Fairy Tale Film Club: 'Maleficent' (2014)

Welcome to the first of a (hopefully) fortnightly feature, Fairy Tale Film Club. It's a bit of an ambitious and, let's face it, slightly desperate title because this 'club' just is entirely made up of just me, watching films, alone. I'm not film critic in any sense of the word (I think I’m blind to camera angles) so these posts are going to focus less on reviewing films and more on how fairy tales have expanded and been developed to fit the (slightly more) modern medium of film. Because of this, they're going to be packed full of spoilers - you have been warned.

First up is Maleficent, a three-dimensional re-imagining of the Basile/Perrault tale and Disney classic, Sleeping Beauty. The film is centred on the croissant-headed villain from all our childhood nightmares and shows that she isn't quite as malignant as the original motion picture makes her out to be. Following Oz the Great and Powerful to the big screen by about a year, Maleficent is part of Disney's current string of live-action reinterpretations of classic films, often depicting the origins of popular culture’s most hated villains; Disney has always had a tendency to be quite black and white in their depictions of good and evil. By drawing on existing films, one could be accuse Disney of simply struggling to find new source material to work with, instead returning to the tried-and-tested favourites to make easy money at the box office. But I find it hard to be so cynical about Disney, a franchise that has, after all, largely been built on retelling other people's stories. Fairy tales, by their very nature, call for constant reinterpretation as they are passed down through different mediums, cultures and ages. Just as Sleeping Beauty reflects the romantic values of the 1950s, Maleficent manipulates the story so that it reflects Disney's updated twenty-first century values.

Anyone who appears in green flames HAS to be irredeemably evil, right?

And Disney's values are certainly changing. Once upon a time if you were a single princess, you were pretty much screwed if you met any misfortune. This is, most probably, because their interpretations closely followed the values in the original fairy tales. It’s little wonder, then, that we grew up thinking our lives are over if we get dumped - your life IS over if you haven’t found your ‘true love’ by the age of sixteen. This outdated reliance of romance, which usually occurs after very little dialogue between the couple, is finally being overridden by independence and more focus on platonic and familial love. The dangers of committing yourself to a man you barely know are evident in Frozen, and more Disney princesses are remaining single at the end of films, finding fulfillment independent of romance. So when, in Maleficent, Prince Philip fails to revive Aurora with his kiss, but Maleficent, who has developed a maternal affection for the girl, can, we see that 'love at first sight' pales in comparison to that between a mother figure and her child.

The loss of love is often attributed to a female character's turn to evil. In Oz the Great and Powerful, which serves as a prequel to Baum's work, we also became acquainted with a villain's backstory. We witness the doe-eyed, love-struck Theodora being left heartbroken by the Wizard and, as a result, turning green becoming the Wicked Witch of the West, bent on destroying everyone. And I thought my break ups were bad. However, this Wicked Witch origin story lacks the depth and originality of Gregory Maguire's novel, Wicked. Whereas Maguire creates a multi-faceted, witty heroine with politically and morally complex backstory, Disney relies on the tiresome 'spurned woman' trope. We all know that romantic, happy endings are important in fairy tales - literally a case of life or death - and it's understandable how the inability to fulfil this obligation could naturally lead to a life of evil. But this is the twenty-first century, can't we stop seeing female villains as such delicate flowers, incapable of malice without having been heartbroken, and just let them be greedy or evil for the sake of it?

Initially, Maleficent looks like it's going down the same heavily-soiled path. We are introduced to Maleficent as a forest-dwelling fairy child of the Moors, with startling cheekbones and trademark horns, but a pair of wings that aren't familiar with fans of the animated original. She's innocent, but to be honest, anyone who gives their child a name like Maleficent is just asking for trouble. She meets Stefan, with whom she shares 'true love's kiss' as a teenager, but he later disappears to pursue his ambition at the castle. As an adult, Maleficent uses her wings to protect the Moors from invaders from the kingdom, and when she mortally wounds the current king in battle, he pledges that the man who slays her will be his successor. Stefan visits Maleficent under the guise of rekindling their relationship, drugs her and cuts off her wings to return to the king as evidence of her demise. Heartbroken, Maleficent becomes the secluded (save for her human/crow companion, Diaval) queen of the Moors, fixated on revenge.

Although heartbroken about her lost love, Maleficent’s evil deeds are a result of her lost wings, and the freedom that came with them. Angelina Jolie herself has admitted that the act of drugging Maleficent and taking her wings was consciously conceived as a metaphor for rape, as her identity is bound with her wings in the same way that a woman's identity includes the freedom to choose whom she has sexual relations with. Like rape, it is the theft of a body. It is only through learning to love Aurora that Maleficent regains her original self, and relinquishes the need to avenge what she has lost. It is an ending that is concerned with love, but is not as restricting as the old-fashioned fixation on romance.

