Over the past few months, there has been ongoing discussion of Orson Scott Card, his vile views on queer people and equal marriage, and the upcoming release of the film adaptation of Ender's Game. Over and over again - as in the most recent such article I've stumbled upon, by John Scalzi - people say:
Personally speaking, I have a pretty high tolerance for artists and creators being obnoxious/offensive/flawed/assholes/otherwise seriously imperfect. This is partly because I believe art is a highly composed, refined, edited and intentional end result of a process that takes place in a mind which can be almost anything. The only thing creators fundamentally have in common is the ability to create, and to shape their creations to speak to others.
[...]
So, yeah, I can put up with a lot when it comes to creators. It’s not
usually the art’s fault the brain it came out of is directly connected
to an asshole.
To be clear, in fact I think Scalzi is generally competent, and I've deliberately pulled out the most unpleasant part of the article: but it's representative of a broader idea, the idea that a creator's reprehensible views don't affect the art they create.
They do.
It is one thing for me to consume media that doesn't contain queer people, trans people, just because we've been forgotten and overlooked.
It is quite another to consume media from which we have been actively erased.
My boycott isn't about material created by an author who holds irrelevant views. It's about my unwillingness to give money to people who deliberately erase me as an active political position.
[TW: This post contains discussion of racism and misogyny]
[image description: A screenshot of the Twitter feed from ‘The Onion’,
a satirical website. It was posted at 8.42pm on Feb 24, 2013 and reads “Everyone else seems afraid to say it, but that Quvenzhané Wallis is kind of a cunt, right?”. The word 'cunt' has been blacked out: this was added by the source from which I obtained the picture]
Yes, that Tweet was posted as a ‘joke’, and yes, The Onion has subsequently taken it down and apologised for it (and good for them for doing so). However, I’d still like to unpack some of the
discourse that has been going on around Quvenzhané Wallis, her name, and her
position in Hollywood over the past few days.
Here is a list of names (assembled in about ten minutes
on the Lashings mailing list) that the film-going, TV-watching and
novel-reading public has had no problem at all in learning to pronounce and
relate to in the past fifteen years:
Yes, these are all fictional characters, and yes some of them are from
texts that do appeal more to that special geeky sub-section of the public that
I hold dear. However, it sure seems to me that names which are
difficult-to-pronounce for an English speaker don’t attract much in the way of
screaming and whining if they come attached to Sparkly Elven Princess or
Awesome Wizard or Space-Age Alien. However, when the name that presents an Anglophone
speaker with some difficulty belongs to a young Black girl – even a
ridiculously talented and adorable one – what we seem to end up with is
comments like this (made, I remind you, by someone who was responsible for judging the Academy Awards):
In the past few days, we’ve also seen incidents of TV producers and
commentators referring to Quvenzhané Wallis as ‘Little Q’ and ‘Miss Wallis’,
presumably out of a desire to avoid having to say or type her real name (I don’t
recall Haley Joel Osment being referred to as ‘Little H’ or ‘Mr Osment’ shortly
after the release of The Sixth Sense,do you?). My point here is that yes, ‘Quvenzhané’ is an
unusual name, and one that doesn’t follow pronunciation rules that are familiar
for a speaker of British English. I didn’t know how to say it when I first saw
it written down either! But it is a real name, it is her name, and it literally
takes all of ten seconds to learn how to say it properly (here’s a handy guide,
which includes a video of the lady herself saying it for you!). If you’re a professional commentator on the entertainment industry, barring disability issues or temporary lack of access to communications devices, learning
to say/spell the name of the person you’re speaking or writing about seems like
a fairly basic minimum job requirement to me.
Interestingly, I suspect that the reactions of Anglophone people around
Wallis’ name are to some extent backed up by research. A joint study produced
last year by the University of Melbourne and NYU suggested something the
researchers called the ‘name pronunciation effect’, meaning that people in the
study were more likely to positively evaluate people with ‘easily pronounceable’
names in both a laboratory and a real-life context. You can read a short article about
the study here and a copy of the report itself here.
