond, white princesses. And there was the Frozen short we were both curious to see.

In the end, I liked the movie. But I didn’t love that I took her. Because I worry that some of the images from the film—as much as I tried to disrupt them—will stick with her. I can think of three specific examples.

First, the waists. I had been so worried about the whiteness, the blondeness, the general thinness, that I forgot to think about the waists, but during my viewing, all I could do was stare at Lily James and Cate Blanchett’s waists. I hadn’t read all of the pre-film hype about the issue, that James had eschewed solid food for days on end to fit her already slim waist into the corset. During the movie, my mind raced: Will my daughter think this size is normal, even though she often pulls up my shirt to look at my very normal belly to press my belly button? Will she start comparing my stomach to Cinderella’s? I kept wondering: Can film editors do the same tricks that print editors do? Is there some kind of filmic Photoshopping happening? (They swear there is no digital magic happening.) The waists are something to behold and left me trembling. Meanwhile, my daughter housed a large popcorn without a care in the world. But how long will it be before she starts to make connections between food and body shame, even if I do all I can to disrupt it?

Second, the love story. The idea that all stories work toward a heterosexual coupling is a myth we work toward disrupting in our household, for both familial and political reasons. We have lots of conversations about what love can look like for her and for those around us. So I wasn’t too upset when she insisted she needed to go to the bathroom at the moment Cinderella and Kit come together to declare their love. However, the line at the loo foiled my plan. As we stood at the back of the theater and watched the two come together, I whispered in her ear: “Remember, this movie is about a boy and a girl in love. And there are lots of other ways to love. But this movie right now is about a boy and a girl.” I can whisper in her ear all I want. Until she actually sees a romance that goes beyond the one trope we all know, these whispers may fall on deaf ears.

Third, the desperation. The shenanigans that the women of the kingdom enact to jam their feet into the glass slipper are hysterical. I laughed. Especially at the wicked stepsisters and their desperation to get…that…foot…into…that…shoe.

However, just as with the rest of the movie, I also felt an anxiety about those scenes as I felt the weight of my daughter, sitting on my knee at this point in the movie. If the goal to be attained is the love of a wealthy man in just about every film marketed to her, and if her initiation into girlhood isn’t going to be completely mediated by me (though how I wish that were possible), what are my choices? I can whisper in her ear that marriage isn’t everything, that waists aren’t that tiny, that love looks like many things, but aren’t the shouts of Disney in this world louder than my whispers in her ear?

I may only be as loud as the mice that flit about Cinderella’s feet.

Colleen Lutz Clemens is assistant professor of non-Western literatures at Kutztown University. She blogs about gender issues and postcolonial theory and literature at http://kupoco.wordpress.com/. When she isn’t reading, writing, or grading, she is wrangling her two-year old daughter, two dogs, and on occasion her partner.

‘Cinderella’ Or Why Do Mostly Straight, Mostly White Guys Make All The Big Studio Movies?

Nothing is glaringly wrong with this ‘Cinderella,’ but if our sole criteria for these middling, dull, straight-guy directors and writers is that they didn’t fuck up too much, we’re in trouble. This affirmative action for mostly mediocre, mostly white guys could also help explain the selection of this year’s Oscar nominees–and why the ratings for the ceremony, along with audience attendance at theaters, is rapidly shrinking.

As I sat waiting for an evening preview screening of Disney’s latest Cinderella to begin (and because I didn’t have my phone to distract me–everyone had had theirs confiscated in an asinine and outdated measure to prevent piracy), I couldn’t help noticing that the vast majority of the audience were a somewhat diverse group of women and queers–except for the guys talking loudly behind me. They were so straight, one of them said Last Tango In Paris was the ideal date movie. Since at least one of these guys talked about having a son I marveled that either man had ever succeeded in getting a woman to have sex with him, even once–and wondered what these two were doing at Cinderella. Then I remembered they were seated in the “press” row: they were film critics.

Film criticism suffers a lot because white, clueless, straight guys like the ones seated behind me make up the majority. These critics all tend to like films about straight, white, male protagonists like themselves (with the occasional, historically inaccurate, white male gay stand-in to show how “open-minded” they are), one of the many reasons this year’s Oscar nominees were nearly all white people (and the Latino who won big awards did so for making a film about a white, straight guy).

But the movies themselves suffer when only straight guys are allowed to make them: not only are Cinderella’s filmmakers, director Kenneth Branagh (Thor and at the beginning of his career movies with Emma Thompson like Dead Again) and writer Chris Weitz (who with his brother, Paul, made American Pie–Weitz is part Latino, but the vast majority of characters in his films are white guys) men, their previous films have been singularly bereft of queer flair–memorable costumes and hairstyles and a sense of how women talk when they’re alone together–that make up the Cinderella story.

Chris Weitz, as a director, took over the Twilight franchise right after the original film, directed by Catherine Hardwicke, proved to be a box office bonanza. Since then no women have directed the big YA adaptations, even those centered on women and girl protagonists. Similarly, Sam Taylor-Johnson the woman director of the successful (in both the financial and critical sense) recent Fifty Shades of Grey film (with a built-in audience that is mostly women) seems to be poised to be unceremoniously dumped from the franchise–which I’m sure the producers will be quick to tell us has nothing to do with her being a woman, though, odds are, she’ll be replaced by a man. Even when women directors succeed with big studio films they’re treated like failures.

