Why Maxine from ‘Being John Malkovich’ Is The Best

Maxine is a perfect character. She stands up for herself, takes no guff off of anyone, and goes for what she wants while issuing remarkable and hilarious ultimatums to those around her. I don’t just like Maxine. I don’t just love Maxine. I am Maxine.

1178744_orig


This guest post by Sara Century appears as part of our theme week on Unlikable Women. 


Being John Malkovich is a delightful trip of a movie from beginning to end. It’s a classic, and, if you haven’t seen it, you really should, definitely before you read this article.

It is based on a puppeteer named Craig Schwartz, who has taken on a job to support his puppeting habit (stick with me here). He meets Maxine, who he develops an unhealthy obsession with despite the fact that he’s married to Cameron Diaz, aka Lottie. He discovers a portal that leads to John Malkovich’s brain that Maxine brilliantly decides to rent out to people… because she is a genius. Maxine seduces Lottie while Lottie’s in John Malkovich’s body, and then slaps Craig in the face when he tries to kiss her. It is amazing. The movie gets even more complicated from there. Charlie Sheen shows up out of nowhere. It’s epic, so just go watch it, or agree to be confused, because I’m here to mostly talk about why Maxine is a great character, despite the fact that she could be considered by some misguided souls as somehow “unlikable.”

Maxine is played by Catherine Keener, who is probably one of the better actors in all of Hollywood right now. When she shows up, she is immediately the most interesting character in the movie. Maxine radiates self-confidence and style, and, in comparison, Craig becomes absolutely cartoonish, if he wasn’t already. There is almost no reason to watch the movie without Maxine. She propels everything forward in a magnificently hands-off fashion, letting the obsessions of others carry her on a wave of success that could have lasted forever. If she hadn’t fallen in love. With… Cameron Diaz. Maxine is a perfect character. She stands up for herself, takes no guff off of anyone, and goes for what she wants while issuing remarkable and hilarious ultimatums to those around her. I don’t just like Maxine. I don’t just love Maxine. I am Maxine.

tumblr_n97zgcnLPQ1r5vp4eo4_500

 

Yet, not a year goes by, not a year, when I do not hear from some Cusack-loving member of the patriarchy (otherwise known as my friends and family) accusing Maxine of being “a bitch,” “a gold-digger,” and some… worse words than that. Use your imagination. I’m not going to, because it horrifies me to hear people speak badly of something that they clearly don’t begin to understand. Why try to put Maxine in a box? She doesn’t fit within your narrowly defined limitations, my friend. Maxine is one of the greatest characters in film, and I’m going to let you know why in a pointedly numbered list that descends in order of importance.

7. Best dressed person in the movie, and possibly in any movie, ever. Who did wardrobe for Maxine? Did you win an Oscar? Because you should have won an Oscar. Maxine actually has pretty much only two wardrobe items: white dress, and black dress. MAGNIFICENT. Brilliant social commentary on the rigid black and white world that tries to limit her from achieving her deserved position in society. Don’t care if that’s how you meant it, that’s how I’m taking it, and BRAVO.

Picture+3

 

6. Best lines in this movie, and possibly in any movie, ever. The first line Maxine has is just her calling out bullshit like a pro. She does that through the whole film, and it is great.

5. Craig Schwartz is like the stereotypical “nice guy,” who thinks he’s in love with a girl that doesn’t notice he exists, and then freaks out on her for being “evil” when she really just doesn’t want to sleep with him. He’s the worst, and he really just a whole lot of problems for everyone, ultimately leading himself down a path of ruin. Maxine as his breezy, unaffected foil is a perfect antagonist-turned-protagonist, so, even if she were evil, she’d still be a pretty great character.

dans-la-peau-de-john-mal-ii11-g-650x433

 

4. Maxine has a totally radical view of sex and relationships, and she isn’t afraid to go for what she wants and dare to have it all. She is a pioneer of not only women’s rights but also defining relationships in unconventional terms.

