國立臺灣師範大學英語學系 碩 士 論 文 Master‟s Thesis Department of English National Taiwan Normal University

亂時慾望與過時軀體： 當代好萊塢電影中的回春女性

Anachronistic Desire and Aging Body: Rejuvenating Women in Contemporary Hollywood Films

指導教授：李秀娟博士 Advisor: Dr. Hsiu-Chuan Lee 研 究 生：黃筱筑 Hsiao-Chu Huang

中 華 民 國 104 年 7 月 July 2015

摘要

本論文從近年來好萊塢使用中年女演員演繹年華老去的女巫和邪惡皇后的

潮流出發，探討當代好萊塢電影中年華漸長之女性角色。由於平均壽命增長與人

口老化，好萊塢選角反映出「年華漸長」的確是當代性別經驗中重要的一環。藉

由分析三部以中、老年女性為主要角色的影片：《捉神弄鬼》、《魔法奇緣》、《魔

鏡魔鏡》，我主張回春的敘事情節凸顯了不同年齡層女性的經驗，其中不乏性別

與年齡歧視。

論文分成五章。第一章回顧近年來年齡研究的發展、女性主義與年齡研究的

交集、及「性別年齡歧視」的定義。第二章探討《捉神弄鬼》中兩位回春女性的

呈現手法，特別著眼於喜劇元素如何削弱本片的異性戀價值規範。第三章探討《魔

法奇緣》中母職之建構，思考母職經驗經常被等同於老化的問題。片中的母女關

係亦可被解讀為兩個世代女性之間的關係，其刻劃母女衝突的手法則帶有年齡歧

視。第四章研究《魔鏡魔鏡》的年齡意識形態。我藉由探討片中皇后一角與茱莉

亞羅勃茲的明星形象，指出「後女性主義」的侷限以及好萊塢電影工業普遍的性

別年齡歧視。最後，我回顧幾部更近期的電影，期待未來能有更多電影聚焦年華

漸長的女性、打破性別年齡歧視。

關鍵字：年齡研究、女性研究、後女性主義、性別年齡歧視、好萊塢電影

Abstract

This thesis aims to examine the ways in which aging women‟s experiences are represented through contemporary Hollywood films. I open my thesis by observing a recent trend of employing middle-aged actresses to enact the role of witches and/or wicked queens in Hollywood. Particularly, two films adapted from Grimm Brothers‟

“Little Snow White,” both released in 2012, drew my attention to the experiences of aging women. This trend corresponds to the fact that aging has become an essential experience of contemporary people, thanks to prolonged life expectancy as well as population aging. By analyzing the aging women presented in three popular films—

Death Becomes Her (1992), Tangled (2010), and Mirror Mirror (2012), I argue that the narratives of rejuvenation bring to the fore aging women‟s experiences albeit in collaboration with sexist ageism.

This thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter One provides a general review on the trajectory of age studies, the intersection between age studies and feminism, and the definition of sexist ageism. In Chapter Two, I delve into the representations of two rejuvenating women in Death Becomes Her. By analyzing the comedical style of the film, I suggest that heteronormativity is undermined by the comedical representations of rejuvenated bodies of the two aging women. Chapter Three studies how motherhood is constructed and conflated with aging experience in Tangled. I propose to read the mother-daughter relationship presented in this film as the relations between two generations of women, and indicate that ageism surfaces in the film‟s representation of conflicts between mother and daughter. Chapter Four probes the age ideology embodied in Mirror Mirror. By examining the Queen alongside with Julia

Roberts‟s stardom, I point out the limitations of postfeminism and the sexist ageism inherent in Hollywood stardom. In the concluding chapter, I ponder on the potentials of more recent films and anticipate to see more works complicate the representations

of women‟s aging experiences and challenge sexist ageism.

Key words: age studies, women studies, postfeminism, sexist ageism, Hollywood

films

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Prof. Hsiu-chuan Lee, my advisor, for giving me tremendously helpful guidance and encouragement. I would not be able to complete this long and strenuous journey without her being so supportive and understanding.

Thanks to Prof. Lee, I have found the joy of writing and researching even if the process of thesis writing could be arduous at times. My sincere gratitude also goes to my committee members, Prof. Chi-wen Liu and Prof. Chung-hao Ku, whose constructive criticism and insightful advice are extremely helpful in my revision.

I am deeply grateful that my friends were by my side through the writing process. I thank my classmates at NTNU, especially Jessie Lin and Amber Chen, who patiently read some of my messy first drafts and listened to my whining. I‟d also like to give a hearty shout-out to my best friends—W. T. Wang, Susana Hsu, and Daisy

Chang, as their support and solace relieved my stress and anxiety during this long journey of intellectual pursuits.

Last but not least, I want to express my love and gratitude to my parents, whose financial and moral support allows me to do what I love the most and fulfil my dream.

I dedicate this thesis to my mother, who inspired me to undertake this research on aging women and enables me to envision myself aging into a better person.

Table of Contents

Chapter One______1

Introduction

Chapter Two______21

Comedy, Queerness and Aging in Death Becomes Her

Chapter Three______40

“Now I AM the Bad Guy”: Aging and Motherhood in Tangled

Chapter Four______59

When “Pretty Woman” Looks into the Mirror:

Postfeminism and Aging in Mirror Mirror

Chapter Five ______76

Conclusion

Appendix______80

Works Cited______83

Chapter One Introduction

In her article on HuffPost Women, Emma Grey, the associate editor of the website, addresses how the anxiety toward aging makes her identify with the Wicked

Queen more than with Snow White when she reviews the movie Mirror Mirror

(2012):

[Snow White] was boring; the type of girl you tell your friends is “nice,”

but can think of no other adjectives to describe her. On the other hand,

Julia Roberts‟ queen was by far the most compelling (and entertaining)

part of the film. She was convincingly over-the-top, vain and haughty . . . .

Though I‟m 24, closer in age to 18-year-old Snow White than her

presumably decades older stepmother, I was drawn to the Wicked Queen‟s

fear of getting older far more than Snow's quotidian coming-of-age quest

for independence and a boy's heart.

Here I want to point out that Grey‟s identification with the Queen is not only due to the fear of aging she shares with the Wicked Queen but because the characterization of the Queen weighs more than Snow White in this film. In fact, there is a trend of employing strong female leads to play evil queens and witches in recent Hollywood fairytale adaptations.1 Just as Mirror Mirror‟s having Oscar-winning Julia Roberts play the Wicked Queen, Snow White and the Huntsman (2012), another Snow White adaptation released in the same year, hires Oscar-winning Charlize Theron for the role.

Hollywood top-earning and award-winning stars enacting the roles of evil antagonists

1 In the article “Oscar Winning Actresses Roberts, Theron, Jolie, Weisz Turn Evil to Boost Boxoffice Fortunes,” Pete Hammond explicates on the trend by listing the Oscar-winning and oscar-nominated actresses who have recently played the wicked queen and witch such as Helena Bonham Carter in Alice in Wonderland (2010), Charlize Theron in Snow White and the Huntsman (2012), Rachel Weisz in Oz the Great and Powerful (2013), Angelina Jolie in Maleficent (2014). Pomorski‟s article also shares similar views.

reflects a shift of audiences‟ interest from the innocent, nice female leads to her cunning, manipulative antagonists. Besides featuring attractive Queens, Snow White and the Huntsman highlights the Queen‟s fear of aging and desire for rejuvenation as much as Mirror Mirror does.

Intrigued by how wicked queens are emphasized in recent Hollywood fairytale adaptations, I intend to examine the age ideology these wicked female characters embody.2 To begin with, the tension between a coming-of-age female protagonist and an older powerful woman has been a recurring theme in fairy tales, so fairy tale adaptations are important texts to be discussed concerning age relations among women. For example, Grimm brothers‟ “Little Snow White,” “Little Briar Rose” and

“Rapunzel” all evolve from the relationship between young princesses and wicked old queens and/or witches. Gilbert and Gubar even claim that Disney‟s well-known cartoon Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) “should really be called Snow

White and Her Wicked Stepmother” (201). In addition, it is noteworthy that recent

Hollywood fairytale adaptations employ younger actresses to enact the role of wicked queens than before. In Disney‟s self-parody of its traditional animated princess-themed fairytale adaptations Enchanted (2007), Susan Sarandon, who was 61 years old at the time, played the wicked queen. But in the 2012-released Snow White films, the two actresses who play the wicked queens are in their 30s and 40s respectively.3 What does it mean to see a beautiful actress, in a rather young age, to play the role of a queen who fears aging and seeks rejuvenating power? This phenomenon is a sign that fear of aging does not merely belong to the elders but appears among the younger generations, mostly the middle-aged women.

2 The term “age ideology” is coined by Margaret Morganroth Gullette to refer to “everything we know of as culture in the broadest sense—discourses, feelings, practices, institutions, material conditions [that] is saturated with concepts of age and aging” (Declining 3). 3 At the time when the films were released, Julia Roberts, who plays the Queen in Mirror Mirror, was 45 years old; and Charlize Theron, who plays queen Ravenna in Snow White and the Huntsman, was 37 years old. Huang 2

Since the early twenty-first century, the world has entered a new era of prolonged life expectancy, and population aging has become an important issue in contemporary society. Due to the advancement of medical technology, life expectancy has an ostensible extension in the past fifty years. According to the UN‟s World

Mortality Report in 2011, the average life expectancy in the world (both sexes combined) has increased from the estimated number of 47.7 in 1950-1955 to 69.3 in

2010-2015, and will keep on increasing to 75.6 around 2045 to 2050. Because of the extension of life span and population aging, attention has been paid to how to take care of the elders and the arrangement of post-retirement life. As a result, there is a proliferation of academic discussions and researches implemented in the field of age studies and gerontology.4 To improve senior citizens‟ welfare, critical gerontologists called the attention to the idea of ageism. In 1969, gerontologist Robert Butler coined the term “ageism” to indicate prejudicial attitudes toward older people, old age and aging process. In 1980, Butler further pointed out that “ageism” is composed of three interconnected aspects, that is, the prejudicial attitudes, discriminatory practices, and institutional practices that perpetuate stereotypes against older persons (Wilkinson and

Ferraro 339). After 1980, due to the proliferations of age studies, ageism has become an encompassing term, denoting any discriminating acts against a person based on her/his age. For example, in researches on childhood, “ageism” means “the ways adults misuse their power over children and adolescents” (Gullette, Aged 201).

Although it is important to note that ageism applies to discrimination against not only old age alone but also the younger ones, I use ageism to indicate stereotypical

4 Gullette defines age studies as “the interdisciplinary movement that wants to disrupt the current age system in theory and practice” (Declining 18). Normally, both “age studies” and “aging studies” are permissible terms to refer to the field. However, scholars like Gullette, such as Kathleen Woodward and Howard P. Chudacoff, believe that “age studies,” as it connotes a more general target of analysis, is more helpful in deconstructing ageism and more fruitful in understanding the construction of human life course. For more details, please see the introduction in Woodward‟s Figuring Age: Women, Body, Generations; Chudacoff‟s How Old Are You?: Age Consciousness in American Culture; and Gullette‟s Declining to Decline and Aged by Culture. Huang 3

assumptions about older people and the aging process in this thesis.

Viewing feminist issues with consideration of aging is highly relevant to contemporary women‟s experiences. This thesis is predicated on the belief that sexism can only be thoroughly deconstructed when ageism is also taken into consideration.

Although experiences of aging are normally attached with negative connotations for both men and women, feminists argue that aging “casts its shadow earlier” for women than for men (Woodward, “Introduction” xiii) mostly because women are attached to reproduction and sexual attraction—which diminishes with the aging process—in patriarchal society. Susan Sontag claims that “since women are considered maximally eligible in early youth, after which their sexual value drops steadily, even young women feel themselves in a desperate race against the calendar” (20). Patricia

Mellencamp also indicates that “the process of aging [is] portrayed as a series of losses rather than achievements or successes for women” (“From Anxiety” 314).

Mary Russo‟s analysis of untimely death as a form of anachronism reminds us how women‟s life course is constructed in relation to chronological time. Russo argues:

Given the common placement of women‟s lives within the symbolic

confines of birth, reproduction, and death, the risk of anachronism is

scandal. Not acting one‟s age, for instance, is not only inappropriate but

dangerous, exposing the female subject, especially, to ridicule, contempt,

pity and scorn—the scandal of anachronism. (21)

Russo‟s analysis shows that “not acting one‟s age,” as it violates the symbolic rule of chronological time, is not permissible. Regulating how one should act one‟s age, ageism is reinforced by cultural discourse. Indeed, the aging subject is a cultural construct. And being aware of this enables us to re-consider the medical and psychoanalytical discourse about women‟s life course and female subjectivity. It also helps us deconstruct the “natural” stages of women‟s lives.

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Nevertheless, feminists have not done enough to diminish ageism toward older women. In fact, Barbara Macdonald accuses younger feminists of neglecting older women‟s rights as an inherent ageism within feminist community. In the 1985 convention of National Women‟s Studies Association, Macdonald called for attention on the inherent ageism within the field and urged fellow researchers to be aware of aging as another social marker that is as important as race and class. As Kathleen

Woodward indicates, the first wave and second wave feminist movement in the U.S. has been working on issues “that are associated with the earlier years in the life course, with, for example, reproductive rights, child care, and the right to enter certain domains of work” and thus overlook issues related to older age (“Introduction” xi).

Macdonald‟s speech has marked a shift in the field of women‟s studies in terms of aging (Marshall vii). Since the 1985 convention, feminists have grown aware of age as an important marker of social difference in their studies and academic discussions.

But discussions that concern older women are limited to academic publications rather than other forms of feminist discourse. As Astrid Henry observes in Not My Mother’s

Sister, the metaphor of mother-daughter relationships, which generally applied in describing the conflicts between the second and the third wave feminist movements in the U.S., best illustrates the ageism embedded in feminist discourses. Resorting to the two-way hostility between the mother and the daughter to describe their relationships to the second wave feminism, the third wave feminists compare themselves to the younger women—the daughters, who are going to replace the older generation—their mothers (Henry 48).

Popular postfeminism, which emerges in the 1980s and then proliferates in the

1990s, also reinforce sexist ageism5 with its emphasis on personal “choice” of

5 Since this thesis focuses on the representations of aging women, I use the term “sexist ageism” to indicate the ageist ideology and discrimination specifically aiming at older women without denying the fact that men suffer from ageism as well. Huang 5

consumption and the celebration of “girl power.”6 Basically, postfeminism is premised on the assumption that feminism has achieved its goal and has become outdated. Being saturated with capitalist consumerism, postfeminist culture emphasizes female empowerment through “the formulation of an expressive personal lifestyle and the ability to select the right commodities to attain it” (Negra 4). Sadie

Wearing‟s examination of British TV series 10 Years Younger reveals that postfeminist culture poses the aged body as the inevitable outcome of bad lifestyles and unwise choices of commodities (286). Diane Negra also observes how postfeminist culture accentuates anxiety about aging:

One of the signature attributes of postfeminist culture is its ability to

define various female life stages within the parameters of “time panic.”

Postfeminism has accelerated the consumerist maturity of girls . . . it has

forcefully renewed conservative social ideologies centering on the

necessity of marriage for young women and the glorification of

pregnancy; and it has heightened the visibility of midlife women often

cast as desperate to retain or recover their value as postfeminist subjects.

(47)

In addition to flaunting the value of youthfulness, postfeminist culture imposes negative connotation on the aging process. Postfeminist culture consolidates sexist ageism by confining female life course to a linear process of “birth, reproduction and death” (Russo 21).

6 “Postfeminism” is a rather ambivalent term in popular discourses as well as academic discussions. It is sometimes used to refer to “third-wave feminism,” a term coined by Rebecca Walker in her 1992 essay. A backlash against second-wave feminism, third-wave feminism believes that women of different sexuality and ethnicity are underrepresented and aims at vocalizing the diverse experiences of these women. Postfeminism is sometimes used interchangeably with post-structural feminism which questions and challenges the unified identity of gender and sexuality. In this thesis, however, the term “postfeminism” or “postfeminist” only refers to popular feminism, which designates the ideologies premised on the idea that (second-wave) feminist goals have been achieved and that women nowadays should be able to wield and enjoy their body and power. Huang 6

Choosing films released after 1990 and seeing them as part of the postfeminist discourse, I detect the ageism these texts embody and explore an alternative way to imagine age ideology through cultural productions. Unlike gender or sexuality, aging is basically a physically determined phenomenon, yet this physical phenomenon, not unlike gender and sexuality, is frequently construed by social discourses and representations in mass media. By examining the representations of rejuvenating women in contemporary Hollywood narrative films in this thesis, I am especially interested in the following questions: How do Hollywood films represent women‟s desire and subjectivity in relation to aging? What does it mean to depict rejuvenating subjects as grotesque, monstrous or deadly characters? Do these representations work to consolidate or challenge ageism toward older women? To answer these questions, I choose three films—Death Becomes Her (1992), Tangled (2010), and Mirror Mirror

(2012) for analysis. All of them feature female characters‟ self-empowerment through rejuvenation when facing life crises. Their depiction of women‟s anxiety toward aging body seems to fit into the postfeminist belief of “women‟s lives [as being] regularly conceived of as timestarved, women themselves are overworked, rushed, harassed, subject to their „biological clocks‟” (Negra 48). Moreover, the time gap between the production of Death Becomes Her and the other two films propels a comparison between works that are produced before and those produced after the prevalence of postfeminism in American popular culture. By comparing these works, I grasp how ageism toward older women has been intensified by postfeminist ideology.

