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Fairy Tale Women in 1990's Film
Julie Sinn
The 1990s in the United States witnessed a resurgence of the fairy tale in literary and film form as well as in feminist and cultural criticism. From 1993 to 2000, editors Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling published Snow White, Blood Red; Black Thorn, White Rose; Ruby Slippers,Golden Tears; Silver Birch, Blood Moon; and Black Heart, Ivory Bones, five anthologies of short stories drawn from authors such as Tanith Lee, Patricia Wrede, and Jane Yolan who reexamine and revision familiar fairy tale tropes. Also in 1993, The Bloody Chamber, Angela Carter’s collection of dark, sensual, and witty feminist fairy tales, was reissued. Traversing the boundary between academic criticism and pop culture, works like Clarissa Pinkola Estes’s Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype (1992), Jacqueline M. Schectman’s The Stepmother in Fairy Tales: Bereavement and the Feminine Shadow (1993), and Marina Warner’s From the Beast to the Blonde (1994) connect contemporary constructions of femininity to their popular feminine counterparts often found in folklore, legends, myths, and fairy tales. Moreover, in Kate Bernheimer’s Mirror, Mirror on the Wall (1998) women writers such as Margaret Atwood, bell hooks, and Joyce Carol Oates comment upon and/or rewrite their favorite childhood fairy tales in order to explore the impact of these tales on their lives.
In the thick of these texts and collections that question the complexities of feminine agency, the following three big budget fairy tale films emerged: Freeway (1996), Snow White: A Tale of Terror (1997), and Ever After: A Cinderella Story (1998). While each of these films has its own distinct narrative and cinematographic style, they all share the common plot element of a female protagonist who does not fit neatly into the presupposed gender and class definitions that are generally prevalent in traditional, literary fairy tales from writers such as the Brothers Grimm, Charles Perrault, or Hans Christian Andersen. These three films are a part of the 1990s deluge of feminist fairy tale production that focuses on reexamining, rebuilding, and/or reclassifying the mobility and gender boundaries of women in fairy tales. In Freeway, we watch as Vanessa, a lower class girl whose cultural literacy extends beyond her reading ability, outwits and survives a wolfish Freeway Killer in bourgeois clothing. Then, in Snow White: A Tale of Terror we watch as the focus of the film shifts from Lilliana, the Snow White character, to her stepmother’s descent into a mid-life madness where she tries to consume Lilliana’s youth and beauty. Finally, in Ever After: A Cinderella Story, we watch as Danielle transforms from a dirt-spattered young girl into a clean, boundary crossing young woman whose quick wit and wisdom saves her servant (and friend) from being exiled to the Americas, her dead father’s land from bankruptcy, and the Crown Prince of France from gypsies as well as from his own careless self-destruction. Since the female characters within these films are pushing the boundaries of how a fairy tale heroine may or may not fit traditional gender roles, not only do the these three postmodern films utilize the stylized form often seen in traditional literary fairy tales, but they also approximate oral narrative traditions that include preliterate/innocent characters, a multiplicity of voices and/or storytellers, and a shift in the main focus of the story.
The ability to read is not important when listening to a storyteller, nor is it important when watching a film (unless the film is subtitled). This lack of literacy in oral tradition and fairy tale film is particularly exemplified in the Little Red Riding Hood characterization of Freeway’s Vanessa. The first time the audience sees Vanessa, she is in school struggling to read the sentence, "The cat drinks milk." Even though we later find out that she has an amazingly large vocabulary, in school she is practically illiterate; thus providing evidence that Vanessa is actually innocent and virtuous like her traditional fairy tale counterpart because she has not received the full advantage of a school-based education. As the film progresses, we find that Vanessa is certainly not the good little girl who takes a basket of wine, cheese, and bread to her grandmother’s house in order to feed and comfort her sick grandmother. Rather, she is a young woman on the run from social services who wants to live with her grandmother in order to avoid being placed back into foster care where she was abused. Yet, anyone who is familiar with any version of the Little Red Riding Hood story – excluding Perrault’s version – expects that this illiterate but street smart girl will triumph over the wolf. Although, for that matter, we know that Vanessa will triumph simply because her role as the heroine implies that she must.
Ultimately, Vanessa’s lack of literacy and the lack of education that being nearly illiterate implies are celebrated when she denounces Bob, the wolf-like Freeway Killer, for his hypocritical ways:
VANESSA. You know maybe I ain’t smart like you, maybe I haven’t finished school, but at least I ain’t a f-cking hypocrite.
