Musings on Fairytales and Disney
I love fairytales. I love the magic and fantasy of them. They have always sparked my imagination and I admit, I wanted to be a princess when I grew up. I also have really enjoyed the Disney Princess movies both as a little girl and as an adult. Beauty and the Beast and Mulan I particularly love and rewatch fairly often. Even as a kid, I knew many of the stories were changed from the original for the movies, often 'cleaned up'. My one sister can still be goaded into a rant about the changes made to The Little Mermaid. It never really bothered me that much though. I'm not sure when I first started thinking this way, but to my understanding fairytales were these universal stories that everyone knew. They were told and retold over so long a time that of course there were many versions and adaptations and each teller brought something new, something of their own to the story. I was familiar with many of the original versions of the stories and I knew I could track down the original version if I was interested enough to do so. Long before I knew what copyright was, I knew that fairytales were the sort of stories that belonged to everyone.
As I grew older I became more aware of the 'problems' in fairytales and the Disney movies; chief among them, to me at least, the portrayal of women's roles in society. It didn't lessen my love of these stories. But I did crave stories with strong females who fought side by side with their 'prince' instead of waiting in a tower to be rescued or even, gasp, did the recuing themselves. (This is one of the reasons Mulan is one of my favorite Disney 'Princesses'. And I know there were some people who were upset with the changes made from the original but I don't care because I still loved the movie. And yes, one of these days I will track down the original and read it and I probably would not have if I hadn't seen the movie.) Luckily around this time I started finding fantasy novels and the movement to write more active female characters in sci-fi and fantasy had already gotten started. The Dragonlance books, The Blue Sword, The Sword and Sorceress anthologies, The Heralds of Valdermar. They filled my need for female role models. And I found Dealing with Dragons and the other books written by Patricia C. Wrede. Here was the princess I had longed to see in my fairytales, who volunteered to be a dragon's princess because she was boarded and wanted to do something with her life. Here were delightfully twisted fairytale conventions. Stories I knew taken and given new shape. This series and the other novelized versions of fairytales (chief among them Mercedes Lackey's Elemental Masters books and Robin McKinley’s Rose Daughter and Spindle’s End) touched that spark deep in me that fairytales have always stirred while presenting fantastic twists on stories I knew and giving me the amazing female characters I longed to read about.
All of which is a really long way of saying, I love fairytales but I don't mind people changing the stories, especially if it’s to make the 'princesses' more kickass.
Now we get into Rapunzel. Even as a young girl, the story of Rapunzel, the implications and her role bothered me far more than any other fairytale despite the fact that one could argue that surviving in the wilderness with two infants meant she had survival skills and thus had far more 'onscreen' action then say Sleeping Beauty who spent most of her story asleep. But I think the reason Rapunzel bothered me when none of the other fairytale heroines did was because I felt I should identify with her, that I was expected to identify with her. She had long hair. I have long hair. Ask someone to come up with a nickname for me and most times the first thing that comes to people’s minds is Rapunzel. (Luckily my family and closest friends never fell into this. I've been called many things by the people close enough to give me a nickname-Kender, Kiddo, Brat, Heath and even Long Hair, but never Rapunzel.) But I didn't want to identify with her. The one I identified with the most was Disney's version of Belle. I was ten when that movie came out. The scene where she walks through town and doesn't notice anything around her because she is reading... That was me. My family still brings up stories about how the crossing guards would yell at me for reading a book while walking home from school. And before Belle, there was Entrapta, a villainess from She Ra, who attacked people with her long hair which I thought was the coolest thing ever. I still have the original action figure. So to make a long story short (too late), Rapunzel has always been my least favorite fairytale.
Then a few months ago I read Repunzel's Revenge, a graphic novel by Shannon Hale (and a few other Hales) and was completely blown away. Here was a Rapunzel who had been placed in the tower for rebelling against her 'mother', swore she'd take down the witch down for what she has done to Rapunzel, her real mother and all of the people under her power, and who rescues herself from the tower. In this fairytale/wild west-esque land she carries her hair like a lasso, uses it as a weapon and teams up with Jack (yes THAT Jack) a man who has no problem whatsoever hiding behind her when trouble starts. He comes up with the convoluted plans, she kicks ass, and it works. This was the Rapunzel I had always wanted to meet but never thought I would. This was a Rapunzel I could look up too.
Still if you had told me Disney was making a Rapunzel movie I'd have though 'well I'll probably check it out on DVD at some point' but wouldn't have gotten excited about it. That is until I saw this:
Click to viewThe charming thief ends up in her tower not to rescue her but because he needs a place to hide. The thief who has previously taken out armed guards while chained up. He ends up tied hand and foot by her hair. This. This makes me excited to see the movie.