Before proceeding to more discussions on the three texts, I want to deliberate on a few terms and concepts related to ageism. First, there are mainly two aspects of ageism, the social aspect and the psychological aspect, which are often conflated.

Compared to “ageism,” gerontophobia connotes the idea that everyone has a primal fear toward aging. The definition of “gerontophobia” in The Oxford Companion to

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Medicine is “morbid dislike of old people; alternatively, a dread of growing old”

(Woodward, “Gerontophobia” 145). Kathleen Woodward explains that “the term

„ageism‟ was favored over „gerontophobia,‟ in part because it gives a more sociological than psychological explanation of the phenomenon, and in so doing helps relieve researchers in gerontology from the burden of being implicated in prejudice against their own subject of research” (“Gerontophobia”145). Indebted to

Woodward‟s definition, I use “ageism” to indicate the socially constructed prejudices against old age.

While admitting ageism is socially constructed, Woodward argues that the fear of the aging process is closely linked to bodily decline. Woodward‟s argument suggests that the psychological reaction toward bodily decline is noteworthy.

Dwelling on the biological aspect, Woodward starts with the decrepit body and seeks to explicate the emotion triggered by it:

I . . . think it is impossible to deny that there is a necessary biological link

between aging and death: old age means precisely that one is nearing the

end of one‟s natural life span. Thus the equation of aging and death is one

that must not be summarily dismissed as having no basis in reality. And

although old age and decrepitude cannot be equated—the former is a

necessary but not sufficient condition for the latter, we might say—the

fear of aging is an important area of research precisely because it

represents death, and often decrepitude, to our cultural and social

imagination. (“Instant” 48)

According to Woodward, while fear of death and the abhorrence of suffering from sickening body seem inevitable and rather unchangeable, we have to disassociate old age from death and decrepitude so that we can rewrite the negative connotations of the aging body. She emphasizes the importance of understanding aging as a natural

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biological phenomenon that could be a necessary, but not a “sufficient” condition for

“decrepitude, sickness, and ugliness” (“Instant” 45).

Following her argument in “Instant Repulsion,” Woodward re-examines gerontophobia through the lens of Freudian psychoanalytic theory in her book Aging and Its Discontent: Freud and Other Fictions. Woodward claims that “Freudian psychoanalysis, as well as many literary fictions of aging, is embedded in the fundamentally ageist ideology of western culture” (Aging 10). Woodward‟s use of key concepts of psychoanalytic theory provides us a working paradigm to understand the symptoms of gerontophobia. Woodward argues that the mirror stage of old age is “the inverse of the mirror stage of infancy” (Aging 67). The subject “denies [the] identification” of the mirror image, which is “understood as uncannily prefiguring the disintegration and nursling dependence of advanced age” (Woodward, Aging 67; emphasis added). How Woodward associates the mirror image with the uncanny is noteworthy because “[the mirror image of the aging body] is something familiar that has been repressed” (Aging 65). Analyzing Freud‟s account of his personal uncanny experience, Woodward argues that Freud‟s experience of the uncanny is an encounter with his own aged double (Aging 65). Woodward uses the uncanny as an example to illustrate that every aging body we encounter becomes the mirror image that we are familiar with—our own aging double. Woodward‟s delineation of the uncanny reminds us that the fear and repulsion toward other‟s aging body are actually the fear and repulsion toward our own. Since ageism surfaces when one fails to recognize one‟s future self in others‟ aging body, acknowledging this concept helps us tackle with the social construction of ageism.

Nevertheless, when we think of ageism in terms of gerontophobia, we are tempted to believe that ageism results from the primal fear of death and it cannot be reduced. The “primal fear,” however, only partially comprises our fear of the aging

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body. I argue that our refusal of identification with the mirror image of old age also results from the underprivileged status of older people in our society. Actually, many forms of ageism are culturally constructed. “Internalized ageism” is an important aspect for us to understand how we are aged by culture. The most well-known research on “internalized ageism” is Levy and Langer‟s experiment on older Chinese and older Americans‟ memory performance. Their research shows that older Chinese has higher memory performance than older Americans (Kite and Wagner 152-53).

Because Chinese culture generally has more positive views toward the elders than

American culture, and it is the older Americans‟ “internalized ageism” that affects their memory performance (Kite and Wagner 152-53). “Internalized ageism” makes people assess their values and abilities in accordance with their age and accept other people‟s prejudicial judgments without second thought (Cruikshank 153). Making self-mockery with an ageist joke, apologizing for slow movements, body-loathing and age-passing could all be symptoms of internalized ageism (Cruikshank 154-56).

Nevertheless, wherever there is a form of oppression, there is resistance. The most common case is that people may refuse to be categorized as old by claiming that they do not “feel old.” The inconsistency between the aging body and the psychological rejection of feeling old shows that age is more fluid than other social markers. A person may claim certain gender or race, but not her/his age as a stable source of identity. First of all, as Mary Russo points out, “we experience age in relation to the ages of other” (25). Our age identity is always dependent on another person‟s age. When facing one‟s parents, one usually “feel” young. Reversely, a parent may consider her/himself older when interacting with her/his children. This phenomenon indicates that age identity is relative. Moreover, as Margaret Cruikshank points out, “ageist stereotypes require dualistic thinking” of old/young, with the later valued over the former (141). Similarly, age critic Margaret Morganroth Gullette

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claims that ageism is based on the dualistic thinking of decline/progress. In her book

Aged by Culture, Gullette argues that “just as critical race studies points out the roots of racism, and gender studies the roots of sexism, to eliminate them, so age studies focuses on the sources of these manifestations of . . . decline” (36). Targeting on middle-ageism, the idea that declining starts in a person‟s thirties, Gullette sees “the opposition of progress and decline” as the source of middle-ageism, ageism, the anxiety about aging and any negative connotations of old age (Aged 19). She explains that such decline ideology is a result of “drastic biases in postindustrial/postmodern age ideology,” which reached its peak of naturalization in the 1990s (Gullette, Aged

29). In the postindustrial world, time has become the major source of pressure for people, and the sense of speed-up intensifies day by day. Admitting “ageism may be an ancient prejudice,” she emphasizes that “speed-up of the life course” has made middle-ageism our own postmodern, globally-spreading problem (Gullette, Aged 30).

Gullette claims that middle-ageism has caused anxiety in everyone—no matter her/his gender, race, age, and class, and a middle-aged person is considered to be declining if he/she is not physically and financially in progress (Aged 32). Age studies, as a weapon to defeat middle-ageism, serves as a way for people to rethink age cohorts and the stages of life, to reconstruct “[age] identity as a process of identification” and to rebut the binary thinking of decline versus progress (Gullette, Aged 126).

Although Gullette insists that middle-ageism applies to both men and women, she admits that “women and minorities may find or expect more insecurity at younger ages” (Aged 32). As I mentioned earlier, emphasizing sexual attraction and reproductivity in postfeminist texts reinforces middle-aged women‟s anxiety about aging process. Like middle-ageism, sexist ageism is more an effect of social ideology than the result of the “old-old,” decrepit body. While the smallest sign like wrinkles may evoke one‟s sense of gaining age, sexist ageism accentuates women‟s anxiety

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over the loss of reproductivity, idealized beauty and economical resources, and it makes women become anxious about aging much earlier than men.

Simone de Beauvoir and Susan Sontag are the first two feminists who took heed of older women, and they both indicate the social constructive nature of sexist ageism. Their analyses show us that the older women are in double jeopardy because of their detachment from traditional femininity—that is, reproductivity and idealized beauty. De Beauvoir provides a bleak description of older women in The Second Sex:

Every period of woman‟s life is fixed and monotonous: but the passages

from one stage to another are dangerously abrupt; they reveal themselves

in far more decisive crises than those of the male: puberty, sexual

initiation, menopause. While the male grows older continuously, the

woman is brusquely stripped of her femininity; still young, she loses

sexual attraction and fertility, from which, in society‟s and her own eyes,

she derives the justification of her existence and her chances of happiness:

bereft of all future, she has approximately half of her adult life still to live.

(619)

For de Beauvoir, the first feminist who took notice of women‟s aging experience, the future for postmenopausal women is “the body in decline” (Pearsall 2). Here menopause means being deprived of femininity, which basically equals to a discontinuation from her previous self, “brusquely.” Although her book The Coming of Age, one of the pioneering works in age studies, does not aim at aging women‟s experiences specifically, she points out that women only experience aging when other people see them as old. De Beauvoir indicates that “it is impossible for us to experience what we are for others in the for-itself mode” (The Coming 291). The

“for-itself mode” means subjective experience of aging, which is different from “what we are for others.” Although women may be unwilling to submit to the negative

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adjective of “old,” de Beauvoir points out that it is impossible to resist what is assigned to them from others (The Coming 291).

Two years after the publication of The Coming of Age in 1970, Susan Sontag wrote the essay “The Double Standard of Aging,” in which she argues that it is the double standard toward femininity and masculinity that makes older women invisible to the society. She claims that “a woman‟s value lies in the way she represents herself, which is much more by her face than her body” (22). It is notable that Sontag also sees femininity—the idealized beauty—as representation, as a “mask,” as masquerade.

She argues that the ideal is that “[women‟s face] is supposed to be a mask—immutable, unmarked,” and wrinkles, the physical phenomenon accompanying aging, is considered as dreadful signs of decaying instead of signs of experience, maturity and strength (as in men‟s case) (23). Not surprisingly, Sontag‟s essay was criticized for her employment of clear-cut dualism of femininity/masculinity as well as—as Baba Copper argues—its heterosexist assumption that every women intends to please men (123).

Although some would argue that de Beauvoir‟s and Sontag‟s analyses—as they were written forty years ago—are flawed and would consolidate heterosexist assumption of gender roles, ageism and the deification or demonization of older woman have a longer history among humans. In her essay on the social construction of older women, Elizabeth Markson points out that “in the past females were believed to possess magical properties, as menstruation and the lengthy human gestation period for human birth were poorly understood until the nineteenth century” (54). In ancient

Greek, postmenopausal women were believed to have magical power and were chosen to be the priestesses of Dionysus (Markson 56). On the other hand, some ancient cultures, such as Roman culture, deem that older women possess demonic power and can destroy men with their insatiable sexuality (Markson 57). Older

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women, no matter being seen as deities or demons, are associated with menopause, which is the loss of reproductivity. Moreover, older women‟s “insatiable sexuality,” being considered as detrimental to patriarchal social order, and their unattractiveness

“let them to consort with the devil” (Markson 58).

Aside from sexist ageism, Markson explains that the antagonism toward older women may result from the need to redistribute resources:

Scapegoating older women as witches not only reflected the growing

misogyny of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—when official

witch hunting throughout Europe was at its height—but provided a way

to eliminate the poor who were too old or too feeble to work. Older

women as targets were financially profitable as well. Well-off widows‟

property was impounded before trial. Loss of property could also occur

after death, for witches could also be tried posthumously—and their

property confiscated—up to three generations afterwards. (58)

Older women—sometimes older men included—were considered as occupants of limited resources, the ones who “steal” resources from younger people without providing other utilities. This idea could result in ageism as well. While Markson also remarks that “high status enjoyed by the elderly resulted from their control of resources” (59), in the case of witch hunting, such high status was torn down by sexist and ageist acts.

Accordingly, the economically privileged ones could be relieved of ageism is an illusion. In contemporary society, especially in a postindustrial, consumerist capitalist society, senior citizens seem to enjoy higher status and economical advantage than in the sixteenth and seventeenth century. However, Stephen Katz and

Barbara Marshall indicate that consumerist capitalist ideology, in collaboration with medical discourses and the advancement of and rejuvenation technology, has

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produced the illusion of empowerment through “positive and successful aging” (4). In their essay “New Sex for Old: Lifestyle, Consumerism, and the Ethics of Aging

Well,” Katz and Marshall argue that the promotion of positive aging in the 21st century consumerist culture reproduces and enhances “a culture of obsessive self-improvement” (4). Accordingly, Foucault‟s “docile body” has become the prominent characteristic of postmodern body:

There is no escape here since one cannot rationally choose to decline. In

fact, individuals skilled in the exercise of consumer choice must choose

to be posthumanly and timelessly functional and do so by embracing the

benevolent promise of modern technology. Sexual function, like physical

fitness more generally, has become central to contemporary conceptions

of the good life. (Katz and Marshall 13)

Promising to relieve people of decline, discourses surrounding “positive aging” require people to cooperate by consuming more medical products. This kind of

“positive aging” does not necessarily mitigate ageism but could create another form of prejudice against weak, sick and decrepit aging bodies. Signs of aging, such as waning sexual attraction or sexual incompetence, are considered signs of personal laziness and results of unwise life choices. Although Katz and Marshall conclude that the ethics of aging well applies to both men and women, its emphasis on active sexuality has aggravated the ageism and hetero/sexism toward older women.

Postfeminist discourses, by demonstrating the importance of product consumption, work along with this ideology, and put more pressure on middle-aged women.

Although rejuvenation may be seen as coercive self-improvement as well as internalized ageism, representations of rejuvenating body may have some potential to counter ageism. For instance, Woodward‟s idea of “youthfulness as a masquerade” suggests that rejuvenation serves as a way for the aging subject to protest against

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ageism and to rewrite aging bodies. As I mentioned earlier, one‟s subjective experience of aging does not necessarily correspond to the social construction of aging process. Woodward‟s article also indicates that rejuvenation is a way for the aging subject to demonstrate her/his subjective experience of aging. According to

Woodward, youthfulness as a masquerade is a personal statement and “a form of self-representation” (Aging 148). In this sense, the subject could demonstrate certain agency through the process of bodily rejuvenation. In the society that values youthfulness, rejuvenation is a way to “forging links to one‟s past selves”; it serves as

“a bridge which re-creates, momentarily, the past in the present” (Woodward, Aging

157). Youthfulness as a masquerade is a way for the aging subject to revive the past self through changes of appearances.

Furthermore, Woodward uses Mary Ann Doane‟s discussion of masquerade to illustrate how youthfulness as a masquerade confounds ageist assumption:

Doane concludes that by “destabilizing the image, the masquerade

confounds the masculine structure of the look. It effects a

defamiliarization of female iconography.” . . . [The aging body in

masquerade] destabilizes conventional images of the aging body,

confounding what I call the youthful structure of the look. (Aging 155)

Researches on ageism show that stereotypical assumptions of aging process, especially the binary structure of old/young, are crucial to the social construction of ageism. Visualizing aging subject‟s decrepit body also enhances “the youthful structure of the look,” which could include the implied spectator and the implied reader who normally “occupies a position of relative superiority in part because of presumed youth” and tends to patronize the aging subject by assuming negative

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stereotypes of the aging body (Woodward, Aging 157).7 Anachronism, that is, the inconsistency between the aging subject‟s age and her/his younger bodily image, destabilizes the stereotype that assigns a weak, powerless body to an aging subject.

Besides, by assuming the younger look, the aging subject makes a statement of her/his desire that is forbidden by socially constructed ageism. Through rejuvenation, the aging subject refuses to be categorized as underprivileged. He/she refuses to resign, to yield, or to hand over power to younger ones.

As I mentioned earlier, in this thesis I choose three Hollywood films that feature the rejuvenation of aging female characters. I see these films as cultural forms that demonstrate contemporary women‟s anxiety about, as well as resistance to, aging.

In addition, these films highlight the visual aspect of aging body in masquerade. The concept of masquerade suggests that aging, especially for women, is construed as a highly visible phenomenon. Unlike the aforementioned discussions on sexist ageism, the female characters‟ anxiety toward aging in these films is not due to their loss of maternal productivity. Rather, it is the change of appearance that accounts for their fear of aging the most. Furthermore, the rejuvenating women in these films are not visibly “old-old” figures; they employ various kinds of rejuvenating strategies and are

“masqueraded” with much younger look. Examining how these films characterize aging women, I am especially interested in how older women‟s subjectivity is constructed in relation to younger women through their rejuvenating masquerades.

This thesis is divided into five chapters. Following this introductory chapter, in which I review the trajectory of age studies and its intersection with feminist discourses, I analyze in Chapter Two the representation of rejuvenating women in the dark comedy Death Becomes Her, directed by Robert Zemeckis. The film features two aging women, Madeline and Helen, competing with each other for one man by

7 Woodward explicates more on this idea in her essay “Performing Age, Performing Gender.” Huang 17

drinking a magic potion that keeps them youthful and alive forever. However, the potion does not guarantee the intactness and beauty of their appearances. The film actually ends with a grotesque and monstrous portrayal of their decrepit, though everlasting, bodies. At first sight, Madeline and Helen‟s vanity and hostility toward each other, along with their irrational attitude toward their aging bodies, seems to reiterate negative stereotypes of aging women. However, the comic style of the film gives these negative stereotypes a twist and renders the film ambiguous. As a dark comedy, the humor in Death Becomes Her results from its campy style, which expresses the serious theme of death and aging in a flamboyant, playful way. The campy style makes the representation of aging women a caricature of stereotypes, thus queering the heteronormative message the film‟s narrative sets out to convey.