3. OK, so maybe once or twice Maxine behaves slightly amorally in this movie. Here’s the thing, she’s a single woman trying to make it in a harsh world where you gotta be tough as nails to survive, and if you don’t, it’s just too darn bad. You’re supposed to sympathize with her. She makes bad choices, we all make bad choices. Does that mean we deserve to be hounded forever over that one time we left our girlfriend in a cage with a monkey and slept with her husband after he literally stole John Malkovich’s entire body? It was ONE TIME. Come on, people, live and let live. We all learned an important lesson (not to date puppeteers ever, even when they’re in John Malkovich’s body). Isn’t that what’s important, here?

DSC0736-M5

 

2. Funniest woman in cinema? MAYBE. I’ve seen this movie so many times that I sometimes confuse it with actual memories, yet I still laugh at Maxine’s jokes. Catherine Keener’s deadpan delivery is flawless. Did she win an Oscar? Because she should have won an Oscar. P.S., she didn’t win an Oscar, because the Oscars are bogus. Except she did lose to Judi Dench, so that’s legit. If Judi Dench were against anyone else in any other movie, I’d say, “Give the Oscar to Judi Dench, why don’t you?” but in this one case, of course Maxine should have won.

1. Maxine and Lottie reuniting in the rain off the Jersey Turnpike, with Lottie screaming, “You’re so full of shit!” and Maxine screaming, “I KNOW, I KNOWWWWW!” is probably one of my top 10 favorite moments in the history of cinema. It crushes my heart, yet makes me fall in love with love all over again. Next, they eat Cheetos and raise a baby together. Greatest queer love story of our time? MAYBE.

large_being_john_malkovich_blu-ray_06

 

Finally, Maxine is the best for all the reasons above, but mostly for the fact that she is a strong woman who ultimately gets her life on track despite her flaws and past mistakes, and I really respect that. Well, I’m not sure what other evidence you need that clearly everyone is just misunderstanding Maxine.

 


Sara Century is a multimedia performance artist, and you can follow her work at saracentury.wordpress.com

 

‘American Mary’: In Praise of the Amoral Final Girl

Directed by the Soska sisters, ‘American Mary’ features a complicated female protagonist who starts out as a likable badass but ends up as an amoral psycho. The film celebrates the power of bodily autonomy and depicts the horror of taking it away.

 

American-Mary-movie


Written by Mychael Blinde as part of our theme week on Unlikable Women.


Directed by the Soska sisters, American Mary features a complicated female protagonist who starts out as a likable badass but ends up as an amoral psycho. The film celebrates the power of bodily autonomy and depicts the horror of taking it away.

Trigger Warning: American Mary is a rape/revenge film and this essay discusses sexual violence.

This post is Spoiler Free! I want you to see this movie. (If you can stomach it.)

The film in a nutshell: We meet Mary (Katharine Isabelle) as she’s carefully practicing her surgeon stitching on a turkey in her kitchen.

American Mary, film

Mary is a med student whose financial situation has become dire. She “interviews” to become a stripper and by awesome happenstance winds up entering the underground world of extreme body modification.

American-Mary-dressed-for-doctoring

After she is suddenly and horrifically physically violated, Mary spends the duration of the film torturing the hell out of her attacker and becoming famous in the body mod community. I want to avoid spoilers, so suffice it to say that eventually, the shit hits the fan.

American Mary’s directors, Jen and Sylvia Soska, are Canadian twin sisters, and they make an appearance in the film as German twins who want to exchange their left arms to remain symbolically together forever. The Soskas’ production company is Twisted Twins Productions, and their first film is titled Dead Hooker in a Trunk.

American-Mary-Soska-twisted-twins

For an awesome interview with Sylvia and Jen, look no further than this Bitch Flicks piece: “Talking with Horror’s Twisted Twins.

The sisters discuss representations of violence against women in film, and they remark on the ability of horror films to inspire conversations that address our critical need to make the world a safer place for women:

Sylvia: The prolonged death of the Hooker in [Dead Hooker in a Trunk] was made with the intention of being very difficult to watch. We didn’t create the term “Dead Hooker in a Trunk,” there is a society wide stigma on these women that devalue them as worthless human beings…We are at a point in time where we need to get a zero tolerance for horrendously vile acts against women. We put these moments in these films because we want to open up a dialogue about it and it’s a lot easier to do with a genre film than other platforms.

