Showing posts with label feminist. Show all posts
Showing posts with label feminist. Show all posts

Friday, September 7, 2018






Angelina Jolie Says Feminism Is About ‘Equality’ And ‘The Freedom To Make Our Own Choices’


Angelina Jolie does not believe feminism should come at the expense of men.

The actress, filmmaker, and humanitarian spoke on the topic of feminism and femininity in a Q&A with perfume line Mon Guerlain.

“Equality is not about us all being the same, it is about the freedom to make our own choices and live our own lives fully, not at the expense of men, but alongside men,” Jolie said. “It is not about taking each other down but building each other up. I think it is not said enough how much we need the men in our lives to be strong and capable and the best they can be.”


But expressing herself as a woman did not always come so easy to Jolie. In fact, it was motherhood that shifted her perspective. “That sense of ease grows and changes with each passing year and each stage in life,” she explained. “For me, it is about learning to accept yourself and what life brings.”

Jolie, 43, refuses to buy into the idea that women are spoiled goods once they hit 40: “It is just simply not true. Wisdom, understanding, clarity of thought — all the things that come with age — are also beautiful and feminine qualities. I’d like to think we all get better with age — men and women.”

“There is nothing more attractive than someone being fully themselves, without inhibition, in whatever form that takes,” Jolie said when asked how women should tackle conflicting ideas of femininity. “We all recognize it when we see it — those women whose beauty is their spirit, and their inability to be anything other than true to themselves.”

One way Jolie expresses her femininity is with her new perfume Mon Guerlain Eau de Toilette. How does perfume represent femininity, you may ask? “By lending itself to your every mood, and escaping definition,” said Jolie. “That is what I love about Mon Guerlain.”




She described the fragrance as “classic, refined, understated elegance combined with strength of mind and character. Poise.”

Working as an actress, Jolie has had many an opportunity to lose herself in a character. Her role in “A Mighty Heart” particularly stands out “because Marianne is a woman I admire and learn from. She has overcome so much with strength and grace.”

Jolie is keeping very busy these days and has a number of notable upcoming movie credits. She will voice Stella in “The One and Only Ivan” starring Bryan Cranston. The actress will also reprise her role in Disney’s “Maleficent II” and star opposite David Oyelowo in “Come Away”.



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Wednesday, July 2, 2014







thenewyorker

July 2, 2014

Love’s True Kiss: “Maleficent”’s Complex Sexual Politics

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The sexual politics of Disney’s “Maleficent” are a complicated business. The most important thing, or at least the basic thing, is that the moviemakers took a villainess and turned her into a sympathetic character. “Maleficent” is an update of “The Sleeping Beauty,” which, to name the three versions especially relevant to the new movie, is a seventeenth-century tale by Charles Perrault; a nineteenth-century Russian ballet—probably the most honored of all nineteenth-century ballets—choreographed by Marius Petipa to a score by Tchaikovsky; and a 1959 Disney animated feature. Unsurprisingly, since these renditions come from different centuries and different media, they vary in many details (I will favor the details of the ballet in its modern versions), but on one point they emphatically agree: an innocent princess, Aurora (her name means “sunrise”), is condemned to death, or to a permanent coma, by an evil fairy, supposedly because, by mistake, the fairy was not invited to the princess’s christening party. A lot of readers and movie- and ballet-watchers will notice that, at the party, the invited guests are all dressed in pretty clothes and have nice manners, while the evil fairy wears a slick black garment, simultaneously deluxe and sinister, and arrives at the palace in a carriage drawn by rats or the like—circumstances that raise a doubt as to whether her exclusion was, in fact, due to a clerical error. Might she not be a reiteration of an old trope: Eris, the goddess of discord, who threw the golden apple, thereby precipitating the Trojan War? Might she not be that thing we’ve all been told about, the thing than which Hell hath no greater fury: a woman scorned?

In the new movie, the fairy’s wrath is given a backstory. We meet two children. One is Stefan, a regular country boy. The other is a girl he has encountered in the woods: Maleficent, with a sweet, round, normal face but also, curiously, wings. The wings are not dainty little things, like something on an Advent card. They are big and brown, and, as I remember, they are taller than Maleficent. She zooms around on them wildly. She is not vain about them, however; she thinks they are just part of her body. To us, on the other hand, they are magical, making her both beautiful and weird. Her name (invented for the 1959 animated movie) is another double message. It means “evil-doer”—a prophecy of what will happen in the film—but many people will associate it with some pretty, old-fashioned girl’s name, such as Millicent or, more likely, with “magnificent.”

Maleficent and Stefan are friends. But the king of the territories neighboring Maleficent’s goes to war with her and loses, whereupon he declares that whoever can kill her will succeed him as king. Stefan goes to visit Maleficent and brings his dagger, but he can’t bring himself to murder her. (Think of Snow White and the huntsman.) So he does something almost worse: he drugs her and cuts off her wings. Blessedly, we don’t see this happen. We only hear, once Maleficent awakens, her horrible cries—low, guttural, unstoppable—rising out of the woods. Angelina Jolie, who plays the adult Maleficent, has said that it was clear to her and to the writer that the removal of the wings was an image of rape. I am certain that someone involved must also have had clitoridectomy in mind. A piece of the girl’s body, and a source of power and happiness, has been sliced off. The wings are taken to the castle and hung in a glass case, like a display in the Museum of Natural History.

Stefan, as promised, becomes king. He and his queen produce Princess Aurora (Elle Fanning), and then begins the real story, the story of Maleficent’s emotional life. (Reportedly, fifteen minutes were cut from the beginning of the movie in order to get to this business faster.) Frightened by a death curse that Maleficent has laid on the baby, King Stefan sends Aurora away, to be reared by three fairies, lovable but silly old ladies. While they are off doing whatever they do, Aurora is watched over by—yes—Maleficent. Maleficent didn’t mean to get involved in this. Early on, she says to one of the cute little girls who plays the young Aurora, “I do not like children.” This is a meta joke. First of all, the child actress whom Jolie is speaking to is her own five-year-old daughter, Vivienne Jolie-Pitt. Second, Jolie demonstrably does like children. She and her mate, Brad Pitt, are famous philoprogenitives. They have six children, three of them adopted,and she has been a leader in international child-protection movements. From another angle, too, she has a special relationship to motherhood. As she explained on the Op-Ed page of the Times last year, she recently had a double mastectomy, because she had learned from genetic testing that she was at a very high risk for breast cancer. A big-time, gorgeous movie star, announcing that she has had both of her breasts removed: Is this something that Marilyn Monroe would have done? It is not.