Furthermore, in Death Becomes Her, dark humor is employed by Madeline and Helen to cope with their aging experience. By analyzing the comedical elements in Death

Becomes Her, I argue that the style of the film complicates the depiction of aging women and thus subverts ageism.

Chapter Three tackles the mother-daughter issue in Disney‟s animated film

Tangled and investigates how sexist ageism and discourses of motherhood are closely linked. Based on Grimm Brothers‟ Rapunzel story, Disney‟s 50th animated film

Tangled adds a modern flavor to the fairytale by highlighting the complicated mother-daughter relationship between the heroine, Rapunzel, and her stepmother,

Mother Gothel. Attempting to get hold of rejuvenating power, which lies in

Rapunzel‟s hair, Mother Gothel steals Rapunzel from the King and the Queen and raises Rapunzel as her own child. In order to keep the rejuvenating power, Mother

Gothel assumes the image of an idealized mother as a way to persuade Rapunzel to stay with her. Just as the rejuvenating women in Death Becomes Her, mother Gothel is given the chance to rebel against the unfair treatment she receives as an older woman

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through her pursuit of youthfulness. However, compared to Madeline and Helen,

Mother Gothel‟s rejuvenation is depicted as less empowering. In fact, she has to assume the role of a sacrificial mother in order to remain young. In this sense, Tangled consolidates sexist ageism by reinforcing Mother Gothel‟s motherhood. In addition, the conflict between Mother Gothel and her daughter Rapunzel also implies that a conflict of interest between older and younger women is inevitable, which hinders cooperation between women of different generations to fight against sexism and ageism.

In Chapter Four, I analyze Mirror Mirror to demonstrate how sexist ageism emerges from postfeminist discourses that celebrate female empowerment. Adapted from Green Brothers “Little Snow White,” Mirror Mirror attempts to add a contemporary flavor to the well-known old tale by characterizing both the Queen and

Snow White as postfeminist heroines. Because the release date of Mirror Mirror was so close to another adaptation of “Little Snow White”—Snow White and the

Huntsman, Julia Roberts‟s brand was employed in the campaign to distinguish Mirror

Mirror from Snow White and the Huntsman, which makes Roberts‟s role, the Queen, more prominent than the assumed protagonist Snow White (played by Lily Collins) in the film. Julia Roberts‟s star persona also works in magnifying the Queen‟s postfeminist characteristics. However, in Mirror Mirror, the Queen does not end up winning the man she likes as other postfeminist heroines—or as Julia Roberts‟s past roles—do. While the Queen is characterized as a postfeminist heroine, her failure in competing with Snow White indicates the limitation of the postfeminist narratives in female empowerment through self-making and self-governance. The Queen‟s defeat, sometimes being conflated with the downturn of the Julia Roberts brand, reveals the sexist ageism inherent in Hollywood stardom as well as in postfeminist discourses.

I conclude my thesis with a brief review of a number of more recent film

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productions that feature aging women as major characters. In more recent Disney productions, Angelina Jolie‟s role in Maleficent (2014) and Meryl Streep‟s role as

Rapunzel‟s mother (the Witch) in Into the Woods (2014) are of great interest to me.

Both roles deviate from the stereotypes of aging women to a certain extent, thus presenting different experiences of being older women. Other feature films centering on older women‟s experiences, such as Philomena (2013) and Still Alice (2014), are critically acclaimed and won many film awards, which seems to indicate that women‟s aging experiences have received increasing recognition. Compared to Death

Becomes Her, Tangled and Mirror Mirror, these recent films allow us to envision a better future, in which more diverse and authentic experiences of gendered aging are investigated and presented.

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Chapter Two

Comedy, Queerness and Aging in Death Becomes Her

It is impossible for those who have seen Death Becomes Her to overlook its theme—fear of aging. This film presents two women, Madeline Ashton (Meryl Streep) and Helen Sharp (Goldie Hawn), competing with each other for a man, Ernest

Menville (Bruce Willis) through rejuvenation. The story of two women fighting for one man is not new in Hollywood, but the actresses‟ comedic performances have impressed critics and audiences alike. For example, Nathaniel Rogers reviews Meryl

Streep‟s works in the 1990s and concludes that Death Becomes Her serves as a milestone in Streep‟s career because of her outstanding comedic performance in this film:

See, off screen as well as on, Streep got older. We all do. But you have to

hand it to her. What seemed like folly to some at the time—four

consecutive and often silly comedies after her coronation as the world‟s

preeminent dramatic force—was actually a savvy forward motion move.

She fought an aging career, not by underlining her dominance (Lord

knows she probably had plentiful Oscar bait scripts to choose from in that

four year period), but by stretching her instrument, experimenting with

new genres and poking fun at herself. Laughing may cause crow‟s feet

and smile lines, but it sure keeps you young at heart.

Evoking the theme of aging in Death Becomes Her, Rogers‟s comment brings to the fore Streep‟s age and indicates the possible harm that age could bring to the actress‟s career. As an actress who used to work in “serious” genres, Streep‟s starring in films like Death Becomes Her was considered a “folly” and desperate move at that time.

Looking in hindsight, Rogers praises her comic performance as a smart strategy that

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gave her “aging career” a boost. Although it remains debatable if Death Becomes Her is really a defining move that saved Streep out of midlife crisis, Rogers‟s comment highlights the power of comedy in this film.

While acknowledging the advantages of comedy, Rogers‟s observation yet points to the frequent bias against comedy—which is “folly to some,” as well as sexist ageism usually launched against aging actresses in Hollywood. Needless to say, middle-aged actors do not have to deal as much with an “aging career” as middle-aged actresses do. Madeline Ashton‟s story in Death Becomes Her resonates with the predicament which the two leading actresses experienced at the time of filming. Death Becomes Her begins with Madeline performing in front of an unwelcoming audience, making manifest the actress‟s declining beauty and her career.

Not accidentally, the musical performed by Madeline also features the theme of aging.

A musical version of Tennessee Williams‟s Sweet Bird of Youth, this musical is about an aging actress longing for her lost youth. Later on, after Madeline successfully seduces Ernest, i.e., Helen‟s fiancé, both women end up fighting with each other.

Madeline and Helen‟s pursuit of youthfulness not only points up these two female characters‟ anxiety, jealousy, and anger but also makes them seem irrational and monstrous. However, all these presentations of their irrationality are colored with a touch of comedy. While comic style is employed to poke fun of the protagonists‟ shallowness and vanity in Death Becomes Her, the comic moments that represent experience of aging and death are more disturbing than funny to the audience. Since aging and death are considered more tragic than comic, people tend to feel uneasy and even shocked when they encounter comic representations of these themes. This kind of uneasiness has certain potential to undercut the discriminative message about aging delivered by this film.

Treating tragic materials with humor, Death Becomes Her is defined as a dark

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comedy. In his analysis of this genre, Benjamin Nathan Schachtman points out that dark comedy “represents a natural ambivalence of tragedy and comedy,” through which “the audience is not just sickened by tragedy or just amused by comedy, but forced to experience the paradoxical emotions simultaneously” (169). And the most prominent feature of a dark comedy is the employment of black humor, or sick humor, to represent subjects that are considered unmoral, tragic or taboo. In Death Becomes

Her, jokes about death, such as ridiculing the job of morticians, using immortalizing magic potion as a beauty regime and joking about corpses, are “violation[s] of sociocultural normative standard of morality” (Schachtman 168). Among all the dark comedic moments, black humor that touches on the two female protagonists‟ bodies is the most relevant to my topic. Here I want to point out that black humor adds ambiguity to the film‟s representation of women‟s pursuit of youth and immortality.

Furthermore, treating this subject with dark humor makes the two female characters not as much repugnant as immoral. To be more specific, these two women characters could be depicted as “queer” subjects in the sense that their “sexuality [is] not defined as heterosexual procreative monogamy” (Benshoff and Griffin 1). They are rendered deviant from heteronormative, straight sexuality by dark humor. I argue that the comic representation of the grotesque bodies in Death Becomes Her makes the protagonists

“queer” and thus undermines the sexist ageism this film seems to set out to reproduce.

At first sight, the female characters in Death Becomes Her seem to embody the sexist ageist stereotype because the narrative emphasizes women‟s fear of aging and female antagonism. To begin with, the female protagonists, Madeline and Helen, are depicted as irrational and hysterical, and such depiction renders their attempt to rejuvenate themselves more of an internalization of ageism than an act of defiance against ageism. Self-absorbed, vain, prone to jealousy, both female protagonists are represented as stereotypical heterosexual women who desire nothing but beauty and

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youthfulness. Using female antagonism to bring out their desire for eternal youth, this film characterizes Madeline and Helen as women who use sexuality as a weapon to fight each other in order to get hold of the men they desire. When they see each other, they call each other in a seemingly intimate manner “Mad” and “Hel,” yet the literal meaning of these two names only reveals the hostile relationship between them and suggests their irrational and monstrous personality.

In the beginning of the film, in contrast with the narcissistic actress Madeline,

Helen is presented as a smart woman whose ambition is to write her own book.

However, after Madeline steals her fiancé, Helen becomes morbidly obese and suffers from mental disorder. Her living in filth and gaining pleasure from watching Madeline being strangled to death on television suggest that Helen has turned her passion from writing to hating Madeline. The presentation of her obese body and messy lifestyle suggests that her anger overpowers her rationality. Meanwhile, while Madeline is the winner in seducing Ernest, she does not live in a better condition. She sleeps with skin-lifting devices that reduce wrinkles, and she commands her maid to say “Oh, madam, you look younger every day” when she wakes up every morning. Such arrangement shows that Madeline is anxious about her aging body, and she refuses to accept the reality of becoming older. Before she goes to Helen‟s book launch party, she asks her beautician to perform plasma separation surgery for her, regardless of the beautician‟s warning that it would be a “traumatic process to the body” if it is enforced too frequently. Her insistence on undergoing the surgery discloses the fact that her fear of aging makes her unable to make rational decisions. Here, both

Madeline and Helen are represented as irrational women who blindly pursue the fountain of youth. And they are ridiculed by the film in their sufferings.

Considering their own beauty a means of power, Madeline and Helen embody the sexist ageist assumption that older women are of no use to heterosexual

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procreative monogamy due to their loss of beauty and reproductivity. In her analysis of anxiety toward aging, Mellencamp asserts that the heterosexist assumption that sexual attraction and reproductivity contributes to the value of women leads to the sexist ageism that represents youth “as a lost object, rather than as a subjective process or a passage through time” (“From Anxiety” 314). The story of reclaiming youthful body through magic potion solidifies such supposition. It presents that age—along with the history one has gone through—is something that can be disavowed by changing one‟s appearance. Moreover, it reiterates the binary structure of young/old that sustains ageism. After her break-up with her much younger extramarital lover (who tells Madeline “Go find someone your own age!”), Madeline decides to seek the rejuvenating potion. This break-up scene features her most vulnerable moment in the film. The heart-breaking and powerless Madeline, in contrast to the rejuvenated Madeline after her taking the potion, simulates the before/after picture of plastic surgery advertisements. The juxtaposition of the former, powerless, older self and the later powerful, younger self reinforces the bipolarity of old/young as equaling to the contrast of “ powerless” and “powerful.” While representing the aging subject as powerless propagates negative images of aging body, it also speaks to the fact that most older women suffer from underprivileged position in our society. Again, because the process of rejuvenation is displayed by having

Madeline look into her own reflection in a mirror, the representation suggests

Madeline‟s internalization of sexist ageism. According to Mellencamp, sexist ageism derives from the opposition between the aging body as a grotesque body and the classical body as “a youthful, thin body, airbrushed of blemishes, lines, and wrinkles”

(High Anxiety 279). Seeing her aging body quickly morphed into the classical body in the mirror, Madeline happily exclaims: “I am a GIRL!” This exclamation indicates an immediate satisfaction that upholds the value of the classical body that does not

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change rather than accepting bodily change as treasurable traces of history and experiences.

Despite being complicit with socially constructed sexist ageism, Madeline and

Helen‟s pursuit of youthfulness is depicted as unnatural because of their defiance of death. In this film, the magic potion the two female protagonists take to rejuvenate themselves endows them with immortality, but it does not guarantee the takers‟ body to be free from harm. Therefore, Madeline and Helen have no choice but to live on as the living dead after they are literally “killed.” In fact, they are portrayed as monstrous with their living-dead, grotesque body. Right after Madeline is pushed down the stairway by Ernest, her neck becomes twisted and her head dislocated (fig. 1). Her head that faces backward horrifies Ernest. What follows is that Madeline is sent to the hospital where the doctor examines Madeline but cannot find her pulse, despite trying several times with different sets of stethoscope. Seeing Madeline being mobile without pulse, Ernest claims that Madeline‟s living dead body is “in violation of every natural law that [he] know[s].” And this violation is so horrifying that it actually frightens the doctor to death. When Ernest runs out of the room where Madeline is resting, he realizes that the doctor has lost his own heartbeat.

While Madeline‟s body is monstrous enough, Helen‟s body is no less horrifying.

Helen is shot to death by Madeline right after her plan to murder Madeline is revealed to Madeline. Being immortalized by the magic potion, Helen does not lose her life, but she bleeds when she is shot through the stomach. The scene of Helen

“resurrecting” and walking out from the blood-filled pond, with water pouring out of the hole in her hollow stomach horrifies Ernest, Madeline, as well as the audience of the film. The subsequent scene highlights Helen‟s hollow stomach by showing the hole in her stomach in the center as Helen angrily asks Ernest—as well as the audience—to look at her. The presence of the hole, along with Helen‟s facial

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expression, makes Helen gruesome and fearful (fig. 2).

Death Becomes Her ends with the sequence of Ernest‟s funeral, in which the film aggravates Madeline and Helen‟s monstrosity by contrasting their life with

Ernest‟s. Despite the two women‟s efforts to force Ernest, a former plastic surgeon and a skillful reconstructive mortician, to stay with them for the maintenance of their body, they fail to do so. When Ernest is urged to drink the magic potion brought to him, he starts to contemplate on the meaning of immortality and death. Eventually, he decides not to live forever because immortality would be unbearable “if [he gets] bored [and] lonely.” After Ernest‟s escape from Madeline and Helen—as well as the lifestyle they represent—the film jumpcuts to 37 years later, when Ernest‟s funeral is taking place. A priest recites what Ernest has achieved during that 37 years—having two sons, four daughters, and many grandchildren, doing charity works, founding a marriage counseling clinic and women study center and an AA chapter. As the priest praises Ernest as a “biblical patriarch [who] spread the message of hope to his adopted children all around the world,” the camera moves around to show the crowds that attend Ernest‟s funeral as if to confirm the priest‟s words. It is also noteworthy that when the priest says how Ernest‟s pursuits are “not just to attain some personal ambition,” the camera moves toward a corner of the church and shows two human figures dressed in black sitting far away from the crowd. As the camera moves closer, the audience realizes that these two figures are Madeline and Helen. The way camera moves toward them along with the priest‟s words seems to set up a contrast between them and Ernest: if Ernest wins respect because he is not constrained by “personal ambition,” Madeline and Helen are precisely the ones whose pursuit of youthfulness are “just to attain some personal ambition.” Here the camera movement foregrounds

Madeline and Helen‟s difference from Ernest and condemns their pursuit of youthfulness, suggesting that their immortality is a deviation from the normal, linear

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process of “birth, reproduction and death” in a successful human life (Russo 21).

Furthermore, Death Becomes Her introduces a cautionary note against women‟s blind pursuit of youthful bodies by showing Madeline and Helen‟s post-rejuvenated bodies deteriorating. After Madeline falls from the stairs and Helen is shot, both of them are “dead” in the medical sense. While they still keep their bodies and are able to move around because they are “immortalized” by the potion, their bodies, now more an object needing constant maintenance than living blood-and-flesh with its own curing power, suffer from a process of deterioration. When Madeline and Helen leave

Ernest‟s funeral to find a lost can of paint, they walk down the stairs in an awkward manner, which suggests that they cannot fully control their body. After that, Helen accidentally steps on a can and falls down the stairs. Despite the precious companionship now developing between these two women, their vicious intention toward each other remains—Helen pulls Madeline when she falls so Madeline falls down the stairs with her. After their fall, the camera offers close-ups of each piece of their broken body and then stops with a focus on the two female protagonists‟ heads with their eyes rolling (fig. 3). This scene features the “unnatural” aspect of rejuvenated bodies. It also underlines the fact that any attempt to stop the aging process is futile.

