We have seen a massive trend
towards ‘modernising’ fairytales in film recently, but many of them (‘Red
Riding Hood’ being a prime example) fail miserably at updating the stories’
gender and sexual roles sufficiently for a modern, post-feminist audience. I am
happy to say, however, that whatever else you may say about ‘Snow White and the
Huntsman’, it certainly does not fail at bringing a strong female icon to the
screen whilst maintaining a sense of fairytale mysticism. For the purposes of
this review, I shall focus on the film’s feminist take on a traditional
fairytale rather than the quality of the film in terms of writing and acting
etc., purely because I think that this is the most important aspect of a film
which attempts such a standpoint.
Traditional
fairytale as we know it stems from the nineteenth-century, when folk-tales,
traditionally told orally, were written down and used in nurseries throughout
the western world as a means of imparting social values, particularly those
regarding expectations of either gender (think beautiful princesses marrying
the strong, brave prince). These are
still the versions we know today, and therein lies a problem: these roles were
set out for a nineteenth-century audience with a patriarchal social structure,
and so are not necessarily appropriate today. Enter the influx of ‘new’
fairytale film.
The problem many of these films face is
maintaining the femininity in the strong female, which ‘Snow White’ manages to
do astoundingly well. The heroine is a strong character who proves on several
occasions that she doesn’t need a strong man to come and rescue her. Indeed,
she escapes from the castle of the wicked queen by herself using entirely her
own initiative, and without sacrificing her femininity by being forced to fight
hand-to-hand with an army of guards.
Later on, she even saves the Huntsman, who is supposed to be protecting
her, from a troll, completely subverting the traditional iconography of the
damsel in distress.
Even when she
leads an army into war, she maintains a very feminine strength. War is
traditionally a hyper-masculine world which forbids female ‘weakness’, but Snow
White is on the front line, leading her men and joining in the fight herself,
defying this expectation. She is a far cry from the helpless image of her on
the bier in the traditional story, waiting to be woken up and live happily ever
after. When this Snow White is woken up from her poison, she is angry and ready
to fight back herself rather than let a man do the fighting for her.
However, these
were not the first things I noticed about the subversion of gender roles. In
the prologue, Snow White’s mother wishes not for a girl as pure as the snow on
which she looks, but beautiful and strong. This focus on strength is paramount
to the move away from traditional fairytale values, which almost always prize
beauty and chastity over all other female traits. The best example I can give
comes not from ‘Snow White’, but ‘Sleeping Beauty’ by the Brothers Grimm, who
list the virtues the twelve wise women bestow on the princess thus:
‘one gave
virtue, another beauty, a third riches, and so on with everything in the world
that one can wish for’
This list illustrates perfectly the
fairytale priorities when it comes to its female characters. Despite there
being nine other gifts given to the princess, the only ones worth noting are
first purity, then physical attractiveness, and the third primarily amounts to
a dowry with which to sell her into marriage. The mother in ‘Snow White and the
Huntsman’ wishing for strength is then hugely important as it shows a shift in
values from the nineteenth-century nursery story to a twenty-first-century
realisation of a female character.
The Huntsman
himself also defies traditional gender expectations, showing the way in which
the film takes on a truly feminist standpoint in fighting against all gender
stereotypes, not just those damaging to women. When we first see him, he is the
very epitome of ineptitude. He is drunk and has gotten into a fight and, in an
absolutely hilarious scene, accidentally punches a horse and gets kicked by
it. He is by no means the flawless
figure of male strength in contrast to female weakness, but neither is this
scene mocking masculinity. He has a back-story which justifies his flaws and
opens his character and, by proxy, values of masculinity, from mere brawn and
drunkenness to a more fluid and feeling representation, even crying at one
point. He has a psychological reason for his character rather than just being
thrown into that role because he is male.
Sexual politics
forms another major part of the film’s feminism. The evil queen is no more
arbitrarily evil than the Huntsman is arbitrarily masculine; rather she is a
product of male oppression, in particular the male gaze. She explains whilst in
bed with the old king that she realised that a woman’s power over men resides
in her beauty and sexual attractiveness, but when that fades she is nothing.