In feminist documentaries like She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry, we see that women in the 1960s at newspapers and magazines were unfairly pigeon-holed into writing for the “women’s section,” but women directors now, 50 years later, don’t even get to helm the few “women and girls’ stories” big studios choose to tell.

Nothing is glaringly wrong with this Cinderella, but if our sole criteria for these middling, dull, straight-guy directors and writers is that they didn’t fuck up too much, we’re in trouble. This affirmative action for mostly mediocre, mostly white guys could also help explain the selection of this year’s Oscar nominees–and why the ratings for the ceremony, along with audience attendance at theaters, is rapidly shrinking.

The film chooses the most familiar parts of the stories (Cinderella is a folktale that has many different iterations including some very old ones from Asia) but also tacks on a syrupy-sweet beginning in which “Ella” (played as a child by Eloise Webb and as an adult by Downton Abby’s Lily James) spends an idyllic childhood with her father (Ben Chaplin) and mother (Agent Carter‘s Hayley Atwell, unrecognizable in a blonde wig and eyebrows) before her mother dies from that disease women in films often get that keeps them looking good on their deathbeds. She tells her daughter who, like her, is so virtuous she has no discernible personality, “Have courage and be kind,” a case of the bland leading the bland.

We’re introduced to Ella’s CGI mouse friends (much more creepy than the animated ones in the 1950 Disney Cinderella—as she kept scooping them up I couldn’t help wondering if she washed her hands afterward) with whom she can communicate, as she also does with a farmhouse menagerie of animals running across the yard. The film has a seemingly willful ignorance of why those animals are there; when we see scraps on Cinderella’s plate they’re just vegetables, even though the goose, in the 19th century English setting the nameless, timeless kingdom the film takes place in resembles, would most likely be Christmas dinner.

Ella’s father remarries, bringing into the house the evil stepmother, here called Lady Tremaine (Cate Blanchett, in a succession of 1940s-inspired gowns, hairstyles and hats that, like her sojourns on the red carpet, show what a great clothes horse she is) and the two stepsisters (Holliday Grainger and Sophie McShera) who, the film is careful to point out are “ugly” on the inside. With their overcurled hair and pursed lips, wearing busy print dresses, the two aren’t terrible to look at, exactly, just tacky.

When the father dies (some versions of the tale have him survive and take part in Cinderella’s degradation) the stepmother banishes Cinderella to sleep in the attic and to become the household’s only servant. Because she sleeps by the dying embers of the fire to keep warm the stepsisters christen her “Cinder-ella.”

Trying to escape the drudgery of home, Cinderella rides her horse into the forest and meets the Prince (Richard Madden, Game of Thrones’ Robb Stark) who is on a hunt. Cinderella, not knowing who he is, talks him out of killing the stag (another instance of creepy CGI) she has just warned to run away. When they part The Prince says, “I hope to see you again, Miss.” Back at the palace the King (Derek Jacobi) pressures the Prince to take a wife and The Prince asks that the palace hold a ball, open not just to gentry but all the young women in the kingdom, so that he might meet the nameless “country girl” again.

CinderellaHBCarter — Helena Bonham Carter as the Fairy Godmother

We see Cinderella working on her dress, one of her mother’s that she has altered, and inevitably her stepmother and sisters tell her she is not welcome to attend the ball with them, “It would be an insult to take you to the palace dressed in these old rags.” When they leave Cinderella’s fairy godmother (Helena Bonham Carter) appears first disguised as a beggar woman, then after Cinderella gives her a crust of bread and milk revealing her true identity. Her wand exudes the same sparkles as that of the “Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo” godmother of the 1950 Disney version, but that effect seems more like laziness (it’s very familiar from other films) than an homage.

The transformation of the pumpkin, mice, lizards, and goose (actually a gander) into respectively, the golden coach, horses, coachmen and driver–and then back again–is the most magical in the film. Less successful is the transformation of the fairy godmother and Cinderella, whose hair and gowns end up looking more like the garish stepsisters’ than they would in a Cinderella directed by Pedro Almodóvar, John Waters, Jane Campion or Gina Prince-Bythewood (the dresses also don’t equal the storybook descriptions of spun gold and silver). It’s like Branagh made a conscious decision to not pay too much attention to “girly” detail like gowns and hair. Also barely adequate, perhaps for similar reasons, is the styling of the Prince. Plenty of women and queer men enjoyed looking at Richard Madden in Game of Thrones (and some of us remember him fondly as the gay EMT in the UK version of Sirens), but here he’s dressed in gaudy jackets, clean-shaven, with his curly hair dyed dark and shellacked into a long pompadour, so that he looks like Zac Efron without the self-tanner. And even though we don’t know where the kingdom is, he’s made to drop his Scottish accent for an English one, that, even to my American ears, sounds shaky.