And despite the fact that a lot of people regard Quvenzhané Wallis with
affection and joy, there have been a number of such negative evaluations. See
the not-so-subtle hostility in the comments on this Jezebel post, for example (for those who don’t want to click through, the post features an image of
Wallis ‘pumping her arms’ in her seat at the Award ceremony: apparently a gesture
of pleasure and pride used by many cast and crew members on the film Beasts of the Southern Wild, the film for which
Wallis was nominanted). At the time of writing, comments included:
Which brings me back to the 'cunt' comment in the Onion. Yes, it was a joke -- a joke that revolved around the idea that so many people love Quvenzhané that you can now base humour on the idea of 'taking her down a peg or two': the basic premise of the comedy is still that a little girl -- a little Black girl -- has 'got above her station' and this makes it funny and shocking to throw misogynist slurs at her.
Intersecting with the obvious racism here (a nine-year-old kid looks pleased and happy at the effing Oscars and she's 'full of herself' and needs to 'learn humility'? WTF?) I think that the jokes and complaints around Quvenzhané's name are particularly interesting. Here is where it veers off the theoretical and gets a little personal for me: in non-Lashings life, my family name is non-English and is difficult for many English speakers to pronounce. It's worth noting that for me, this comes with a large side-serve of white privilege (classic immigrant story: perfectly-ordinary-name in non-English-language became awkwardly-misspelled-uncommon-name when illiterate great-grandparents came into contact with English-speaking immigration officials). However, I’ve certainly felt that hostility, that slight frisson of ‘Ugh, awkward kid with awkward name’, even though my racial privilege shields me from most of the worst aspects of it. It was much worse when I was a kid and subject to the whims of roll-calling teachers, but is still around to some extent today. Anyone who’s ever had a microaggressive conversation that ran along the lines of
“What kind of name is that?”
“How do you say that?”
“How do you spell that?”
“Are you sure?”
“Where are you from?”
“No, where are you really from?”
might agree. When the 'name pronunciation effect' study first came out, I shared it with a number of friends on Facebook. Several people jumped in to say that I had it wrong -- there wasn't any kind of racial or cultural bias at work in the study: it's just that people don't like names which are 'unfamiliar'. By an amazing co-incidence, the contradictors were all people with English-based names living in majority-English-speaking countries. Reader, I LOL'ed. It's about more than 'unfamiliarity', I'm afraid. Yes, a ‘difficult’ name demands that the person who
needs to use it work a little harder: ‘Quvenzhané’ requires more effort from an
Anglophone teacher or secretary (or ‘Entertainment Tonight’ journalist) than ‘Sarah’
or ‘Jane’. That's called cognitive bias, it's a real thing, and cheers to fellow Lasher Bishop for reminding me of it.
HOWEVER, I suspect that this interacts in some important ways with who we as a
society deem worthy of ‘extra’ time and effort: we're much quicker to get over our cognitive bias about unfamiliar names when we think the person causing it is important or powerful. When I was little, adults didn't make much effort to say my name properly and were often rude and dismissive when they got it wrong: now that I'm an adult with a professional job, other people tend to be more careful about pronouncing it right and get embarrassed if they mess up. Funny, that. And thus back to Quvenzhané Wallis and an attitude that many powerful people seem to be projecting: who does this kid, this girl, think she is, ‘demanding’ (with
her very presence) that we go to the trouble of learning how to say that
tongue-twister? Can’t we just call her ‘Annie’ instead?
[GIF description: An interviewer is speaking to Quvenzhané Wallis.
Interviewer: “Look who it is! It’s Annie!” (a reference to Wallis’ recent
casing in the 2014 remake of Annie). Interviewer:
“I’m calling you Annie now.” Camera zooms in on Wallis’s face, she looks
shocked and annoyed. Wallis: “I am not Annie! I am Quvenzhané”.]