Which brings us to the next point. Jolie, who often plays a sexy little item—in several of her early movies she was one of those “Nikita” types, with the short skirt and the lethal weapon—becomes, in “Maleficent,” the very opposite, a mater dolorosa. The evil spell hanging over Aurora is such that, if she is pricked by a spindle, she will fall into a deep sleep and will revive only by “love’s true kiss.” Maleficent, now fond of Aurora, tries to get every spindle in the kingdom removed from Aurora’s reach. When that doesn’t work—Aurora is pricked, and she succumbs—Maleficent gets in touch with Prince Phillip, a nice young man from a neighboring kingdom. He and Aurora met once before, and they liked each other. Now here he comes again; he kisses her, and we await the promised result. Her eyelashes will flutter, her bosom will rise and fall. But they don’t. This is the film’s wittiest and most politically forthright moment: kiss, wait, wait, nothing. Maleficent gives up. Clearly, Aurora will sleep forever. Before leaving to return to the woods, Maleficent leans over the body of the sleeping girl and plants a farewell kiss on her brow. And Aurora wakes up! That is “love’s true kiss”: not romantic love, the thunderbolt, but a steady, daily love. And not necessarily from a man, who you think will magically save you, but from a woman, who perhaps will unmagically save you just by having loved you, quietly, for a long time.

It is to Jolie’s enormous credit that she is able to put this wholesome revisionist message across without righteousness or sentimentality. Her performance is less a matter of words than of small physical details: tilts of her lovely head, topped, here, with a pair of Minoan-bull type horns; gleams of the eyes, plunging to great, green depths; and, of course, adjustments of the famous Duchampian cheekbones, whose angularity was greatly enhanced for the occasion by the Disney makeup people. Jolie manages to be both soft and sharp, poignant and yet still a little slithery. (Those horns are covered in black leather, or something close.) This is a quite a trick, but perhaps not for Jolie. In her early years, she was a wild thing. She told interviewers that she had tried every drug she could find, that she was bisexual, that she was interested in B.D.S.M., and so on. She showed off her many tattoos. Now, at thirty-nine, she is a special envoy for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Perhaps it wasn’t so hard for her, in “Maleficent,” to be both a badass and a paragon.

The film’s moral tolerance extends to its other characters. The treatment of the men is especially interesting. King Stefan falls to his death from one of the castle’s high parapets, but, God knows, he had it coming. As for the rather goofy Prince Phillip, his ineffectual kiss is not laughed at, and when we last see him and Aurora they seem to be happily getting to know each other. In the meantime, Maleficent has acquired a sort of lieutenant, Diaval, who is a shape-shifter. His default position is as a raven, but he can pretty much be whatever she needs: a dragon, etc. In the end, Maleficent’s wings are restored—they sense her presence in the castle and escape from their vitrine to reattach themselves to her—whereupon she and Diaval zoom off, pulsing, into a white sky. God bless them! Above all, God bless Maleficent, who wasn’t sure, until the end, that she wanted to do all those good deeds.

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Tuesday, June 24, 2014






by Robyn Bahr
June 24, 2014 2:38 PM



Not since  I Spit on Your Grave have I seen such an intrepid and compelling rape-revenge film.

I am talking, of course, about Disney's Maleficent, the latest in a long line of revisionist fairy-tale epics to hit theaters in the last few years, though this might be the first one that I actually found personally inspiring. And it goes further in its exploration of sexual assault than any mainstream fantasy film might dare.

Maleficent presents the "untold" backstory of Disney's classic Sleeping Beauty villain, portraying the dark fairy in her youth as a winged protector of a colorful, enchanted forest kingdom inhabited by a number of magical creatures. She is fierce and loyal to her homeland, relying on her magnificent wings not only as weapons for defense against invading armies, but as boons to surveil her personal paradise. They aren't just instruments: they are a part of who she is and how she lives.

In a pivotal moment early in the film, Maleficent is raped. The rape is not via a sex act, though to be fair, rape is never about sex at all: it's about power. And power, in this case, will literally be bestowed on anyone in the neighboring kingdom who can provide the crown with Maleficent's corpse. After years of silence, her long-lost human love Stefan (Sharlto Copley) returns to her and they share the twilight together in the glow of wistful reunion. Maleficent suddenly slips into sleep; your stomach drops as you realize Stefan has drugged her drink. Your heart stops when you understand he intends to sever her wings.

Many commenters have debated whether this film is about rape at all and whether that subject matter, even veiled, is appropriate for young audiences. Others have reminded us that the filmmakers are putting the subtext of the original story back where it belongs.

Instead of shying away from the connection, Angelina Jolie has thankfully seized the opportunity to be honest about her intent: "We were very conscious, the writer [Linda Woolverton] and I, that it was a metaphor for rape," Jolie said in an interview with BBC Woman's Hour. The actress, an advocate for women's issues around the world, recently spoke at the Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict, commenting on the struggles of rape survivors in countries torn apart by war. Jolie knew what she was doing with this role: she was shining a light on the diverse emotional difficulties of women who are attacked, injured, and humiliated when they are most vulnerable.

But this is no Lifetime movie-of-the-week. Beautifully, it embraces its own darkness. Too often, rape on screen is at best denied and at worst, made to seem arousing. Stefan doesn't wrestle with Maleficent or "take her by force," the typical image we've come to associate with rape. (He may exploit her body, but the camera does not.) Nor does she change her mind in the middle, or consent and then regret it later. She is unconscious. Period. And when Maleficent awakes, Stefan gone and with him something so deeply ingrained in her identity, she cries out in physical and emotional agony for nearly a minute. It is brutal to witness.

But it is important to watch her pain, to see her suffering and how it manifests into the blackness she shrouds around her kingdom and her own body. She doesn't cower, but instead chooses rage. Maleficent is not ashamed; she's ready to inflict pain. Real-life survivors have many ways of coping with sexual assault, but there is something deeply gratifying about seeing a movie star, larger-than-life on the big screen, don a decadent black cape to confront the man who has stripped her of a piece of herself and simply fuck his shit up. It's commonly brought up in feminist discourse that women are socialized to modulate our personalities to appear "pleasant" or "nice" and certainly undemanding. When Maleficent walks in her own anger, it is powerful to behold.

What makes this film truly audacious, however, is not its portrayal of Maleficent's wrath or cynicism, but how it pushes the rape symbolism to include an aspect of sexual assault that is often ignored, denied, or papered over: pregnancy. Maleficent does not physically give birth to Aurora/Sleeping Beauty, but the girl is still a child of rape. When Stefan slices off our heroine's wings and presents them to his king, he is given the hand of the royal princess and secures his place as next in line for the throne. Without Maleficent's wings, he never would have been able to marry the royal woman. There is no Aurora had her father not violated the woman he claimed to love. There is no Aurora without Maleficent.

When Maleficent barges into the infant's christening and curses her to eternal sleep upon the prick of her finger, she has no intention of true love's kiss returning the girl to consciousness; she doesn't believe in true love now that the illusion has hurt her. Yet she remains drawn to the child, even after three squabbling pixies whisk Aurora away to the woods for her own safety. Maleficent is fueled by her hatred, calling her "beastie." She is fearful of her, disgusted by her. But even against her own rational judgment, she slowly begins to protect the child as she watches her from afar, using her magic to keep the curious little girl from harm. The audience begins to understand this is not just a story about revenge, but about the complicated mother-child relationship that can arise from violence.