CinderellaCoach — Cinderella in the golden coach

In spite of her ballgown, James is radiant and doesn’t get stuck in gooeyness of her character, but she has the same odd affect she did in Downton (where she appeared just as I was giving up on the series): even when her character is supposed to be upset she always seems on the verge of breaking into one of her big, bright smiles. Most disappointing is Blanchett, whose stepmother is never given a real reason for her cruelty (besides money, which the movie pays scant attention to, and her own perfunctory rationale that she still grieves for her first husband, which we see no evidence of) so Blanchett has nothing to play except in one brief scene, when she blackmails the Grand Duke (Stellan Skarsgård). Blanchett is talented enough that not only has she convincingly played Bob Dylan, but she made him sexier and more appealing than he’s ever been himself, so Branagh and Weitz really dropped the ball here. The stepmother could have been a great villain, like Ben Kingley’s Snatcher in The Boxtrolls. Instead, she just looks great, like a blonde, chic Joan Crawford in her prime.

An interesting difference between this version of Cinderella and most of the other earlier versions is that it has a little diversity in it. Some of the princesses who arrive at the ball aren’t white. The Prince’s footman (Nonso Anozie) as well as a few of the townspeople are Black. But this tiny, tiny step in the right direction made me wish someone had been bold enough to make the decision to cast a Black actress as Cinderella. Then we would have the reason for the stepsisters’ and stepmother’s irrational and instant hatred of her, no matter how kind she is to them, and also the King and Duke’s reluctance to let The Prince marry her, since, in too many places, those same attitudes survive today. I would have loved to have seen what Lupita Nyong’o (who, like Blanchett, has shown on award show red carpets that she can wear the shit out of great gowns) could have done with the role, but as it has since its beginning, Walt Disney still barely believes in white, brunette princesses, let alone Black ones. I doubt I was the only person in the theater wondering how many more white, blonde storybook heroines I could take.

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Ren Jender is a queer writer-performer/producer putting a film together. Her writing. besides appearing every week on Bitch Flicks, has also been published in The Toast, RH Reality Check, xoJane and the Feminist Wire. You can follow her on Twitter @renjender

You Say Evil Like It’s A Bad Thing

Written by Myrna Waldron.

Maleficent appears at King Stefan’s castle

Last year I wrote a fairly well-received piece defending the Disney Princesses from a feminist perspective, “You Say Princess Like It’s A Bad Thing.” It was always my plan to write a sequel/companion piece to it. I like Belle and Ariel, but I admit that it’s the villainesses that keep me coming back. I get chills watching Maleficent demonstrate her infinite power. I sit in awe as Queen Grimhilde controls the very forces of nature to create her disguise potion. And, as a plus-size woman, I love the confidence Ursula has about her every curve. Yes, the Disney Villainesses are examples of strong female characters…who don’t have to be protagonists. Sometimes, it’s so good to be so bad.

“A thunderbolt! To mix it well. Now…begin thy magic spell.”

Queen Grimhilde:

Otherwise known as the Wicked Queen or The Witch, she is, of course, the very first villain in the Disney canon. And by god, is she memorable. Her face has a cold beauty enveloped in a dark headdress and a billowing violet cape. She is notably vain, but who can blame her? The Queen cannot be more than 40something at the most, and yet the Dwarfs, who must be positively ancient, refer to her as the “Old Queen.” Old? OLD? Not a wrinkle on her face and yet a group of dumpy, tiny old men consider her old. To hell with that. It’s quite obvious she lives in a world not so different from our own. A world where the only kind of beauty that is valued is the youthful kind. She fears the encroaching inevitability that one day her looks will fade, and then all that she has worked for–respect, power–will vanish and be transferred to her preteen stepdaughter. Her husband, the King, is noticeably absent, meaning that she is probably a regent. Her power is temporary, just like her beauty. The real tragedy of her death is that she has left her kingdom without a ruler. Snow White’s scampered off to go be with her Prince, and obviously doesn’t care about her birthright.

The Dwarfs speak of her talents with black magic. This is a brilliant woman. Deliciously bloodthirsty. The skeleton in her dungeon shows that she has killed before. This is not a woman to be trifled with. Her dungeon is full of books, tomes, instruments, and devices. In another world she would have been a scientific genius. As the Witch, she is an enormously quick thinker, and a rather effective actress. It is impossible for her to completely hide her malice towards Snow White, and yet see how ingeniously she tricks her into eating that poisoned apple. Note how she checked for an antidote to the poisoned apple, a sign of tremendous genre savvy. How was she to know that the Dwarfs would display Snow White’s body above ground as if she was some sort of attraction? Appreciate her enormous amount of power. How she could distill fear into liquid. How she could command the winds and lightning itself. Such a powerful, commanding woman. What a wonderful precedent she set.

