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Retelling Grimm Girlhood: Representations of Girlhood in the Contemporary Fairy Tale Film Adaptation Cycle

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Retelling Grimm Girlhood: Representations of Girlhood in the Contemporary Fairy Tale Film Adaptation Cycle Retelling Grimm Girlhood: Representations of Girlhood in the Contemporary Fairy Tale Film Adaptation Cycle Still from: Sleeping Beauty. Dir. Julia Leigh. Perf. Emily Browning. IFC Films. 2011. Submitted by Karen Ann Grobben, to the University of Exeter as a thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Film, May 2016. This thesis is available for Library use on the understanding that it is copyright material, and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgment. I certify that all material in thesis that is not my own work has been identified and that no material has been previously submitted and approved for the award of a degree by this or any other University. Signature: ___________________________________________________________ ABSTRACT Working within the filmic fairy tale adaptation cycle that emerged between 2005 and 2015, this thesis investigates how girlhood is cinematically constructed through the lens of fantasy, in relation to gendered representation in media. The relationship between femininity and fairy tales is well-established. By reading contemporary filmic adaptations of the tales, the thesis deconstructs gendered myth-making and reveals the extent to which fairy tale imagery and plot continue to inform cultural constructions of girlhood. It argues that by centring upon young female protagonists and often targeting a young female audience, this cycle constitutes a newly emerging young woman’s cinema. In doing so, the thesis relates the contemporary fairy tale adaptation cycle back to gendered histories of media and genres traditionally associated with female audiences (such as the Female Gothic, the Melodrama, the Costume Drama and so on). The thesis analyses their similar narrative strategies of using iconographical objects, haunted spaces and evocative settings. The cycle’s cultural denigration is critiqued for its association with mainstream and primarily female audiences. The act of adapting fairy tales to construct girlhood through fantasy thus necessitates exploring the ideological implications of gendered genres, their narrative strategies as well as complex processes of adaptation, from tale to screen. How these films, by centralising girlhood, explore female fantasies and desires, trauma, gendered violence and coming of age, is explored throughout. The thesis argues that a highly specific mode of girlhood comes to the fore in this cycle, within particular cultural (social, racial and narrative) parameters. This mode of fairy tale girlhood is imperilled, spectacular and exclusionary, generating disturbing implications of how young women are represented and addressed in popular media. As in women’s films of previous eras in film history, however, the fairy tale adaptation cycle both reinforces and challenges the rigid parameters in which girlhood is cinematically imagined. TABLE OF CONTENTS 2 Introduction, “Girlhood and the 2005-2015 Fairy Tale Film Adaptation Cycle” ........................................................................................................................... 4 Chapter One, “Oz and Wonderland: Telling Anglo-American Girlhood in Alternate Fairy Tale Worlds” ......................................................................... 44 Chapter Two, “Bloody Chambers: Encountering Girlhood through Traumatic Space in the Bluebeard Adaptation” .......................................... 85 Chapter Three, “Enchanted Objects: Constructing Girlhood in the Magical Mise-en-scène” ............................................................................................ 112 Chapter Four, “Into the Woods: Locating Girlhood in the Fairy Tale Heroine’s Journey” ..................................................................................... 160 Conclusion .................................................................................................... 211 Works Cited .................................................................................................. 