Later, Aurora finds her "fairy godmother" and Maleficent is entranced by her metaphorical daughter and consumed by the guilt of cursing her all those year ago. It would be easy to dismiss the film as sentimental by the time Maleficent discovers that only she can provide the "true love's kiss" of her own doing, even politically conservative for seemingly suggesting the birth of a child from rape could be rewarding. But that would be diminishing the beauty and power of that moment and of this rare mother-daughter action film.

I loved Maleficent because we need images of women's sexual trauma and anger, not for the sake of fetishism or torture porn or sexual thrill, but to show that there is just as much pain in "invisible" violence as there is in the assault narrative we normally see portrayed. We need them to fuel activism and to strengthen the voices of those who are hesitant to reveal their experiences. Maleficent is loud and proud and making hundreds of millions of dollars at the box office. Frozen, ostensibly about the dangers of suppressing your feelings and personality for the sake of others, is now the fifth highest grossing film of all time. These movies are making money. People are responding.

Robyn Bahr is a writer and humorist who lives in Cambridge, MA. She tweets @RobynBahr about television, pop culture, and fat politics.





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Tuesday, June 17, 2014







The New Kind of True Love

We don't always need Prince Charming to save the day.

By Laura Cohen

We know the standard Disney fairy tale formula by now: The princess is either cursed, trapped, or in some other major predicament, and only one thing can save her — true love. And that true love has always come in the form of a dreamy prince. Until now.

Disney's Maleficent has made a splash at the box office over the past few weeks, and besides being a cinematic masterpiece starring Angelina Jolie, it put a new twist on an old classic. It turns out the seemingly evil queen isn't so bad at all — she's been betrayed by the man she believed was her true love when he takes what is most important to her. In revenge, Maleficent seeks to lure his daughter, the princess, into an eternal sleep, but ends up bonding with her in a way we did not expect. Instead of Prince Phillip saving Aurora with that true love's kiss, it was a kiss on the forehead from mother-figure Maleficent herself that did the trick.

Strong female bonds are important to many women and a remain big part of many of our lives. Let's be real, there's just some times where you need a girlfriend, and the man in your life just doesn't get it. Mothers and daughters, sisters and friends — these are the female bonds that actually end up saving us the most in real life, so it's about time the movies reflect that. Especially Disney movies, which attract moviegoers of all ages.

Frozen was the first to shake things up last year. First, soon-to-be-queen Elsa actually attempts to talk some sense into sister Anna who wants to get engaged to someone she just met and doesn't know, shutting down the classic princess story formula from the beginning. After Hans won't even kiss Anna to save her freezing heart (since he's a complete jerk and was only using her to acquire the Kingdom of Arrendelle), we thought maybe noble mountain man Kristoff would be the solution. But it turned out to be the act of love between two sisters that saved the day. Anna's near sacrifice for Elsa unthawed her own heart and showed Elsa how she can stop the eternal winter. Throughout the entire film, Anna’s relationships to Hans, Kristoff, and even trusty snowman Olaf are totally secondary to the one with her sister.

These may be princess movies, but they represent so much more. Close relationships among women are crucial in today's world, whether we're battling congress for better gun control or coming together to decrease the wage gap. It's time that female solidarity is reflected in the movies we view.

Not only are we starting to get more female lead characters starring in movies (whether fantastical or animated), they're actually getting to love and care about each other — all without needing to be "saved" by men. Let's keep this up.





Angelina Jolie is talking about rape.
Last week the Academy Award-winning actress all but took over the Internet when she joined Foreign Secretary William Hague in leading the Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict. The summit came just days after the opening of Jolie’s current film, Maleficent, which opened at number-one at the box office and has since grossed over $150 million worldwide. The Disney production is a retelling of the 1959 animated classic from the villain’s point of view, one that has received mixed reviews among critics but garnered significant attention in feminist circles for its provocative storyline.
The moment that transforms Maleficent from a fun-loving, quirky woodland fairy into cruel, pissed-off sorceress is an act of violence. The man she thought was her friend drugs her, and while she is unconscious, he saws off her wings. She wakes up bleeding, in pain, a part of her destroyed. Sobbing. It feels like a sexual assault.
Yes, it does, and according to Jolie (who also serves as the film’s executive producer), it was meant to. During an interview on the BBC Woman’s Hour, Jolie was explicit that the integral scene was intentionally written as a metaphor for rape. 
This is no small feat in a feature film by one of America’s most prominent and beloved studios, known for its portrayal of women as lovesick, house-arrested, eye-candy. Jolie’s participation in lobbying for legislative change on a global front is inspiring, though it may be Maleficent that is challenging the most insidious of oppressors—the Hollywood feature film. As the L.A. Times’ Betsy Sharkey points out, “It’s one thing to speak in front of global dignitaries about the need to combat rape; it’s quite another to slip that message into a global blockbuster.”
It is no secret that there is tremendous gender disparity in Hollywood—where the stories of men are told in the words of men, through the lenses of men, and about the desires of men. In 2013, the MPAA reported that 52 percent of movie going audiences were women, yet of the year’s top 500 grossing films, women comprised only 30 percent of speaking roles, only half of which were protagonists.  When women are present (as characters who are predominantly written by men), they are often regulated to the usual roles of ingénue, mother, or wicked witch/queen/stepmother.
This is a pattern so consistent that The Atlantic's Raina Lipstiz argued Thelma & Louise was the last great movie about women. That was 23 years ago.
Combating this is one of the ways Maleficent creates real change, as making a truly progressive film for women means more than just passing the Bechdel Test. Maleficent has two female protagonists, and the majority of the film focuses on the relationship they develop with each other. It was written by a woman, Disney veteran Linda Woolverton, who credits the film with one of the most emotional moments of her career, the kiss scene between Maleficent and Aurora/Sleeping Beauty.
You have to rewrite these things 100 times, and every single time I wrote it I could barely get through it. I did Homeward Bound, you know that dog movie? Every single time I wrote the moment over the hill when everyone comes back at the end, I would cry into my hand over the keyboard. The kiss scene was like that for me.
Woolverton’s emotional attachment and her assertion that 20 years ago she couldn’t have written “as complex a lead character” is a reflection of the rampant sexism in Hollywood, echoing the growing frustration of female moviegoers who yearn to see characters in their likeness and stories that mirror their own experiences.
Of course, the film has it’s flaws and allows ample opportunity for feminist critique. It is, in fact, a fairy tale created in the same old storybook of kingdoms and hierarchies and colonization, one so lackluster in creativity that blogger Lindy West asks, “You could have built any world you wanted to—why choose one ruled by the same regressive, white-washed mid-century morality as every other 'modern' fairy tale? Aren't thou bored?”
West goes on to note the glaring acceptance of gender normativity by the female characters who exist as “moldy feminine tropes—the sullied innocent, the abandoned lover lost without her man, the evil ex-girlfriend, the overreacting harpy, the broken woman redeemed by motherhood.”
It’s true. West’s analyses evoke Audre Lorde’s assertion that the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. But focusing on the ways Maleficent reinforces stereotypical images of women distracts from the vital moments when it does not, most notably the conscious choice by the writer and executive producer to create a national dialogue about rape and sexual assault, in a country where it largely goes unspoken. Fairy tale or not, Maleficent is reflective of the experiences of #YesAllWomen.
“The Longest War” is what writer Rebecca Solnit calls America’s cultural relationship between sexual violence and gender:
At the heart of the struggle of feminism to give rape, date rape, marital rape, domestic violence, and workplace sexual harassment legal standing as crimes has been the necessity of making women credible and audible.
The feminist lessons in Maleficent may not have the same magnitude as those taught in college classrooms or published in scholarly journals, but they are reflective of a common experience among American women and girls. These women, though they may not live in a categorical warzone, live in a country where 1 in 4 experience teen dating violence, 1 in 4 are abused by a partner in their lifetime, and 1 in 6 are survivors of rape or attempted rape.
These are the women who cheered when Aurora saves Maleficent by rescuing her wings, the same way that a generation of women before erupted in bursts of support when Louise shoots Thelma’s rapist. It more than just a climactic plot twist, more than just character redemption, and way more than revenge. This is a chance for real women to access and feel their right to a self-determined life. Through these characters, a silenced majority is given a voice that is resonating beyond the silver screen.
After all, the Global Summit to End Violence During Conflict didn’t take place in Fairy Tale Land.
Alicia Swiz is an educator and performer committed to inspiring dialogue about gender, feminism and the media. Find her @popgoesalicia.