Obviously, the representation of Madeline and Helen‟s declining bodies replicates the negative image of aging body. In her analysis of the aging body in

Western culture, Woodward points out that the image of aging body is regarded as

“the feared image of death” and notes that the fear of aging also results from one‟s incapability of mastering one‟s body (Aging 66). Using Lacan‟s theory on the mirror stage of infancy to illustrate her point, Woodward suggests that “the mirror stage of old age is the inverse of the mirror stage of infancy” because the subject “denies this identification” with the mirror image of old age instead of embracing it (Aging 67).

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Woodward explains further:

The image [of old age] in the mirror is understood as uncannily

prefiguring the disintegration and nursling dependence of advanced age.

[…] If the psychic plot of the mirror stage of infancy is the anticipated

trajectory from insufficiency to bodily wholeness, the bodily plot of the

mirror stage of old age is the feared trajectory from wholeness to physical

disintegration. And the hostility toward others which is associated with

the mirror stage of infancy is now reflected back upon oneself as well as

projected onto others. Aggressivity […] is intensified and now directed

back upon oneself: this aging body is not my self. (Aging 67)

In the mirror stage of infancy, the infant anticipates an image of bodily unity that s/he objectively lacks. Reversely, in the mirror image of old age, we foresee a future of bodily disintegration that will not necessarily happen. Like the mirror image of infancy, the mirror image of old age is an imaginary one. By assigning the imaginary image of a disintegrated body to the old age, our culture constructs the old age “as a social category” that is conjectured as powerless (Woodward, Aging 70). The inability to control one‟s body is linked to one‟s dependence on others‟ nursling, which implies the loss of mobility, agency and—most importantly—power. The subject hence refuses to identify herself/himself with such an image. Also, for self-preservation, the subject refuses to identify with others‟ aging bodies and derogates the aging bodies by viewing them as grotesque and unreal. Woodward‟s analysis indicates that such a denial of identification with aging bodies reinforces ageism, causing the society rejecting the elders “as a class” (Aging 70).

Death Becomes Her visualizes the feared process of bodily deterioration and reproduces “the mirror image of old age.” While the story is premised on two women determined to defy the very predicament coming along with old age, the film

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re -affirms the connection between old age and the loss of power. After her break-up with her extramarital lover, Madeline examines her look in the mirror and is scared by her own face. Evidently, Madeline refuses to identify with her aged image. Such a refusal of aged image is transmitted to the audience across the screen. In her analysis of body genres, including horror film, pornography, and melodrama, Linda Williams points out that what is specific to the viewing experience of these genres is that “the body of the spectator is caught up in an almost involuntary mimicry of the emotion or sensation of the body on the screen” (270). Strictly speaking, Death Becomes Her is not a horror film; however, its representation of grotesque bodies creates a horrific viewing experience. As Williams observes, “whether spectator at the horror film actual[ly] shudders in fear” defines the success of it (270). In Death Becomes Her, the representations of Madeline‟s twisted neck, the hole on Helen‟s stomach, their face mottled with dry paint, and their broken limbs succeed in imposing a shocking experience upon the female protagonists as well as the spectator. This intensifies the spectators‟ experience with the threatening force of the mirror image of old age, for they see the grotesque bodies on screen as the mirror image of not only others but also themselves.

The representation of monstrous female bodies as such is central to Death

Becomes Her. Yet, the comedic elements of this film should not be overlooked, either.

While the horror upon seeing grotesque, aging bodies is transmitted to the audience, such horror comes along with laughter, which, as Schachtman argues, is “a form of surprise” that breaks expectations to create humor (167-68). Comedy highlights the socially unaccepted concepts and incorporates absurd scenarios to exceed expectations. Indeed, the psychological mechanism of laughter differentiates comedy from other genres. According to Freud, laughter is a way for the ego to mediate between one‟s instinctual drive and the limits set by social norms:

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Freud illustrates the connections between laughter and the unseen

mechanics of the psyche and discusses the now familiar trichotomy of the

human mind: id, ego and superego. Anxiety caused by the desires of the

id conflicting with the limits set by the superego and obstacles perceived

by the ego has to be coped with by psychological mechanisms or released

by catharsis. Laughter, Freud theorizes, is a healthy way of releasing

anxiety and is often provoked by wit. (Schachtman 170)

Freud‟s theory indicates that provocative ideas are inherent in comedy. More importantly, the cathartic effect offered by laughter dissolves anxiety and thus makes these provocative ideas accessible and palatable to the audience of comedy.

Because of its tendency to present unconventional ideas and characters that are inconspicuous in other genres, comedy is predisposed to showcase characters that are marginalized in the society. In fact, women, people of non-straight sexuality, and people belonging to minority groups are usually those targeted at in comedy films.

Observing that humor and comedians have been “commonly associated with marginality,” Joanne R. Gilbert asserts that “performing and capitalizing on their marginalized status is integral to the potentially subversive discourse these comics generate” (17). In his analysis of popular comic film The Woman, Alexander Doty argues that “as a genre comedy is fundamentally queer since it encourages rule-breaking, risk-taking, inversions, and perversions in the face of straight patriarchal norms” (81). Even for conservative texts that tend to use non-straight sexuality as the butt of joke, Doty insists that queerness remains “the source of many comic pleasures for audience of all sexual identities” (81). Doty‟s observation could apply to our understanding of the female protagonists in Death Becomes Her:

Madeline and Helen‟s refusal to yield to heteronormative standard that propels aging women to retreat to the backstage of life serves as subversive comedic materials and

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provides pleasures for the audience. Although many elements in Death Becomes Her, in particular the film‟s main narrative, reiterate the heteronormative assumption that the most meaningful way to carry on one‟s life is through reproductivity, the comedic characterization of Madeline and Helen invites alternative readings of the film. It undermines the heterosexual message about reproductivity and problematizes the discriminative images of aging women the film seems otherwise to reproduce.

Diana Postlethwaite describes Death Becomes Her as “a drag queen‟s fantasy: a surreal, campy black comedy in stiletto heels; the ultimate cat fight” (119).

Postlethwaite‟s description shows that the campy style of this film is quite distinct. To

Postlethwaite‟s argument I would add that campy style serves as the main source of comic pleasure in this film and undermines the sexist ageism in the narrative. The mise-en-scène of Death Becomes Her creates a campy world that is spectacular, fantastic and surreal, which adds an ironic tone to the narrative. Such ironic humor actually “foregrounds straight cultural assumptions and its (per)version of reality” and thus challenges heterosexism (Doty 82-83). Accordingly, the campy mise-en-scène in this film fosters active queer reading, or camp reading, of the film. It is noteworthy that camp is not only a “mode of cultural production” but a “reception strategy”

(Benshoff and Griffin 119). As a reception strategy, camp refers to how the spectators interpret the text by “comically consider[ing] a wide range of issues through their connection to ideologies of taste/style/aesthetics, gender and sexuality” (Doty 92).

The spectators who do camp are usually familiar with the conventional characteristics of the cultural text, and they are fully aware of the dominant heterosexual ideologies represented by these conventions, which allow them to enjoy the text ironically. By making fun of the texts, such camp reading denaturalizes heterosexual ideologies and thus queers the text.

Among all the features that contribute to the campy style in Death Becomes Her,

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the casting choice is the most straightforward one. According to Doty, extratexual information often elicits “queer comic readings of film” because “extratextuality can foster a certain camp distance and irony toward narrative and characters by encouraging a passionate involvement in „behind-the-scenes‟ news about the production and the actors” (92). In his review, Rogers observes that the role of

Madeline is quite different from Meryl Streep‟s previous roles. Appearing in film genres other than comedy, with Meryl Streep‟s well-known method-acting artistry, her star persona is nothing close to the talentless and shallow Madeline Ashton.

Postlethwaite also points out that the star persona of Meryl Streep is more akin to

Helen, which was played by Goldie Hawn; and in reverse, Hawn‟s screen persona is closer to Streep‟s Madeline:

While Meryl Streep was in training at the Yale Drama School, bikini-clad

Goldie Hawn was giggling “sock it to me” on “Laugh in”; Streep‟s

celluloid persona has been cerebral “actress”; Hawn‟s, simpering

“starlet.” But in Death Becomes Her, Hawn is cast as the smartie, Streep

the mindless bimbo. (126-27)

Just as both Rogers and Postlethwaite comment on such casting choices, most audience members are aware that Madeline is not the usual type of character played by Meryl Streep. Likewise, the audience may also notice the similarity of Goldie

Hawn to Madeline than Helen in personality. In fact, this “against-type” casting also happens to the male protagonist Ernest. Ernest is played by Bruce Willis, whose successful portrayal of action roles in films like Die Hard series makes him one of the most prominent representatives of masculinity in Hollywood. Contrary to Willis‟s celluloid persona, Ernest is a wimpish man who is constantly manipulated and intimidated by Madeline and Helen. Such role reversal in casting adds ironic humor to

Willis‟s performance of Ernest. For example, the scene in which Ernest could barely

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hold onto a pipe in his failed attempt to escape from the female protagonists—presents Ernest as the opposite of Willis‟s agile and athletic screen persona. Casting Willis to play Ernest undermines the seriousness of narrative, demonstrating that anything happens on the screen shall be observed with a detached attitude.

With the leading actors‟ personae in mind, their performance becomes more of a caricature or parody of stereotypes. According to Jack Babuscio, “[i]rony is the subject matter of camp, and refers here to any highly incongruous contrast between an individual or thing and its context or association” (122). The “against-type” casting is a way to create comedical effect, as irony results from the incongruity between the actors‟ screen personae and their roles in Death Becomes Her. Such comedical effect prevents the audience from perceiving the characters as they are on screen. In other words, as long as Streep‟s image as a serious actress lingers in audience‟s mind, her portrayal of Madeline becomes intentional and hyperbolic. Streep‟s performance therefore elicits alternative readings toward the stereotype her character embodies.

Indeed, Streep‟s performance sometimes also offers a self-reflexive parody which lends her character “the ironic distance of self-knowledge” from Hollywood culture‟s complicity with heterosexism (Woodward, Aging 152). For example, while the musical skit in the beginning of Death Becomes Her introduces Madeline as a talentless and narcissistic actress, such an introduction is complicated by its ironic implication. Acting as a woman contemplating on her own reflection in the mirror as well as pondering on her identity, Madeline sings a song that adumbrates her narcissism. Nonetheless, the ideal images of women she attempts to associate herself with are soon counteracted by the negative images the chorus cruelly reminds her of:

MADELINE. I see me, I see me

Actress, woman, star, and lover

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Sister, sweetheart, slave and mother

I see me

And I like what I see

Virgin, temptress, dream of others

Yes, it's me

Yes, it's me

CHORUS. We see you

MADELINE. You mean me?

CHORUS. Idol, goddess, shameless hussy

Diva, princess, lewd and lusty

The lyrics speak to the so-called “Madonna/Whore” trope in mainstream television and Hollywood cinema: a pattern of representing two mutually exclusive types of women in terms of their sexuality.8 While Madeline wants to consolidate her

“Madonna” identity by assuming the roles of “Sister, sweetheart, slave and mother” and “Virgin, temptress, dream of others,” in the eyes of the chorus she is not as much a “Madonna” as a “Whore”—“Idol, goddess, shameless hussy/ Diva, princess, lewd and lusty.” The lyrics as such bring to the fore Madeline‟s struggles with this

Madonna/Whore dichotomy. Yet, since the lyrics are uttered from the mouth of an experienced Hollywood actress Meryl Streep, who has been assigned to play numerous Madonnas and Whores through her career, these lines also introduce a self-reflexive dimension that exposes, if not criticizes, the very limited bipolar stereotyping the Hollywood industry has imposed on women in general.

Aside from extratextuality, other elements of the mise-en-scène, such as

8 The “Madonna/Whore” trope, or Madonna/Whore dichotomy, refers to the representations of Freud‟s theory of Madonna-Whore complex in popular culture. Madonna-Whore complex describes heterosexual men‟s dilemma of being unable to desire their wives (the “Madonna”) within a committed relationship while constantly being attracted to degraded women (the “Whore”). Freud‟s theory is also used to delineate the phenomenon that women are either being viewed as virtuous or sensual in Western culture. Huang 35

costume and makeup, also provoke mockery on stereotypical female images mostly through over-exaggerating the Madonna/Whore bipolarity. When Helen visits

Madeline in her dressing room, the two characters are presented within the same frame for the first time. In this scene, their contrast is magnified by their costume and makeup. Helen is supposed to be the “smart and classy” woman who has a vocation for writing9, and her look is so conservative—a turtleneck sweater, a plaid skirt and a long sleeve blazer that does not fit her well and a old-fashioned hairstyle of medium length bob and a heavy bang—that the audience is impelled to recognize her

“Madonna” image with amusement. On the contrary, Madeline has platinum blond curly long hair that shines under spotlight, and she wears a corset that showcases her cleavage and a robe that barely covers her upper body and legs (fig. 4). In fact, this contrast is further exaggerated when Goldie Hawn put on an ugly fat suit to show that

Helen is defeated in the two women‟s war for Ernest. Excessive designs like these undercut the seriousness of the film. While representing Madeline and Helen in terms of the Madonna/Whore dichotomy, the film actually parodies this bipolar opposition.

The camp aesthetics of Death Becomes Her is furthered by the choice of

Beverly Hill as the setting in the film. Beverly Hill displays a world that embodies what Doty observes as camp‟s code: “excess and exaggeration” (82). Wearing cocktail dresses and jewelries, living in magnificent mansions, attending parties by taking a limousine, the protagonists live a life too luxurious to be real. Also undermining the realism of the narrative is the jump cut toward the ending of the film. Jump cuts are usually taken as a violation of continuous editing. They disrupt the continuity of time, undermining the realism of film narrative and hence inducing camp reading. In the case of Death Becomes Her, what happens after Ernest‟s breaking away from

9 In the dressing room scene, when Madeline‟s assistant tells her that Helen is visiting her, Madeline inquires “How‟s she look?” The assistant answers, “I don‟t know, smart I guess, sort of classy,” to which Madeline replies angrily “Classy? Really? Compared to whom?” Huang 36

Madeline and Helen is elided; the film narrative rushes to its end with a sleight of hand. In fact, the priest who appears to proclaim Ernest‟s death and the significance of his life is not unlike a “deus ex machina” figures that befalls not to carry out a realistic ending but to bring about an unexpected resolution. It reminds the audience that what has been presented in front of them is nothing but contrived plots—an entertaining show that they do no need to take too seriously. In fact, they could even be invited to laugh at this scene when Madeline and Helen burst into giggles at

Ernest‟s funeral despite (or exactly because of) the over-seriousness of the priest.

Taking realism and seriousness as its main targets, the camp style of Death

Becomes Her is also illustrated by the dark humor employed in the film. As one of the elements that contribute to campy style, dark humor, as pointed out by Cynthia

Morrill, is usually employed by the queer subject to re-interpret her/his desire through

“a discourse predicated upon compulsory reproductive heterosexuality” (95). While acknowledging the inability to overthrow the dominant order with an explicit representation of her/his real desire, the queer subject defies the order through dark humor. In Death Becomes Her, the rejuvenated women, as queer subjects, use dark humor to cope with their aging experience and negotiate with sexist ageism. After

Helen “resurrects” from her death caused by Madeline, both women realize that the other has taken the rejuvenating potion and they start to make sardonic comments about each other‟s grotesque body. Madeline sneers that “You‟re a walking lie and I can see right through you!” as she bends over to see through Helen‟s stomach hole. To retaliate Madeline‟s assault, Helen hits Madeline with a shovel and makes Madeline‟s head shrink into her body during their arguments. When Madeline tries to talk back,

Helen coldly responds: “I will not speak to you „til you put your head on straight.” In another scene, as Ernest‟s successful escape leaves Madeline and Helen depending on each other, the two women giggle with the idea of “painting each other‟s ass day and

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night, forever.” These joking words do not simply underline Madeline and Helen‟s predicaments—the disintegration of their bodies and their dependence on each other—but also bring to the fore their self-mockery. Indeed, their ability to look at their own predicaments “jokingly” makes these predicaments less detrimental than being exaggeratedly funny. Dark humor here becomes a coping mechanism for queer subjects. With dark humor, Madeline and Helen are cast as defiant characters that are never simply victims of sexist ageism but are capable of poking fun on their own aged bodies.

Furthermore, while the images of Madeline and Helen‟s grotesque bodies might accentuate the spectators‟ fear of aged women, this fear of encountering the mirror image of old age is instantly relieved by Madeline and Helen‟s humorous response to their bodies. The female protagonists show no serious anxiety toward their grotesque bodies: Madeline simply pulls out her head as a response to Helen‟s command to “put your head on straight” and Helen sits at ease as a wood stick pokes out of the hole on her stomach. In the last scene where the film demonstrates Madeline and Helen‟s grotesque broken body parts, which is discussed previously in this chapter as a scene that reinforces ageism toward decrepit aging body, dark humor is employed as well.