To my mind, this explains in part why there's been very little crying about having to learn how to say names like 'Jake Gyllenhaal', 'Gerard Depardieu' or 'Arnold Schwarzenegger', and why I've never seen a reporter bounce up to Ralph Fiennes on the red carpet and demand to be allowed to call him 'Ralf'. The 'name pronunciation effect' seems to entangle itself with other factors affecting the way in which we deem people in society to be worthy of our effort and respect, and age, gender and whiteness are all key in this. Having been someone who, by age and gender, was not deemed worthy of that respect at various times in my life (oh, but that "I am not Annie!" expression in the gif above is identical to that which frequently appeared on the face of the infant Galatea), I see what's going on here and I don't like it. I dislike even more the fact that it's still going on in 2013, and that we'll apparently spend more effort on learning to say the name of a fictional hobbit, alien or dragon-keeper than a real live nine-year-old girl.
I don’t have a quick or easy solution here, but I think
that it’s important to keep this in mind, and to remind everyone that this bias
exists and perhaps needs to be consciously countered where necessary. In other words, do 'vote for people you can't pronounce' if they deserve your votes, and maybe be conscious of the need to do so! Another simple
act of respect that you and I can begin with is to deliberately set out to
educate ourselves about names that are not familiar to us, and to use them
correctly whenever possible (assuming that we have the permission of the owner
to do so).
[image description: Quvenzhané Wallis standing outdoors, wearing a red dress and smiling].
Who does this kid think she is? She thinks she is Quvenzhané, and she’s
damn well right.
So I went to see Snow White and the Huntsman this week and I have a lot of feelings about it, so I thought what better place to put them than the Lashings blog.
(I’m going to talk in some detail about various choices the film made in their re-telling of the Snow White fairytale so spoilers for stuff like that. However, if you are familiar with the fairytale, there are not really going to be a ton of surprises here, except for interpretation/artistic choices/that sort of thing.)
[Trigger warning: Use of misogynistic language, in the post and the links. I discuss sexist portrayals and violence against women in the horror genre, including sexual violence, and have embedded a video that depicts some of these things. Some of the film descriptions I link to may also be disturbing or triggering. At least one of the linked videos is NSFW (the others, it may depend on where you work!).]
[Spoiler warning: I potentially spoil some minor plot points in The Vampire Lovers, Shambleau, Jenifer, Deadgirl, Carrie, Teeth, Misery, and Bride of Frankenstein. Major ending spoilers for Perfume and Martyrs. Some spoilers for Supernatural, especially in the embedded video, but nothing from the last couple of seasons. Almost all links contain spoilers.]
So, I'm a fan of horror. Movies, books, comics; anything that promises me a creepy doll, a supernatural menace, an eldritch abomination or just a really good scare, I'm there for. And I feel sympathy for people who raise their eyebrows when I mention this. One friend said to me, “Oh, I'd like to get into horror fiction too. It's just so hard to find the good stuff that isn't all blood and rape,” and I could only agree with them. While I would say horror is no more prone to Sturgeon's Law than any other genre, horror's usual subject matter means that the crap is often, well, crappier; more violent, more gratuitous, more enraging, more difficult to read or watch. Horror fiction is by its nature often reactionary – it's about the intrusion of the abnormal into normal life and (usually) the eventually re-assertion of the status quo. That being the case, it's not surprising to find the annals of horror fiction littered with bad guys who are in some way othered: demons dressed in S&M gear, predatory lesbians (link NSFW), really offensivemetaphorised representationsof people of colour.... And of course slasher movies are particularly infamous for the tendency of the victims to be black, sexually active or generally behaving in non-societally approved ways.
Besides the general kyriarchical mess, though, there are two things that make it tough for me specifically as a female fan of horror, and it's those that I'd like to talk about more in this post.
So, further to Sebastienne’s frankly brilliant post t’other day about concepts of self-belief, self-doubt and the fantasy of understanding in Paging Doctor Sherlock House, let’s talk about what happens on the rare occasions when the supercharacter in question is female. As Sebastienne has already discussed the case of Holmes’ former nemesis and now (apparently) sap Irene Adler, I won’t go into that, but believe me it’s tempting – instead, let’s talk about Lisbeth Salander, the eponymous Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. (It seems important to point out here that The Young Female Defined By A Notable Physical Feature wasn't actually the original title of this book: the literal translation of the Swedish Män som hatar kvinnor is 'Men Who Hate Women', which is going to be relevant in due course.) Apologies to those who haven't seen the films or read the books - this post contains spoilers.