The only acceptable way to represent sexual assault is to represent it as horrible and horrifying, and in American Mary, the Soska sisters succeed: their representation of Mary’s rape neither exploits nor glosses over her violation.

Jen:  The reason we put violence against women in our films is because it is so common in real life. It’s so common that people just turn a blind eye to it. The amount of letters and emails we’ve received from women who’d been sexually assaulted and had their attacker go unpunished was disgusting. They were so happy to see Mary get her revenge because there is so little justice in the world.

The directors also talk about depicting flawed female characters:

Sylvia: There is such a famine of a representation of women, it’s almost like you have to make an excuse for a female character if she does something that isn’t perfect or proper. But women are flawed. We’re human. We’re just like men, and we can be interesting and crude.

I’ll address the film’s depiction of Mary, her flaws and the flaws in her representation (there’s really just one little thing that bugged me) later on in this piece, but first, let’s take a sharp left turn and talk about body modification.

American-Mary-twin-skin-corsets

In horror, the mutability of the human body is typically presented as uncontrollable, and therefore terrifying. In American Mary, we get to see the creepy yet beautiful possibilities of controlled bodily mutability. Here, body modification isn’t horrible; it’s aspirational.

Body modification is an ancient practice. Human beings’ adeptness at manipulating our environments is a defining characteristic of our species, so it should come as no surprise that for pretty much all of human history we’ve been manipulating our bodies as well. (Cf. piercings, tattoos, circumcision.)

Courtesy of Bradley University’s Body Project:

We tend to think of human bodies as simply products of nature. In reality, however, our bodies are also the products of culture. That is, all cultures around the world modify and reshape human bodies. This is accomplished through a vast variety of techniques and for many different reasons, including:

– To make the body conform to ideals of beauty
– To mark membership in a group
– To mark social status
– To convey information about an individual’s personal qualities or accomplishments

People may seek to control, “correct” or “perfect” some aspect of their appearance, or to use their bodies as a canvas for creative self-expression.

Our society tends to be accepting of body modification that seeks to attain a look that’s more aligned with our conventional standards of beauty, but we tend to reject modifications that seek to depart from the hegemonic norm.

American Mary asks the viewer to like and root for characters who seek more radical transformations and unorthodox forms of self-expression. Though we are primed to expect these strange looking characters to be scary weird bad people, the body modders are actually the most likable folks in the entire film. They are helpful and thankful and kind. And while their modification choices may seem bizarre, their decisions to seek augmentations are presented in a way that is respectful both to their characters and to the community they represent.

First, we meet Beatress (Tristan Risk):

American-Mary-meet-Beatress

Beatress: “I’m lucky enough to be able to afford to make myself look on the outside the way I feel on the inside.”

American-Mary-Beatress

She explains: “In my travels, I met another girl like me, but she hasn’t been able to find someone to finish her. I want to hire you…She’s a nice girl who wants an unconventional operation.”

Then we meet this nice girl, Ruby (Paula Lindberg), who asks Mary (and by extension, the viewer):

American-Mary-meet-Ruby

Ruby: “I don’t think it’s really fair that God gets to choose what we look like on the outside, do you?”

As individuals, we should all have power over our own bodies, whether we want to shave our legs or dye our hair or pierce our skin or modify our secondary sex characteristics. We as a society should accept and respect the bodily autonomy of every individual, regardless of that individual’s personal choices.

Sometimes people want to make changes to their bodies that deviate from that which is culturally sanctioned. Who are we to stop them?

This guy had his penis and his balls removed and he’s doing just fine. This guy is famous in the body mod community for implanting magnets in people’s fingers. (With a magnet implanted, you can FEEL electromagnetic fields. I WANT ONE — how amazing to have an electromagnetic sixth sense!)

Whether aspiring to become more “normal” or more unique, we should all be afforded the opportunity to safely seek alterations to our bodies. Our bodies are our own.

Or at least they should be. With the terrifying depictions of both Mary’s rape and her revenge, the loss of control over one’s own body is the driving force of horror in this film.

Another facet of the film’s horror is the age-old adage that appearances are often deceiving. In American Mary, everything is the opposite of what the viewer has been cultured to expect: the body mod freaks are the good people, the seemingly respectable doctors are the villains, and the Mary we see at the end of the film is not the Mary we thought she’d become when we first met her stitching up her turkey.