Right after the camera zooming in on every broken body part, a shot focalizes on one of the women‟s fingers casually tapping the ground, a gesture showing her familiarity and collectedness toward the situation (fig. 3). And Helen‟s calmness is emphasized again when she finally asks Madeline “Do you remember where you parked the car?” as if breaking their bodies is very common and shall be faced with ease. Treating their bodies with dark humor shows that Madeline and Helen are—if not fully—in control of their body to a certain degree. Dark humor in these cases arouses an ambivalent emotion as the audience tends to be gasping and laughing at the sight simultaneously.

Evoking both fear and comedical effect, dark humor propels the audience to ponder

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over the experience and meaning of aging.

The title of Death Becomes Her evokes various interpretations. Some argues that “becomes” means being suitable for someone just as people would claim a fashion style is “becoming” to someone; others argue that the title literally suggests that the two female protagonists do not succeed in being immortalized—they end up becoming embodiments of death.10 As open-ended in meaning as its title, Death

Becomes Her concludes with no fixed message. At first sight, it seems that the film presents a cliché story about two women fighting for a man resolved by a traditional moral lesson. The horrifying presentations of aged women‟s grotesque bodies reinforce heteronormative ageism. However, my reading in this chapter shows that

Death Becomes Her could be more complicated on the issues of ageism than it appears to be. Be investigating the comical style and camp aesthetics of this film, I have demonstrated in my discussions above that Death Becomes Her has the potential to question mainstream aging ideology.

10 Referring to the online discussion “What does „Death Becomes Her‟ mean?‟” on Yahoo Answers. Huang 39

Chapter Three

“Now I AM the Bad Guy”: Aging and Motherhood in Tangled

In the previous chapter I analyze the representation of aging women in Death

Becomes Her, whose comedical style complicates the sexist ageist ideology. In Death

Becomes Her, women do not procreate offsprings and eventually live independently of men. They are rendered defiant figures against sexist ageism. In pursuit of rejuvenation, they deviate from the normative path of “birth, reproduction, and death” that is assigned to women by heteronormativity (Russo 21). In this chapter, I look into a more recent Hollywood animated film Tangled, in which the aging female character,

Mother Gothel, voluntarily assumes a mother‟s role in order to get hold of rejuvenating power. Unlike Madeline and Helen in Death Becomes Her, Mother

Gothel seems to be deprived of defiant power as she chooses to become a mother.

Since being a mother accounts for a woman‟s being “aged” vis-à-vis a younger daughter regardless of her age, studies on motherhood are essential to our understanding of ageist ideology. As will be demonstrated in the following discussion,

Tangled’s depiction of the mother figure brings insights to the discourse of motherhood in relation to ageism.

Like Snow White and Seven Dwarfs and Cinderella (1950), Tangled is one of

Disney‟s princess-themed animated films adapted from Brothers Grimm‟s fairy tales.

Brothers Grimm‟s “Rapunzel” begins with a husband who offended Frau Gothel. He agreed to give Frau Gothel his first child as a compensation for the Rapunzel he stole.

Frau Gothel then named the baby girl Rapunzel and raised the child as her daughter.

Brothers Grimm had two versions of “Rapunzel” published 1812 and 1857 respectively, and it is noteworthy that the characterization of Frau Gothel is altered in the second version (Ashliman). Frau Gothel is transformed from a “fairy” into a more

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wicked “sorceress” (Ashliman). More importantly, the 1857 edition, which contains more descriptive and supplementary details in comparison with the one published in

1812, includes Frau Gothel‟s telling the husband that she “will take care of [the child] like a mother” (Ashliman). In the first edition, the lack of description concerning Frau

Gothel‟s motive to keep the child leaves room for interpretation, while the second edition ascribes to Frau Gothel the role of a mother.

Apparently taking cue from the second version of Brothers Grimm‟s story,

Tangled purposefully characterizes Mother Gothel as a mother. To begin with, the change in Mother Gothel‟s name shows that the character is intended to be seen as a mother rather than any elderly woman.11 Moreover, Mother Gothel is characterized as a mother who does not allow her daughter to grow up away from her. As mentioned by Donna Murphy, the Broadway actress who dubbed Mother Gothel‟s voice, the film producers of Tangled make sure that every audience recognize Mother Gothel as a mother by having the character loaded with traits and behaviors that they consider as most commonly associated with mothers:

I heard that the folks at Disney […] polled many people who worked at

Disney about their relationship with their mothers and the things that

annoyed them—the things that their mothers would do that made them

feel trapped or made them feel smothered. Or made them feel like their

mothers were trying manipulate them, etc. So they used a lot of that in the

film, so it wasn‟t just a woman who had stolen this child for her own

purposes would do, but what a certain kind of mother might do to prevent

her own child from having her own life, which is more relatable and

familiar to your average audience. (Eisenberg; emphasis added)

Disney producers think that the qualities “annoying” and “smothering” the child

11 The word “Frau” in “Frau Gothel” means “woman” in German. Huang 41

would make the character more recognizable as a mother. While designing Mother

Gothel from children‟s perspective is understandable since Disney films are known for its appeal to children audience, I would also use this quote to suggest that

Tangled‟s representation of Mother Gothel reflects the contemporary cultural discourse of motherhood. Though being a responsible mother attentive to her daughter‟s demands, Mother Gothel also demonstrates some annoying qualities of trying to control Rapunzel, qualities that are assumed to be characteristic of many contemporary mothers.

Tangled tells a coming-of-age narrative which traces a daughter‟s growth away from her mother in order to reach adulthood. In the beginning, the film presents

Mother Gothel as a hundreds-of-years-old woman who lives on the rejuvenating power of a golden flower that grows out of a drop of sunlight. When the pregnant

Queen becomes ill, the King takes away the flower to treat her. After consuming the golden flower, the Queen gives birth to a daughter, and the rejuvenating power is now transferred to the Princess‟s hair. In an attempt to take back the rejuvenating power,

Mother Gothel tries cutting part of the magical hair but then realizes that the rejuvenating power is lost once the hair is cut. Therefore, Mother Gothel has no choice but kidnap the Princess, who is then named Rapunzel and raised by Mother

Gothel in an isolated tower. To ensure that Rapunzel safely stay in the tower, Mother

Gothel tells Rapunzel that people from the outside world are trying to harm her and to get her magic hair. The film then jumpcuts to the time when Rapunzel is about to celebrate her 18th birthday. Rapunzel as a teenager is bored by her monotonous life in the isolated tower and eager to explore the world. Conflicts between mother and daughter ensue as Rapunzel‟s requests to leave the tower are constantly turned down by Mother Gothel. Desperate to fulfill her dream of seeing the floating lanterns on her birthday, Rapunzel eventually lies to her mother and asks Flynn Rider, who later

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becomes her love interest, to accompany her on her journey to the outside world.

Driven forward by Rapunzel‟s desire to leave the nest to see the outside world, the film culminates in her return to the palace with the help of Flynn Rider.

Tangled inherits the long-established psychoanalytic idea that one‟s separation from the mother is necessary for achieving maturity. As Marianne Hirsch points out in her book The Mother/Daughter Plot,

[F]or psychoanalysis, […] a continued allegiance to the mother appears

as regressive and potentially lethal; it must be transcended. Maturity can

be reached only through an alignment with the paternal, by means of an

angry and hostile break from the mother. (168)

Characterizing Mother Gothel as a mother, the narrative of Tangled is premised on the idea that Rapunzel‟s emotional attachment to Mother Gothel must be surpassed so a happy ending—her marriage with Flynn Rider—can be achieved. In the beginning of the film, Rapunzel‟s frustration toward her life in the tower is introduced by the song

“When Will My Life Begin?,” in which she sings about the boredom of her monotonous daily routines and her longing for the “beginning” of her adult life by leaving her home. Not coincidentally, she decides to leave Mother Gothel on her 18th birthday, which is indicative of her entering adulthood. Throughout the film, Rapunzel is struggling with the dilemma between her desire to explore the world and her unwillingness to leave Mother Gothel alone in the tower.

Serving as the obstacle that prevents Rapunzel from adulthood, Mother Gothel is characterized as the archetypal “phallic mother.” In Powers of Horror, Julia

Kristeva introduces the concept of abject to explain the phallic mother archetype.

Kristeva reworks psychoanalytic theories and coins the term “abject” to indicate

“what disturbs identity, system, order” (4). Claiming the abject is “the „object‟ of primal repression,” Kristeva extrapolates that abject is associated with the maternal

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and asserts that our first encounter with the abject happens during the Oedipal phase

(12). For Kristeva, “abjection” is “a means of separating out the human from the non-human and the fully constituted subject from the partially formed subject” (Creed

8). As a child grows into adulthood, her/his mother becomes an abject to be discarded from the child‟s subjectivity. However, the process is difficult and painful:

The abject confronts us […] within our personal archeology, with our

earliest attempts to release the hold of maternal entity even before

ex-isting outside of her, thanks to the autonomy of language. It is a

violent, clumsy breaking away, with the constant risk of falling back

under the sway of a power as securing as it is stifling. (Kristeva 13)

Kristeva emphasizes the difficulty breaking away from one‟s mother by describing the maternal power to be “securing” and “stifling.” For Kristeva, children and mothers remain in conflict—while a child tries to break away from the mother in order to enter the symbolic, the mother is reluctant to let go. In Barbara Creed‟s The

Monstrous-Feminine, Creed uses Kristeva‟s idea to explain the abundant representations of phallic mother archetype in horror films. The phallic mother‟s

“securing” and “stifling” power is depicted as so monstrous and horrifying that it prevents the child “from taking up its proper place in relation to the symbolic” (Creed

12).

While Tangled is not a horror film, the characterization of Mother Gothel corresponds to Creed‟s description. Murphy indicates in the aforementioned interview:

Mother Gothel is intended to be seen as the mother who “prevent[s] her child from having her own life” (Eisenberg). In Tangled, Mother Gothel‟s motive of clinging to her daughter is strong enough to make her a phallic mother. The narrator mentions that she has been relying on the golden flower to rejuvenate herself for centuries, and the rejuvenating power does not just keep her young but, more importantly, keeps her

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alive. As the ending suggests, Mother Gothel will lose her life once the rejuvenating power disappears. Therefore, throughout the film, she has to put all of her energy to keeping her daughter. Mother Gothel imprisons Rapunzel not only by forming a close mother-daughter relationship but also by manipulating Rapunzel‟s emotions. She constantly criticizes Rapunzel‟s behavior, appearance and naiveté so as to lower her self-esteem, which discourages Rapunzel from going on an adventure on her own.

When Rapunzel becomes annoyed by her criticisms, Mother Gothel immediately responds with “I‟m just teasing, you‟re adorable. I love you so much, darling,” so

Rapunzel could not protest against her mother or even lash out her anger. Mother

Gothel is also akin to a femme fatale character because she is very scheming and duplicitous. After Rapunzel flees the tower with Flynn Rider and develops a romantic relationship with him, Mother Gothel finds her and tells her that Flynn Rider does not really love her and that he would leave her once he earns some furtune. Mother

Gothel then has Flynn Rider kidnapped and fools Rapunzel into believing her lies.

Yet unlike the phallic mothers in horror films, Mother Gothel‟s monstrosity does not lie in her having threatening power to destroy or to kill someone but in her ability to maneuver her way into her daughter‟s mind. The lyrics of Mother Gothel‟s theme song “Mother Knows Best” indicate that she is good at using indirect expression of hostility to manipulate Rapunzel‟s feelings. When Rapunzel insists that she wants to leave the tower to see the floating lanterns in spite of her mother‟s warning about the danger of the outside world, Mother Gothel responds with these lyrics:

Go ahead get trampled by a rhino,

Go ahead get mugged and left for dead,

Me I‟m just your mother what do I know?

I only bathed and changed and nursed you.

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Go ahead and leave me I deserve it!

Let me die alone here, be my guest!

By singing “I‟m just your mother what do I know?,” Mother Gothel seems to admit that her own knowledge is limited and shallow. But the next line “I only bathed and changed and nursed you” emphasizes her efforts in raising up Rapunzel. This line also makes the next line “Go ahead and leave me, I deserve it!” sarcastic, implying that as a mother who has done so much for her daughter, Rapunzel would be unfilial if leaving her behind to “die alone here.” Pretending to be passive and unable to do anything to stop her daughter from venturing out, Mother Gothel successfully evokes

Rapunzel‟s guilty sense. In this way, Mother Gothel‟ skillful employment of language makes her a powerful figure. One online reviewer views Tangled not as a love story—as most audience would assume—but as a story about Rapunzel‟s

“recognition” of her relationship with her mother as “abusive” (“„Mother Knows

Best‟: On Abusive Parenting in Tangled”). Another reviewer claims that “the unexpectedly complex central relationship between the manipulative mother and the conflicted daughter seemed to leave women at my screening shaken” (Ridley; emphasis added). According to these reviewers, Mother Gothel‟s way of employing language and manipulating emotion makes her as intimidating as the monstrous mother in horror films—her relationship with her daughter leaves the audience

“shaken” by the implicit violence she impresses on Rapunzel.

Despite Mother Gothel‟s abusive language, her other features actually make her not as “monstrous” as expected. In Motherhood and Representation, E. Ann Kaplan depicts the dichotomous nature of motherhood in Western cultural tradition. She suggests that the “good” and “bad” mothers are construed in terms of how mothers could relate to the child-phallus in Freudian psychoanalytic theories. Kaplan delineates how a “good” mother is constructed as passive and powerless:

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the child represents the longed-for penis and signifies the end of women‟s

envy. She now enters into her “natural” masochistic feminine,

subordinate to the Father. […] The mother is happily passive, receptive to

her child‟s needs, and without her own desire. (46)

A good mother turns her desire for the phallus to her child after giving birth to a child.

The child‟s needs become her priorities. The “good” mother is sacrificial and masochistic because she does not desire anything other than the child‟s happiness. In contrast with the “good” mother, the “bad” Mother occupies “a jealous/possessive stance toward the child, just because it represents the much-longed-for phallus that is now aggressively seized upon” (Kaplan 46). A “bad” mother refuses to relinquish her control over her child and turns as an obstacle to the child‟s development into adulthood.

Mother Gothel is a complicated mother figure as she is neither an idealized

“good” mother nor a completely evil mother. In fact, Mother Gothel is not as vicious

as other Disney femme fatales.12 Queen Narissa in Enchanted offers one most

prominent example of the monstrous mothers among the Disney villains. As Prince

Edward‟s stepmother, Queen Narissa is characterized by her intimidating magic

power, beautiful appearance and manipulative schemes. Like the Queen in Snow

While and Seven Dwarfs, Queen Narissa in Enchanted owns a magic mirror and is

obsessed with her crown and beauty. She is so possessive of her stepson that she

fears that a woman will steal her son and her crown by marrying Prince Edward.

12 Elizabeth Bell uses the term to refer to Disney‟s female villains, including “the beautiful witches, queens, and stepmothers” in her analysis of women‟s animated bodies in Disney princess films. In “Somatexts at the Disney Shop: Constructing the Pentimentos of Women‟s Animated Bodies,” Bell indicates that Disney incorporates the cinematic codes of the femme fatale, “the „deadly women‟ of silent film and of Hollywood classic film,” into the portrayal of the bodies of middle-age female villains (115). For example, Bell observes that “The readability of the femme fatale, painted in beautiful and shapely strokes on the bodies of Disney‟s Wicked Queen, Lady Trumain, Maleficent, and Ursula, is evident in the careful cosmetics of paint, cowls, jewelry, and “clinging black dresses” (115). The term “femme fatale” is also used by other Disney critics, such as Rebecca-Ann C. Rozario and Marjorie Worthington, to refer to the villainous women in Disney animations. Huang 47

Failing to seduce and poison Giselle, the protagonist of the film, with poisonous

apples, she becomes an ugly giant dragon to kill her. The awful appearance of the

dragon that Queen Narissa turns into is in debt to Maleficent, the evil witch in

Sleeping Beauty (1959). The image of dragon becomes even more dreadful as

advanced filming techniques allow more “realistic” portrayal of the monstrous

feminine. Moreover, Queen Narissa is equipped with powerful magic and sends

people back and forth between the “enchanted world” and to the “real world.” The

fighting scene on top of a skyscraper between Giselle and Queen Narissa in the end

of the film is indicative of Queen Narissa‟s monstrous quality, her power to destroy

the roof of a skyscraper and her intimidating voice.

Unlike Queen Narissa, Mother Gothel is relatively powerless for she is deprived of magic power. Her only magic comes from the rejuvenating power of the golden flower she tends carefully. After the flower is taken to cure the Queen, Mother Gothel becomes vulnerable as now the rejuvenating power is on Rapunzel‟s hair. In a sense, she is not as much a “pure evil” character as her predecessor but a mother who clings desperately to her daughter. As shall be seen, after Rapunzel finds out that it is impossible to persuade her mother to let her leave the tower, she asks her mother to bring her some white shell paint as her birthday present. Upon hearing such a request,

Mother Gothel at first complains about how difficult it is to get white shell paint but soon agrees to take a three-day trip to get the paint. Since she does not have magic power like other Disney femme fatales, she needs to sacrifice something in order to keep her child (as well as the magic power of the golden flower) with her. Such an arrangement accounts for audience‟s ambivalence toward Mother Gothel, as Mother

Gothel is apparently not a “powerful” phallic mother. Her control over her child is also undercut because she means to act as a “good mother.” After scolding Rapunzel and making Rapunzel depressed, she sighs and says, “Great. Now I am the BAD guy.”