Following on the heels of Annalytica's post on the messages that we take in, consciously and unconsciously, from popular culture... I'm pleased to report a minor episode of mainstream Hollywood film gender-win, just in time for anyone who feels like taking in a film over the holidays!
I went to see the new 'Puss in Boots' film expecting not-a-great-deal in the way of positive political messages. As a pop culture and folklore/fairytale geek, I usually find films from the Shrek franchise juuuust clever and entertaining enough for me to put up with their fail -- but the fail is definitely there. The exploitation of stereotypes in the Shrek world is occasionally playful and parodic, but I find that it often steers too close to uncritical parroting of sexist, racist and fatphobic traits for me to be entirely comfortable with it (and I'll deliver my full critique of the politics of Shrek another day, boys and girls and everyone else).
The trailer, which focuses heavily on the figure of Puss himself and the action scenes, can be viewed here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55gmAtakjJ4 -- and again, it doesn't promise much in the way of departure from what we've seen in previous Shrek outings. So while I like Puss, and enjoy listening to Antonio Banderas go 'Meow!' as much as the next gentleman-fancying person, I really wasn't expecting great things from this film. But what I got was...
Kitty Softpaws. Leaving aside the rather icky name (gratuitous pun on equally ickily-named James Bond character for the lose), what we have here is a mainstream Hollywood heroine who does the ass-kicking-female bit we've all seen from a hundred tedious action films... but takes it a bit further in some quite pleasing and interesting ways.
There are many things going on this weekend! How will you ever decide which to go to?
Friday
7:30pm: The Mechanisms
Port Mahon, Oxford
Once a year, the inhabitants of the lonely outpost of Spaceport Mahon, floating near-derelict in the Clement Asteroid Belt, tremble in anticipation: that notorious vessel AURORA and her band of troublesome MECHANISMS are approaching once again. Is this the time when they will finally destroy Spaceport Mahon in a blaze of anarchic fury? Or have they managed to calm Gunpowder Tim’s tendencies to arson? Only the brave, foolish, or those interested in dieselpunk cabaret spacefolk musical storytelling should dare to find out.
8pm: Film screening as part of Wadham Queerweek
Old Seminar Room, Wadham College, Oxford
XXY is a 2007 Argentine film written and directed by Lucía Puenzo. The film stars Ricardo Darín, Valeria Bertuccelli, Inés Efron and Martín Piroyansky. It tells the story of a 15-year-old intersex person, the way her family copes with her condition and the ultimate decision that she must eventually make as she finds her sexuality.
Saturday
12 noon: Fawcett Day of Action
On average, women earn less, own less, and are more likely to work and retire in poverty than men. The government’s approach to cutting the deficit will widen the gap between women and men. On November 19th, join us on the ‘DON’T turn back time’ March in London or host your own ‘DON’T turn back time’ tea party to help us tell David Cameron:“DON’T TURN BACK TIME ON WOMEN’S EQUALITY!”
London:
12 noon – march congregates at Temple tube, Victoria Embankment.
12.30 – march sets off down Embankment, across Horse Guards Avenue, down Whitehall past Downing Street.
13.30 – march finishes with a rally on King Charles Street.
6pm: Wadham Queerfest
Wadham College Gardens, Oxford
To mark the end of Wadham's annual QUEER WEEK, come and join us in the beautiful College Gardens for a night of live entertainment, cocktails, delicious food, fantabulous costumes and lots and lots of dancing.
Sunday
7:15pm: Transgender Remembrance
St Columba's United Reformed Church, Oxford (off Alfred St , near All Bar One)
A special meeting to remember members of the transgender community who have lost their lives as victims of abuse and hatred.