Lady Tremaine figures out that Cinderella was the woman at the ball

Lady Tremaine:

Another early villainess and Wicked Stepmother whose name is underused (she is only referred to as Lady Tremaine at the ball when her daughters are being introduced). Cold green eyes and meticulously neat grey hair are the most recognizable features of a woman who is not to be trifled with. She has a dangerously quick, brilliant mind, and considering she named her horrible cat after the devil himself, apparently a sense of humour as well. The narrator tells us that she and her daughters are bitterly jealous of Cinderella. Can we really blame them? The daughters are plain, but hardly hideous, and yet the Prince and Duke act like they’re the ugliest women they’ve ever seen. The Prince actually rolls his eyes at them, an incredibly rude act considering that all he knows of them is that they came when summoned to the ball. The Duke shudders when Anastasia tries to show polite deference to him. Asshole. These two men are powerful, so Lady Tremaine has no choice but to be ambitious and try every opportunity possible to get her daughters to a higher station. She’d naturally be jealous of the stepdaughter who will get ahead mostly on the strength of her looks. As for the scene when the daughters rip apart Cinderella’s dress, although they tremendously overreacted, she IS wearing stolen jewelry and fabric. Is the movie seriously trying to tell me that after years of doing their laundry, Cinderella can’t recognize her own stepsisters’ belongings, and didn’t question where the mice got the materials to make the dress with? Come on now. And as for Lucifer, Disney, you are not going to convince me that a cat is evil just because he hunts house mice. I mean, how DARE a cat act according to its biology! Mice are destructive, noisy, disease ridden pests, and their talking and singing in this film has still never endeared me to them. Cat lover for life here.

Lady Tremaine herself is an amazingly effective villainess. The first of two Disney villains voiced by Eleanor Audley (who has to be one of the all-time greatest voice actors), I really love watching her brilliant mind work out details, and how quickly she reacts to things. I love the scene where she tells her daughters to control their tempers, and then immediately loses her own temper when she is interrupted by Cinderella. Her eyes are penetrating, and when she walks upstairs to lock Cinderella in her room, you follow her eyes the entire time. Her satisfied smirk when she believes she has succeeded over Little Miss Perfect. I also rather enjoy the touch of sarcasm and spite hidden in faux-affection when she refers to the clearly adult Cinderella as “Child.” Ah, if only all the Wicked Stepmothers in the innumerable adaptations of Cinderella were half as much fun as Lady Tremaine is.

“Now shall you deal with ME, O Prince. And all the powers of HELL!”

Maleficent:

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that Maleficent has got to be Disney’s most popular villain, and probably one of their most popular characters, period. When I asked for nominations of favourite Disney villainess, her name came up more often than anyone else’s. And I absolutely love the hell (pun intended) out of her myself. Her iconic design, combining the horns of Chernabog (the Devil in Fantasia) with a purple and green motif, defines the ultimate Disney villainess. Her infinite power is fascinating to watch. She can make a castle shake and blow hurricane-like winds even before she’s entered the room. Character-wise, like Lady Tremaine, she also has a sick sense of humour. Her curse on Aurora isn’t out of jealousy (let’s not pretend she really gives a shit about whether she was invited to the christening or not) but just because she can. She even kills the Three Fairies’ flowers with frost for the fun of it. And, upon learning that her moronic followers had been searching for a baby for sixteen years, she lets out insane laughter that almost completely conceals her rage boiling within.

A commander of all sorts of demons and dragons, she can bend reality itself–her trademark fire is acid green, not red. She also possesses incredible poetry in her speech, once again provided by the amazing Eleanor Audley. “I lay my trap for a peasant and LO! I catch a Prince!” And I don’t think anyone can forget her immortal, iconic, incredible line, “Now shall you deal with ME, O Prince. And all the powers of HELL!” She used the h-word in a Disney film! AND GOT AWAY WITH IT! She also weaves a sarcastic tale to Prince Philip about how she intends to keep him in her dungeon for 100 years, and that when the extremely elderly (if even still alive) Prince finally comes to awaken his Princess, she’ll still be young and beautiful and he’ll be old and withered. She ends her tale with a sarcastic, “Proving true love conquers ALL!” and can’t keep herself from laughing at the idea. She’s aware she’s in a fairy tale. That’s how powerful she is. And, as a Disney Channel special on Disney Villains pointed out to me, she would have won if it had been a fair fight. The Fairies magicked away everything possibly fatal to Prince Philip. The only part he did himself was hacking away at the thorny brambles, which, in comparison to the rocks and boiling pitch, were not a real threat. He didn’t even really strike the final blow. No, in my preferred ending to Sleeping Beauty, Maleficent swallows the Prince and Fairies whole and then goes to get that restful sleep she’s been lacking for 16 years. She deserves it.

Fearing being discovered by the police, Cruella demands that the puppies be killed quickly

Cruella De Vil:

There may be a wide variety of evil women detailed today, but Cruella’s kind of evil is, well…particularly nasty. First she purchases an enormous number of dalmatian puppies, then, just to get back at an old friend, kidnaps 15 more puppies to bring the number to 99. And, of course, what does she want to do with them? Make spotted dogskin coats! She’s quite obviously deranged, and has clearly pulled off this sort of thing before, judging by Anita’s comment about Cruella’s “new” fur coat, and how she addresses Jasper & Horace. But really, can we blame her for losing her mind a little? Her parents literally named her Cruel Devil. It’s like they were expecting her to turn out bad. Plus, her skunk hairdo and literally pointed cheekbones haven’t done her looks any favours. As she says, her only true love is furs–it’s the only way she can feel confident.