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Mother Gothel is a villain that does not want to be a “bad guy.” Indeed, only by being a “good” mother could Mother Gothel keep Rapunzel with her.

Like other princesses in the Team Disney productions, Rapunzel is “a little bit bad,” as Rebecca-Anne C. Rozario describes these princesses (44). In her essay “The

Princess and the Magic Kingdom: Beyond Nostalgia, the Function of the Disney

Princess,” Rozario compares the representations of princesses in two eras of Disney productions, divided by the death of Walt Disney. The films produced from the time when the studios were run by Walt Disney himself are termed Walt Disney productions and the films released in the later period are called the Team Disney productions (Rozario 35). Rozario indicates that the power originally lies in the

Disney femme fatales in Walt Disney productions is later transferred to Team Disney princesses (44). Inheriting the traditions of Team Disney princesses, Rapunzel embodies “the grace of sportswoman” (Rozario 46) and is able to rebel against the authority in her attempts to “struggle for autonomy” (Rozario 50). Rapunzel has the ability to escape from the tower with her strength. Actually, she is the one who helps

Mother Gothel get into the tower every day. Physically stronger than Mother Gothel,

Rapunzel is “trapped” in the tower not by force but because of her psychological attachment to Mother Gothel. Not surprisingly, Rapunzel eventually decides to venture out the tower because of Mother Gothel‟s unexpected anger. When Mother

Gothel fails to maintain her “good” mother image and bursts into the angry “You are not leaving this tower…EVER!,” Rapunzel sets up her mind to break away from

Mother Gothel.

Struggling between the roles of good/bad mothers, Mother Gothel also embodies other maternal traits that are not easily categorized in the bipolarity of good/bad mother. As implied in the lyrics of Rapunzel‟s theme song “When Will My

Life Begin?,” Rapunzel is well-educated and very talented in her artistry. In the song

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sequence , Rapunzel sings about her daily routines that cultivate her interest in reading books, drawing, playing guitar, making pottery, alongside with other domestic tasks related to traditional femininity such as doing laundry, cooking, and mopping the floor.

This song sequence, which serves as an introduction to Rapunzel, emphasizes her creativity by showing her colorful paintings on the wall, which she calls “gallery.”

This shows that Mother Gothel has been offering Rapunzel the resources and space needed to nurture her artistry throughout the years. Another ambiguous representation is that Mother Gothel keeps telling her daughter to speak up because Rapunzel tends to mumble when she talks to her mother. Asking her daughter to speak up with confidence is contradictory to her monstrous behavior of sabotaging Rapunzel‟s confidence through sarcasm and jokes. Rapunzel ultimately learns to speak loudly and clearly when realizing that Mother Gothel is not her biological mother. Rapunzel even uses Mother Gothel‟s words against her: “Did I mumble, mother? Or should I even call you that?”

While re-presenting a more complicated and well-rounded mother character,

Tangled still consolidates conventional ageism in its portrayal of Mother Gothel. To begin with, the film reiterates ageism by magnifying the conflict between the younger and the older women. Centering on Rapunzel‟s struggle for autonomy, Tangled is one of the postfeminist films that celebrate the “Girl Power” of their teenage female protagonists. Like the teenage female protagonists in other postfeminist films,

Rapunzel possesses sportswoman-like physicality and features “femininity” that combines “masculine physical prowess with girliness” (Karlyn 38). Rozario observes that physical prowess endows the Team Disney princesses with “heroism, egalitarianism and autonomy” (47). As the female protagonists‟ physical prowess invests them with mobility and the strength to rebel against authorities and/or to defeat enemies, they are rendered agents who surmount obstacles in their struggles for

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autonomy and propel the narrative diegesis. In Tangled, Rapunzel not only uses her strength to escape from the tower, she also saves Flynn Rider from being caught by the royal army and mobsters. Aside from physical prowess, like Mother Gothel,

Rapunzel skillfully employs language in the realization of her goal. For example, she persuades the angry royal horse Maximus, who is originally chasing Flynn Rider, to cooperate with Flynn in their journey to see the lanterns. Also, Rapunzel is so persistent in pursuing her dream that she even moves a group of vicious mobsters to help her. Throughout the film, Rapunzel actively affects everyone around her to help her escape from her monotonous life in the tower and pushes forward the narrative.

Also, the romance between Rapunzel and Flynn Rider fits the paradigm of postfeminism that “places a high premium on sex and romance as an aspect of identity formation” (Karlyn 35). Although manifestation of protagonist‟s sexuality are avoided in the narrative of Tangled since Disney films‟ target audience is younger than other postfeminist films, Tangled still associates Rapunzel‟s struggles for autonomy with the consummation of romantic love. However, having Mother Gothel as the only obstacle between Rapunzel and Flynn Rider, Tangled reiterates the mother-daughter conflicts in other postfeminist films. One of the recurring themes in postfeminist texts is the conflict between mother and daughter concerning (hetero)sexuality and romance. The mother tends to be more conservative and concerned about the daughter‟s relationship with men while the daughter embraces sexuality and romance as another means to express autonomy. In her analysis of mother-daughter conflicts in postfeminist films, Karlyn indicates that the argument about sexuality actually reflects the differences between the second wave, which is the generation to which the mother characters belong, and the third wave, the daughter‟s generation:

While the Second Wave generally tied (hetero)sexuality to oppression,

the Third Wave is less conflicted about sexuality in any form. […] The

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insistence of young feminists on their right to define their political

strategy as “[making] use of the pleasure, danger, and defining power” of

social structures critiqued by the Second Wave may well unsettle older

women concerned about girl‟s vulnerability to exploitation by men or

experimentation outside the social norms of heterosexuality. (33)

Viewing heterosexual institutions as the origin of gender inequality, the second-wave mothers are concerned about the exploitation imposed by patriarchy on the third-wave daughters‟ sexuality. The third-wave daughters, however, assume that the gender inequality older generations of women suffered from is over, and demonstrate their subjectivity by enjoying sexual freedom and pursuing romantic love. This view is accentuated in the characterization of teenage female protagonists in many postfeminist films. In these films, choosing romantic partners is emphasized by daughters as the steppingstone to maturity and autonomy.

It is interesting to see how Karlyn‟s arugment about the conflicts between second-wave mothers and third-wave daughters could shed light on our reading of the mother-daughter discord in Tangled: Mother Gothel is bitter about romantic love and tells Rapunzel not to trust men. In the song sequence of “Mother Knows Best,”

Mother Gothel uses “men with pointing teeth” who reside in the “outside world” to intimidate Rapunzel into staying in the tower. When Rapunzel starts to grow affectionate toward Flynn Rider and tells Mother Gothel that she has “met someone,”

Mother Gothel sarcastically responds: “Yes, the wanted thief. I‟m so proud. Come on,

Rapunzel!” When Mother Gothel tells Rapunzel to “put [Flynn Rider] to the test” by returning Flynn Rider the crown he desires, Rapunzel is swayed from her belief in romantic love. However, Mother Gothel‟s words are proven false, Rapunzel succeeds in gaining freedom from the imprisonment in the tower and happily reunites with

Flynn Rider. Even though some of Mother Gothel‟s opinions stand valid—such as a

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wanted thief certainly is not a proper choice for boyfriend or husband, the “happily ever after” ending suggests that Rapunzel‟s belief in “true love” surpasses Mother

Gothel‟s cynical views toward men and romantic love. Having the mother and daughter represent different views toward romantic love, Tangled empowers younger women at the expense of the mother as well as the older generation the mother stands for.

All these being said, one still has to be cautious that Karlyn‟s theory of second wave vs. third wave does not speak for all of the mother-daughter complexities in

Tangled. As one shall see, Mother Gothel is in no way aligned with second-wave ideology, nor does Rapunzel necessarily stand for the ideals the third-wave embraces.

In this film, there is no indication of Mother Gothel‟s sharing any characteristics with a second-wave feminist aside from her hostile attitude toward men. Nor is Rapunzel aware of the girlie power advocated by third-wave feminists.

Indeed, Tangled‟s representation of romantic love still upholds conservative ideology that confines women to marriage. Not unlike other Disney Princess films,

Tangled sticks to promoting the idealized girlhood and sets monogamous reproductive marriage as the ultimate goal for young women. Indeed, after the release of the film,

Rapunzel joins other princesses and is “crowned” as “the 10th Disney princess” in the

Disney princess collection.13 Like other princesses, such as Ariel in Little Mermaid

(1989) and Jasmine in Aladdin (1992), Rapunzel is portrayed as a wide-eyed young girl wondering “When Will My Life Begin?” and longs to go on adventure in the world outside of the tower. Like Jasmine and Ariel, who disobey their father to pursue their dreams to see the world, Rapunzel lies to her mother so that she can leave the tower. And as Jasmine needs Aladdin‟s guidance to explore “A Whole New World,”14

13 Disney even held a coronation ceremony in London to announce that Rapunzel has become the 10th princes. (“Disney Throws a Party in London for Rapunzel”) 14 “A Whole New World” is the name of the song sung by Jasmine and Aladdin together when they Huang 53

Rapunzel worries about the danger of the outside world—as told by Mother

Gothel—and relies on Flynn Rider to bring her to the world she is not familiar with.

While the longing to explore the world and to take on adventures can be a means of achieving one‟s goal, most Disney princesses‟ adventures end with marriage. In her article “Power to the Princes: Disney and the Creation of the 20th Century Princess

Narrative,” Bridget Whelan argues that the representations of Disney princesses made up of the “ideal girlhood” that emphasizes traditional feminine qualities such as

“dutifulness, sacrifice, and desire for and subservience to males” (26-27). Comparing

Rapunzel to Tatiana, the heroine whose ambition is to start her own business in The

Princess and the Frog (2009), Whelan suggests that Rapunzel is characterized as a traditional princess:

[Rapunzel‟s dream of seeing] floating lanterns don‟t exactly compare to

owning one‟s own business. […] And like Mulan, and Belle, Jasmine,

and Ariel, Rapunzel‟s story ends with romance. The culmination of her

narrative is not the fulfillment of her life‟s dream but her marriage to

Flynn Rider. Clearly her progressive tendencies have been diminished so

that additional force can be placed on Flynn. (32)

In fact, as if having Rapunzel and Flynn Rider as narrators announcing their upcoming wedding is not “happily ever after” enough, Disney makes another short film Tangled Ever After (2012) to visualize Rapunzel‟s wedding. While celebrating girl power as in other in postfeminist texts, Tangled reverses back to traditional ideology. In addition to being oblivious to female sexuality, which is usually a focus in postfeminist texts, Tangled exploits the theme of postfeminist daughter‟s discord with second-wave mothers and reinforces ageism by foregrounding contradictions between women of different generations. ride the magic blanket to travel around the world. Huang 54

Another case of sexist ageism lies in Tangled‟s representation of Mother

Gothel‟s desire for youthfulness. For Mother Gothel, the real threat is not losing

Rapunzel, but losing the rejuvenating power. Her first line “Rapunzel, let down your hair; I am not getting any younger down here!” resonates with contemporary women‟s anxiety over aging. In the film, Mother Gothel has to sing a “Healing Incantation” so that the rejuvenating magic will be activated. The sexist ageist ideology that “the process of aging [is] portrayed as a series of losses rather than achievements or successes for women” (Mellencamp, “From Anxiety” 314) is revealed in the lyrics of the incantation:

Flower gleam and glow,

Let your power shine,

Make the clock reverse,

Bring back what once was mine,

What once was mine. […]

Save what has been lost,

Bring back what once was mine,

What once was mine.

In the song sequence, youthfulness is described as a property that can be regained through a rejuvenated body. Like the representation of rejuvenation in Death Becomes

Her, the contrast between Mother Gothel‟s aging and youthful body is emphasized in

Tangled. When Mother Gothel retains a younger look, her image is similar to other

Disney femme fatales, who are beautiful but dangerous middle-aged women. After losing the rejuvenating power, Mother Gothel turns vulnerable and weak as she becomes really old (according to the narrator, she might be hundreds-of-years old).

Her face is wrinkled and her hair turns white quickly once she loses her power, showing her big, hollow eyes and huge eye bags. Her aging body is portrayed as

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grotesque and vulnerable. Once again, the bipolarity of old/young runs parallel with the contrast of “powerless” and “powerful.”

In her analysis of Disney femme fatales, Elizabeth Bell suggests that unlike the deadly woman in silent films and of Hollywood classic films, Disney femme fatales do not threaten any specific male character but “cast their spells, not only on their young women victims, but on the entire society from which they are excluded” (117).

Based on the modal of Disney femme fatale, the characterization of Mother Gothel allows the character to take her vengeance on the entire society that has mistreated her.

By kidnapping the King‟s daughter, Mother Gothel not only regains the rejuvenating power that once belonged to her but takes revenge on the King on the violence enforced on her. Without the Princess, the kingdom is threatened since there is no legitimate heir to the crown. While Mother Gothel‟s interaction with Rapunzel is made up mostly of performance in order to keep Rapunzel with her, she once speaks out her true voice. When Rapunzel is made to believe that Flynn Rider only pretends to love her for a fortune, she is hurt and depressed. At this point, Mother Gothel comforts her by saying “I tried to warn you what was out there. The world is dark and selfish and cruel. If it finds even the slightest ray of sunshine, it destroys it!” These lines reiterate Mother Gothel‟s resentment toward the King as well as the predicament she has suffered from. In her book Statistical Panic: Cultural Politics and Poetics of the Emotions, Woodward establishes anger as a rhetorical tool in feminist texts and argues that “oppression can be identified by anger, and that it should be responded to by anger” (54). In the next chapter in the same book, Woodward proceeds to assert that anger should be employed as a political weapon by older people to protest against ageism (Statistical 74-75).

Here I would point out that the Mother Gothel‟s anger, though clearly showing her protest against the unfair treatment imposed on older women, still fails to

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challenge ageism. As my analysis above indicates, ageism exists in the mother-daughter dyad. As the mother no longer “knows best,” she is to be replaced by her daughter. In Tangled, though Mother Gothel defies the chronological time and the symbolic, law and order by trying to remain young, the fact that she desires for nothing but youthfulness makes her a victim of ageist ideology. Moreover, since the rejuvenating power cannot be separated from Rapunzel, Mother Gothel‟s craving for rejuvenation conflicts with Rapunzel‟s pursuit of independence. The conflict between

Mother Gothel and Rapunzel‟s desires makes the coexistence of mother and daughter impossible.

Compared with other Disney Princess films, Tangled offers a more complicated mother character through Mother Gothel, yet the subverting force of Mother Gothel remains limited. In Marjorie Worthington‟s article “The Motherless „Disney Princess‟:

Marketing Mothers out of the Picture,” Worthington criticizes Disney for repeating “a history of matricide” by characterizing the princesses as motherless daughters (32).

Worthington argues that with the repetition of motherless plot, Disney Princess films carry the message that older women and mother are not to be trusted, they thus hinder younger women from identifying with their mothers and other older women who could offer guidance and help (41). In comparison with previous Disney Princess films, the representation of the mother in Tangled should be applauded as the film makes Mother Gothel its central character and ever allows her to utter her desire.

Nevertheless, the film still complies with sexist ageism with its emphasis on the opposition between mother and daughter and its implication that the young will eventually replaces the old.

While Tangled fails to present a mother that is more subversive toward ageism, two more recent films released by Walt Disney Pictures offer more powerful mother figures. The animated film Brave (2012) gives the audience a more thorough

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representation of mother-daughter relationship which starts out with conflicts but ends with mutual understanding and reconciliation. Two years after Brave hit the big screen,

Maleficent was released. Based on Disney‟s 1959 animated film Sleeping Beauty, the film is re-told from the perspective of the Disney femme fatale in Sleeping Beauty,

Maleficent. By characterizing Maleficent as a mother-figure who raises Aurora, the princess in Sleeping Beauty, the film re-defines the theme “true love” in Disney

Princess films, transforming it from romantic love to a (substitute) mother‟s love toward her daughter. Both Brave and Maleficent do not end with the consummation of romantic love between princes and princesses. Rather, these two films suggest a future of the princesses successfully inheriting the crown with the help and wisdom from her mother. While the endings of Brave and Maleficent may seem utopian in terms of the predicaments confronting aging women in our society, they provides alternative visions by emphasizing female empowerment through the alliance between women of the older and younger generations.

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Chapter Four

When “Pretty Woman” Looks into the Mirror:

Postfeminism and Aging in Mirror Mirror

On Grimm Brother‟s well-known tale “Little Snow White,” Gilbert and Gubar observe the conflicting relationship between two archetypal women in Western literature: “the angel-woman” and “the monster-woman” (201). Snow White represents the “angel in the house,” who is “childlike, docile, submissive, the heroine of a life that has no story,” while the Queen is a “plotter, a plot-maker, a schemer, a witch, an artist, an impersonator, a woman of almost infinite creative energy” (Gilbert and Gubar 203). Gilbert and Gubar argue that Snow White represents the antithesis of what the Queen embodies and that the Queen‟s endeavors to kill Snow White signify her attempts to disavow the “angel” in herself.