7:30pm: Discussion: Feminism and Pornography
Tanner Room, Linacre College, Oxford
Can there be such a thing as non-exploitative pornography?
Does anti-porn mean anti-sex?
How can campaigning around issues related to the "porn industry" be respuctful to those who work in it? Lashings' own Goblin in discussion with Matt McCormack-Evans of the Anti-Porn Men Project.
Posted by Sally Outen
"Our princess is as strong as they come!" "Indeed, she rescued me earlier!"
Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind In a Disney film, dialogue like this might be written to be self-consciously subversive, a knowing attempt to play upon that whole "rescue-the-princess" cliché. It might come across as empowering, but it's just as likely to ring false, as though the writers aren't sure whether their main objective is to provide strong female role models, or just to show off how clever they are at messing around with fairy-tale tropes.
But these lines actually come from a film by Hayao Miyazaki, and it's difficult to find the same flavour of cynicism in them, within context. In Miyazaki's films, women are every bit as likely to be heroes as men, every bit as likely to be in positions of power – and the majority of Miyazaki's protagonists are well-characterised women. Miyazaki is often described as a feminist (most notably by Studio Ghibli president, Toshio Suzuki), and his films are frequently noted for their feminist themes, as well as for their elements of environmentalism, pacifism, socialism, and complex attitudes towards good and evil. For me, this was always going to be a winning formula, and in evaluating Miyazaki's output, I tend to find myself squeeing incoherently rather than taking an attentive critical viewpoint. So here's my attempt to offer a broad feminist analysis of Miyazaki's work, highlighting the aspects that I've found potentially problematic, alongside more squeeworthy elements.
OK - a couple of warnings. Firstly, this post turned out a bit longer than usual, proof that I should never start typing while watching anime. Secondly, it contains spoilers for Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, Castle in the Sky, My Neighbour Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service, Porco Rosso, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle, and Ponyo. It can be inferred that these spoilers will extend to the novels and manga on which some of these titles are based. I haven't included Castle of Cagliostro (from the Lupin III canon) in this analysis because I'm not sure to what extent it is possible to detect Miyazaki's own directorial voice in this film from early in his directorial career.
Two things I’m not about to apologise for: being an enormous nerd, and caring about children’s film and literature.
In case you were wondering, mine is the geeky sensibility that animates a lot of the critiques of sci-fi and fantasy in Lashings, including our existing Lion King sketch (which was, if I say so myself, the breakaway hit of our Edinburgh 2010 run – if you haven’t yet had the chance to see twelve grown adults miming carnivorous vaginas for a paying audience, I recommend you rectify this ASAP).
I’ve spent most of my adult life struggling to balance an extremely sharp and pointy feminist nose with a love of all things animated and super-powered, hobbit-ridden and Hogwarts-bound (I draw the line, however, at psychic talking dragons). I love geeky shit enough to ask some really difficult questions about who it serves and what it does: feminists who want to know why I’m wasting my time with this trivial silliness and geeks who whine that I’m harshing their uncritical squee tend to be given equally short shrift.
I also think that there’s nothing less feminist than acting as though children’s literature isn’t important, or that popular children’s texts (such as Disney films) aren’t literature. These things, which are pushed on kids to a ridiculous extent in Western culture (see here and here for discussions, and here for a really interesting alternative take on The Little Mermaid), play a huge role in shaping their inner lives. I don’t mean ‘Oh, kids will watch Superman and then think that they can fly’ or anything so pointlessly reductive: what I mean is that the ranges of characters and situations shown will, in some very real ways, help to shape kids’ senses of what is possible, both within fantasy* and outside it**.
* Eg., a child (generally!) knows that flying is make believe and ze cannot really fly.
** But if flying = a make-believe symbol that stands in for ‘being strong and adventurous’, and child only ever sees a certain type of character getting to fly... well, you tell me.
I think Ursula le Guin puts it best:
As you read a book word by word and page by page, you participate in its creation, just as a cellist playing a Bach suite participates, note by note, in the creation, the coming-to-be, the existence, of the music. And, as you read and re-read, the book participates in the creation of you, your thoughts and feelings, the size and temper of your soul.