Naturally, there has been some moral outcry from militant parents who don't want their little darlings to be exposed to the story of a woman reclaiming her sense of self after an assault. However, the metaphor is veiled that it isn't evident to many adults, let alone a child with little or no knowledge of sex. The use of sexual metaphor in a film based on a fairy tale is hardly surprising considering the lurid meaning of much of the source material. In Giambattista Basile’s Sun, Moon and Talia, the original Sleeping Beauty tale, princess Talia is put to sleep by a splinter of flax; Basile must have thought that princesses were excessively fragile if they could be overcome by a plant. A passing king is enraptured by her death-like beauty, and so rapes her in her sleep. She becomes pregnant and gives birth to his children in her slumber, and only wakes up when one of her babies, searching for a nipple to nurse on, sucks on her finger instead and removes the splinter. After some nasty business with the king's wife - under which logic Basile chose to make her the villain instead a man who has sex with unknowing girls in their sleep, I don't know -Talia and the king live happily ever after. This debacle ends on the worst moral I have ever come across in a story:

"Those whom fortune favors

Find good luck even in their sleep"

Nope. violation and a resulting pregnancy is never "good luck", whether it’s by a king or not. Maleficent puts the blame back where it belongs - on the violator.

The spinning wheel, added by Perrault to replace the splinter of flax, is a simultaneously masculine and feminine icon, pertaining to the sexual acts in Sun, Moon and Talia. On one hand, the pointed needle is a phallic symbol, representing the dangers associated with sex. On the other hand, the circular motion of this domestic object reminds us of the perpetual nature of gender-assigned roles, confining the female to the home. Let's look at this in comparison to Sun, Moon and Talia. It is through the one-sided act of sex with the king during her sleep, a time where she has absolutely no say in the outcome, that Talia's domestic destiny is decided, as bearing the king's children automatically assigns her a place in the his home. She has no choice but to be overjoyed, because as a woman she must remain passive, her future decided by external forces such as licentious kings and splinters of flax. Had she not been happy with the king’s actions, would she have had a say in the matter?

Fairy tales, such as Little Red Riding Hood, are often used as metaphors to warn young girls about the dangers of men and sex. Still, Perrault depicts Sleeping Beauty as being, despite warning, drawn to the sharp point of the needle; she cannot sate her curiosity until she has touched it. Sex can be seen as damaging to a young woman because it could have bound them to a man through pregnancy and the resulting marriage – they could have as little choice in their life partner as a sleeping woman, yet would need to force themselves to be content with it. In the era of fairy tales, sex could bind women in the domestic cycle, limiting their personal choice. In the same way, Maleficent’s freedom to fly and protect her land is restricted after her violation, yet this time, it is viewed negatively. Contrary to Sun, Moon and Talia, the actions performed upon Maleficent in her sleep are not considered good fortune doesn't find good fortune in her sleep. In fact, any invasive action during sleep has no true benefits.

Maleficent is a critique of male entitlement to female space, the same entitlement that the king is guilty of in Sun, Moon and Talia. There is clear a dichotomy between male and female geographical spaces in the film. The Moors, where Maleficent rules, is a space related to femininity and the stereotypical role of reproducer and nurturer, as it is a wild, natural and fertile place where Maleficent discovers her maternal instinct. Stefan's castle on the other hand, is cold, angular and stone, relating to male warfare and power. It is entirely governed by men - the queen has very little screen time, her death going unnoticed in favor of Stefan's quest for power, and the fairies fulfil their duties away from the castle in the woods. These spaces are entirely built on stereotypes associated with the sexes.

It is not a criticism of men in general, but a criticism of the archaic attitudes towards female independence and allowing women to govern their own spaces. It is the inability of the male characters of power to accept that there is a space run by a woman, independent of male influence,  that makes them the villains. They try to take her land by force, as rape is taking a woman's body by force. By removing the wings that make her powerful, the castle are removing the threats associated with autonomous females in society. Maleficent reclaims her original identity, putting aside vengeance, when she learns to love Aurora, who is as irritating as you'd imagine anyone who's been blessed to never feel sad would be. She is therefore reconciling the idea of traditional feminity – maternal – with being poweful. Feminity and power do not have to be mutually exclusive.

The film has been criticised for forgoing a one-dimensional character for Maleficent in favour of an irredeemably evil male character. However, Stefan’s evil is necessary, showing how entitlement to female space is unacceptable and unnecessary to society, that putting too much emphasis on isolates your loved ones and, as Maleficent shows, it is possible to rule with compassion.

For more on the rape imagery in Maleficent, read Robyn Bahr's article here.

Next time: Red Riding Hood (2011)