However, while Gilbert and Gubar focus on describing Snow White and the

Queen with opposite characteristics, they overlook the effect of age despite the fact that they do observe the age difference between Snow White and the Queen. A teenage woman, Snow White is in a formative stage of life and she goes through the developmental stage without parental guidance outside her home. She is not married to anyone until the end of the fairy tale, which makes her not quite an “angel in the house,” a popular figure submissive to her husband in Victorian literatures. As the only legal heir to her father‟s crown, Snow White‟s status of straying outside the castle troubles the Queen as well as the kingdom as a whole. Therefore, it would be too arbitrary to categorize her as a passive, docile “angel-woman” though Snow

White is passive compared to the wicked scheming Queen. But as a modern adaptation of Grimm Brother‟s “Little Snow White,” Tarsem Singh‟s Mirror Mirror

(2012) emphasizes more on the unstableness in Snow White‟s character. It even

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allows Snow White to share with the Queen some characteristics such as assertiveness, rebelliousness, and even duplicity. In fact, in this 2012 version of “Little Snow

White,” both Snow White and the Queen grow apart from their counterparts in Grimm

Brothers‟ version and they even become similar to each other as now both are products of postfeminism.

As critics and scholars have pointed out, “postfeminism” is a complicated and ambiguous term. While the definitions of the term vary, most critics define it based on shared traits and ideologies embodied in popular cultural texts such as chick lit or romantic comedies whose popularity has increased significantly since the 1990s.

Accordingly, in this chapter, I use the word “postfeminist heroine” to designate a popular figure in these cultural texts produced in the 1990s and early 2000s. In her analysis of postfeminist films, Charlotte Brunsdon uses the second-wave feminist movement as the watershed to distinguish different types of women characters in pop culture, which she divided into “the pre-feminist,” “the feminist” and “post-feminist” women (85). According to Brunsdon, the postfeminist or the feminist woman “has a different relation to femininity than either the pre-feminist or the feminist woman” for

“she is neither trapped in femininity (pre-feminist), nor rejecting of it (feminist)”

(85-86). While embracing a rather traditional definition of feminine qualities such as conventional beauty and gaining pleasure from dressing herself up, the postfeminist heroine differs from the “pre-feminist woman” because she “also has ideas about her life and being in control which clearly come from feminism” (Brunsdon 86). Overall, re-claiming conventional femininity and exercising agency over her own life are the two most prominent traits shared by the postfeminist heroines in various popular cultural texts produced in the 1990s and early 2000s.

In terms of agency, these cultural texts produce female protagonists who enjoy certain advantages, freedom and rights, which their feminist predecessors fought for

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in past decades. As Yvonne Tasker and Diane Negra observe,

postfeminist culture emphasizes educational and professional

opportunities for women and girls; freedom of choice with respect to

work, domesticity, and parenting; and physical and particularly sexual

empowerment. (2)

Most postfeminist texts center on strong, independent female protagonists whose active pursuits for commodities, lifestyles and (hetero)sexual partners drive on the narrative. The heroines in postfeminist texts are usually characterized as white, middle-class, heterosexual women who enjoy the (relative) privilege of her social status. Blessed with financial stability and cultural capital, postfeminist heroines seem to be more powerful and possess more freedom from the social constraints than her predecessors and fellow women of other race, class and/or sexuality. In some postfeminist texts, especially in genre films such as horror films or sci-fi movies, the heroines even possess extraordinary physical prowess that enables them to guard themselves against anyone intending to hurt her. These qualities endow postfeminist heroines with mobility and agency, allowing them freedom to make decisions for themselves and to pursue their goals. Nevertheless, while postfeminist texts boast the concept that women nowadays enjoy the same opportunities and advantages as men do and present a less conflicted view toward women‟s relationships with men, the drama of women negotiating between personal longings and patriarchal values is still one of the major themes in postfeminist texts.

In Mirror Mirror, both Snow White and the Queen are characterized in terms of postfeminist ideals, especially with presentations of their freedom of choice. Unlike what Gilbert and Gubar observe, the opposition between Snow White and the Queen is not based on the dichotomy between passivity and action—since both of them are outspoken, strong-willed and active in this film—,but purely on their age. Specifically,

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as I will argue in this chapter, the rivalry between Snow White and the Queen in

Mirror Mirror reveals the contradictions in postfeminist discourses in regard to age.

Furthermore, the contradictions presented in this film also indicate that the female empowerment embodied by the postfeminist heroines in Mirror Mirror, like in other postfeminist texts, is limited. A close analysis of the extratextual discourses surrounding the Queen and the actor Julia Roberts in Mirror Mirror reveals the contradictions and ageism inherent in contemporary postfeminist discourses.

The Queen, played by the “pretty woman” Julia Roberts, is characterized as a postfeminist heroine that could be easily identified by the audience. Basically, the film is promoted through the brand of Julia Roberts and therefore it is impossible to dismiss the extratextual discourses attached to the star and their impact on the film. In

2012, two films adapted from “Little Snow White” were released. Mirror Mirror was released on March 30th, while Snow White and the Huntsman hit the big screen on

June 1st. The mere two-month interval between the releases of the two films made them fierce competitors to each other, let alone the fact that they are adapted from the same story that almost every North American—even the worldwide audience—is familiar with. Consequently, stars are used as one of the means to distinguish Mirror

Mirror from Snow White and the Huntsman in promotion. Paul McDonald points out in Hollywood Stardom that

…unlike other goods such as basic foodstuffs, consumer demand for

films is uncertain and capricious. With the mixture of high-cost

investment and uncertain demand, the industry treasures concrete,

material signs of content which consistently draw audiences. (11)

And stars are used here as the “concrete, material signs.” While film genres rely on other certainties such as narrative and stylistic tropes, “the value of stars is tied up with how they represent versions of human identity” (McDonald 11). In the marketing

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competition between Mirror Mirror and Snow White and the Huntsman, stars play a rather important role. Before the release of the two films, the actors playing Snow

White and the Queen received great attention from the media. As Kristen Stewart, who played Snow White in Snow White and the Huntsman, had been made one of the

Hollywood big names with her role in Twilight franchise before accepting the Snow

White role assignment, Julia Roberts, being the only A-list star in the cast of Mirror

Mirror, is expected to carry the film more than Lily Collins, the actor who played

Snow White.

In the 1990s, the success of Pretty Woman (1990) made Julia Roberts the only actress who could guarantee profit for film studios in the male-dominated Hollywood industry. When Pretty Woman was released in North America, it was the highest-grossing film produced by Disney. The successful domestic and worldwide grossing of Pretty Woman and the subsequent Sleeping with the Enemy (1991) secured

Roberts a place among A-list Hollywood stars. On his decision to fund Roberts‟s another film Dying Young (1991), Joe Roth, Chairman of Twentieth Century Fox, said of her: “When you have Julia‟s name on the marquee you have the biggest female star in the world, one of less than 10 people in the world who can „open‟ a picture simply because she‟s in it” (qtd. in Dutka). Warner Bros.‟s Senior Vice-President of

International Theatrical Distribution at the time, Veronika Kwan-Rubinek, also claimed that “If Julia Roberts is attached to a project, people will want to finance it”

(qtd. in McDonald 260). Roth and Kwan-Rubinek‟s words can be confirmed by the

Quigley poll, a yearly survey and conducted by the Quigley Publishing Company in regard to the profit-making potential of Hollywood stars. According to the Quigley poll, Roberts ranked the second-highest money-making star in 1990 and had been constantly on the top ten money-making stars list from 1990 to 2004 (“Top Ten

Money Making Stars”). Despite the fact that Roberts fell out of Quigley‟s top ten

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money -making list after 2004, Roberts remained as one of the highest-earning actresses in Hollywood. According to Forbes‟s annual list of “Hollywood‟s

Top-Earning Actresses,” Roberts ranked the 6th with an estimated 16 million income in 2012, the year when Mirror Mirror was released (Pomerantz).

Roberts‟s star persona is undoubtedly influential in the marketing campaign of

Mirror Mirror. The trailer gives more attention to the Queen‟s aging beauty, her hatred toward Snow White and her schemes to sabotage Snow White‟s happiness than to Snow White, though Lily Collins‟s Snow White and Roberts‟s role share similar amount of screen time in the feature. Judging from the trailer, one may even agree with what the Queen claims in the beginning of the film—Mirror Mirror tells the

Queen‟s story, not Snow White‟s. In fact, the first two posters released as teasers included one showing Julia Roberts‟s Queen holding the poisonous apple (fig. 5) and the other displaying the rivalry between Snow White and the Queen with only Julia

Roberts‟s name on it (fig. 6). The name on the teaser-poster indicates how the brand of Julia Roberts is emphasized to sell the film. Just like how brand names are used to sell products, star names “are deployed in the hope of encouraging certain consumption decisions” (McDonald 49). According to McDonald, “the star name functions to compress what is known of the person. In Hollywood stardom, names alone are enough to bring to the screen rich collections of pre-conceived ideas about a performer” (50). In the case of the two Snow White movies in 2012, the star names

“Julia Roberts” and “Charlize Theron” on posters brought different preconceptions to the Queen‟s role in Mirror Mirror and Snow White and the Huntsman.

Briefly, the stardom of Julia Roberts as the “everywoman” in romantic comedies that celebrate postfeminist ideals permeates the image of the Queen in

Mirror Mirror. Julia Roberts‟s name is closely linked to top-grossing films like Pretty

Woman, My Best Friend’s Wedding (1997), Notting Hill (1999) and Runaway Bride

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(1999), which are all romantic comedies (McDonald 260). As Kathleen Rowe claims, romantic comedy “demands a place for women, or more precisely, for a woman, in the narrative itself and in its vision of a social order that is not only renewed but also, ideally, transformed” (102). Focusing on the consummation of a romantic relationship, romantic comedy usually begins with a demonstration of how the heroine suffers from the unequal relationship between men and women and eventually closes out with a more balanced power relation between its hero and heroine, which the makes it the most common genre to present postfeminist discourses that celebrate female unruliness and female empowerment. Take Vivian, Roberts‟s role in her career-defining work Pretty Woman, as an example. While Vivian seems to be a

Cinderella figure who is transformed and rescued by a rich man Edward (played by

Richard Gere) from her poor life, this character is made a postfeminist heroine who is not only beautiful enough to attract men but also exercises certain agency in making decisions for herself. In her analysis of the film, Hilary Radner points out that Vivian

“must represent desire for the masculine subject while simultaneously acting as the agent of her own desire—must re-enact the specular image of consumer desire and yet assume agency and autonomy in the context of her own wishes” (qtd. in Brunsdon 94).

In terms of feminism, Vivian is a complex figure. On one hand, she is very attractive, which makes her a traditional female role who is the object of men‟s desire; on the other hand, she actively expresses her own desire by making different choices. In her analysis of Pretty Woman, Brunsdon argues that it is exactly this kind of ambiguous relationship with feminism that makes this film post-feminist (95). Although Pretty

Woman‟s presentations of femininity through Vivian conform to conventional patriarchal values, the film at times shows how it is “informed by feminism” when emphasizing Vivian‟s agency, which is also demonstrated in her work ethic and her practical attitude toward money (Brunsdon 95).

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As a defining image of Julia Roberts‟ stardom, Vivian‟s characteristic of being a woman with both outer allure and inner agency set the tone for Julia Roberts‟s subsequent images on the big screen. McDonald analyzes Julia Roberts‟ stardom, by pointing out that the trait of “feisty sweetness” is constantly re-enacted in many of her roles (258). Roberts‟ characters usually possess a natural, everywoman-like beauty.

Roberts is “sweet” in the sense that she is attractive, but her look is not too beautiful to intimidate anyone. Most importantly, Roberts attracts female audience as well as male audience. When recounting the success of the Julia Roberts brand, Rob

Friedman, Vice Chairman of Paramount‟s Motion Picture Group, described Roberts as a movie star “in the classic sense…Everyone can relate to her on some level…Women are not threatened by her…And men are attracted to her at the same time as they admire her strength” (qtd. in McDonald 266). Despite her sweetness, it is noticeable that Roberts‟s “strength” is an essential trait that contributes to the Julia Roberts brand.

Such “strength” is important in the postfeminist imagination of female empowerment.

While Roberts‟s roles in romantic comedies all share the trait of “feisty sweetness,” her role in Erin Brockovich (2000), the film that won her an Oscar, makes best use of the “strength” in her star persona. In this film, Roberts plays a single mother who starts out as a legal firm assistant and later becomes determined to fight against a big corporate after she finds out the details about water contamination produced by that corporate. Her role is “sweet, caring and vulnerable” when performing motherhood but very strong and determined in carrying out lawsuit against the evil corporate

(McDonald 268). Being able to balance between sweetness and strong will, Julia

Roberts turns a quintessential postfeminist heroine.

In Mirror Mirror, Julia Roberts‟s star presence endows the Queen with certain

“pre-conceived ideas” (McDonald 50). The Queen is expected to inherit certain postfeminist ideas that are akin to Roberts‟s previous roles. In fact, the film

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characterizes the Queen‟s as a postfeminist heroine by highlighting her agency. From the beginning of the film, the Queen shows her unruliness through her spirited narrative voice. For example, when introducing the naming of Snow White, the

Queen comments: “They called her Snow White—probably because that was the most pretentious name they could came up with.” By describing Snow White‟s name as

“pretentious,” the film allows the Queen to sabotage the dignified status of Snow

White in the original fairy tale. When proceeding to describe the kingdom ruled by

Snow White‟s father, the Queen says: “The kingdom was a happy place where people danced and sang day and night” first, but immediately, she undermines such a comment by adding “Apparently, no one had a job back then, just singing and dancing all day and all night.” This sarcasm distracts the audience from the familiar version of

“Little Snow White.” When the narrator/Queen introduces herself, she claims moreover: “The Queen was the most beautiful woman in the world, she was intelligent and strong—and just to clarify: she was me. And this is my story, not hers.”

Such a self-assertion of being the protagonist of the story makes the Queen a qualified postfeminist heroine. The Queen‟s sarcastic narration sets the tone of the film as a comedy and prepares the audience for a new story, differentiating the Queen in Mirror

Mirror from either the Queen in Grimm Brother‟s story or the Queen in Disney‟s

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. As the narrator of Mirror Mirror, the Queen contributes to the story-making process, which underlines her creative and plot-making personality. More importantly, this time the Queen seems to be in control of how she would be depicted.

The Queen‟s agency is also established through her choices of spouse and her solution to financial problems. In Mirror Mirror, the Queen faces two problems—the financial crisis of her kingdom and the proposal from a wealthy baron who is much older than she. In the meantime, Prince Alcott is robbed by seven dwarfs in the forest

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and visits her castle to seek help. On hearing that Prince Alcott comes from a wealthy country, the Queen decides to woo Prince Alcott in order to solve her financial problems by marrying him. While the baron is considered by other a more suitable mate for the Queen, the Queen finds the baron repulsive and is determined to seduce

Prince Alcott into marriage. This plot suits Brunsdon‟s description that “[the postfeminist heroine] may manipulate her appearance, but she doesn‟t just do it to get a man on the old terms. She wants it all” (86). The Queen‟s unruliness is accentuated through her refusal to settle for the baron. As a postfeminist heroine, she “wants it all.” That is, she wants to fulfill her sexual desire and material needs by marrying a handsome, rich young man. Moreover, the film brings to the fore Julia Roberts‟s star presence by having the Queen smile when she successfully enforces her shemes.

McDonald argues that Roberts‟s smile has become the most significant feature of her star persona, which is displayed by almost every role Roberts played (264). Similarly, in Mirror Mirror, Roberts‟s smile “become[s] a stand-out idiolectic feature, functioning as a condensed statement of her star visibility” (McDonald 264). The signature smile is demonstrated when the Queen successfully get what she wants—marrying Prince Alcott. On her way to her wedding, the Queen happily announces: “No matter how many times I do it, I still get excited on my wedding day!” Her announcement is followed by a big smile, which is framed right in the middle of the shot (fig. 6). Here the Queen is not only a character in the movie, but also Roberts the movie star, whose image as a postfeminist heroine is called to the mind of the audience.

Julia Roberts‟s smile, however, heralds in the Queen‟s downfall in Mirror

Mirror. While the Queen is determined to marry Prince Alcott, everyone around the

Queen considers the baron a more suitable mate for her. The Queen‟s servant shows his disapproval of this marriage. On hearing the news of the Queen‟s wedding, Snow

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White also chuckles and asks “Who is she marrying? The baron?” as if this is the only reasonable answer even though the Queen has already shown great interest in Prince

Alcott. Even the Mirror, serving as the Queen‟s sidekick, advises the Queen to marry the older man regardless of his unpleasant features like “receding hairlines and rotten egg [smell].” Sexist ageist ideology could be detected in these comments. Although both the baron and the Queen are wooing someone younger, the desire of the baron is acceptable whereas the Queen‟s desire seem illegitimate. The Queen‟s wooing of

Prince Alcott is even made a target of laughter. In the scene where the Queen tries to propose to Prince Alcott, Prince Alcott seems rather uninterested and always seems confused about the Queen‟s behavior because it doesn‟t register in his mind that the

Queen can be a likely love interest. In this scene, when the Queen pulls the table cloth to force Prince Alcott to sit closer to her, Prince Alcott becomes awkward and uneasy.