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Monday, June 9, 2014










GreyGhost

In the Spring of 2011, author Tee Morris gifted me a few things. First, he asked me to write a short story for Tales of the Archives, Vol. 1, “Dust on the Davenport,” which went on to win the Steampunk Chronicle’s Readers’ Choice Award for Best Short Fiction in 2012; and second, he gave me a name for the “M” (and this really cool trading card of me, left).
...
Last week, I saw the film Maleficent, and it was beyond brilliant. The name Tee gave me three years ago took on new meaning because I deeply identified with Jolie’s Maleficent and her experience.
**SPOILER ALERT** Also, **TRIGGER WARNINGS** as I will be talking about the film and sexual violence/rape culture in great detail.

This film is about rape and recovery. This film is about the aftermath of rape and how the rapist robs their victim of their freedom, their reality, their very identity. This film is about rage and betrayal and justice.

I’ve seen articles across cyberspace criticizing the film for this, or minimizing the important social commentary by picking apart petty plot issues, but we must all remember that the original Sleeping Beauty tale is all about rape. In the original, Sleeping Beauty wasn’t awoken by “true love’s kiss,” she was repeatedly raped by a king and bore children, all while she was unconscious. Disney reduced these original assaults to a single kiss by a prince whose purity and grace and love woke her from her slumber, contributing to the social, narcissistic fantasy of perfect love and the damaging belief that one will be rescued by a perfect mate and taken away from all the pain and betrayal to live Happily Ever After. I’m glad to see Disney’s storytelling is changing into something more realistic and empowering.

But that’s another post.



As Maleficent, Angelina Jolie is Magnificent. Utterly Magnificent.

This is a story about a fairy with massive, strong wings that lift her into the clouds and enable her to protect her magical, peaceful home, a faerie realm known as the Moors, from the neighboring kingdom of greedy humans and their reigning, entitled king, Henry.

One day, a young human orphan named Stefan goes into the Moors and steals a precious stone. Maleficent, still a young fairy herself, shows him mercy and uses it as a teaching moment. This begins a lifelong friendship that evolves into love over the next several years, although Stefan’s obsessive ambition and lust for power overshadows his feelings for her. On her sixteenth birthday, he kisses her and tells her it’s “True Love’s Kiss,” but then he leaves and doesn’t return for years upon years….until he wants something.



Here’s the first great life lesson: entitled, powerful narcissists are extremely dangerous and petty.

At this point, there was no ruler in the Moors, for they didn’t need one. It was a place that needed no ruler because all the magical creatures could live together in mutual respect, harmoniously. One day of particular narcissistic boredom, King Henry decides it’s time and wages a full attack. The magical folk in the Moors never threatened or tried to move into the human’s kingdom. Never once, so King Henry’s attack was not a case of defense or safety. No. This was about a solitary man and his childish temper tantrum that someone else had something he didn’t control. King Henry had promised his kingdom that he would conquer and acquire the Moors for no other reason than because he wanted it and no one could tell him he couldn’t have it. Wah.

Maleficent, soaring above the Moors on her glorious wings sees the advancing army and rallies a defense. She’s totally badass, along with her magical allies, and they easily defend their world with much less effort (and much more power) than King Henry has at his disposal. This is important to note because the people of the Moors could’ve demolished Henry’s kingdom at any time, but they had no need or desire to do so. They lived peacefully in their own space.

King Henry is furious, as you might imagine, having suffered such a profound narcissistic injury. As he lay dying from his battle wounds, he claims that whoever defeats Maleficent will be named his heir. (Remember, his fatal wound was caused because he waged war against a peaceful nation who defended themselves. He brought this on himself.)

This, by the way, is “vengeance*,” just so you see the difference later on in the story. (See the notes at the bottom of the post for why I choose to use the terms in this way.)*

So, Stefan, another narcissistic, power-hungry, entitled man, sees his opportunity for advancement, and Stefan has a weapon at his disposal King Henry did not. Love. Stefan returns to the Moors, now in service to King Henry, and calls out to Maleficent. She’s thrilled to see her beloved again after so many years, albeit skeptical. He warns her that she’s to be hunted and killed because of the king’s decree, so she softens because he came to warn her, to ostensibly save her life. Over the next several hours, they catch up, share a drink, and become close. Stefan explains why he stayed away for so long and how much he regrets it, and she finds she still loves him, and he her (Sociopathic Love Bombing). Next thing the audience sees is Maleficent passed out on her stomach, for Stefan had spiked her drink with a fantasy version of Rohypnol. Stefan positions the dagger over her back, about to kill her for his own political benefit, when he finds he can’t do it. I’ve seen articles that say this shows that Stefan has some good in him, but I don’t see that at all. Not even a little bit. It wasn’t goodness that kept Stefan from killing Maleficent, it was cowardice.

What he did to her was far, far worse than killing her would’ve been. Turned out worse for him as well. Good.

While she’s unconscious from his treachery, he cuts off her wings and takes them back to the king to prove he defeated her, thus securing the throne for himself.

The scene where Maleficent wakes the next morning is the most poignant of the film, and Jolie pulled it off flawlessly, displaying all the raw emotion of betrayal and violation in a guttural howl to the heavens. It’s a moment every woman (#YesAllWomen) can relate to, whether or not they’ve survived sexual violence at the level of this powerful metaphor.



Whether it is waking up after being drugged or intoxicated to discover someone you trusted had violated you while you were unconscious–feeling the physical difference in your body–or if it’s the slow, agonizing realization (awakening) over months or years that someone you loved and/or trusted had violated you in a more subtle, socially acceptable (although still assault and no less damaging) way, and all the confusion around that (only 27% of survivors whose assault meets the legal definition of rape think of themselves as rape victims because certain forms of sexual assault have been so minimized and normalized in our rape culture), #YesAllWomen can relate.