BOB. Vanessa, please indulge me. Please tell me why I am a hypocrite.
VANESSA. You act like you’s all on some sort of mission, but all you want to do is get off in a sex-type way.
Though she lacks the power of traditional literacy, Vanessa refuses to remain a silent object who is gazed upon. Even in this short exchange, the difference in education between Bob and Vanessa is exemplified not only in Bob’s lack of contractions, but also in Vanessa’s use of ungrammatical contractions such as "ain’t" and "you’s." Bob likes to tell himself that he is on a mission to rid the world of unwed mothers, crack whores, and Lolitas. He essentially tells his young victims that they are blights on society that must be eradicated, and he is just the man – the educated, well-bred, white man – to wipe them out. In contrast to Bob, "I ain’t smart like you" Vanessa proves that a traditional education is not necessarily a demarcation of intelligence. She sees through Bob’s outer façade of breeding and into his need to "get off in a sex-type way." This short exchange between Vanessa and Bob that highlights their educational differences also indicates the differences in class and the different social norms within those classes.
Yet, even before Bob reveals himself as the Freeway Killer, street savvy Vanessa willingly climbs into a stranger’s vehicle, instantly breaking the "never get into a car with a person you don’t know" rule that most children learn at the age of three. Vanessa did not mean for her car to breakdown, and she certainly did not know Bob before he picked her up; however, her lack of wariness in this situation might lead an audience to wonder whether or not Vanessa is asking for trouble. What audiences are probably unaware of while watching this scene is that Vanessa’s lack of fear when meeting the "wolf" parallels almost every children’s book illustration of this scene. According to Zipes’s study of the illustrations of Little Red Riding Hood in Don’t Bet on the Prince, "the girl is rarely afraid of the wolf, despite his large size and animal appearance" (Zipes 235). Rather, in the illustrations the girl looks intently into the wolf’s eyes, suggesting further the notion that she is familiar with the wolf and that she is looking forward to his sexual advances. Zipes points out that the girl in the illustrations appears to want to be raped by "a male creature" with a "voracious appetite" who desires to "dominate and violate women" (Zipes 242). At least that is what the male illustrator wants his viewers to imagine about the young girl. She is portrayed as the innocent who knows more than we give her credit for knowing. In this same way, the scenes leading up to Vanessa meeting Bob initially indicates that Vanessa wants sex – wants to be raped – by Bob or any other "male creature," but her words and actions disprove this initial connotation.
The traditional story elements of "Little Red Riding Hood" dictate that there must be two seduction scenes: an initial scene that mimics the pictorial representations of Little Red meeting the Wolf, and a secondary scene when the Wolf dons the Grandmother’s clothing and coaxes Little Red into the house and/or into the bed. Yet, when Vanessa reaches her grandmother’s trailer, she is not easily fooled by Bob’s outer grandmother-like lineaments. Not only does Vanessa not wait for an invitation to enter the house, but she also is not seduced into taking her clothes off and climbing into bed. Rather than fly out of the room, her fight reflexes take over as soon as Vanessa sees through Bob’s disguise. Unlike other versions of Little Red Riding Hood, Vanessa will not receive the kind help of a woodsman nor will she simply flee grandmother’s house. (Earlier in the film, Vanessa’s boyfriend and fiancé Chopper, whose name indicates that he is a potential woodsman and savior, was caught and killed in a premeditated drive-by shooting.) Vanessa clearly dominates within this situation as she brutally beats Bob with a table lamp and then strangles him until he is undeniably dead. Basically, she destroys Bob because she knows that if she does not, he will gobble her up and then go on to murder and rape other female victims. Help, in the form of police protection, does not arrive until after Bob is dead and Vanessa is covered in blood.
