The Nameless Mother

[matril]

I've only seen Tangled once so far, so I haven't had too in-depth a look at it yet, but there's one thing that stood out to me, in how it compares to past Disney/princess stories: the mother matters. But....she's actually a fake mother who's manipulating and exploiting her stolen daughter, and by nature of the story of Rapunzel she had to matter, so I doubt Disney was making a deliberate choice to finally have the mother fill the central parental role. Too bad, since their track record is unfailingly skewed toward father-daughter relationships.


In the early princess movies, character development on the whole is, shall we say, on the spotty side. But whenever a parent does show up with any significant role, it fits in one of two boxes - loving father, or evil stepmother.

Fairy tales tend this way, of course. Still, the pattern is rather telling - Snow White has the evil queen, Cinderella has her malicious stepmother (so perfectly malicious, in fact, that they asked the same voice actress to perform as Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty.) Cinderella's references to her parents is about equal, between her father dying and her mother supplying the dress that Cinderella originally plans on wearing to the ball, but neither one is important compared to the stepmother. Then there's Aurora, whose father has a number of lines, a handful of scenes, a song, a little subplot with the prince's father - and a name, for pete's sake. Her mother has some sparse lines and no name. On the other hand, her primary parental figures are the fairies who pose as her aunts, so that's something.

But then. Ariel? Her father. No mention of her mother. Belle? Papa. No mother. Jasmine? Sultan, no mother. More tellingly, the choices that instigate much of the stories' development are motivated almost entirely by their relationships, healthy or not, with their fathers. Ariel rebels against her father's strict anti-human policy and ends up basically selling her soul to the sea-devil (who is, erm, also a she-devil). Belle gives up her freedom to save her father. Jasmine meets Aladdin because she's running away from the marriage her father wants to arrange for her. Father, fathers, fathers. Hey, I'm all for a strong father-daughter bond, don't get me wrong. But consider that of the source material for these stories, only Beauty and the Beast originally contained that particular father-daughter relationship. And it could have been interesting to shake things up and portray, for once, a crucial mother-daughter bond. I had to laugh when Princess and the Frog had the father die before the main part of the story - and yet, even with a living mother, Tiana's actions are still influenced far more by her dead father! Again, I'm not criticizing the way that was portrayed; it was quite sweet. But again with the father and his little girl.

So Tangled finally focused on a mother and her daughter. Well, it had to. That's what the story of Rapunzel is about. But it was rather nicely nuanced, all things considered. The clash between guilt and rebellion within Rapunzel, the passive-aggressive ways that Mother Gothel (who has a name, hooray!) manipulates her - a surprisingly accurate rendering of a dysfunctional, abusive relationship. Which is why I confess to being a little let down that, once Rapunzel realized the truth, she showed no lingering feelings for her would-be Mother. The fact is, Mother Gothel's maternal inclinations were all feigned, but Rapunzel's responses to those inclinations were entirely genuine. And she would have grieved, not for a real person, but for the person she thought she was. It wouldn't have been a simple matter of transferring those feelings to her real parents, who would be strangers to her to start with. Now of course that's expecting way too much nuance and introspection from a movie aimed primarily at children....But on other hand, the mother-daughter relationship was far more complex and insightful than I would have expected from a franchise's first full-fledged portrayal of a daughter's connection to her mother. Here's hoping for more mothers with names, and maybe the first mother to play a major role without being evil.

Comments

[nirupama kumar (from livejournal.com)]

so true. I knew there were a lot of father/daughter ties in the movies, but I never realized how systematically moms are excluded from the disney universe until now. Is the mother figure just not good children's entertainment? Maybe Walt himself couldn't relate to it? Kind of like how Alcott wrote all of her fathers as very vague creatures while everything else was so realistic it was almost quoting life.

[matril.livejournal.com]

The thing is, I don't think it's a deliberate choice to exclude mothers - if they were conscious of it, they probably would have made an obvious, ham-fisted attempt by now to rectify it - "Look, it's a Mother Story! See how there's a Mother?" instead of incorporating a mother organically into an existing fairy tale. I kind of hope they'll continue to not notice it...while at the same time subconsciously bringing in more mothers. Yeah, I'm pretty picky.

[(Anonymous)]

What if it's as simple as subconscious "gender balance"? Disney has a long tradition of dropping "superfluous" characters (remember Missus Pongo from 101 Dalmatians, or Jack from Swiss Family Robinson?) Usually one parent is enough to drive the plot forward, and, since most characters with parents are female, a male parent is the "balanced" approach. Of course, the Lion King is an obvious exception, but I suspect they'd have a hard time doing that any other way. . .

[matril.livejournal.com]

Interesting thought. Of course, it usually results in there being very few female authority figures.

[firehearts132.livejournal.com]

I can understand your concern about the lack of mothers/mother figures in Disney films, especially when the few of them there are tend to be evil. It's funny how people focus on how stereotypical the Disney princesses can be, but ignore the lack of mothers, and how evil they can be portrayed at times. It's an issue that needs more attention.

And like you, I mostly enjoyed Tangled. But yeah, it's kind of a let down how Rapunzel just stopped loving Mother Gothel. It's also disappointing how while Rapunzel's relationship with this mother figure is complex and interesting, it would have been nice if Disney included a more positive mother or mother figure.

[matril.livejournal.com]

I had vaguely noticed the prevalence of father-daughter pairings in Disney movies some time ago, but it wasn't until the Princess and the Frog that I noticed - hey, her father's dead, and she still has a more important relationship with him than her mother! The trend is just too frequent to ignore.

I'm thinking I might look at the lack of human friends next time. Why are princesses stuck with nothing but animal sidekicks?

[firehearts132.livejournal.com]

Neither did I. The first time I noticed it was when I watched this Disney critique on how the Disney princesses are portrayed on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbpVre4gnmI

The people didn't just discuss how stereotypical the Disney princesses tend to be, they also noticed the lack of mothers and mother/daughter relationships in the films.

It's ironic that I notice this, seeing as how I have a closer relationship with my father than my mother. Then again, that doesn't change the fact that I care for my mother too. It's just that she is often busy at work, which makes it more difficult to spend time with her. :(

That's a problem too. I think the whole befriending-animals thing has to do with the stereotype that women are more intune with nature than men, whereas the men are more intune with technology. In fact, you can see this in Tangled---Rapunzel was able to calm a horse down, whereas Flynn was constantly in conflict with it.

But yeah, I think it would be a good idea for the Disney princesses to have human friends. The lack of them is probably why Disney princesses have been so dependent on the princes in Disney films; it's easy to become more attached to someone when you only have one or a couple people to focus on.

[matril.livejournal.com]

Very interesting. I do think it's important to notice the nuances involved in these stereotypical portrayals - like the movie's tone toward those attitudes. For example, while it's portrayed as perfectly natural that Snow White would happily cook and clean for the dwarves, it's not shown as a positive that Mulan is getting trussed up like a doll so she can land a good husband, and I think even a young viewer could recognize the subversive tones going on there.

[firehearts132.livejournal.com]

Agreed. The way sexism is portrayed changes everything. Like Mulan, the sexism in Beauty and the Beast was portrayed as a bad thing---in fact, the villain(Gaston) is a villain who basically wants Belle to be his trophy wife.