In that moment of realization, everything changes and nothing will ever be the same or really okay ever again.

It wasn’t something you chose. It was something done to you. Something stolen from you.

Here the film portrays a visual, powerful metaphor for a rape survivor. Everything changes. Part of your identity has been stolen from you. Your perception of reality–or your actual reality–had been altered, perhaps irrevocably. You stumble away in confusion and dissociation, just like Maleficent did, trying to make sense of this new reality. Trying to process the betrayal, the inherent change in your deepest being.

Maleficent’s raison d’être was ripped from her. Her wings, the part of her that enabled her to soar through life in joy, that gave her life purpose in her community as protector, were violently ripped from her.

For me, it was my ability to write and my sexuality that were stolen from me. My raison d’être. My career. My identity. My most profound ability to experience joy and love in life.

My metaphorical wings had been ripped from me, too.

Maleficent’s bright, beautiful, magical world became dark and dead, full of rage and confusion. The beautiful cinematography and effects showed this visually, and we all felt it viscerally.

Her first goal was to find out “why,” as if it would change anything, but understanding “why” is something inexplicably necessary and almost always elusive. However, with the help of Diaval, a raven she saved from certain death who becomes her shape-shifting confidant and ally, Maleficent found out why: because Stefan’s selfish, entitled, narcissist need for power and control were more important than anything or anyone else.

In fact, that’s pretty much the “why” for most sexual (or any) violence, come to think of it.



She creates huge walls of thorns around the Moors in an attempt to protect herself in a dangerous world she no longer understands, knowing deep down she will never feel safe again. Then she takes a throne of her own to rule the Moors, which is a metaphor for the necessity to feel in control of everything, your entire world, after enduring something so horrific through force. It’s the first thing any rape recovery counselor or sexual assault attorney tells a survivor: you’re in control.

Then, to add even further insult to profound injury, she learns her attacker (her rapist) announces the birth of his daughter in his happy life with his happy wife in their sumptuous castle. This breaks her completely. So many say what she does in response is revenge* or vengeance*, but it’s not, it’s justice*.

Remember, King Henry who brought his injury on himself through his own selfishness and greed? Well, Maleficent’s injury, nay–virtual destruction, wasn’t her choice. It was done to her under the guise of love and trust.

This is justice*. Balancing the scales. Her life was violently taken from her, but her attacker gets to be powerful and adored and happy. He needed to be held accountable for what he had done. He must answer for his crimes and accept the consequences of his choices. Again, as is so very often the case in our own world and communities, no one will step up to ensure the perpetrator answers to his choices, so the burden falls on the traumatized, often causing more trauma; however, doing nothing is worse, so we shout into the darkness until one person listens…and then another…and then another. We keep shouting until we can come back into the light, protected by supporters and other survivors who say: No More.



Some say she could’ve just killed Stefan, but that wouldn’t be justice.* That would be relief.
Similar to the way Constance delivers justice in Avalon Revamped, Maleficent ensures that Stefan will also live each day as much confusion and fear as he inflicted upon her with his selfish, violence actions by cursing his daughter.

Granted, the innocent child doesn’t deserve to be the target of Maleficent’s rage, as she did nothing to harm Maleficent or anyone, but this is where another powerful metaphor comes into play. As I mentioned in my “Hmmmm…Would I Accept an Apology? (A Rant)” post, daughters of rapists and other such treacherous, abusive people, are cursed. They are cursed by their father’s actions and by who he is. This is what happens in Maleficent, only through Maleficent’s will, which was itself created by Stefan’s violation and betrayal.

I won’t go into the psychology of brain development and developmental trauma here, but it has been widely observed, generation after generation, that children learn what relationships look like, how to behave, and who to choose in romantic and sexual relationships based on the examples of their caregivers, usually their parents. Before they can even speak, they learn these things. For those raised in abusive and/or dysfunctional situations, this inevitably turns into a constant search for someone with whom they can play out and “fix” childhood issues and trauma, albeit subconsciously. Little girls with scumbag daddies usually end up with scumbag partners, for example. Over and over and over again. Abused children, usually end up in abusive adult relationships, either as the abuser or the victim. Over and over and over again. Victims of assault often find themselves victimized again, not being able to see the warning signs early enough because of previous trauma and nervous system reorganization.

But I digress.

After having her purpose ripped from her, Maleficent must find a new purpose for herself. Over the next sixteen years, we see Maleficent watching over Aurora, even saving her life many times from the incompetent pixies. Perhaps at first it is to ensure Aurora survives long enough to fulfill the curse, but within a few years, as time heals her wounds and quells her justified rage, Maleficent falls in love with the child. Maleficent sees Aurora for the individual she is, not as an extension of her father. Maleficent even tries to remove the curse, but she can’t.

Stefan, on the other hand, under the guise of “protecting” his daughter, sent her away to live in isolation, another metaphor for patriarchal control (and what so often happens to rape survivors, self included). When Aurora learns he’s her father, she rushes back to the castle on her 16th birthday. Stefan, instead of, you know, talking to her about what’s going on, gets angry that she’s a day early and locks her away.

Think, if he had just said, “By the way, Aurora, don’t touch any needles before sunset, okay? If you do, you’ll fall into a deep, deathlike sleep forever. Just a heads up.”

Honestly.

But, no. He has to control his property, so he locks her away. Since she was raised to be an independent woman in the isolation of the forest, and since the curse is driving her to find a needle on which to prick her finger, she escapes and finds the pile of spinning wheels King Stefan had supposedly destroyed sixteen years prior. Before Maleficent can warn her, Aurora pricks her finger (which in the original story was a metaphor for rape) and falls into her deep sleep.

Maleficent weeps and doesn’t ask for forgiveness over Aurora’s sleeping form, for she knows what she’s done to the girl can never be erased by “I’m sorry,” (ahem, my point here). They tried to have the handsome, love-at-first-sight Prince Phillip kiss Aurora, but it wonderfully didn’t work. The very reason Maleficent included the clause of “True Love’s Kiss” is because she has learned, through great personal sacrifice, that no such thing exists, or at least not in the way we’ve been taught to believe.
In her grief and remorse and motherly love, Maleficent kisses Aurora on the forehead. This awakens Sleeping Beauty. The true, unselfish love between two people is perhaps the truest love of them all. Where they love each other for who they are, not what they can get from the other, whether that be sexual gratification or notoriety or arm candy or a possession.

The beautiful simplicity when one soul recognizes the magical divinity of another.



Maleficent’s love returns Aurora to herself, and Aurora’s love enables Maleficent to become whole again. Aurora finds Maleficent’s severed wings, which the narcissist King Stefan kept in a glass case over which to preen or rage or whatever, and realizes what her father had done. She returns the wings to Maleficent just in the nick of time, and they reattach to Maleficent’s body. Whole once again, after sixteen long years, she has regained her power through love and forgiveness and kindness. She’s healed, as much as she can be after losing nearly two decades of her life, and she’s done with this war.