Even as the fairy tale film pushes against the edges of social boundaries, it also conforms to certain preconceived gender roles established specifically for women in fairy tales. Not only must a heroine keep her voice in check while at the same time finding it, she must also wait for her prince to come and save her from a life of toil and drudgery. Witnessing the growth and formation of a young girl within a fairy tale is fairly common, and, as expected, the girl will prick her finger, run away, or be locked up as soon as puberty starts. In the literary fairy tales of Perrault and the Brothers Grimm, the good girl remained silent while passively waiting in a tree to be rescued or comfortably sleeping for thousands of years. In contrast, the wicked girl did not pause for breath and had nothing nice to say. Even in the Disney feature-length version of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Snow White is remembered for her songs, not for what she says. Her voice is only for providing the audience and the dwarves with pleasure in the same way that a pet bird’s singing provides pleasure for its owner. The opposite of the voiceless heroine is found in Vanessa, Lilliana, and Danielle –two of whom utilize their ability to speak boldly from childhood on and one of whom discovers her voice along the way to adulthood. In these cases, finding a voice of one’s own is an extension of finding one’s self. When a fairy tale film deviates from these norms, it also deviates from the social expectation that fairy tales are strictly meant to provide didactic lessons for children. The production of live-action fairy tale films has made room for the exploration of topics deemed by the consuming society as not suitable for young children by struggling with society’s class and gender expectations.
Snow White: A Tale of Terror returns to oral tradition through the film’s shift in focus from a young girl to a seemingly innocuous stepmother who refuses to age gracefully. In the same way that a storyteller is able to change the focus of the story in response to audience expectations, film is also able to change the focus of the story in order to draw in its desired audience. Few adults would be willing to pay money to see a film titled something like "Snow White: A Tale of Feelings, Family, and Female Bonding." Even though the title of the film – Snow White: A Tale of Terror – upholds the traditional importance of the role of Snow White, little is known of the actress who plays Lilliana, the Snow White character. Instead, the film’s star is Sigourney Weaver, and thus the film’s focus is on Weaver’s portrayal of the wicked stepmother, Lady Claudia. Here we see that the real tale of Snow White is not at all about a young girl’s struggle to come of age while her stepmother literally talks to a mirror, but rather it is about horrors that spawn from Lady Claudia’s refusal to accept the inevitability of aging and lead Lilliana to young-adult independence. Horrors that exacerbate the image of the hysterical, menopausal woman struggling to retain her youth and beauty. All the while, Lady Claudia is talking to a magical mirror that remains hidden within a standing wooden wardrobe behind two doors that are shaped to resemble the body of a woman in long robes. Her clasped hands hold a lily, the namesake of Lilliana – also the symbol of resurrection, rebirth, and the Virgin Mary. A transformation of character and a magic mirror sufficiently fulfills an audience’s fairy tale expectations of a wicked stepmother, but this film pushes the importance of these characteristics by shifting the focus of the story from Lilliana to Lady Claudia.
When we initially meet Lady Claudia, she is an object to be looked upon through the eyes of young Lilliana, who ascribes meaning to her. Even though we initially see Lady Claudia at the same time that the servants of the Hoffman household meet her, we do not immediately glimpse her face. Rather we see Lady Claudia through a series of fragmented close-ups. First, we see her hand in a carriage, then the back of her coiffured hair. We even have a momentary view of her profile, but we do not look upon the face of Lady Claudia until young Lilliana does. Thus, Lady Claudia is not recognized or is not fully accepted by the household until we see her through Lilliana’s eyes. If Lilliana accepts her, then everyone else will. (Fredrick Hoffman’s opinion in this matter is of little bearing.) The test of acceptance occurs when young Lilliana, instead of saying hello to Lady Claudia, says, "Look what I found. It will be a butterfly someday," while opening her hand to reveal a caterpillar. She then asks if she can keep it in a box. Instead of acting slighted when Lilliana does not return her greeting or recoiling from the harmless creature, Lady Claudia kneels down to young Lilliana’s level, looks at the caterpillar, and asks her what she will do with it when it grows wings. To which young Lilliana replies, "I’ll let her go." As a testament to her present and future goodness, Lilliana is willing to release the caterpillar when it reaches its full potential as a butterfly. Unlike Lady Claudia who holds on to the physical body of her dead child with the same obsessiveness that she holds on to her fleeing youth, Lilliana knows when to let go. Within this moment of acceptance, the power of the gaze is transferred from young Lilliana to Lady Claudia.