Having been discarded by another king in this fashion before, she desires power
and eternal beauty, both of which she takes by force. In this respect it is the
male expectation of female beauty that has created the evil in the film, challenging
the traditional fairytale notion of beauty as a key signifier of femininity: in
generating such expectations of women, it creates a monster. It is interesting
to note, then, that the only man the queen trusts is her brother, primarily
because he can pose no sexual threat. If she is a reaction to the male use of
women as sexual objects both in the fairytale world and in terms of a wider
social allegory, then it stands to reason that fraternal loyalty is the only
male connection that doesn’t threaten her. Her brother is within her power, but
that will not fade with her looks because he cannot desire her sexually. It is
her magical and regal power to which he aligns himself, not the power of female
beauty.
The kiss which
traditionally revives Snow White after being poisoned is a difficult thing to
screen from a feminist perspective. A man standing over an unconscious woman
and forcing himself on her through a kiss always has connotations of some kind
of sexual threat, particularly in light of early versions of the ‘Sleeping
Beauty’ story in which the princess awakes to find herself already married and
having borne children. Furthermore, it positions the woman as sexually
submissive and weak as opposed to the active, strong male who brings her back
to life. However, it is a vital part of the story. As I have said previously,
she doesn’t awaken to a ‘happily ever after’, but to lead her troops into
battle to take what is hers, which is a marked improvement already. What is
interesting about the kiss itself, however, is the sexual politics it arises.
The first man to kiss her is the ‘handsome prince’ figure (although he is
actually the son of a Duke, but you get my meaning), and his kiss does nothing.
It is the kiss of the Huntsman, a common man, which actually brings her back to
life after he gives a heartfelt speech about his past. This brings a whole new
dimension to the proceedings. Instead of the kiss coming from a pre-destined
figure who will contractually unite two wealthy families through marriage, it
is a man of little to no power of the woman’s choosing who brings her back, not
just the first eligible suitor who happens to come along. So, whilst the sexual
dynamic is still on the submissive side on the part of Snow White, the fact
that it is not the expected man who revives her, but her chosen man suggests a
move towards female sexual agency, more appropriate to a modern audience.
One of the most
important aspects of female sexuality in the film comes with the ending. Most
fairytales (and Romantic Comedies) end with the woman in a domestic role, in
marriage or motherhood. In this film, however, we see the princess being
crowned the new queen without a man by her side. She is released from the
traditional ‘happily ever after’ of marriage to a handsome prince into one of
her own, where she holds the power still for herself, thus promoting female
agency and autonomy, proving that a happy ending doesn’t by necessity require a
man.
There are so
many more things to say about this film’s realisation of a contemporary
fairytale world. One of the most important of these is that it keeps the horror
dark and scary, which is vital to a re-telling of a fairytale. Many versions
dull-down the frightening elements of such stories, particularly when aiming
them at children, and this is completely unnecessary in my opinion. I read a
book called ‘The Uses of Enchantment’ by Bruno Bettelheim which explained very
neatly the reasons for keeping the horror in children’s stories. He theorises
(using a Freudian model of the psyche) that a child doesn’t yet have a fully
developed Ego, Id and Super-Ego, and so the violent and brutal aspects of these
stories help them to externalise their subconscious desires, to help them
rationalise and deal with them and thus develop their psyche. It really is a
fantastic book, which goes into detail to show how fairytales help children
make sense of the world around them, for example, the wicked stepmother being a
way of extracting the mother that punishes them from the mother who loves them.
But I digress.
The film also
deals with the dwarves in a more sensitive way than many realisations. It
actually seems to remember that they’re human rather than simply ‘mythical
creatures’. They are fierce and they fight for the princess with the same ferocity
and cunning as any of their soldier counterparts, rather than being subservient
creatures that tend to Snow White’s every need. Furthermore, it casts a wider
social net, involving civilian members of the kingdom from a range of social
classes in the uprising against the queen. Many fairytales simplify the
politics of a kingdom just to the upper classes, since this is, firstly, easier
for children to understand and, secondly, a more ‘pleasant’ read in the eyes of
the nineteenth-century middle class audience. In remembering the broader
implications of political struggle, the film reminds us that there is not just
one, pure force for good, but that it is in the everyday as well.
I could go on to
discuss the technical aspects of the film, but I fear that this review is far
too long already. If nothing else, these things would be of little importance
anyway, because the film successfully updates the film to incorporate a contemporary
sense of female autonomy without losing the sense that you are in a fairytale
kingdom. It seems that we have finally reached a point at which a fairytale
heroine is just that: a heroine, not some helpless woman in constant need of
rescue.
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