-- Ursula K. Le Guin
Disney Princesses are a rant for another day, or possibly even another lifetime. But this is what I have to say about the five things I really wish that ickle baby Galatea hadn’t learned from The Lion King:
1. Girls kick ass! For exactly as long as they need to until the Real Hero shows up.
This is the thing that got me angry enough to write the Lashings skit in the first place. When It All Goes Horribly Wrong at Pride Rock re: evil Machiavellian uncles, young lioness Nala courageously leaves her family and travels across the desert in order to find somebody who can come and put a stop to Scar. She’s the sole surviving hope of her people (mostly because they believe their prince to be dead, but hey, I’ll take my female heroes where I can find them), and gets sent off with a really touching duet in the stage-musical version*.
* Which interests me particularly because it's performed by two women (link is to a video, lyrics here), backed with a chorus of mostly women -- which is not something you see that often in mainstream pop culture, particularly when the song isn't about love or men. Hooray, Bechdel-test-passing on the West End!
But all of that immediately ceases to be important once Simba decides that hmmm, maybe he’ll wander back home and fulfil his patriarchal dest-- er, I mean, claim that pesky kingdom back after all. And answer me this, cats and kittens: if adult!Nala is demonstrably able to knock adult!Simba over and pin him to the ground just as she did when they were cubs... why is that he is able to fight Scar and she isn’t?
[Video description: Pumbaa the warthog and Timon the meerkat are stalked and chased by Nala. Pumbaa becomes stuck under a tree root, and they seem about to be eaten until Simba appears and attacks Nala. The two lions fight until Nala knocks Simba to the ground and pins him there, in a pose that echoes a moment when they played together as cubs at the beginning of the film. Simba recognises her, and gasps 'Nala?'. End clip.]
What really spins me out is that I’d never even noticed this as a wee’un. Because of course, no matter how strong or brave or clever Nala is, she isn’t The Hero. Of course, she isn’t there to be identified with, or loved in her own right, because she’s The Girl, and no matter how competent she is we’d better not forget that her real job is to look sexy in a disturbingly anthropomorphic fashion during the profoundly G-rated Disneyfied sex-scene.
Phooey.
2. Accents as narrative determinism:
Let’s break it down, shall we?
Standard USAmerican = Hero (Simba, Mufasa, Nala, Sarabi, all the good lionesses)
British RP = highly intelligent, whether for good (Zazu, played by Rowan Atkinson) or for evil (Scar, played by Jeremy Irons).
Working-class Bronx = the Comic Relief (Timon and Pumbaa)
Afro-American/Latino cadences = Comedy Villanous Henchmen (the hyenas, speaking parts voiced by Whoopi Goldberg and Cheech Marin)
Swahili?* = Unfathomably Wise Elder (Rafiki).
It’s particularly worrying that the accents also seem to function as marker of species, and that the more class privilege your accent is associated with, the higher up the food chain you tend to be. Literally.
On the other hand, I do have to give massive props to Niketa Calame and Jason Weaver, who played Young Nala and the singing voice of Young Simba resepctively and were, to the best of my knowledge, the first Black actors to voice a Disney hero and heroine.
* Given that the character is named in Swahili, and speaks a couple of phrases of it, I’m going to assume that that’s what the voice-actor Robert Guillame, who is actually USAmerican, was going for. The racefail in that isn't mine to unpack, particularly as Guillame is African-American, but I do think it's that it's there.
3. Effeminacy Is Evil
Oh Scar, Scar, Scar. Much as you might be the favourite character of every gentleman-fancying person with whom I’ve ever watched this film as an adult, you are still decidedly problematic . Between the dramatic gestures, slinky walk, camp asides about being surrounded by IDIOTS!, and being physically slighter and less muscular than the other lions, it’s fairly easy to read the character as less conventionally-masculine, and I think this is intentional on the film-makers’ behalf. More troublingly, his gender performance seems to be directly linked to his evil nature, as in one scene the character admits that he resorts to conspiracy because he is less physically strong than his brother (‘at the shallow end of the gene pool’). Although in the stage version, part of Scar’s villiany is wanting to ‘marry’ Nala against her will, he shows no interest in her until the idea of a succession is suggested by Zazu – make of that what you will.