King Stefan, however, doesn’t stop trying to get revenge* for his perceived hurt, and even though Maleficent tries to walk away from him and his life for good, he attacks her while her back is turned, like the coward he is. They tumble off of the turret, but since she has her wings again, she is able to save herself from death. Joyfully, King Stefan isn’t saved. The fall ends his miserable, obsessed life of self-induced torment.

When Aurora becomes queen, she unites the two realms, and they all live in harmony. Prince Phillip returns, and they have a chance to actually get to know each other and make a mutual decision whether or not to be together, as individuals, rather than the stereotypical perfect-happily-ever-after-narcissistic-bullshit-fantasy of love.

To summarize, Maleficent was a loving, trusting, beautiful soul who was horrifically violated during a vulnerable moment by someone she loved. This violation fractured her identity and her very soul. It completely altered the way she saw the world. She then watched her attacker become famous, loved, adored; and she knew there would be no justice (and thereby no healing for her) unless she delivered it herself. In contrast, where she had the clarity of a single, undeniable violent act in one evening, my destruction took three separate, confusing assaults and betrayals over a period of 18 months. Like 73% of rape survivors, I didn’t see them for what they were for a long, long time. Now I do.

Still, this is why I identify with Maleficent. This is why I applaud my gifted name.

May you all find peace.

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Friday, June 6, 2014






Hayley Krischer

The Maleficent Rape Scene That We Need to Talk About

Imagine you're drugged by someone you thought you trusted. You wake up in the morning with your face down in the dirt. You're aching. Your appearance has changed and you can feel that you're different as you try to stand through the pain. Beyond the physicality of it, your power was stolen from you. Your flight response. Your dignity.

You're confused. Enraged. Devastated. Angry. You set everyone on fire around you. You wish hatred on newborn babies. You want to hide in an evil shell of darknesss where everything is black and no one can touch you. Or ever hurt you. They talk about walls on reality TV shows. Oh, you build walls -- they're walls of thorns with armed towering guards that will crush any man who tries to approach it.

And though it sounds like a rape victim's story -- it's not. It's the storyline of Maleficent.

Rape has so permeated our culture that it ended up in a Disney movie.

It's a Wicked-like backstory, and in it, we learn why Maleficent casts a spell on an evil baby. She's a fairy before the black magic begins. She soars through the forest with freedom and passion. She falls in love with Stefan, a human. He returns to kill her so that he can be king.

But he doesn't kill her. He rapes her of her ability to fly. He drugs her and leaves her so that he can bring her wings back to the king of the humans like Dorothy was told to fetch the broom of the Wicked Witch. She wakes up moaning, wailing. Stumbling. Utter devastation.

My 5-year-old digested the scene as an act of betrayal. She flat-lined the reasoning for Maleficent's rage: "He cut off her wings." Maleficent was wounded. But she survived. More, she recovered -- physically and psychologically.

Grown women know better. I know better. I'm too familiar with the headlines about the boys who feel entitled to take from women and girls. Boys like these. And these. And now, these three boys, who raped a drunk girl at a prom party. There is so much rape that when you write a story about a woman at her most vulnerable point (is drugged in the dirt enough for you?), rape becomes the symbol. Even if that's not the writer's intention. Writer Linda Woolverton doesn't actually say that this was a rape scene -- instead she says in an interview that she had always wanted to do a "dark fairy story."
I had done some research, and the biggest surprise is that she's a fairy, not a witch. I've always wanted to do a dark fairy story. Then I watched that scene where she curses the baby, and I'm thinking "well if she's a fairy, where are her wings?" Suddenly it was "boom. Lightbulb. Oh! It's the wings!" Then I worked backward from there to create the Stefan relationship.
Right. The wings. The wings give her the freedom to escape. To fly away. It's about her ability to retreat. And if you can't fly. If you can't run. If you're drugged and trapped. Even if you agree to hang out in the forest with your attacker in the first place.

This is the horrific side of rape culture. We're so enmeshed in it that it's impossible to ignore that a metaphorical rape occurs in a Disney movie. It's a traumatic backstory -- one that 70 percent of women who are raped understand. They're sexually attacked by someone they know.

For the reviewers who aren't happy that Disney brought a rape/recovery element to their beloved Sleeping Beauty backstory, writer Sady Doyle makes the case that Sleeping Beauty has always been about rape.
In the earliest known version of the tale -- the Italian "Sun, Moon and Talia," by Giambattista Basile -- the princess is not awakened by "true love's kiss," or by a kiss at all. She's discovered by a king who repeatedly rapes her while she's unconscious. She gives birth to two children in her sleep, before one of those children dislodges the splinter in her finger and wakes her up. Later versions of the tale (including the version recorded by the Grimm Brothers, or by Charles Perrault, who's credited as a writer on Maleficent) censor this ending, to make it more chaste and less violent. But that central image -- a man "kissing" an unconscious woman -- made it into the Disney version, and has survived into the present day.
There are also a number of critics who have said that this movie was targeted to the Frozen fans. That it was targeted to girls and moms. But Maleficent is a commentary on current male and female relationships. It's a commentary on rape culture. And much more, it's a story that allows a woman to recover. It gives her agency. It gives her power. It allows her to reclaim the story. And this is something that can't be ignored.

This originally appeared on Femamom.

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Maleficent: Finally, Disney Gives us a Positive Witch/Mother

June 2, 2014 by




Women’s stories have often been twisted, stolen, and locked away, often in iron-clad phallocentric cages. This has led to benevolent witches turning wicked, powerful woman being framed as bitches, midwives cast as baby-killers, queens/princesses truncated into damsels in distress and, perhaps most pervasively, the demonization/murder of mothers and motherhood.


To hide this ironclad prison house within which women’s lives and stories have been imprisoned, we have been given the fairy godmother, the innocent maiden, the asexual nanny-figure. In ways, the new Disney flm Maleficent—a retelling of Sleeping Beauty from the view of the “villainess”—rights (and re-writes) all of these wrongs, finally breaking down the phallocentric prison within which female tales have been trapped.

Ironically enough the film is brought to us by a key builder of such prisons: Disney. While I am not naïve enough to think Disney has truly turned over a new feminist leaf (more like they are following the money and banking on upping the profits of Brave and Frozen), Maleficent still deserves applause. The intentions of Disney may be profit-driven (when are they not?), but the message of the film is important and groundbreaking nonetheless.

There is much to be said of the film from a feminist perspective,  from its wonderful revisioning of the character Aurora, played fantastically by Elle Fanning, to its condemnation of fairies who see beauty and eternal happiness as great gifts for a female, and most significantly, to the fact we finally have a positive, complex depiction of a witch/mother figure in Maleficent, brought to life exquisitely by Angelina Jolie.

If you have not already done so, please fly your horned self to the nearest cinema and see Maleficent!
If you read on, though, be aware that THERE ARE MANY SPOILERS TO FOLLOW!