Generally at the entrance of the second queen, all people and prospects outside of the stepdaughter/stepmother dichotomy disappear, thus leaving the two women in a struggle for the absent king’s affection. In The Uses of Enchantment, Bruno Bettelheim describes the stepmother’s inward search as a "narcissism" whereby she is "seeking reassurance about her beauty from the magic mirror" (Bettelheim 203). In "The Queen’s Looking Glass," Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar push the boundaries of Bettelheim’s initial assertion by stating that even though the king is absent, his voice is "the voice in the mirror" ruling the queen with a "patriarchal voice of judgment" (Gilbert and Gubar 202). However, these statements do not aptly describe the mirror or the occurrence of the gaze in Snow White: A Tale of Terror. Fredrick Hoffman is not absent from the story, nor is he the patriarchal voice in the mirror since Lady’ Claudia’s mirror initially belonged to her mother and the image reflected therein is her own. In the same way that Lady Claudia is unable to identify herself outside of a direct relationship to her mother, Lady Claudia is also unable to identify herself outside of a direct relationship to Lilliana. Without Lilliana as competition, Lady Claudia has nothing on which to base her beauty and self-worth. Even though much critical discourse been written about the gaze as it exists between the wicked stepmother and her mirror, Snow White: A Tale of Terror is one of the few fairy tale films that brings to the forefront this objectification of a woman by a woman as opposed to the objectification of a woman by a man.
In Ever After: A Cinderella Story, the visual return to oral tradition is quite literal in terms of the setting. In the scene before the film’s opening credits, two distinguished looking gentlemen step out of a black carriage in front of a large, medieval castle and are immediately ushered into the presence of a regal, elderly lady who is referred to as "Your Majesty." Even though she does not specifically identify herself or the region her family once ruled, the tapestries, paintings, and servants that surround her are symbols of her royal status. She asks the two men, the Brothers Grimm, if they are wondering why a person of her age would "request an audience with the authors of children’s stories." She goes on to tell them that she finds their collection of folk tales "quite brilliant" but she was "terribly disturbed" when she read their version of the "Little Cinder Girl." At this juncture, the Brothers quickly relate all of the differences in the Cinderella tale that modern scholars still point out, such as the shoe being made of fur instead of glass or that Perrault’s version, with its magic pumpkins and fairy godmother, is closer to the truth. To the Brothers’ amazement and delight, Her Majesty "sets the record straight" by telling them the real story of Danielle, the little cinder girl, and producing a "glass" slipper. She even starts her story off in true fairy tale fashion by mimicking a style of introduction that the Brothers made famous: "Once upon a time, there lived a young girl who loved her father very much." Without this royal character to set the record straight, we might assume that the tales collected by the Brothers Grimm and other authors are closer to the truth since they were derived directly from the "folk." Yet, as this film clearly shows, the "true" story is related through a royal figure who is the great, great, great granddaughter of Queen Danielle. Therefore, the social status of a person from whom a tale is derived is not nearly as important as that person’s relationship to the people involved in the tale. This film also illuminates the importance of oral tradition by visually providing a narrator who can either respond to the needs of her immediate audience, or fulfill her own needs in relating the "truth" about the tale.
Since Danielle’s Cinderella-like story is filtered through Her Majesty, the audience is no longer receiving a female-centered story from a male voice as in previous literary fairy tales. Even though traditional authors like the Brothers Grimm often collected their initial stories from female informants which would indicate a strong female voice, those collected stories were not written down and published "as is" directly from the female informant. Rather, those collected stories were adapted to fit the needs and ideals of the authors. In Ever After an older female, much like the Sibyl of myth, is relating the story to men from her royal, but darkened cave-like room. This parallel between Her Majesty and the Sibyl should not be overlooked. According to Marina Warner in From the Beast to the Blonde: "the Sibyl, as the figure of a storyteller, bridges divisions in history as well as hierarchies of class. She offers the suggestion that sympathies can cross from different places and languages, different peoples of varied status" (Warner 11). When Her Majesty is speaking to the Brothers, she not only is bridging the gap between a royal occurrence and the "folk" rendition of that occurrence, but she is also drawing the audience into sympathy with the plight of these medieval characters who are part of her ancestry. In her resides a tale that crosses social, class, and gender boundaries since she descends from French royalty, while the Brothers are middle class, literate Germans, and the film’s audience is presumably a mix of nationalities, ages, and classes.