As the Queen utters: “Prince Alcott, I have a proposition for you. We are both single adults, roughly the same age—,” Prince Alcott immediately interrupts and corrects her:

“I don‟t think we are the same age.” In response to Prince Alcott, the Queen insisted:

“I said „roughly!‟” This scene is presented in a comical way. The Queen‟s pursuit of a younger man is therefore not taken seriously.

Though celebrating postfeminist heroines‟ freedom of choice, Mirror Mirror is apparently not free from exerting sexist ageism. In addition to the Queen‟s desire for a younger man, her anxiety toward her aging body is also a target of joke. Just as how the aging women‟s anxiety is presented in previous films discussed, the Queen‟s anxiety toward aging is magnified in a comical style. Mirror Mirror is advertised in its trailer wtih the slogan “A classic tale gets a new wrinkle,” which is followed by a a scene showing the Queen appalled by such a claim and protests: “They are not wrinkles, they are just crinkled!” In her analysis of the aging women in Hollywood films, Imelda Whelehan observes that the beautification procedures the Queen

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undergoes in order to remain youthful is “punishing” and that the Queen‟s “holding on to [her] youth is seen as desperate and futile” (88). Indeed, the beautification procedure demonstrated in Mirror Mirror is horrifying and ridiculous. To seduce

Prince Alcott, the Queen goes through a series of beauty treatment—including covering her face with bird excrement and having bumblebees and scorpions sting her skin. Though conscious of the suffering she goes through, the Queen, like many other aging women in postfeminist texts, makes the decision to suffer in exchange of the fulfillment of their goal. Before her wedding, she asks her servant to “lace her up” with a tight corset. When she successfully fits into the corset, she lets out a good laugh and happily exclaims: “I know I was still the same size!”

Just as the Mirror warns the Queen of her waning beauty in the original “Little

Snow White,” the Mirror in Mirror Mirror reminds the Queen of her problem. Also played by Julia Roberts, the Mirror functions as the Queen‟s alter ego. Compared to the Queen, the Mirror is less emotional and more clear-eyed. Right after the proposal being offered by the baron, the Queen comes to the Mirror and complains. In response to the Queen‟s statement that “Women have standards after all. And an exotic woman like myself has very high standards, “ the Mirror suggests the Queen to take the offer:

“You spend so much supporting your vanity, you can‟t afford to say no.” Here the words “spend” and “afford” refer not only to money but also to the fact that she couldn‟t “afford” spending more time finding another person to marry. The Mirror proceeds to tell the Queen: “Trust me, I am, after all, merely a reflection of you,” to which the Mirror soon adds in a whisper: “Well, not an exact reflection... I have no wrinkles.” The Mirror‟s lines once again underscore the fact that both the Mirror and the Queen is the same person, revealing the sexist ageism is internalized by the Queen.

In the essay “Neoliberal Self-Governance and Popular Postfeminism in Contemporary

Anglo-American Chick Lit,” Eva Chen argues that most readers of postfeminist texts

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disregard postfeminist texts‟ reiteration of conventional and conservative values. Chen stresses that the concept of female empowerment through freedom of choice is problematic in the sense that

…the individual is interpellated as the actively choosing and

self-responsible consumer/entrepreneur who is motivated by economic

self-interest and risk-calculation to freely and willingly engage in a

ceaseless project of self-making and self-governance. (247)

In postfeminist texts, the heroines are free to choose what she wants to wear, what she needs to buy, along with who she is going to marry. However, the postfeminist heroines have to make themselves desirable so as to exercise the right to act autonomously. In most postfeminist texts, only when the postfeminist heroine is desirable as a woman is she endowed with the means to choose and to pursue her goal.

That is why makeover sequence becomes a trope in postfeminist texts. Every beautification procedure and purchase of goods is considered a necessary investment in the self. However, when the postfeminist heroine gets older, more efforts are called upon for maintaining one‟s image since conventional attractiveness and desirability require youthfulness.

In What a Girl Wants?: Fantasizing the Reclamation of Self in Postfeminism,

Diane Negra observes that

One of the signature attributes of postfeminist culture is its ability to

define various female life stages within the parameters of “time panic.”

[…] it has heightened the visibility of midlife women often cast as

desperate to retain or recover their value as postfeminist subjects. (47)

The “time panic” mentioned here results from the ideology that every subject should engage in “ceaseless project of self-making and self-governance” (Chen 247). Signs of aging on a midlife women‟s face and body indicate lack of self-discipline and

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hence failure in this project. In Mirror Mirror, “time panic” is not only displayed through the way the Queen struggles with her aging body but also through the

Queen‟s competition—and hence a comparison—with Snow White. When Prince

Alcott talks about Snow White‟s beauty and ivory skin, the Queen retorts: “She‟s eighteen years old and her skin has never seen the sun, so of course it‟s good.” The

Queen‟s statement suggests her awareness that age has put her at disadvantage in her competition with Snow White, even though the Mirror has never announced that

Snow White is “the fairest of them all” in Mirror Mirror.

Like the Queen, Snow White in Mirror Mirror is also characterized according to the postfeminist code of female empowerment. Instead of being a damsel in distress, who passively awaits the rescue of her prince, Snow White is able to fight against the

Queen by herself. Snow White‟s awakening to her own free will happens after she learns that the Queen has done a terrible job ruling the country. As she discovers how her subjects suffer from poor economy, Snow White confronts her stepmother about people‟s poor living condition. She tells the Queen: “You have no right to rule the way you do. And technically, I am the rightful ruler of this kingdom.” As Snow White proclaims the legitimacy of her leadership and the possibility of taking away the

Queen‟s power, her words result in the Queen‟s decision to have her killed. After the

Queen‟s servant pities her and lets her escape, Snow White goes on to live with seven dwarfs, who are a group of skillful mobsters robbing every passerby they ambush in the forest, and the dwarfs teach her to use a sword and other martial arts techniques.

Snow White is therefore able to battle with the Queen‟s soldiers and protect the people she loves. In Snow White‟s final battle with the Queen, she tells Prince Alcott:

“I‟ve read so many stories where the prince saves the princess. I think it‟s time we change that ending. This is my fight.”

But other than her confrontations with the Queen and physical prowess, Snow

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White lacks the unruliness and rebelliousness possessed by other postfeminist heroines who are endowed with “Girl Power.” In her review, Emma Grey claims:

“[Snow White] was boring; the type of girl you tell your friends is „nice,‟ but can think of no other adjectives to describe her.” In her analysis of the protagonists in young adult films targeted on teenage girls, Karlyn indicates that “the pleasure of self-indulgence, anger and a power that soon must be moderated” is a major reason why those characters are so popular (80). According to Karlyn these protagonists are

“inherently unruly because [the genre] places female desire at its core, validating its very existence” (79). Snow White is criticized as “boring” because Mirror Mirror prioritizes the Queen‟s desire over Snow White‟s. In terms of romance, Snow White barely expresses her desire. Even when she shows affection, she is much more reserved than the Queen‟s comedical expression. When Snow White hears about the

Queen and Prince Alcott‟s wedding, she cries and feels defeated immediately. It is noteworthy that the dwarfs encourages Snow White to fight back by saying “You are the true leader. The kingdom needs you.” The duty as a kingdom‟s heir motivates

Snow White to fight with the Queen more than her feelings toward Prince Alcott. For

Snow White, other people‟s happiness is more important than hers. Another example is demonstrated in a scene wherein Snow White steals the tax money that the dwarfs snatch from the Queen‟s servant and gives them back the villagers. This subplot indicates that when personal interest conflicts with the public‟s welfare, Snow White would like to sacrifice the former for the latter. Unlike those “self-indulgent” young postfeminist heroines who only learn to be compassionate or sacrificial for her friends in the end, Snow White puts others‟ needs before hers from the beginning of the film.

More importantly, what appeals to teenage female audience is that young adult films “le[t] girls experience the taboo emotion of anger. Girls let themselves get mean.

What matters is girls, who begin to learn about social power by exercising it over each

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other” (Karlyn 79). Serving as a contrast to the wicked Queen, however, Snow White is not a “mean girl.” Snow White is soft-spoken and treats others politely. Only when seeing the cruelty the Queen enforces on her subject does she become angry so her anger results basically from her sacrificial personality. While Mirror Mirror presents a coming-of-age plot in which Snow White gradually discovers her inner strength to fight against the Queen, the failure to present female desire, self-indulgence, and anger makes Snow White not as rebellious as other postfeminist teen heroines. Indeed, compared to the vain, arrogant and self-centered Queen, Snow White reminds one of the “pre-feminist” heroines in romantic comedies. In terms of either star presence or character development, the Queen attracts more attention than Snow White. However, the film still ends with the Queen being defeated, having her announcing that “It is

Snow White‟s story after all.” In the combat between two heroines, the younger one wins.

And the problem confronting the Queen doesn‟t simply remain within the narrative; the issue of aging actually translates through the screen with Julia Roberts‟s star presence. While the director Tarsem Singh uses Julia Roberts‟s most well-known work to indicate her importance in Mirror Mirror by saying that “I don‟t know about

Snow White and I don‟t know about the prince, but I know about the queen: It‟s

Pretty Woman. That‟s the woman I want” (Buchanan); reports, interviews and reviews constantly evoke Julia Roberts‟s star persona and her previous works to mourn for

Julia Roberts‟s lackluster performance in Mirror Mirror. Ramin Setoodeh, in his harsh criticism of Mirror Mirror, talks about how unfitting Juila Roberts is to the role of the Queen:

For fans of her romantic comedies like Notting Hill or My Best Friend’s

Wedding, Mirror Mirror is particularly painful, because it‟s like someone

has kidnapped America‟s most prominent leading lady and abandoned

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her—without a script—in a series of ugly bridesmaid dresses.

In “Julia Roberts—Pretty Woman Shows Her Ugly Side but Still Comes Up Smiling,”

Lesley O‟toole suggests that “Julia Roberts is cast against type as a wicked queen in her new film.” Similarly, Hilary Busis, on Entertainment Weekly, discusses the trend of employing middle-age actresses to play wicked witch roles in Hollywood:

Once upon a time, Julia Roberts was America‟s sweetheart. (Hell, at one

point, she even starred in a movie called America’s Sweethearts.) But

because nobody can stay an ingénue forever, the 44-year-old actress has

officially aged into the next phase of her career.

These articles and reviews suggest a downfall of Julia Roberts‟s career not simply because of the villainess of the role she is assigned but also because of Julia Roberts‟s age. The comparison of Mirror Mirror with Julia Roberts‟s former works, which constantly juxtaposes Julia Roberts in middle age and the memory of her younger screen presence, underscores the aging of the star. Inside and outside the screen, Julia

Roberts the star and the Queen are always competing and compared with a younger woman, be it her former self, Snow White, or the younger co-star Lily Collins.

Though characterized as a postfeminist heroine, the middle-aged Queen has to yield her power to the young.

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Chapter Five

Conclusion

During the promotion tour of her new film Into the Woods, Meryl Streep expresses her frustration with the roles she was offered when she became middle-aged:

When I turned 40, I got three witch offers in one year. And no other offers.

Three offers to play a witch, but no love-interest things, no

woman-scientist-adventurists, no „I‟m out saving the world,‟ no nothing.

Just witches. I thought, „God, there‟s got to be another way.‟

(Abramovitch)

By saying this, Meryl Streep expresses her political stance against Hollywood‟s

“demonization” of older women and the concept of “age being this horrifying, scary thing” (Walker-Arnott). Indeed, Meryl Streep‟s words are indicative of the workings of Hollywood industry, in which there is a lack of job offers and of varieties of roles for women who pass their thirties. The aging women characters discussed in this thesis confirm Streep‟s criticism toward Hollywood industry: two out of three films feature aging women as witches (Mother Gothel in Tangled and the Queen in Mirror

Mirror) who are menacing and evil. However, it is noteworthy that both characters are based on the prototypes characterized as witches in Grimm Brothers‟ tales, which shows that this kind of sexist ageism has a long history in Western culture rather than being exclusive to Hollywood.

As it turned out, Meryl Streep chose not to take the witch roles she was offered in her forties and still survived in her career. Her role, Madeline, in Death Becomes

Her is one of the roles she took when she was in her forties. Strictly speaking,

Madeline is not a witch, but it is hard to argue against reading Madeline as a

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“demonized” version of aging women. My analysis of Death Becomes Her nonetheless suggests an alternative reading of the negative representations of two aging women in the film. In Death Becomes Her, queerness permeates the campy, outlandish and comedical style of the film, and thus undermines sexist ageism.

Similarly, Mother Gothel in Tangled and the Queen in Mirror Mirror offer broader perspective on the representations of aging women. These characters, as the representations of aging women in the diegetic world, speak to the predicaments and desires of aging women. Through Mother Gothel, I probe into the discourses of motherhood and note the ageism disseminated through stereotypical representations of mother-daughter relationships. The Queen in Mirror Mirror, which is studied alongside the extratextual materials concerning Julia Roberts‟s stardom, reveals the limitations of postfeminism in regard to aging. While it is true that sexist ageism still exists in all three films studied in this thesis, these films‟ depictions of aging women allow us a broader view of older women‟s aging experiences as well as other related issues.

When Meryl Streep uttered her dissatisfaction with the negative stereotypes of older women roles, she was actually promoting her witch role in the musical film Into the Woods. She claimed that she made an exception for Into the Woods because of “the

„complex‟ nature of the movie‟s plot” (Walker-Arnott). Indeed, the Witch in Into the

Woods is quite different from traditional witches. Unlike the rejuvenating process in

Death Becomes Her, Tangled, and Mirror Mirror, the rejuvenating process in Into the

Woods is reversed. The Witch appears to be really old, but then the spell on her is broken and she reclaims her true identity as a younger woman. In addition, the Witch is not depicted as a villain and she is given chances to articulate the unfair treatment she receives by singing the song “Children Won‟t Listen” and “Last Midnight.” The film subverts the dichotomy of good and evil in traditional fairy tales and presents

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better -rounded characters by having the characters admit that one could neither be totally evil nor absolutely justified for their behavior. A similar message is expressed through Maleficent, in which the main character Maleficent leaves a curse on Aurora out of vengeance and becomes regretful when she grows motherly love toward the younger woman. More importantly, unlike many older women characters that are jealous of the younger ones in fairy tales, Maleficent has never made any remark on her age. In a way, age is never an issue for Maleficent. What really concern

Maleficent are things other than age, such as love and forgiveness.

Besides the Disney films adapted from fairy tales, it is important to note that aging women‟s stories are also told by mainstream feature films. Two award-winning films adapted from best-selling books, Philomena and Still Alice, draw attention to other aspects of older women‟s lives. Philomena presents the process of an Irish woman Philomena Lee‟s search for her long-lost son in collaboration with a journalist.

The film shows how an old woman with low education level could surpass a sophisticated and cynical political journalist in wisdom when facing life-changing events. The story constructs aging as a process into maturity for women just as for men. Still Alice raises the issue of Alzheimer‟s disease by detailing the memory and intellectual deterioration of a 50-year-old Alzheimer patient Alice Howland. It shows how Alice‟s families cope with this situation. Both Philomena and Still Alice are well-received among critics. Actresses who play the leading roles as aging women,

Judie Dench as Philomena Lee and Julianne Moore as Alice Howland, are recognized for their achievements. Indeed, both Julie Dench and Julianne Moore were nominated for the Academy award for Best Actress, with the latter eventually winning the Oscar for Best Actress in 2014.

Perhaps the best way to counter sexist ageism in the Hollywood industry is to have more aging female characters that are not so conscious of their aging in film

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productions. Hollywood fails to create better job offers for middle-aged and older actresses largely because it lacks imagination and is constrained by limited expectations from women in of various ages. Few months after the release of Into the

Woods, Meryl Streep was reported to fund a screenwriter lab for women over forty

(Cox). So it is possible that we get to see more and more stories of women in different stages of life hit the big screen in the near future. One day, hopefully, actresses can choose to act as many roles as actors do, and the audience, however old they are, will be able to identify with or relate to a variety of female characters.

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Chapter 2

fig. 1

fig. 2

fig. 3. While the demonstration of broken body parts replicates the fear image of aging body as decrepit and uncontrollable, dark humor undermines the seriousness of this scene.

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fig. 4. The contrast between the costume and makeup of Madeline (left) and Helen

(middle) magnifies and mocks the Madonna/whore trope.

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Chapter 4

fig. 5 (Gallagher)

fig. 6 (Gallagher)

fig.7

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