Where’s the Beauty in this Beastly feminist vision of Disney?
Yes, yes, of course. There is much to commend about emma Watson. she was an excellent Hermione, good at all her spells, always did her homework, a role model to millions of little girls. In real life, she is modest and kind. she has fashion savvy. she has used her celebrity status to highlight her feminist credentials and turbo-charge her effectiveness as an equal-rights campaigner.
emma is not just a pin-up girl for the millennials, she is also the ice princess of the snowflake Generation.
And that is where the problem starts. For sometimes one can’t help but think that the 26-year-old actress gets a bit carried away with herself and her ideals. especially when she starts meddling with our fairy tales.
The former Harry Potter star is to appear as Belle in a new Disney adaptation of Beauty And The Beast. The live action version will be released next spring and features Dan stevens (Matthew in Downton Abbey) as the Beast. How lovely, you might think.
The ancient story, believed to have originated in the second century AD, is to be reimagined once more for another generation of wonderstruck little girls. But despite the fact it has delighted audiences for hundreds of years, it is not good enough for our emma.
she has insisted upon turning Belle into an independent woman who becomes an engineer and invents a washing machine to save herself from a life of drudgery. ‘What is she doing all the time?’ says Watson, of the lack of detail and feminist rigour in the heroine’s story arc.
The first Disney adaptation portrayed Belle as a peasant girl who is trapped in a life of drudgery and shunned because she likes reading. Now she flips on the spin cycle and has more time to study mind-improving books — and it is yet to be seen if emma will allow Belle to be redeemed by love in the timehonoured tradition. Perhaps she must find comfort in the cold embrace of a Nobel Prize For White Goods Innovation instead.
Of course, fairy tales change through the centuries, but I dread emma and the gang getting their sticky paws on classic tales, then tailoring them to their frangible, modish needs. Belle, Cinderella, sleeping Beauty etc — the point of these characters is not specifically to be feminist heroines. Instead, they are ciphers upon whom generations of young women have projected their worries and fears, their hopes and dreams.
However, hyper-sensitive millennials and trembling snowflakers don’t want to be challenged or have their imaginations stoked. They want to surround themselves with characters and images that rigorously reinforce their world view.
THey get distressed by opinions that differ from theirs, they are censorious of attitudes that do not dovetail with their own outlook. The dark landscape of spinning wheels and poisoned apples, peopled with flawed characters who fail to live up to modern ideals, is not for them. Too scary! Pause to skip down memory lane. I belong to that battle-hardened generation who still bear the scars of The singing Ringing Tree and Tales From europe; those teatime terrors from the sixties.
Now deemed to be some of the most frightening programmes ever shown on children’s television, the forbidding adaptations of Middle europe’s favourite fairy tales may have had us cowering under our candy-striped winceyette sheets, but left us in no doubt that the world would not always be welcoming and the people could be mad and bad and evil.
The re-writing of fairy tales to give a cosy, feminist slant starts with Belle inventing the washing machine, but where does it end? With single mum Thumbelina fighting diversity and sizeism to become the first woman on the Moon, while Cinderella smashes the glass ceiling instead of losing a glass slipper?
Once upon a time, I reimagined the horror that lies ahead . . .
CINDERELLA
CINDERELLA doesn’t go to the ball because she is too busy studying for a degree in international feminist victimology at Amal Clooney College.
The Ugly sisters have been recast as the slightly Unsightly sisters. They are kindly and campaign against global poverty — because no female character must ever be seen in a negative light. like, never. Pumpkin Coach is an actual pumpkin coach; a gardener who encourages the veg that grows on his Trump Pump patch to fight against racism and body shaming. ‘Orange skin and a curvy shape ain’t never held anyone back,’ he cries. ‘Why, one day you could be the president of America!’
When he comes to visit, Prince Charming is no-platformed by Cinderella, who sees him as the unacceptable face of class elitism and the patriarchy.
she also reports him for a sex crime because he ‘inappropriately touched my ankle’ when inviting her to try on the glass slipper (which she believes to be a symbol of male repression anyway). The fed-up Prince elopes with Buttons, and they live happily ever after.
RED RIDING HOOD
ORIGINALLY a freaky tale from the tenth century, which warns against talking to strangers, entering the forest and getting into bed with wolves. Good advice which has stood the test of time? you might think so, but in this new version, scarlett Hoodie refuses to visit her ailing grandmother with cake and lemonade because it reinforces subservient female stereotypes.
‘What big ears you have?’ Uh, oh. Trigger words warning, as scarlett urges denigrators to desist from being judgmental and overtly earist. And who is afraid of the Big Bad Wolf? Not she.
scarlett feels Wolfie has been misunderstood and regards criticisms of him and his forest-based circumstances as a hate crime.
‘I apologise on behalf of my country, I’m sorry for what we put you through,’ she tells him, shortly before he eats her.
GOLDILOCKS
WHO are you calling Goldilocks? That’s a derogatory sexist term.
In this version, Goldilocks is a gender-fluid runaway who only agrees to appear because the porridge is gluten-free. Goldie assumes squatters’ rights in the Three Bears’ Cottage and is appalled by the rampant consumerism encountered there.
Three beds, three chairs, three bowls? While there are people in the world who starve?
The Three Bears are depicted as greedy capitalist honey monsters and urged to ‘check your privilege’.
RAPUNZEL
RAPUNZEL, Rapunzel let down your hair, let me climb your golden stair? Are you like for real?
Today’s Rapunzel would never let the Prince inside her safe space. she’d have him arrested for harassment, yelling up at her window and impersonating a witch.
Alone with only her emotional support dog and a lifetime’s supply of kale and cocoa nibs, Rapunzel eschews the company of men and invents the deep-space capsule shuttle instead.