Let’s talk about Mary and American Mary’s representation of an amoral lady protagonist:

American-Mary-prepped-to-perform

Mary is depicted by the Soska sisters and portrayed by Katharine Isabelle as smart, strong, resourceful, and funny. She has agency and complexity. She is a fully formed, dynamic character. She propels the narrative. This is her story. No Male Protagonist’s Girlfriend here.

Some reviewers feel that Mary’s sexy attire detracts from her ability to be considered a true icon of feminist horror. Courtesy of I Just Hate Everything:

American-Mary-sensible-shoes

In an interview with the Soska sisters, Steve Rose of The Guardian points out that “Katharine Isabelle’s wardrobe in the movie consists primarily of lacy negligees, lingerie and fetishistic surgical outfits.”

In response: “We’re very into third-wave feminism, where a woman can own her sexuality and not shy away from it,” says Jen.

There are moments in American Mary when the filmmakers play up Mary’s sexy sexiness more than necessary, but there are also moments when they utilize women’s scantily clad or naked bodies in ways that are refreshingly subversive.

I don’t think we need two lengthy sequences of the strip club owner’s fantasies of Mary dancing sexy dances for him.

American-Mary-sexy-Mary-dance-gif

I’m not so much bothered by the inclusion of these moments; OK, fine, show us that he’s got a twisted thing for her and remind us that she’s hot, whatever. It’s the lengthiness of these sequences, the extended time devoted to showing us Mary’s sexy body on display explicitly for the male gaze. These moments feel especially unoriginal and pandering in a film that’s otherwise so refreshingly transgressive in its approach to representations of women’s bodies.

For example, the scenes in which Mary performs surgery in her stripper outfit are a clever subversion of horror’s traditional representation of sexy lady torture victims.

American-Mary-performing-surgery-in-underwear

In these surgery sequences, the sexy lady is a woman with the power to save or take the life of the whimpering man lying (or hanging) in front of her. She might be clad in thigh-highs, but she’s the opposite of a victim.

I also appreciated the unabashed depiction of Ruby’s surgery. I won’t give away specifics, but let’s just say that American Mary takes a much different approach to naked breasts than any movie I’ve ever seen. It’s a paradigm shift for tits on screen.

While many reviewers enjoyed the first half of American Mary, they often disliked the ending, calling it a “murkier narrative that lamely sputters to its conclusion” (Hollywood Reporter) in which the Soska sisters “allow their film to turn slack and unfocused after an enticingly lurid, wickedly tense first half” (LA Times).

One reviewer (The Playlist) writes (emphasis mine):

Dreams slip into reality and fantasy assumes a nightmarish plausibility as Mary’s rationale melts away; one could argue her transformation into an avenging sadist takes the teeth out of the film’s medical industry critique, turning it into just another gothic story of one who abuses absolute power.

I suspect that these reviewers’ dislike of the ending stems from their discomfort at witnessing the abruptness of Mary’s transformation from a witty, strong, resourceful rebel into a sociopathic monster. Initially, the violence she enacts stems from a sense of righteous vengeance, but suddenly her violent acts are completely unjustified and totally reprehensible. We all start out rooting for Mary, but we wind up repelled by her.

In a wonderful essay entitled “Not Here to Make Friends” — also featured in her excellent book, Bad Feminist —  Roxane Gay writes:

Writers are often told a character isn’t likable as literary criticism, as if a character’s likability is directly proportional to the quality of a novel’s writing. This is particularly true for women in fiction. In literature as in life, the rules are all too often different for girls. There are many instances where an unlikable man is billed as an anti-hero, earning a special term to explain those ways in which he deviates from the norm, the traditionally likable. Beginning with Holden Caulfield in Catcher in the Rye, the list is long. An unlikable man is inscrutably interesting, dark, or tormented but ultimately compelling even when he might behave in distasteful ways.

Thanks in large part to feminism, our society now generally embraces representations of Strong Female Characters — at least when these Strong Female Characters are presented as morally upstanding. We’re still wildly uncomfortable with depictions of amoral anti-heroines.