For what it’s worth, I wouldn’t really object to Disney fielding a queer villain as a once-off. But it happens with irritating regularity, and it tends to be the only portrayal of non-normative gender performance that gets into mainstream kids’ film. If the only images of gender-unconventionality you see growing up are irrevocably paired with evildom, what does that do to your perception of queers? If you’re a baby queerthing yourself, what does it do to your perception of you?
Well, aside from turn a lot of us into Goths, obviously.
(Full disclaimer: At the time The Lion King came out in cinemas, I was a freakishly tall, skinny pre-teen with an enormous mane of bushy black hair and a withering contempt for anyone not conversant with fractal geometry and the intricacies of the mythos of J.R.R. Tolkien. D’you think I got called ‘Uncle Scar’ every day for a week at break? Answers on a postcard. See also: my ongoing obsession with the bewilderingly high proportion of Disney villians who happen tohavegreeneyes.)
Occasionally I think of the legions of soft-spoken, elegant, evil-intentioned but physically non-violent men who have been the antagonists in every Disney film I grew up with, from Robin Hood ’s Sir Hiss to Aladdin’s Jafar to The Frog Princess’s Dr Facilier. Then I place them alongside the legions of Disney lady-villains who have similarly broken the conventions of gender presentation by being conventionally-unattractive (Ursula the Sea Witch), loud and aggressive (The Red Queen from Alice in Wonderland, Cruella de Ville) or unfemininely ambitious/determined/demanding (Cinderella and Snow White’s stepmothers, Madame Medusa from The Rescuers, the evil Siamese cats from Lady and the Tramp). And then I dance around and around the room, singing at the top of my voice: ‘Thank G*d, thank g*d, thank g*d I’m queer!’.
(Full-on butch ladies, incidentally, don’t exist. Or at least they won’t until Disney makes Mulan, five years later, and that is another post for another day.)
4. Hierarchy Is Natural and Monarchy Is Awesome (particularly when the Royal Family is capable of eating you)
Say what you like about the Royal Wedding Hype that is already tying multiple knots in my organic anti-heteropatriarchy knickers... but not even Princess Anne at the peak of her fox-hunting career was ever known to chase down her subjects with a pack of corgis, rip out their carotid arteries and nom on their juicy still-twitching corpses. ‘Circle of life’, my free-range herbivorous arse.
5. ‘Can You Feel The Love Tonight’
... finally my most deeply-felt and serious objection to this film of all: like anyone else who was a teenager in the 90s, I had to listen to this being played at graduations, school dances, weddings, end-of-year choir numbers, etc until it came out my fucking nose. Eurgh. Sir Elton, I love you like the slightly embarassing Tory-leaning luvvie uncle I never had, but at times you have a lotto answer for.
... and one thing I wish I had:
[TW for discussion of kitty incest]
This has been bothering me for SIXTEEN YEARS now: Seriously, who the hell is Nala’s father?
Either it’s Mufasa, in which case she ends up having kids with her half-brother, or it’s Scar, in which case she ends up being almost pressured into having kids with her Dad (and still ends up having kids with her cousin). I’ve had enough cats in my life to be prepared to give points for animal-behaviour accuracy if turns out that either theory is true, but I think that both of them may cause Disney executives to spontaneously combust. For what it’s worth, a quick Google suggests that I am not the only person to have lost sleep over this. In the extremely unlikely event that I ever come into contact with anyone who worked on the film, I’m going to fix them with my best wide-eyed and innocent expression and ask about it.
Because I am, of course, chock-full of highly-intelligent green-eyed genderqueer evil.
If you enjoyed the Lashings Disney Princess sketch you'll probably like these videos, which I found via Sociological Images. Embedded videos and transcripts below the cut.
Posted by kaberett
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