When Danielle is with the Prince, she is masquerading as a countess, but her quick tongue is not in keeping with the usual mannerisms of a countess. Indeed, in actuality Danielle, a servant playing dress-up as a countess, is stepping over two social boundaries. First, a countess should never voice her opinion or disagree with a man, particularly a prince. To do so is to be crude. Second, a servant should never critique any person of upper class standing or even speak to a prince as if they are acquaintances. To do so is not only insubordination, but it is also showing a familiarity that should not be there. Yet, Danielle’s self-sufficiency is ultimately tested when gypsies capture her and Prince Henry, while they are trying to find their way home from a monastery. Since she and Prince Henry are lost, Danielle removes her outer gown and climbs a tree in order to locate the castle from a better vantage point. Even though his gender demands that Prince Henry be the one who climbs a tree in this situation, his social status demands otherwise. More often than not, Princes do not climb trees when they are lost because that is what servants are for. Danielle will not let him, though, in case he should fall and "break his royal neck." In this act, Danielle completely disregards the social graces that are required – not of a woman of her servant status, but of a woman who is a countess. Furthermore, even though this scene begins with Danielle in the tree, we can safely infer from this situation that Prince Henry would have spent the entire day wandering around lost and not asking for directions to his own castle since to do so would imply that he is not completely familiar with the land that he rules and that he is not in control.
Through the character of Danielle, Ever After not only functions as a modern socializing agent but also as a civilizing agent. The audience sees her transform from a young, dirt-spattered girl, to a woman who is perfectly at ease within a royal court. We have seen this transformation before in familiar tales such as Pygmalion or My Fair Lady. She is a reminder to the audience that all one really needs to succeed in life is civility coupled with knowledge, because one’s outward appearance and station in life is malleable. Further evidence of how Danielle’s outward appearance is deceptive is often overlooked when analyzing Cinderella-type tales. What audience members, literary critics, and her stepmother, the Baroness, seem to forget is that Danielle is the daughter of a Baron. Through her father’s position, she has the same right to attend aristocratic functions that her stepsisters have. In fact she technically has even more right because she is the daughter of a Baron by birthright. The Baroness and her two daughters are only aristocracy through marriage to Danielle’s father. Danielle’s upward move to royal power is not a classic rags-to-riches story; instead, she is simply regaining her rightful aristocratic position. This unobtrusive but critical bit of information adds to the re-inscription of bourgeoisie norms and maintains class boundaries.
Even as Freeway (1996), Snow White: A Tale of Terror (1997), and Ever After: A Cinderella Story (1998) depict the traditional elements of fairy tale women, they also question and manipulate these elements in order to complicate the placid female images created within literary tradition. By utilizing both the literary tale’s stylized form and oral tradition’s multiplicity of voices and/or storytellers, fairy tale live-action film creates a complex space in which to explore the boundaries of female mobility in a patriarchal society. Ultimately, these three 1990s films still end with a "happily ever after" for the heroines and a seemingly appropriate punishment for their enemies. Both Lilliana and Danielle find true heterosexual love while restoring family wholeness by removing a dominating stepmother. These two also provide audiences with images of self-reliant, quick witted, compassionate young women. In particular, PG-rated Ever After focuses on a scrappy young woman who is a potential role model for real live girls. As for Vanessa, even though she will probably return to foster care until she is eighteen since her grandmother is dead, she still lives happily ever after knowing that the Freeway Killer is no longer a threat to any other young women. Though self-reliant and quick witted, Vanessa’s hyper propensity towards violence often overshadows her positive traits which makes her potential as a role model questionable. No matter how cleverly each female character moves beyond her traditional fairy tale role, these particular "happily ever afters" restore a conventional balance as each film reinscribes a traditional fairy tale ending. Yet Lilliana, Danielle, and Vanessa have it all in these three films, since ultimately they each have the freedom to choose.
Works Cited
Bettelheim, Bruno. The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales. New York: Vintage Books, 1977.
Ever After: A Cinderella Story. Dir. Andy Tennant. Perf. Drew Barrymore, Angelica Houston, and Dougray Scott. Videocassette. Twentieth Century Fox, 1998.
Freeway. Dir. Matthew Bright. Perf. Keifer Sutherland and Reese Witherspoon. Videocassette. Republic Pictures, 1996.
Gilbert, Sandra M., and Susan Gubar. "The Queen’s Looking Glass." Don’t Bet on the Prince. Ed. Jack Zipes. New York: Routledge, 1986. 201-08.
Snow White: A Tale of Terror. Dir. Michael Cohn. Perf. Sam Neill and Sigourney Weaver. Videocassette. Polygram Video, 1997.
Warner, Marina. From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and their Tellers. London: Chatto & Windus Limited, 1994.
Zipes, Jack. "A Second Gaze at Red Riding Hood’s Trials and Tribulations." Don’t Bet on the Prince. New York: Routledge, 1987: 227-60. |
