Knightley bans ‘sexist’ Disney classics
The actress has stopped her daughter from watching films with the wrong message, writes David Sanderson.
Keira Knightley may have played a fairy who embodies sugar and spice and all things nice, but do not for a second think that her daughter can watch Cinderella.
The British actress has banned, Edie, three, from certain films to encourage her independence. On the hitlist is Cinderella.
Knightley said in an American television interview: ‘‘She waits around for a rich guy to rescue her. Don’t. Rescue yourself obviously.’’
The Little Mermaid, which recounts the tale of the mermaid who in a deal with a witch gives up her voice to follow Prince Eric to his world, is also banned.
Knightley, who is about to appear in The Nutcracker and the Four Realms as the sugar plum fairy, does have some misgivings about her approach. She told the interviewer Ellen DeGeneres: ‘‘Little Mermaid – the songs are great but do not give your voice up for a man. I love the Little Mermaid. That one is really tricky but I am keeping to it [the ban].’’ Fortunately for Edie, whose father is the musician James Righton, not all animated cinema ‘‘classics’’ are banned. Finding Dory, the tale of a fish separated from her parents, is allowed as is Frozen, about one fearless princess trying to find her powerful, estranged sister. Moana, about a Polynesian girl who launches a mission to find a mystical relic, is also allowed.
While Knightley’s views were ridiculed by some, there is a growing debate about how females are portrayed on screen and page as well as the lack of diversity. In a separate interview Thandie Newton, a fellow British actress, bemoaned the profusion of film and TV roles that ‘‘have women as onedimensional characters’’. Her frustration had led her to ‘‘kind of give up’’ and start producing and directing. ‘‘They are not pushing forward the narrative and are requiring men to elevate them or liberate them from whatever situation they are in,’’ she said in an interview with Audible. The actress has recorded an audiobook version of Jesse Burton’s The Restless Girls, described as the ‘‘re-framing of a fairtytale’’.
Newton, who was born to Zimbabwean and English parents, also revealed her impatience with children’s books. ‘‘I find it incredibly frustrating how much material there is where there is a male protagonist. I even read a book about an earthworm and it is a male gender. Earthworms don’t even have gender.’’ She said the ‘‘other issue for me is ethnicity’’. Before she reads a book to her four-year-old son, Booker, she takes colouring pens and pencils to change the ethnicity of characters. ‘‘I will go through and where possible I will change the ethnicity of the characters to mix it up,’’ she said. ‘‘To show the world the way I see it but also I want my kids to see it. I don’t want them to feel they are in a strange environment [in London] if they see a lot of dark-skinned people around.’’
An Arts Council study revealed that only 4 per cent of children’s books published in the UK in 2017 featured a black, Asian or ethnic minority character. Department for Education figures show that 32.1 per cent of primary pupils were of minority ethnic origin.