You have to admire her car. And mourn it when she wrecks the hell out of it. I can only shake my head at the 50-year-old attempt at “humour” with the “Crazy woman driver” bit, but then again, she was trying to make a moving van tip over. That takes some destructive ingenuity. Also, I can somewhat sympathize with her contempt for Roger. He does look stupid with that pipe. I also am in awe of her fantastically vindictive temper. Her suggestions for violently offing the puppies are without any restraint, and she even throws a bottle of wine into a fire, barely even reacting when it explodes. Another trait that makes her a well-developed villain is her verbal tic for calling people idiots. It’s like her favourite insult. She likes calling people fools and imbeciles a lot too. A proper British lady. And what of that song Roger wrote about her? Those lyrics have got to be slanderous, and yet he gets away with it. No human actually finds out it was Cruella who stole the puppies, so there’s no evidence supporting his lyrics. Poor Cruella. Loses that awesome car and now she has to listen to herself being insulted on the radio.

Lyrics from “Poor Unfortunate Souls” in which Ursula tries to persuade Ariel

Ursula:

Oh, Ursula. The world is a better place with you in it. A fantastic villain, with a curvaceous octopus frame and a deep voice to match. Like Eleanor Audley, I love just listening to Pat Carroll talk. Woman’s in her 80s and she still happily voices Ursula every time. Ursula may be a villain, but speaking as a fat woman, she is a tremendously important character to me. She’s big, and she doesn’t care. She loves herself, and is pure confidence in an aquatic frame. She does transform herself into a slim woman to become Vanessa, but I think that was more of a “trying to look like Ariel” thing than “trying to be skinny to attract a man” thing. C’mon. Like Ursula doesn’t know she’s sexy in her own way. “BOOODYYYY LAAAANGUAAAAGE, HAH!” I also enjoy her pets, Flotsam and Jetsam. Horrible icky-looking eels, and yet she dearly loves her “little poopsies.”

She’s also very, very capable. Look how easily she played Ariel for every step of her story. I’m going to consider the Broadway musical’s plot point that she and Triton are siblings non-canonical for today, but her revenge plan went almost perfectly. When she gets the trident and now commands the entire ocean, her display of sheer unbridled power rivals Maleficent’s transformation into the dragon. That’s not just Triton’s power she’s using, she’s combining it with her own. And oh, what a sweet talker she is. She is the master of the Faustian Bargain. I particularly love her deliberate dramatic irony when she tries to convince Ariel that men don’t care what women have to say. I also love watching her work with her cauldron. Those colours. Those explosions and smoke trails. This is a formidable lady, and an absolutely incredible villainess.

Yzma visualizes turning Kuzco into a flea, then smashing him with a hammer

Yzma:

The Emperor’s New Groove came out during that kinda awkward time where I was “too old” for Disney movies, (Hah!) so this was my first viewing of this film. And wow, I wish I’d watched it earlier. Yzma is a twist on all the other villainesses in that she is not only not very good at the whole evil thing, she’s hilarious. And really, it’s kinda evil to try to assassinate an emperor, but he also kinda deserved it. She probably wouldn’t have been a much better ruler than Kuzco was, but her usage of “Peasant” as a pejorative would have at least been memorable. Her looks are a bizarre combination of Maleficent, Ursula, and…Zirconia from Sailor Moon. Seriously, GIS her if you’re not a Moonie. Incredible resemblance. She’s ancient and skinny as a rail with spider-like eyelashes, and yet dresses almost like a Vegas showgirl. Yzma shot up to one of my favourite Disney villains very quickly. The Adam West version of Batman has always been my favourite, so her being voiced by Eartha Kitt made me miss her tremendously.

She has a similarity to Queen Grimhilde in that she has her own “secret” lab. And it’s actually a lab this time! She wears a lab coat and goggles and everything! Hey, look at that. A woman of science. Lord knows why she specializes in animal transmogrification potions, but whatever. She has so many funny little quirks that make her a three-dimensional character. Her strong dislike of gravy. Her acquiescing to have dessert and coffee before getting rid of an unconscious Kuzco. Her inexplicable decision to have a lever open a trap door to an alligator-infested moat (which even she doesn’t understand). Her insult that finally makes her assistant Kronk turn on her–that she never liked his spinach puffs–well, honey, I can sympathize. I don’t like spinach either. And, honestly, I was rooting for her the entire time. To heck with Kuzco.

Lyrics from “Mother Knows Best” where Mother Gothel attempts to scare Rapunzel into obedience

Mother Gothel:

She’s a very recent villainness since Tangled came out only a few years ago, but she definitely made her mark on this film. Her chief trait is her utter fear of growing old and dying, which, to be fair, is a reasonable fear. What wasn’t so reasonable was her hogging the sunlight flower so only she could benefit from its gifts. But there’s a villainess for ya. Besides Queen Grimhilde, she’s possibly one of the most attractive villainesses Disney has created. Her wavy raven hair is striking, as are her wine red gown and wide grey eyes. Her joke about being a beautiful young woman isn’t all that far off. I can understand wanting to hold on to that. And really, she tried not to be completely evil. Is it her fault that cutting a lock of Rapunzel’s hair severs its magical properties?