The film opens with the line “let us tell an old story anew,” something Disney has done many times before (although usually by making such stories less feminist-friendly, not more). We then learn of two kingdoms, one that is vain and greedy—the human—and another that “needed neither king nor queen,” as all “trusted one another.” In my read, that’s one kingdom that is patriarchal (human/male) and another that is egalitarian. Is it happenstance that this more feminist kingdom, filled with all sorts of queer creatures, is called “the Moors?” In this kingdom, there is “moor” diversity, camaraderie, freedom, joy. You know what there is not more of? Human males. (And though this post argues Maleficent is “the wrong Disney dyke,” I would suggest the representation does queer the character in positive ways.)

When we first see they young Maleficent (Isobelle Malloy) in Moor kingdom, she is described as a girl but “not just any girl”: a fairy. However, we don’t see human-like males flitting around Moor-land. The first human male we see is Stefan, who will become Maleficent’s friend, then love interest, then the king of the human realm (which he achieves by betraying Maleficent) and ultimately Aurora’s father (perhaps one of the worst father figures ever to grace a fairy-tale film).
220px-Sleeping_beauty_disney

Though this is not made overt in the film, masculinity is the true villain in this bi-kingdom world. There are  some positive males to round out the villainy of the evil kings and  soldiers, such as the Crow turned Man, Diaval (Sam Riley), and the puckish Prince Phillip (Brenton Thwaites). However, for the most part, the film is dominated by females, and complex ones at that—a rarity indeed.
The males, in contrast, are rather one dimensional. Stefan (Sharlto Copley) lacks any backstory to justify his badness. The same goes for his predecessor, King Henry (Kenneth Cranham). Likewise, the kill-happy warriors are not given any motivation to war with the Moors, other than orders from above. Here, masculinity, more so than humanity generally, is cast as evil and power-hungry. While the film fails to tease out how norms of masculinity are damaging—not maleness, per se—its suggestion that the power/kill drive that defines traditional masculinity is problematic at least steps away from the image of a savoir prince lionized for kissing deathlike princesses without their consent.

Early in the film we learn that iron burns fairies, and we see young Stefan (Michael Higgins, Jackson Bews) throw away his iron ring so as to not to burn his newfound friend Maleficent. As the film progresses though, males are inextricably linked with iron, from the iron armor warn by the kings henchman to the iron chain Stefan uses to cut off Malificent’s wings to the iron bars that criss-cross the glass case Stefan uses to house her castrated wings to the final battle scenes in which an iron net is thrown over Maleficent. Ultimately, this iron-clad maleness—not Maleficent’s supposed villainy—is what leads Stefan to his death.

Though some have bemoaned the final battle scene as too long, the culmination of the battle in which Maleficent and Stefan face off against one another is made all the more powerful by the dramatic, brutal, lengthy scene that precedes it. High up in the castle, Maleficent faces Stefan and says assuredly, “It’s over.” Given that she does not kill him but turns away to leave, we can take “it’s over” to mean that their relationship is over, their battling each other is over and that she is well and truly done. However, as so many males of Stefan’s ilk often do, he refuses to let it be over. Instead, as she goes to fly off the parapet, he attempts to push her to her death. She takes off in flight, but  he has become caught in one of the iron chains he was trying to bind her with. He falls to his death because he could not accept “it’s over.”

In contrast to this steely male kingdom where cruel kings wage pointless wars, in the non-patriarchal realm of Moor kingdom females such as the young Maleficent are allowed to be powerful and healing. Indeed, the first act we witness Maleficent do is heal a tree. We then witness extended images of her flying—not on a broomstick, mind you, but with wings. The imagery is not one of villainy (as in the iconic Wizard of Oz ) but of freedom.

This recasting of the powerful, magical woman as not wicked is a colossal depiction in the world of Disney, a corporation that has heretofore rarely shown positive depictions of magical women, and when they have graced the screen they’ve been asexual (Bedknobs and Broomsticks), practically perfect (Mary Poppins), grandmotherly (Cinderella’s godmother) or, most recently, an icy figure in need of taming by her kinder, more traditionally feminine sister (Frozen).

Though Jolie purportedly insisted throughout the making of the film that “She is still a villain. Still a villain,” and though most reviews frame Maleficent as such, she is far more of a hero. She saves Aurora and returns the kingdom of the Moors to its pre-Stefan glory, doing so with humor, grace and without need of recognition. She has aspects of villainy, yes, but would these be so focused on if she were a male protagonist? Methinks not.

As detailed in a piece at Vox, male villains are often portrayed sympathetically, as with characters such as Dexter or Norman Bates (especially in the new Bates Motel). Alas, Maleficent is still interpreted in the main as a villain (as here and here), even though her main acts of villainy include casting a curse she then tries to remove, and turning a crow into a man—hardly the stuff of a serial killer or sociopath. Perhaps the tendency to still insist she is a villain is linked to her name—something various reviews take umbridge with, noting it makes no sense that this “good fairy” has a name that means nefarious and malicious. However, cannot her name not be linked to her status as female? Women, in much folklore, mythology, and philosophy are often presumed to be evil—as with Aristotle’s famous dictum that females are deformed, lacking men. As such, Maleficent’s name can be read as a reflection of this patriarchal fallacy rather than as something describing her character.

Further, her name reflects the complexity of identity, suggesting we all have some maleficence in us, but also some beauty and goodness. As Aurora fittingly notes at the end, in voiceover, “My kingdom was united by one who was both hero and villain.” Maleficent is both, but as rendered in this reboot, she is all the more marvelous for being mainly a heroic figure misconstrued as a mainly villainous one (as this review recognizes).

Significantly, her acts of villainy are prompted by allegorical rape, another thread of the narrative that implies she is not evil, but society, and particularly patriarchal society, is. Stefan’s drugging of Maleficent and cutting off her wings as she is unconscious is a fairy-tale version of date rape, one rendered horrifically palpable by Jolie’s anguished screams when she awakes to find herself de-winged. Significantly, the loss of her wings causes extreme physical pain and leaves lasting scars, a fact the film emphasizes at length and which echoes the lasting pain and scarring endured by real-world rape survivors. (For screenwriter Linda Woolverton’s explanation of this backstory, see here.)

In the film, this allegorical rape prompts Maleficent to cast her infamous curse on the baby Aurora—not her jealousy or need for vengeance. Is it villainous to enact her vengeance on the daughter of her rapist? Of course. But Maleficent is redeemed when she realizes the error of her curse, and steps in to protect/nurture Aurora (variously played by Vivienne Jolie-Pitt, Eleanor Worthington Cox, Elle Fanning) when the three hapless fairies ignore the starving child, plugging their ears with cotton so as to sleep through her desperate cries. Maleficent prevents Aurora’s starvation, saves her from falling to her death and watches over her as she grows.

