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Fairy Tale Femininities: a Discourse Analysis of Snow White Films 1916-2012

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Fairy Tale Femininities: a Discourse Analysis of Snow White Films 1916-2012 Fairy Tale Femininities: A Discourse Analysis of Snow White Films 1916-2012 Lisbet Rosa Dam A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science at the Victoria University of Wellington Victoria University of Wellington 2014 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Many thanks to my supervisor Dr Sue Jackson, her help and expertise are deeply appreciated. I am grateful for the continuous support she has given me, her feedback, and her belief in my abilities. Her passion and enthusiasm for qualitative research has inspired me immensely. Thank you Sue for investing your time in me, your assistance has been invaluable. Thank you Sophie for being such an amazing ‘office buddy,’ sharing an office with you has helped transform a stressful year into an enjoyable one. Our discussions of research, concepts, and our theses (and dresses) has been incredibly helpful. Finally, a big thanks to my flatmates, friends and family. Your ideas and support are hugely appreciated. II ABSTRACT Fairy tales are enduring cultural texts that have enjoyed wide appeal and the continuing popularity of the fairy tale can be seen in the recent proliferation of media employing fairy tale narratives. Fairy tales provide a site of meaning about femininity and masculinity and examining them over time identifies versions of gender that are prized or denigrated within specific social, historical moments. This project was interested in the continuities and divergences in these gendered discourses across time. Although there has been considerable academic interest in fairy tales and gender, few studies have approached the topic from a genealogical perspective. This research extends the current literature through a genealogical analysis of five Snow White films from 1916 to 2012 in addition to incorporating an analysis in relation to a contemporary postfeminist, neoliberal social climate. The research employed a feminist poststructuralist framework and utilised thematic and genealogical Foucauldian discourse analysis to analyse the data. Discursive analyses found enduring discourses of traditional femininity across the films which centrally organised around a binary construction of femininity as ‘good’ or ‘bad.’ A moral discourse worked to construct ‘good’ femininity as prized and bad femininity as punished. Alongside persistent discourses of femininity, however, a newer postfeminist femininity was evident in recent versions of the fairy tale. Consistent with a postfeminist, neoliberal discourse that highlights the importance of the body, analyses found an increased emphasis on beauty and the vast effort required to maintain it. Another postfeminist shift in the tale was the invoking of a girl power discourse to construct Snow as a competent fighter and leader. However, the complex entanglement of discourses of femininity in contemporary society is highlighted by the co-existence of these newer versions of femininity with traditional goals such as achieving a ‘happily ever after.’ From the perspective of possibilities for subjectivity, these shifts in representation appear to offer a young female audience more empowered possibilities of femininity but such power is simultaneously constrained by a complex amalgamation with traditional ‘niceness’ and beauty. III TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...................................................................................................II ABSTRACT ......................................................................................................................... III TABLE OF CONTENTS .................................................................................................... IIV CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION..................................................................................... 6 CHAPTER INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................... 6 EARLY TO MID 20TH CENTURY FEMININITIES ............................................................................. 7 1960S TO 1980S – FEMINISM AND MEDIA FEMININITIES ............................................................. 9 1990S TO 2000S – POSTFEMINIST FEMININITIES ....................................................................... 11 POLARITIES: GOOD VS BAD VERSIONS OF FEMININITY IN MEDIA ............................................ 16 MASCULINITIES ....................................................................................................................... 18 MASCULINITY, FEMININITY AND ROMANCE ............................................................................ 21 FAIRY TALE RESEARCH ........................................................................................................... 23 ORGANISATION OF THIS THESIS ............................................................................................... 27 CHAPTER TWO: METHODOLOGY ................................................................................ 29 OVERVIEW OF CHAPTER CONTENTS ........................................................................................ 29 DESCRIPTION OF FILMS ............................................................................................................ 29 METHODOLOGICAL FRAMEWORK ............................................................................................ 31 ANALYSIS .............................................................................................................................. 34 Thematic analysis.................................................................................................................... 34 Discourse analysis .................................................................................................................. 35 REFLEXIVITY .......................................................................................................................... 37 CHAPTER THREE: DISCOURSES OF FEMINININTY IN THE EARLY FILMS ........ 40 CHAPTER INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................ 40 SNOW WHITE – GOODNESS, SWEETNESS, AND SUFFERING ....................................................... 40 MATERNAL CARE .................................................................................................................... 44 SNOW AS THE CHEERFUL HOUSEKEEPER – DOMESTICITY AND SERVITUDE .............................. 46 ROMANCE – THE REWARD FOR BEING A ‘GOOD GIRL’ ............................................................ 55 BEAUTY AND THE QUEEN ........................................................................................................ 62 THE QUEEN AND MATERNALISM ............................................................................................. 67 THE QUEEN AND WITCHCRAFT................................................................................................ 68 THE QUEEN AND HER AMBITION ............................................................................................. 70 CHAPTER CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................... 73 CHAPTER FOUR: DISCOURSES OF FEMININTY AND MASCULINTY IN THE CONTEMPORARY FILMS ................................................................................................ 75 CHAPTER INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................ 75 MASCULINITY ........................................................................................................................ 76 SNOW WHITE AS A LEADER AND FIGHTER ............................................................................... 82 BEAUTY, POSTFEMINISM, NEOLIBERALISM AND THE QUEEN ................................................... 88 THE QUEEN AND SEXUALITY ................................................................................................... 92 POSTFEMINIST ROMANCE ........................................................................................................ 97 CHAPTER CONCLUSION ......................................................................................................... 100 IV CHAPTER FIVE: CONCLUSION .................................................................................... 102 CHAPTER INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................... 102 ENDURING FEMININITIES ....................................................................................................... 102 SHIFTING FEMININITIES: EMERGENCE OF A POSTFEMINIST FAIRY TALE? ............................... 105 REFLECTIONS ........................................................................................................................ 111 IMPLICATIONS FOR AUDIENCES ............................................................................................. 113 REFERENCES.................................................................................................................... 118 V CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION Chapter Introduction For most people in Western society, the classic fairy tales are a familiar part of their childhood. Whether these tales were presented as a film, illustrated book, or the original Grimm’s tales were read to them by their parents, fairy tales are not easily forgotten. As enduring popular culture texts, fairy tales provide audiences with a readily available cultural resource for constructing gender identity (Parsons,
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