Another distinctive character trait is just what a…loving mother she is. She’s basically a textbook example of the mentally/emotionally abusive parent. She compliments, then harshly criticizes. She raises Rapunzel to be terrified of the outside world. Gothel insists that Rapunzel is foolish, clumsy and helpless, and only she can protect her from the dangers of the world. She only reluctantly listens to Rapunzel’s wishes, and perhaps this is because she wants to make sure Rapunzel is still willing to sing for her. In a clever touch of subtlety, when she says, “I love you most,” to Rapunzel, it’s her hair she kisses. The interesting thing about Mother Gothel is that she’s obviously trying to straddle between being a decent mother and a cruel one, and she can’t help failing at it because she’s such a completely selfish person. Once Rapunzel’s kidnapping is discovered, Gothel snaps, and decides she is going to be the “bad guy” after all. Her fear of death is such that she’ll control Rapunzel literally forever, and won’t hesitate to kill if necessary. And when Rapunzel’s hair is completely cut and the flower’s spell fades, her incredibly rapid aging is pretty disturbing. She even does the trademark Disney thing of falling to her death…except that she’s already dead. She’s dust before she even hits the ground. Damn! Just how old WAS she?

The definition of the Strong Female Character differs from person to person, but I define it as: #1, She has realistic flaws, #2, She is in charge of her own destiny, #3, She acts with agency independently of male characters, and #4, Her story is compelling to watch. Pretty broad definition, I think, and hey, look at that. Every single one of these villainesses counts. A Strong Female Character does not have to be a protagonist. Sometimes it’s every bit as fun to root for a villain as it is to hope for the hero. And Disney, to their credit, has made some absolutely amazing villains. The ladies profiled here were a combination of my own personal favourites and some votes from my readers. And, I gotta say, I’ve had more fun writing this than I’ve had in a very long time. Viva la evil!

Myrna Waldron is a feminist writer/blogger with a particular emphasis on all things nerdy. She lives in Toronto and has studied English and Film at York University. Myrna has a particular interest in the animation medium, having written extensively on American, Canadian and Japanese animation. She also has a passion for Sci-Fi & Fantasy literature, pop culture literature such as cartoons/comics, and the gaming subculture. She maintains a personal collection of blog posts, rants, essays and musings at The Soapboxing Geek, and tweets with reckless pottymouthed abandon at @SoapboxingGeek.

Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

‘The Great Gatsby’ Still Gets Flappers Wrong by Lisa Hix via Collectors Weekly

Geena Davis: Girls Need More Role Models in Media by Erica E. Phillips via The Wall Street Journal’s Speakeasy

A Dude to Direct Hillary Clinton Biopic by Melissa Silverstein via Women and Hollywood

Rodham Will Put Hillary Clinton’s Backstory on the Big Screen by Alyssa Rosenberg via Slate’s Double X

Retrolicious — Mad Men 6.5: “The Flood” [on Mad Men and race] by Tami Winfrey Harris, Andrea Plaid, Renee Martin and Joe Lamour via Racialicious

Gwyneth Paltrow: “You Can Only Be the Damsel in Distress for So Long” by Susana Polo via The Mary Sue

Meera Menon (‘Farah Goes Bang’) Receives Inaugural Nora Ephron Prizeby Kerensa Cadenas via Women and Hollywood

‘Blachman’: Most Sexist Show in History Showcases Unattractive Men Judging Women’s Naked Bodies by Elizabeth Plank via PolicyMic

Will Disney’s Live-Action Cinderella Shake Up the Fairy Tale? by Alyssa Rosenberg via Slate’s Double X

The Business of Diversity: Why Hollywood Needs Integration by Zach Stafford and Nico Lang via Racialicious

What Do You Think of Merida’s Redesign? by Rebecca Pahle via The Mary Sue

Seriously, Disney, I’m Trying to Take a Little Break Here — Must You? [on Merida from Brave‘s redesign] via Peggy Orenstein’s Blog

What have you been reading or writing this week?? We want to know…share in the comments!

Women and Gender in Musicals Week: Cinderella

This review by Olivia Bernal previously appeared at Bitch Flicks as part of our series on Animated Children’s Films.

Cinderella (1950)

I would guess that in its long years of making animated features, Disney has made a mint on the princess formula. There is always a brooding prince, handsome, but distracted by his more worldly pursuits (i.e. war, evil, magic, etc.). There is a beautiful yet tragic young woman who is either on-her-knees humble, completely unaware of her high-class lineage, or else common as dirt. It is this woman’s duty to make trouble—stubbornly, stupidly, and innocently; the prince cleans up her mess, the audience rolling their collective eyes, lovingly amused.

In the case of Cinderella, the silly mistakes of losing a shoe and ignoring an expiring spell bring Prince Charming to Cinderella’s doorstep, ready to find his mate no matter how long it takes. This comes after a long and emotionally torturous journey on the part of Cinderella. In its beginning scenes, we see her struggle with housework under the ridiculous demands of her evil Stepmother and Stepsisters. She washes floors while singing prettily, the bubbles harmonizing her melody. It is revealed to us that she used to be rich and spoiled, but destiny wringed her into this incarnation – selfless, lovely, and dutiful. She is the better for it; look what fate made of those Stepsisters – loud, obnoxious, and ugly.