There is a longstanding history in the horror genre of the Final Girl character. Traditionally, she is the most virtuous character in the film, the embodiment of morality, and her defeat of the monster represents Good triumphing over Evil. While the Final Girl doesn’t always win the battle (and sometimes doesn’t even survive), she typically remains virtuous throughout.

In a piece for Indiewire titledAmerican Mary Sets out to Modify the Way You Think About Women in Horror,” the Soska sisters explain their approach to Mary in the context of the history of the Final Girl:

American Mary evolves the final girl once again where not only is the final girl powerful, precise, and fearless, but she becomes her own undoing and takes on the roles of villainess and heroine simultaneously.

We viewers may want Mary to end the film a righteous hero, but to give Mary’s story a happy ending would be to suggest that there is a simple way to right the wrongs of sexual violation. This isn’t to say that survivors of assault can never overcome their trauma, but to point out that there is no easy answer to the question of how to process such violations of the body. Revenge can’t erase Mary’s experience of assault. Vengeance doesn’t make it all okay. Violence begets violence, and everything falls apart.

The final sequences of American Mary may be something of a surprise, but they make sense within the larger thematic context of the film: the horror of losing control of one’s own flesh and the devastation of physical violation.

American Mary is a stellar film and I’m excited to see more awesome work by the Soska sisters!

American-Mary-twins

 
 

Mychael Blinde writes about representations of gender in horror at Vagina Dentwata

Reclaiming Conch: In Defense of Ursula, Fairy Octomother

Ursula’s show-stopper, “Poor, Unfortunate Souls,” presents case studies of mermen and mermaids made miserable by culture. What this song really teaches is that internalizing cultural messages is a fatal weakness, and rejecting cultural conditioning is a source of great power. Small wonder that Ursula had to die the most gruesome onscreen death in all of Disney.

Fear not the dark feminine's suspiciously vaginal conch
Fear not the dark feminine’s suspiciously vaginal conch

Written by Brigit McCone as part of our theme week on Unlikable Women.


A Bitch Flicks review of the film Bridesmaids analyzes it using Maureen Murdock’s model of psychological descent and confrontation with the dark feminine. In Bridesmaids, it is Melissa McCarthy’s “dark feminine” mentor who must literally slap sense into Kristen Wiig’s heroine. She must bite Wiig in the ass, to symbolize life biting her ass and provoke her to fight back.

Such unruly mentors are more commonly male. The Empire Strikes Back‘s Yoda is a beloved mentor, yet pushes Luke to his physical limits and forces him to confront his deepest fears. The Lion King‘s Rafiki beats Simba’s head with a stick, to teach him to learn from pain. Dodgeball‘s Rip Torn targets defenceless adolescents while bellowing, “If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball!” Yet, if any elder woman endangers our heroine’s naivete or passivity, she is usually a villain. Tough love isn’t likable. Our Fairy Godmothers offer a change of wardrobe, not trials by fire. Outside the Buffyverse, the right to “have every square inch of your ass kicked” is an under-appreciated male privilege. After all, Cinderella is a woman enslaved in a house she could leave. She doesn’t need a new dress; she needs a new attitude. Cinderella needs a Fairy Godmother who will bite her ass to save her soul. Instead, she gets slippers. What is it with women and shoes, am I right?

In a recent post, I used the model of “Manawee,” from Clarissa Pinkola Estés’ book of storytelling and Jungian psychology, Women Who Run With the Wolves. I now look to Estés model of female initiation in “Vasalisa the Wise.” In her reading, Estés takes the Baba Yaga, the sinister witch of Russian folklore, and examines her as Crone mother and initiator into wisdom. It is Estés’ belief that feminine teaching tales are often distorted by patriarchal disapproval; our mentors are rewritten as our villains, our role models as our cautionary tales.

