The Nameless Mother
Oct. 25th, 2011 12:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
matrilI'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.
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.