We see the Stepsisters’ true colors when, having been promised by her Stepmother to attend the Prince’s ball, Cinderella pieces together a gown from her real Mother’s dress and beads and cloth trashed by the Stepsisters and collected by Cinderella’s animals friends. As she cleans and cooks (in her Stepmother’s attempt to make her too late to attend the ball), the mice and birds sew together something passable for her to wear. The Stepsisters, recognizing their discarded materials, rip it apart and flounce off, their bustles comically bouncing after them.

It is shocking to see such a comely, self-possessed woman ripped apart as such. But a fairy godmother replaces the dress with a blue, glittering number, complete with absurd ear-covering headpiece. Cinderella floats into the ball and the rest is history. Beauty trumps power once again.

Watching Cinderella again for the first time since I was a child, it was amazing to me that time and again Disney portrays women as either bitches or victims. Ursula, Maleficent, Snow White’s Queen, the Queen of Hearts and of course Cinderella’s stepmother Lady Tremaine are all evil women, jealous of the beauty and innocence of their younger counterparts. One by one they seek to quell romance, passion, and everything else good from the lives of the eventual princesses by seeking power, wealth, and beauty of their own. Only a man can save these women from their pitiful disputes, damaging though they are. Perhaps the notion of a man wielding this type of power over a young, beautiful woman was a little too akin to rape for Disney’s taste. Either way, the Disney-fication of evil into an older, vindictive woman promotes an attitude that women are either a victim or seeking to be a victim; a mentality that when unleashed in the real world leads to horrific statements like, “She was asking for it.”

Newer Disney movies rely much less on this format; I think of such movies as Mulan, Beauty and the Beast, and Pocahontas whose end result of marriage contradicts a much more liberated adventure. In 1950, however, romance, passion, and entertainment could only be accomplished via marriage. True love was confirmed by a man deigning to step from his elevated social status to marry a woman of common birth. (A scheme that, as it usually turned out, wasn’t necessary because said princess is in fact rich or royal or whatever.) And marriage was enough to fill a plot. Jane Austen’s scheming ladies were a prototype for Disney princess movies. The goal is love, sure, but wealth and security sweeten the deal, too.

The problem I have most with Cinderella, though, is in the sweet density of Cinderella herself. “Have faith in your dreams and someday /Your rainbow will come smiling through/ No matter how your heart is grieving /If you keep on believing/ The dream that you wish will come true,” Cinderella croons as she prepares herself for another day of back-breaking, selfless labor. This kind of ignorant rhetoric endorses a blind acceptance of the status quo. Cinderella does not believe she can affect change in her own life. She will wait with faith and something good is bound to happen. Of course, as Disney shows us, it does; Prince Charming really does come and all is happily ever after. It negates a choice and, above all, this is the importance of the feminist movement – to allow the Cinderellas of the world to say “Fuck you” to all the evil power-mongers and be on their way – Prince or no. If women had just kept on believing, their dreams would definitely not have come true. Action in the form of choice is the truest path to liberation.

It is no coincidence that Cinderella was made in 1950. It was the era of writing the standards for the modern housewife; principles of which were impossible for any woman to attain without depression or at least a nasty drinking habit. This archetypal housewife has become the subject of so many books and movies (see The Hours, Far From Heaven, Revolutionary Road, etc.). The era was the springing board for Second Wave feminism. As nostalgia, it is still fun to watch a movie like Cinderella. Perhaps, if nothing else, we can enjoy these movies as a relic of the era – a document of history and ideas that are, luckily, past.

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Olivia Bernal is a public school English teacher from Kansas. She reviews books at The Independent Book Review.

Animated Children’s Films: The Evolution of the Disney Villainess

The Wicked Queen

This is a guest review by Rebecca Cohen.

I’m not the first to note that the female protagonists of Disney animated features tend not to have mothers. When adult women do appear, they are evil wicked stepmothers, as in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Cinderella, or evil sorceresses, as in Sleeping Beauty and The Little Mermaid. Indeed, it almost seems as if Disney “princess” movies simply don’t have room for two sexually mature women to coexist. The benevolent maternal figures, like Cinderella’s Fairy Godmother and Aurora’s three fairy guardians, Flora, Fauna and Merryweather, are post-menopausal, grandmotherly – certainly not in sexual competition with the heroines. Other than those kindly figures, the only women around are usually powerful adult women who must be destroyed in order for the princess to take her place at her prince’s side.

Yet all these wicked women are not all exactly the same. The role of the Disney princess’ adversary has changed over time in interesting ways.

Let’s start with the Wicked Queen in 1937’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The Queen is in direct sexual competition with her stepdaughter. Her explicit goal is to be “the fairest in the land,” and her aim to destroy the younger woman is entirely in service of that goal. She is willing to risk everything to preserve her status as “fairest.” Her cold, angular beauty is contrasted with Snow White’s child-like, soft appearance. (Personally, I always thought the Queen was far prettier than Snow White.) The Queen is a mature, worldly, strong woman who stands in the way of Snow White’s ascension to marriage and adulthood.