Ursula the Sea Witch, from The Little Mermaid, seems a prime candidate to reclaim as tough love mentor, as directors Ron Clements and John Musker did themselves with Mama Odie; what other villains make “evil” schemes so perfectly tailored to help “victims” confront mental obstacles and achieve personal growth? Ursula actually shares many qualities with McCarthy’s character in Bridesmaids: she is sexually assertive, shameless, and models fat acceptance. She positively oozes anarchic vitality. We are drawn to these qualities in McCarthy but, as young girls, we learn through Ursula that they are grotesque and associated with evil. Theoretically. We’re not told why Ursula was banished from Triton’s palace, but she embodies “dark feminine” qualities that are routinely suppressed or mocked by our own culture. Ursula’s show-stopper, “Poor, Unfortunate Souls,” presents case studies of mermen and mermaids made miserable by culture. What this song really teaches is that internalizing cultural messages is a fatal weakness, and rejecting cultural conditioning is a source of great power. Small wonder that Ursula had to die the most gruesome onscreen death in all of Disney.

The punishment for failing Ursula is harsh: transformation into a worm-creature. As her victims are shriveled and rooted to the spot, the process resembles grotesquely accelerated aging. But, just as McCarthy yells, “I’m life!” before biting Wiig’s ass, challenging Wiig to fight for her “shitty life,” so we can read a darker version of that challenge in Ursula’s threat: “I’m life. I will wither your flesh and steal your beauty. I will hunch your back and shrink your body. I will drain your power and tie you down. Face me. Fight me. For I am life. Now, make your choice.” Ursula confronts “victims” with a stark choice indeed: dig a little deeper or surrender all power. Yet, in the slow creep of everyday aging, we face that same choice without noticing. We choose wrongly, because we are not made conscious that we are choosing at all. Ursula challenges that inertia, demands that we define our desires, and face ourselves honestly. Ursula mercilessly punishes self-pity. If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball. But what is worth fighting for? Always let your Conch-wench be your guide:


 Lesson 1: Your Voice Is a Terrible Thing to Waste

“Your silence will not protect you” – Audre Lorde
“Your silence will not protect you” – Audre Lorde

The Little Mermaid has been described as an anti-feminist film, in which a girl must sacrifice her voice to get a man. Not so. Not only does Eric love Ariel’s voice, but it is by Ursula’s bargain that the mermaid learns to appreciate it herself. When we meet Ariel, she is conducting extensive research into the human world, yet never shares her findings or seriously challenges Triton’s bigotry. She has “the most beautiful voice,” but skips rehearsals and concerts to sing in solitude. She falls in love with a man, but confesses that love only to his statue. Ariel is a character wasting her voice in every possible way. Her first honest outburst: “Daddy, I love him!” is the catalyst for her descent to the Crone Octomother, to face Ursula’s trials.

Ursula sings mockingly to Ariel that her voice is a “trifle, never miss it,” and sneers “it’s she who holds her tongue that gets her man.” She dares to voice (ha!) a cultural message that gains power from being unspoken. Ariel has been rewarded for her princess status and “pretty face” all her life, but discouraged from voicing her opinions. She has chosen silent rebellion over self-expression. She has chosen wrongly, because she was not made conscious she was choosing at all. Surrendering her voice teaches its value, climaxing when Ursula seduces Eric with that same voice. Ariel’s happy ending can only come after she fights to regain her voice, exposing her true feelings in the process. Lesson learned.


 Lesson 2: Power Is Not Given, But Taken

"Power can be taken but not given" - Gloria Steinem
“Power can be taken but not given” – Gloria Steinem

 

Ursula believes in her own power to rule. She does not wait for permission or recognition; her confidence is absolute and she bends life to her will. With tactical skill, she forces Triton to surrender his power to her. Of course, rule by Ursula’s matriarch would be dictatorship, as unjust as that of Triton’s patriarch. But it is society’s attempts to banish Ursula that make fairer power-sharing impossible. The more she is opposed, the larger she swells and the more violent the storms that prove her power. Recall Frederick Douglass: “Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.” Ursula is a born agitator; hear her waters’ awful roar as she smashes King Triton’s patriarchy. After all, our heroine Ariel is not granted her dream by Triton either, until she has dared to defy his rule and seize it independently. The lesson is clear: power must be taken before it will be given.


