Come off it, Keira, you’re the ultimate Cinderella
Are you thinking what she’s thinking?
KEIRA KNIGHTLEY says she won’t let her daughter watch Cinderella and certain other Disney films as they are not feminist enough and don’t feature strong female characters. Many mothers might not allow their daughters to watch some Keira Knightley films for exactly the same reason. I mean, come on, sisters.
Let’s not forget that in Love actually — a straightforward reworking of the Cinderella fairy tale, in which tea lady Martine McCutcheon falls in love with prime minister hugh Grant — Keira stars as Juliet, the gorgeous, but drippy, bride whose sole purpose in the film is to hold the male gaze and be super-nice to her stalker.
What a hypocrite. In a film version of King arthur, Keira stars as a plucky Guinevere (wearing little more than two straps of leather on her top half), yet her good deeds are drowned in a sea of armour-clanking machismo by Lancelot and all of his swashbuckling pals.
even in Pirates Of the Caribbean, the hollywood franchise that made her a multimillion-pound fortune, Keira’s character wasn’t allowed to carry a sword in the first film. Usually, she floated around in frocks and had to listen while swordplay and fighting were mansplained to her by guys in eyeliner.
Yet, on the U.S. chat show ellen this week, Miss Knightley polished her fem creds by stating that edie, her three-year-old daughter, has been banned from watching Cinderella because the character ‘waits around for a rich guy to rescue her’. Instead, Keira wants her daughter to rescue herself.
Cue whoops and excruciating applause from the dim-bulb audience at this bold display of 21st-century feminism.
Keira was also dismissive of that perennial favourite the Little Mermaid, because the main character ‘gives [her] voice up for a man’.
Look. We have been here before with fairy tales and Disney films that fail to make the modern feminist grade. Rapunzel letting down her hair, whassat all about? Goldilocks being subservient to those beasts the three Bears?
and don’t get me started on Snow White — but only because actress Kristen Bell has got there first.
the star of Frozen (she was the voice of anna) and Bad Moms claimed this week that Snow White is sending the wrong message to children about sexual consent. the prince should have asked for permission before he kissed her — then (in the original Disney classic in 1937) and now.
No joke, but Kristen is also worried about the apple that features in the fairy tale, fretting it gives the wrong message about taking food from strangers.
But the kiss remained her chief concern. ‘Don’t you think it’s weird that the prince kisses Snow White without her permission?’ she asked her daughters, Lincoln, five, and Delta, three. Well darling, if they didn’t before, they do now.
Kristen has been boasting lately of her love of smoking dope at home and it would be wrong of anyone to assume her views on fairy tales are in any way related to her consumption of mind-altering drugs.
however, if we start to censor innocent, muchloved traditional stories and popular films because of how women are depicted, where does that lead us?
Into the stifling grip of a fairy tale taliban who would defile any form of art that does not conform to approved ideology.
Where would it end? Would the KK (Keira and Kristen) ban Jane austen’s Pride and Prejudice (Keira starred as elizabeth Bennet in a 2005 film adaptation) or Charlotte Bronte’s Jane eyre, which both feature women who are, ultimately, redeemed and made happy by wealthy men?
If little girls are to be shielded from the fiction of happy ever after, how can they judge the reality of someone like Meghan Markle: the former restaurant hostess who once couldn’t afford to fix her car, but then married the handsome, millionaire prince and used him to spread her feminist message — on the official royal website!
We WANT the best for the next she-generation — but we also want to give them the space to dream little girl dreams, too.
Or else what are we raising? a chippy little terracotta army of man-hating warriors who would rather die than wear pink or be nice to boys? Like many of my generation, I grew up with a well-thumbed book of Grimms’ Fairy tales. It had a blue and gold cover and tattered pages that contained all the horror and joy and danger and creepiness that Mittel europe had dreamed up for centuries. It was equal parts terrifying and liberating — yet few were gulled into thinking that being Cinders or Snowy was a viable career option or a life choice to be admired.
What is galling is the assumption made by Keira and Kristen that other women — even their own daughters — are not as clever as them.
that they are not smart enough to work it out for themselves, like they did.
Instead, the literature they read and the films they watch must now be sanitised and controlled — or humanity must face the consequences.
the great irony is Keira Knightley herself.
even her greatest fans would have to admit the 33-year-old actress has gone a long, long way on her exceptional beauty — rather than on her not-incredibly-impressive acting skills. Keira is the greatest Cinderella of them all, and that’s the terrible truth about her fairy tale success.