Lady Tremaine

The Disney Studio tried to recreate some of the success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs with the release of Cinderella in 1950. Cinderella contains many of the prominent elements of Snow White, including an evil stepmother and a protagonist forced to wear rags and perform domestic labor. Notably, the wicked stepmother in Cinderella, Lady Tremaine, is not vain and sexually competitive with her stepdaughter. Instead, Lady Tremaine aspires to wealth and status, and views Cinderella as a threat to that ambition. In a way, this villainess’ objectives have expanded beyond a shallow beauty contest. There is money and position on the line. Although Cinderella herself desires the exact same thing as her stepmother – to escape her present circumstances and live in the castle – the movie couches her ambition as hopeful dreaming, while Lady Tremaine’s desires are conniving and greedy. The wicked stepmother, being past marriageable age, doesn’t enter herself into direct rivalry for the princely prize. Instead she uses her daughters, Cinderella’s stepsisters, as proxies. The stepsisters are flat-chested and bratty, lacking the gentle curves that demonstrate Cinderella’s readiness for marriage. Yes, their appearance and behavior is designed to highlight their “ugliness,” but they also come across as juvenile. They are never real threats to Cinderella’s ascension to sexual maturity. They are only extensions of their scheming mother, who like Snow White’s Wicked Queen, sees the heroine’s inevitable eventual marriage as a personal threat. In the worlds of Snow White and Cinderella, princes are a finite resource and women will naturally compete for them. But only one can prevail.

Maleficent

1959’s Sleeping Beauty breaks from the wicked stepmother mold. In fact, Princess Aurora actually has both a mother and a father, both of whom are on the side of good. But the king is a peripheral character and the queen, while lovely, barely speaks. They are both marginal to the story. The adversary in this case is Maleficent, a powerful sorceress. Maleficent does not view Aurora as a threat to her own ambitions, so much as a tool for revenge against Aurora’s parents. What exactly does Maleficent want? She was not invited to celebration of the princess’ birth, and she takes it as an affront and curses the child. The implication is not that the sorceress is truly that petty, but rather that she wants to instill fear and deference in the monarchs. Maleficent’s role in the kingdom is a little bit vague. She lives on the Forbidden Mountain, in her own castle, commanding her own small army of minions. She is clearly powerful, but she expresses no specific aspiration for more influence. In her own way, she just wants respect. But in the world of Sleeping Beauty, she is a mature adult woman with authority and agency. Naturally she must be destroyed before Aurora can become an adult herself (i.e., marry the prince).

Ursula

The next “princess” movie to come out of the Disney studio was The Little Mermaid in 1989. In The Little Mermaid, it’s not a woman holding the heroine back from adulthood, but rather an overprotective father. It’s hard to imagine a more obvious metaphor for sexual immaturity than being a mermaid. Ariel dreams of having legs, and if it weren’t clear that that means becoming sexually mature, her ambition to be human crystallizes in her desire to marry Prince Eric. The villain in this case is Ursula, “the sea witch.” Like the other villainesses before her, Ursula is a mature woman. She is a very sexual creature, with heavily lidded eyes, big red lips, prominent boobs, and lots of tentacles – down there. Yet she is to be understood as not sexy; she is heavy, and older. Unlike Snow White’s evil queen and Cinderella’s stepmother, Ursula doesn’t see the young princess herself as a threat, but as a tool to another end. But unlike Maleficent, she does have very specific designs on power. Ursula wants to rule the sea in place of King Triton, and Ariel’s campaign to be human (adult) provides a convenient lever for her to achieve this. Ursula is a sorceress, and therefore powerful, but apparently her strength cannot compare to that of King Triton’s mighty trident (ahem). Ursula’s perverse sexuality is of a piece with her perverse power aspirations. How un-subtle that she meets her end being impaled by the prow of a sunken ship piloted by Prince Eric. Once again the only sexually mature woman in sight must be defeated in order for the princess to become available for marriage. And in this case, the ambitious woman who wants more for herself than marriage must give way to the less worldly girl who wants only to land her man.

Ursula was the last Disney villainess I can think of. With Beauty and the Beast in 1991, the studio abandoned the narrative of female competition in favor of an explicit male sexual threat – although it’s still notable that the only other woman in Belle’s world is a teapot. Since then, and probably in response to a fair amount of criticism, the studio has increasingly struggled to incorporate more progressive ideas about gender into their animated features, with varying levels of success. The image of a powerful adult woman in competition with an innocent girl on the cusp of maturity was an intrinsic element of the princess narrative for over 50 years. It continues to resonate in the imaginations of girls to this day, informing and possibly limiting their perspective on gender roles, relationships between women and the nature of feminine ambition.

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Rebecca Cohen is the creator of the webcomic “The Adventures of Gyno-Star,” the world’s first (and possibly only) explicitly feminist superhero comic.

Animated Children’s Films: Cinderella

Cinderella (1950)

Olivia Bernal is a public school English teacher from Kansas. She reviews books at The Independent Book Review.