This is a guest post from Sade Nickels.
Could it possible be an animated Disney movie that has ladiez in it that isn’t about princesses!?! Yes, but this movie’s treatment of women is still distasteful at best. When I first thought about writing about this movie, I thought the question that I wanted to address was of what qualities or characteristics Disney uses to mark Cruella de Ville, the individual, as a villain. However, after watching the first 15 minutes of the film, I realized that the problematic portrayal of women in the movie extends far beyond Cruella. The real question is of what aspects or lifestyle choices of women does Disney want to villanize in the form of Cruella DeVille.
Cruella is a single, loud, independent woman who is bad, bad, BAD! We know this because of her older, androgynous appearance, misandry and verbal harassment of men, poor driving skills, disinterest in the nuclear family, obsession with material items…oh, and her love of skinning helpless, small animals. We know she is especially bad when she is compared to her “school chum” Anita (the owner of Perdita–the mom dog).
Anita is everything Cruella is not: married and pursuing a nuclear family, kind, loving, quiet and beautiful. The audience knows that she is a “good” character after the male dog protagonist approves of her to be his “pet’s” mate based on her wide-eyed, willowy and naive beauty. Helene Stanley provided the live-reference to Anita’s physical form just as she did for Disney’s Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella characters (maybe this is a princess movie after all).
The only thing that we know about the relationship between Anita and Cruella is that they are friends from school. Cruella drops by Anita’s house to degrade her husband and home, and to size up those puppies for their fur (though the two’s conversation did manage to pass the Bechdel Test). Anita and Cruella are polar opposites despite both being young, seemingly well-off, educated women. Just as Cruella’s obsession and insatiable need is for material goods, Anita has an inexhaustible desire to love and help all living things (probably because of that whole maternal need thing, amirightfellas?!?).
This movie was released in 1961 and grossed the most money out of any film that year. These two facts are interesting because 1961 was one year after birth control had been legalized and was right before Betty Friedan’s Feminine Mystique. When One Hundred and One Dalmatians came out, new pathways were being forged for and by women in a highly publicized way. Perhaps this movie is a reaction to current changes in the country. To Disney, “the world was such a wholesome place until Cruella, Cruella de Ville.” If only ladies would stop being deviant and get back to those good, old, traditional family values!
What sucks, sucks, sucks the most is that Cruella isn’t even a formidable villain in this movie (which she should be since her character was based off the ever-impressive Tallulah Bankhead). It is never expressed if she has a career. She is a bad driver (lady drivers, right?!). Heck, she can’t even skin the puppies herself. Though that would have been a little too explicit. Her hired henchman don’t respect her: Her hired henchman don’t respect her: Cruella’s comeuppance is being told to “shut up!” by one of her hired helpers. Zoinks!
Jeez, oh man, does this movie have lots of problems. In case anyone else is interested in revisiting this movie, there are other interpretations to be had of it.
Queer Reading
- Cruella is very kind to Anita and very cruel to her husband Roger. Is it because she is in love with Anita?
- Cruella’s henchman (or Baduns), Jasper and Horace, are both dudes and always together. They are often thwarted in a very slapstick manner. Almost always all the time they end up in some sort of sexually compromising position. See for yourself (note the pink underwear).
Race and Class
- First! There are SO many racial and class problems in this movie. My MAIN issue are the race ones. The first being that Pongo, the dad dalmation, is only attracted to another dalmation. Hmmm…
- Second! When the dogs are running back to London and they are escaping Cruella, they meet up with a labrador who gets them a ride to the city. In order to sneak onto the van the dogs get covered in soot to look like labs (as Pongo says, “That’s the stuff the blacker the better!”). Dog blackface?
- Third! When the dogs arrive back home Rodger (the human dad character) starts singing about how they (the humans) will start a Dalmatian Plantation. Ok, so I know the words rhyme and all, but it is still in poor taste. Oh great, there is a song about it.
Whew! Well, that is all folks. Would LOVE to read your comments.
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Sade Nickels is a toddler teacher in Seattle who enjoys getting tattoos, reading children’s books and thinking about radicalism.