Lesson 3: It’s Patriarchy Or Your Daughter

"The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off" - Gloria Steinem
“The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off” – Gloria Steinem

King Triton is a patriarch trapped in traditions that crush Ariel’s dreams and silence her voice. He chooses his own power as ruler over the happiness of his beloved daughter. He chooses it, because he is not made conscious that he is choosing at all. Octomother Ursula confronts him with that choice in the harshest terms. Ariel is literally trapped, withering in accelerated aging. Her freedom is incompatible with Triton’s power as king. Which is more important? When faced with the conscious choice, and his daughter’s visible disempowerment, Triton realizes that his own life and power mean less to him than hers. When he regains his power at the film’s end, he uses that power to liberate Ariel and support her choices. The idea that patriarchs must sacrifice female freedom to uphold tradition is another cultural message that gains power from being unspoken. Confronting his choice has a profound effect on Triton, transforming him into a just ruler.


 Lesson 4: Screw Body Policing

"Dare to be as physically robust and varied as you always were" - Susie Orbach
“Dare to be as physically robust and varied as you always were” – Susie Orbach

 

Hopefully, as research shows fat-shaming leads to weight gain, we can finally abandon our mumbling about health concerns and admit that it is simply another bullying tactic to enforce social hierarchy. Among Ursula’s “poor, unfortunate souls” are an obese mermaid and a puny merman, both obviously depressed and self-conscious. She sings, “This one longing to be thinner, that one wants to get the girl,” then Ursula transforms them into conventionally beautiful specimens and they fall in love. Of course, they could have fallen in love just as well in their original forms, but the same culture that taught them to despise themselves has also taught them to disdain each other. We are never told the price for which Ursula “rakes them across the coals,” but we can see that their love is made weak by being conditional on external approval – they have literally surrendered control over their self-image. Dreamworks’ Shrek offered a longer critique of such conditional “romance,” but Ursula’s “paaathetic!” said it all.

Ursula is by far the most sexual and confident woman in the film. She applies lipstick with relish, gyrates and flaunts her curves without shame. Later, she takes the form of a slender beauty to trick the human world–meaning that Ursula had the power to appear thin any time, but understood it was irrelevant to her self-esteem and enjoyment of her body. Thin Ursula still loves the fat lady in the mirror. With an image inspired by drag legend Divine, not since Tim Curry’s Dr. Frank-N-Furter has there been such a defiantly flamboyant villain/liberator.


 Lesson 5: Don’t Dream It, Be It

"Men are not the enemy, but the fellow victims" - Betty Friedan
“Men are not the enemy, but the fellow victims” – Betty Friedan

 

I’ve discussed my objections to Ursula violating Eric by brainwashing him. It is totally out of character with her previous bargains and their dependence on free will. It also misses a much more interesting chance–to confront Eric with a choice between the substance of his dream girl and the surface of his dream. Prince Eric is introduced as a commitmentphobe, who dreams of an ideal woman he has never met. He claims he will recognize her when he finds her, then fails to recognize Ariel as “the one” without her singing voice. Instead, he pines over a singing girl that he barely glimpsed (paaathetic!). So, Eric hesitates. He requires entire animal orchestras to nudge him into action. He chooses to miss his opportunity for love, because he is not made conscious that he is choosing at all. After waking up to how Ursula has enslaved him with the false allure of his own fantasy, Eric finally confronts its hollowness. He is forced to stop hesitating and choose: lose Ariel forever or fight for the girl who is right before his eyes. The commitmentphobe must commit (ha!) to saving Ariel at any cost, diving into the ocean where he almost drowned and piloting the ship where he almost burned. It is a Zen principle of enlightenment that one must kill the Buddha, empowering no master to limit your independent development and self-discovery. As Ariel and Eric unite to kill Ursula, their enlightenment seems complete.


Ursula’s trident sinks through the water, setting her captives free. We can interpret this as the final will of the Sea Witch, at the end of her pupils’ trials. Perhaps now, the mermaid who longs to be thinner, and the merman who longs for the girl, can learn to long for each other as they always were. Certainly, our king has learned to use his power to liberate, our prince has learned that real love is choice and struggle, and our heroine has learned to treasure her voice and opinions. Yes, Ursula the Fairy Octomother has had the odd complaint but, on the whole, she has been a saint to those poor, unfortunate souls.

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

Somebody, please introduce Ursula to Cinderella

  


Brigit McCone adored The Little Mermaid growing up (but weirdly overidentified with Sebastian the reggae crab), writes and directs short films and radio dramas. Her hobbies include doodling and bad karaoke.