Though some condemn this depiction of Maleficent as mother-figure (as here), this protectoress is no June Cleaver with horns; she is not a vapid, ever-smiling baker of goods or band-aider of ouchies. No, she is more like the amazing aunt who does not smother and the mother who encourages her daughter to check out other kingdoms, does not scare-monger about Aurora’s attraction to a hot young prince and encourages her daughter to get dirty, take risks and, most magnificent of all, crowns her as queen, not princess. That she is the type of mother many would frame as “bad” and as “hating children” is not lost within the narrative itself. Indeed, the first time Aurora  sees Maleficent as a toddler, she announces “I don’t like children” and then humorously reveals her failure to live up to this claim as she immediately picks up the young Aurora when she says “up, up.” In perhaps the most poignant moment of the film, the toddler first touches her horns and  then her wing stubs admiringly,  appreciating the beauty of Maleficent’s “beastly” power (her horns) on the one hand, and lamenting the horror of the violence done by wing castration.

Fittingly, Maleficent calls Aurora “beastie,” and she is indeed a beast off the old block—as fearless, wise and headstrong as her stand-in mother Maleficent. This is not a one-sided relationship though—Aurora brings about healing for Maleficent by prompting her to recount the harm done to her, to break the silence about her wings, when she asks, “Do all fair people have wings?” Here, the double play on words indicates not only Maleficent’s fairy being, not only that she is “fair” and beautiful, but also that she is fair as in just. She is not a villainous, vengeful harpy, but a survivor of abuse attempting to make her way in the world after irreparable, unspeakable harm has been done to her. Maleficent’s response to Aurora’s question is, “I had wings once. They were stolen from me. … They were strong … and they never faulted … I could trust them,” underscoreing their theft as horrific violence—a violence that takes away her ability to soar as well as her ability to trust, much as rape does to all too many humans in the real world.

MAJOR SPOILER ALERTS ABOUT THE ENDING AHEAD!

The film also suggests that the infamous “true love’s kiss” upon which the Disney house was built, is itself a violation and a falsity. Once Aurora falls into her inevitable sleep from the prick of a needle (yes, another allusion to rape), Maleficent rushes Philip to the castle, thinking his kiss might save her. She never encourages him to kiss Aurora though–it is the misbegotten fairies that do this. To his credit, Philip replies “I wouldn’t feel right about it,” noting they only just met. However, her beautiful sleeping face wins out over this sentiment and he does, in the end, kiss her at some length—a non-consensual kiss that honestly made me squirm in my seat with dread. Waiting in the wings, Maleficent is saddened this does not awake Aurora from her deathly slumber, even though she had insisted there was no such thing as true love’s kiss, thus delivering Philip to the castle out of sheer desperation.

Saddened, Maleficent goes to Aurora’s bedside and speaks to her as she sleeps, crying, “I will not ask your forgiveness,” adding that her own behavior was unforgivable. Explaining that she was “lost in hatred and revenge,” she bends down and kisses Aurora’s forehead in goodbye and turns away. And yes, you guessed it, this is the “true love’s kiss” that awakens the sleeping Aurora. A Frozen-like moment, but one that takes the love between women in a deeper, more complex direction, and one that does not have a man waiting in the wings. Magnificent indeed.
The positive, complex depiction of female heroines and villains is long overdue in Disney films and films generally. Let’s hope for moor like Maleficent soon!


natalie

Natalie Wilson teaches women’s studies and literature at California State University, San Marcos. She is the author of Seduced by Twilight and blogs for Ms., Girl with Pen and Bitch Flicks.






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Monday, June 2, 2014






What “Maleficent” tells us about the future of female movie protagonists

Angelina Jolie's blockbuster hit is good news for kick-ass heroines to follow


Scarlett Johansson in "Lucy," Angelina Jolie in "Maleficent" 
 
Angelina Jolie’s “Maleficent” is by no means a superhero, but the deliciously villainous character possesses enough powers to displace an entire squad of mutants from the top spot at the box office. Though “X-Men: Days of Future Past” was already in its second week of release, the feat is still quite remarkable because of the many identifiable faces, from Hugh Jackman to Ian McKellan to Jennifer Lawrence — and their corresponding quadrants — to which the X-sequel appealed. In contrast, check the promotional material for “Maleficent” and you will see only one prominent visage. Taking it further, I challenge anyone who has not already seen the film to name two other actors featured. Angelina Jolie is one of the very few Hollywood leading ladies who has the sheer recognizability and widespread appeal to singlehandedly open a motion picture up to the chance of blockbuster success. She literally has face value. Studios are willing to bank on it, and if you want proof, recall the poster for “Salt.”

So, what does this mean for the handful of other women who breathe the same rarified air as Jolie? It’s too soon to tell, but not for long. I haven’t seen “Maleficent” yet myself, but I’m betting that all weekend long, while the Disney adventure was raking in its $70 million, it was preceded in each multiplex by a preview for Scarlett Johansson’s upcoming sci-fi action vehicle “Lucy.” Without even a franchise or a fairytale to build from, the potential success of “Lucy” hinges entirely on whether or not audiences around the world want to see a psychically-enhanced Johansson — and Johansson alone — kick butt in the near future. Though Scar-Jo may appeal to a slightly younger demographic than Jolie, the folks behind “Lucy” can’t help but feel bolstered by the fact that, this weekend, more than just teenage girls paid good money to see a beautiful, bad-ass heroine manifesting unimaginable, superhuman powers. “Lucy,” itself, will also function as a test for Johansson’s next high-profile action project, a feature film vehicle for Marvel’s Black Widow. That catsuited character made a splash alongside the Avengers, but solo is another story.


Recognizability alone is no guarantee that anyone — man or woman — can singlehandedly raise a potential tentpole. Remember, how Charlize Theron’s “Aeon Flux” eviscerated the third coolest character MTV ever generated? And mentioning Halle Berry’s name in any conversation about failed franchise attempts is simply beating a dead cat at this point. Zoe Saldana’s relatively less expensive “Colombiana” failed to get too far off the ground as well. But that doesn’t mean Saldana isn’t willing to go it again. Since 2011, the “Star Trek” starlet has had a project on the books entitled “Dominion,” in which she is set to play a half-angel with a full set of wings — two more than “Maleficent” herself. I’m guessing that project may yet have a chance to take flight. And there are apparently three “Avatar” sequels in the works. With male co-star Sam Worthington’s off-Pandora heat waning and Saldana about to get a tremendous bump from Marvel’s “Guardians of the Galaxy,” we may see a well-deserved change in the order of the billing. Hell, it was her (blue) face on most of the posters, anyway.

While it makes sense that actresses of or near Jolie’s commercial caliber have the most to gain from “Maleficent’s” ongoing triumph, I wouldn’t doubt that lesser-knowns are also watching with equal anticipation. Case in point, Israeli actress Gal Gadot is all set to play Wonder Woman in a film adaptation of the iconic DC superhero. (Gadot was in the last few “Fast and the Furious” movies — but then, who wasn’t?) By the time “Wonder Woman” comes out, Zack Snyder’s upcoming “Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice” will have established her in the role of Diana Prince and significantly raised her profile. Gadot’s look is exotic, not unlike Jolie’s, and the potential for international appeal exists. Chances are still slim that the Amazonian Princess will one day conquer a field most dominated by supercharged men, but they grow a little more likely with each day that a witch sits atop the box office.

Neil Drumming Neil Drumming is Salon's TV critic. Follow him on Twitter @Neil_Salon









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