Thursday, April 27, 2017

Editorial: Why Maleficent is Disney's Alpha Female

I'm still involved in Camp Nanowrimo this month and preparing for our library's Sci-fi/Fantasy Festival at the end of July. And because of these ongoing projects I'm learning that I have a finite amount of creative energy, hence the series of opinion blogs this month.

But as Kingdom Hearts III is on the horizon (not ours, maybe Trenzalore has at least gotten a new screenshot) I thought it might be fitting to examine Disney's undisputed Mistress of all Evil, Maleficent. And like all retrospectives, we regrettably have to go back to the beginning. Just bear with me.

The Original Fairy Tale

Dear God in Heaven, have you ever tried to follow the original fairy tale? Or the one that was more original than that? Or the first one? As best as we know, the earliest template of the classic tale comes from an early fourteenth century French book series of romantic prose with interludes of poetry called Perceforest. In here we have the tale of Troilus who rapes the beautiful Zellandine while she's in a coma. She gives birth without waking.

In 1634, Itallian poet Giambattista Basile's tale Sun, Moon, and Talia was published two years after his death. Talia is accidentally pricked by a splinter of flax and falls into a deathlike coma. Talia's father decides she's too beautiful to bury and leaves her on display in one of his townhouses. One day a king happens upon her and tries unsuccessfully to wake her. But so overcome by her beauty, he carries her to a bed and "gathered the first fruits of love"; which, as I regret having to point out, is a flowery way of saying rape (this theme is going to keep popping up). Talia gives birth to twins. The king's wife is furious. She tries to go full (not Tyler Perry's) Madea on Talia and her children and have them murdered. When that fails, the king has his wife burned to death, marries Talia, and they live happily ever after.

Two versions and there's still no sign of Maleficent (or her rough draft), but the issues raised by feminist analyses of the Disney version are clearly on display here. The story's 'Beauty' by whatever name she's given is nothing more than an object. In the Basile version, the king's wife is punished for being outraged by her husband's infidelity, whereas the king is treated as if he's the hero of the piece.

I'm not a historian, but my gut tells me that the actions of Troilus and the king were not thought of as objectionable by their respective audiences or authors. Given the history of the way women have been viewed in society, I wonder if anybody even considered that 'Beauty' might have liked some say in what was done to her body. But we'll be seeing more of this topic as we go, so for now let's move on.

The Charles Perrault version is the one Disney seemed to turn to for inspiration. The newborn gets cursed by an old fairy who had resided in a tower for so long that everyone thought she was dead. After six of seven fairy godmothers grant the child gifts of beauty, happiness, rhythm, health, a new car and a college fund, the old fairy loses it. She decides that the candle that burns the brightest should in fact burn shorter (she kind of has a point), and thus the whole spindle thing. You know the rest. Although there is a second act that goes all over the place with an ogre mom and some crap about a pit of vipers; making this the medieval equivalent of Abbey Road's side B.

For all of its shortcomings (and there are many) the Perrault version at least provides a credible motivation for Maleficent's understudy. One of the great fears of the elderly is being forgotten and left to die on their own. Perrault may not show the old fairy much sympathy, but her anger clearly comes from a place of pain. This element may not have been intended by Perrault, and I certainly don't think Walt Disney intended to work it in either, but the echo of pain possibly found it's way into Maleficent's character anyway.

The Disney Version

I tackled this era pretty thoroughly two years ago, but here's the highlights. Maleficent was kind of a hybrid of the two main female villains before her, Queen Grimhilde and Lady Tremaine (sharing her voice actress and model with the latter). She seemed to take the best traits of both, combining the Queen's above-the-law selfishness with the stepmother's patient seething. This film has the unique and instantly iconic dragon transformation preceded by a rare Disney use of the word 'Hell' that nobody has been able to top.

The film has its flaws, mainly any scene that doesn't involve Maleficent. But more so is a bit of character inconsistency that encourages discussion. What exactly was she so pissed about? The official reason is that she wasn't invited to Aurora's christening, but nobody is buying that. This Maleficent is too...grounded to care about something that trivial. Disney left us an unanswered mystery which was probably an error in judgment from the studio, but Audley enough (see what I did there?) it invites the audience into her psyche in a way very few villains do.

One of the reasons Maleficent has such a strong fan base is that everything about her reads as wishing to be understood. Not waiting around for it to happen of course. But one can't help but wonder if there was a deeper conflict with Maleficent that could have been resolved through respect and diplomacy.

Going back to the feminist analysis, Sleeping Beauty provides a dichotomy between Aurora and Maleficent that easily represents a problematic trope regarding the way male film makers portray female characters. Aurora is 'good'. She's also young, passive, powerless, harmless, and beautiful. Maleficent is 'evil'. She's also old, proactive, powerful, destructive, and...you know, let's look at beauty for a moment.