219 3 Introduction: Girlhood and the 2005-2015 Fairy Tale Film Adaptation Cycle Due to copyright concerns, this image cannot be shown. Fig. Int.1: Still from Hanna (2011) in which Marissa (left) and Hanna (right) face off. In an abandoned Grimm’s Fairy Tale theme park in Germany, a young girl named Hanna (Saoirse Ronan) is being hunted. Fleeing from the murderous clutches of C.I.A. agent Marissa Wiegler (Cate Blanchett), Hanna runs through eerily empty fairy tale-themed attractions. She leaps across boats shaped like seven swans and escapes a funhouse version of Grandmother’s house. Deep in the woods, she comes upon an astonishing sight: defunct rollercoaster tracks lead into a tunnel down the gigantic, open mouth of a ten foot tall wolf’s head, dwarfing Hanna. Suddenly, in a terrifying zoom forward, a familiar figure materialises from the tunnel’s darkness. In a return to the ‘Red Riding Hood’ tale this film prominently references throughout, the wolf as a character comes in the guise of a seemingly trustworthy, motherly figure: Marissa Wiegler. Framed within the huge, sharp jaws of the wolf’s head, however, Marissa’s false warmth is a chilling parody of motherly concern. She is a wolf, dressed in grandmother’s clothing and concealing a gun. In a quick series of shots and counter-shots, Hanna lets an arrow fly and Marissa shoots—both are hit. This sequence from Joe Wright’s fascinating part action film, part thriller Hanna (U.K., 2011) is one from a cycle of films emerging from 2005 to 2015, which mine the heart of many dark fairy tales to stage female coming of age. The monstrous yet moving final image of girlhood that this film closes on, hinges on the spectator’s familiarity with fairy tale narratives. In a medium shot, Marissa succumbs at last to the arrow’s wound and lies against the rollercoaster tracks, a shot of the sharp nails of her clenched, bloody hand recalling the wounded paw of a wolf. In a low-angled shot, Hanna is framed above Marissa and stares expressionlessly down the lens. Gun in hand, the young girl dominates the frame, observing quietly: “I just missed your heart.” She aims Marissa’s handgun directly at the camera, at the spectator. As the shot rings out, the screen goes blood red and in huge white script, the name ‘HANNA’ fills the screen. This ending is particularly significant within an adaptation of ‘Red Riding Hood’. The text affirms Hanna’s ‘wolfishness’ and cold-bloodedness as not only narratively satisfying, but as necessary for her survival as a heroine. Ronan’s feral yet emotionally vulnerable performance as Hanna provides the spectator with a striking re-visioning of Red, and by extension, of girlhood itself. The young heroine comes of age when she occupies the role of both Wolf and Red, and this reconfiguring of fairy tale roles breaks from conventional depictions of girlhood on screen. Furthermore, audience expectations of what kind of role the girl in the fairy tale plays are diverted, by turning the fairy tale heroine-as-damsel trope on its head and rewarding Hanna’s act of transgression, instead of condemning it. Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm’s literary ‘Red Riding Hood’ vouchsafes the moral that little girls alone in the woods should not stray from the path, but Joe Wright’s version takes the opposite view. With no intervening woodcutter or huntsman in sight, Hanna’s journey into adulthood narratively necessitates that she morally ‘stray’ and the woods become the grim backdrop against which she saves herself. That very loss of innocence becomes a stirring, powerful emancipation in the film’s final, blood-red frame. The violence with which Hanna comes of age creates a discomfiting ambiguity, however. In her unwilling strike against Marissa, Hanna initially misses, but the film’s brutal conclusion Due to copyright concerns, this promises she will not make that mistake image cannot be shown. again. The final moments of this sequence are shot from Marissa’s point of view rather than Hanna’s, allowing the spectator to unexpectedly become aligned with the film’s antagonist. The heroine’s coming of age is cast in an unexpectedly monstrous light, when Hanna pulls the trigger. She has come of age but who, or what, has she become? Has Little Red Riding Hood turned wolf? Fig. Int.2: Poster for Joe Wright’s Hanna (2011): “Adapt or Die.” Promotional posters for Hanna, a generically hybrid fairy tale adaptation, interestingly include the tagline: ‘adapt 5 or die’ (see: fig. Int.2). This refers most obviously to Hanna’s own survival in a hostile, modern world after being brought up in a Grimm’s fairy tale-like wilderness. However, it is an apt commentary on the status of fairy tale retellings as well. The enduring cultural relevance of fairy tales lies in their adaptability and ability to reform and reshape in response to socio-cultural shifts. The sequence described above demonstrates that whether adaptations in this cycle are direct, indirect or loose adaptations, they powerfully invoke fairy tales on screen. When Hanna’s heroine defies the role of little girl victim and she is ultimately formally recast as big bad aggressor in the film’s final sequence, this is accomplished through a complex interaction between fairy tale spaces and set pieces (the woods, the giant wolf’s head) and enchanted objects (the arrow, the gun) as well as camera movement and performance. Through close formal analyses of such narrative strategies and structures across and within genre boundaries, this thesis outlines the contemporary fairy tale film adaptation cycle and its critical
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