Tangled: A Celebration of White Femininity

[102bb]

Tangled is Disney's version of Rapunzel . To be honest, I have very little idea of how this move deviates from the the fairytale we are all familiar with. If you are interested in the preview, you can check it out here. What struck me about the story of Rapunzel, is the celebration of her flowing long blond hair. I think it is no accident that

Comments

[maynardsong]

Evil is sexy though. I mean, I'd have had a much bigger problem if Mother Gothel had been unattractive.

[popehippo]

But it's still using the trope of 'woman using her sexuality because she's evil/insecure/jealous of another woman'. :\

[maynardsong]

IIRC, Mother Gothel was never really jealous of anyone, she was just clinging to her own youth. If you're saying that itself is its own problem trope, fair enough. I happen to think she was a magnificent villain though.

[popehippo]

Yeah, I was referring to the over all Evil Is Sexy trope that gets used almost entirely with women villains.

[must_go_faster]

Her real self was "unattractive" though (we all know: in media old = unattractive) and the beauty (youth) that Rapunzel's hair gave her was facade. It was like a reversed Snow White situation of sorts, because her true self was "ugly" and she was just hiding behind a jouthful mask.

Also Rapunzel's whole blonde, green-eyed appearence makes her look innocent, angelic and shiny. Mother Gothel's beauty is connected to being sexy and to being evil.

[popehippo]

Bingo.

[maynardsong]

Ursula's another one of my favorite villains. She's pretty damn cool. And not motivated by vanity either. IDK I know Disney has problems but usually the criticisms I see of it make claims like, "Aladdin teaches boys to lie to get in a girl's pants" (No, lying always backfired on Aladdin, spectacularly.) Giving up her voice also backfired on Ariel. The point was that it was a huge mistake for her to make a deal with the devil. So I'm really not buying, "TLM teaches girls to shut up and look pretty."

[maynardsong]

Didn't Ariel lean forward with her lips puckered and Eric didn't respond at some point in the song?

[maynardsong]

It means Ariel had non-verbal ways of communicating to Sebastian and Flounder that she wanted to get Eric to kiss her. Plus, if Eric didn't kiss her, she'd become Ursula's slave, so...