Yes, Maleficent has the traditional face associated with witches but that doesn't exactly disqualify her as beautiful, it only provides a context for beauty that our view on Aurora takes for granted. Maleficent is elegant. Like so many Disney villains, she has a natural charisma. The sheer power and dominance she exhibits all feed into a different kind of beauty. Aurora is beautiful, but quite a lot of what makes her so is the lack of tarnish by any qualities that would detract from her virginal innocence. You could almost say she's beautiful because of what she isn't; most accessibly, she's not Maleficent.

Fun digression: when I worked at Disney World, there were very few Auroras. Cinderellas were everywhere because it was her castle, and her rags to riches story is exactly what Disney wants little girls to buy into. So if you happened to be chosen to portray Aurora in her rare appearances, you were most likely also playing Cinderella some of the time. I once asked an Aurora how she, as a performer, distinguished between the two. She told me that for her, Cinderella was the peasant girl who always believed she was a princess deep down inside. So her interactions with children were very princess-centric. "Oh, you've been to my castle show! Have you met my fairy godmother?" Aurora never thought about princesses until she was thrust into the role. As such, her interactions were less about herself and more about them. "Do you have something fun planned today? Really, EPCOT. What's that?" I always thought that was brilliant considering Aurora's character gives you so little to work with.

The Kingdom Hearts Version

I was so glad to see Disney place Maleficent in the foreground of the Kingdom Hearts series. If we're talking sheer power in the Disney canon, Hades is a god and Chernabog is the embodiment of darkness. But Maleficent is correctly selected as the most active member of the villain's unit to work with/against Organization XIII.

And why is that? Because most of the villains are limited in their scope and use. It makes no sense to have Jafar wandering around Halloween Town, or Captain Hook popping into Wonderland. Maleficent has versatility. She can interact with just about any character and still feel like herself. And when you place her in a grander scope world than Aurora's story, Maleficent almost starts to resemble a protagonist. Hell, in Kingdom Hearts II, she and lackey Pete make a sacrifice that comes across as from-a-certain-point-of-view heroic.

The Once Upon a Time Version

I did not like Kristin Bauer van Straten's portrayal of Maleficent in the show's first season for two reasons. One, she was a throwaway character, and Maleficent deserves better. Two, no way some apple polisher is going to get the better of a freaking dragon. But, you know, the series evolved.

Season four was where van Straten got to shine (and the series peaked). Here we got to see Maleficent as a mother. And my God did van Straten play the most complex version of Maleficent to date! She actually tries to reason with Snow White and Prince Charming. Once Upon a Time has been more hit than miss regarding its adaptations, but they knocked it out of the park with Maleficent. She's not evil, she's hurting. If there's any character arc worthy of a spinoff, it's the dragon lady.

Maleficent

Angelina Jolie is a fantastic actress, but I was not pleased when I heard she was cast as Maleficent. My concern was that she would be playing herself in the role, the way she did with Lara Croft. I was thankfully proven wrong. The movie was far from perfect, but damn if Jolie didn't get the essence of the character down.

The filmmakers have all but confirmed the story they told was a rape allegory; and Jolie has explicitly stated it was how she approached the role. Whether they were deliberately channeling the original fairy tales or not is unclear, but the point is we've come full circle. Except Maleficent has essentially taken the bullet for Sleeping Beauty.

As a man, one thing that really gets under my skin is hearing other men gripe about 'feminist propaganda'. We live in a patriarch society that we have created to be a patriarch. We don't experience that society as the non-favored gender. And any man who is so quick to reduce something to a dismissive label is saying "I can't be bothered to even try listening". The world is changing. Maybe not as much as I thought (#notmypresident), but it is changing and will continue to. And in the meantime, a movie like Maleficent serves a vital purpose in helping us understand a horrible experience that happens to so many people so very often.

Conclusion

In the end it's not to suggest that Maleficent is destined to be a purely feminist icon. More accurately, she has the flexibility of character to be whatever she needs to be to whoever she needs to be it for. Good versus evil is a story that has been told to death. That grey area in between has so many possibilities, and it seems to be the direction our stories are going.

The strength of Maleficent in the classic film is that we're not clear why she's evil. And as we revisit her further and further away from it, we begin to wonder if she really is evil at all. Yes, she calls herself the Mistress of All Evil, but that could mean anything. It could mean she is born out of evil, or has dwelled within it so long that she has become its guiding force. Or perhaps it's a label that was given to her that she now wears proudly like a scarlet letter 'A'. In my Disney fan fiction series, I approach it as if Maleficent is a dam controller responsible for holding evil back, and having to decide when to release the floodgate and in what dosage.

My sense is that our dragon lady is only getting warmed up. Now that Maleficent portrayed her as the protagonist, I hope this affects the way Kingdom Hearts thinks about her. She's the only villain in the game series that has any claim on being a playable character. And damn it, she's earned it.

So what makes her Disney's alpha female? You know, I really have no idea. It may not be something that can be reduced to a simple statement. But probably more than any other character in the studio's history, Maleficent represents the tip of an undiscovered iceberg. And that by itself means she's at least a step ahead of the rest of us.

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