Fairy Tale and Film

2
Curses, Wishes and Amazing Transformations: 
Male Maturation Tales
1. Tatar further notes that male characters are distinguished by naïveté – 
whether it be silly, foolish, simple or unworldly – arguing that ‘if the female 
protagonists of fairy tales are often as good as they are beautiful, their male 

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178 
Notes to Chapter 2
counterparts generally appear to be as young and naïve as they are stupid’ 
(2003: 87).
2. Tatar adds the important caveat that compassion is rarely extended to fellow 
humans, particularly siblings, but shown to animals or unfortunate beings 
who later repay the debt by helping the hero win a princess (1992: 42). In 
the films assessed in this chapter, by contrast, they need to express these 
qualities directly to their partners.
3. Examples offered from the 
Grimm Tales
are ‘The Golden Bird’, ‘The Queen 
Bee’, ‘The Three Feathers’, ‘The Golden Goose’ and ‘The Water of Life’, in 
which youngest sons overcome limited expectations, leading Heilbrun to 
claim their situation is ‘a paradigm of female experience in the male power 
structure that no woman with aspirations above that of a sleeping princess 
will fail to recognise’ (qtd in Haase (2004: 6).
4. In narratives like ‘East of the Sun and West o’ the Moon’ and other descend-
ants of the ‘Cupid and Psyche’ story a woman is responsible for re-humanising 
an enchanted man. Devoted sisters in ‘The Twelve Brothers’ and ‘The Six 
Swans’ similarly risk everything for this task. The men are usually blameless, 
subject to a cruel curse and rely on female intervention to put things right. 
The heroine’s trial may range from a single night with a despised creature (as 
occurs in ‘The Frog King’), journeying to the ends of the earth, or years of 
silent suffering. The women assume the key narrative role and must perform 
necessary duties to redeem their men, whether it be putting their lives on hold 
or adjusting their expectations (like the heroine of ‘Beauty and the Beast’).
5. In ‘The Uses of Enchantment’ (1993a) Warner notes how the tale’s mean-
ing is open to interpretation, citing its use under fascism ‘to steel the Hitler 
Youth in classroom propaganda’, while also acknowledging its original 
intent as a simpleton tale, simply designed to amuse. In 
From the Beast to 
the Blonde
(1995b) she uses it as a parallel for the motives governing female 
tale-tellers – as a means of confronting fears.
6. Although Warner adds, in a later article, that ‘she’s not portrayed as par-
ticularly old, however, just an older woman’ (2009), the fact she is also his 
godmother, who has been raising him as her son, adds another dimension 
to his rejection, demonstrating how Villeneuve’s version of the tale is not 
only much less romantic than Madame de Beaumont’s, but akin to the other 
conteuses
in portraying the fairy godmother in a sinister light.
7. In the film’s repudiation of Gaston, Warner describes the Beast as the pre-
ferred exemplar of masculinity, ‘a wild man in touch with nature’, and 
alludes to Robert Bly’s call for men to find their ‘warrior within’ (Warner 
1995: 317–18). The allusion is misplaced, however; the Beast ultimately 
exemplifies Bly’s derided ‘soft man’, and his transformation by a woman is 
a phenomenon Bly especially deplores. 
8. A rare role reversal is found in 
Penelope
(Mark Palansky, 2006). A rich family 
is cursed by a witch for a tragic slight against her daughter that occurred 
generations previously. As a result, the first girl born to them is cursed with 
a pig-nose and ears, which plastic surgery is unable to fix, a plight that 
will only to be altered when she gains the love of ‘one of her own’. This is 
assumed to mean marrying someone wealthy, yet the twist in the tale is that 
Penelope (Christina Ricci) breaks the curse herself the moment she genu-
inely starts to like herself, which entails leaving home – and her superficial 

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Notes to Chapter 2 
179
parents – and acquiring a sense of acceptance. At the end of the film an 
apparent scoundrel, Johnny (James McCavoy), turns out to have a heart, 
similarly having been judged too much by appearances, and he declares his 
feelings without being aware the curse has been lifted – although the gesture 
is somewhat undermined by the fact that Penelope’s nose was hardly mon-
strous and her nature is achingly sweet. Both 
Beastly 
and 
Penelope
affirm the 
upside of curses as a means of finding true love. They also suggest that the 
rich are not necessarily any happier than the rest of us, with affluence seem-
ingly its own curse. Only when they leave their respective ‘castles’ do the 
protagonists learn to connect with others – and notably choose poor love 
interests who are more in touch with their emotions than their privileged 
yet emotionally aloof parents. As examples made for an adolescent market, 
fairy tale tropes are interestingly reworked to provide love stories that extol 
the virtues of compassion, humility and looking beyond appearances, add-
ing a dose of liberalism for additional sugar-coating. 
9. A mother–daughter variation of the parent/child body-swap is 
Freaky Friday
(1976), which also unites the protagonists through their ordeal, while 
Big
(1988) and 
13 Going on 30
(2004) rework the body-swap scenario from the 
perspective of a child propelled forward in time, who is similarly forced to 
realise that childhood is to be cherished, rather than resented, particularly 
given the foibles of adult relationships. 
17 Again
(2009) reverses the fantasy 
as a disgruntled middle-aged man gets the chance to relive his youth and 
realises his commitment to his family.
10. The theme is extended, without supernatural intervention, in films such as 
Big Daddy 
(1999), 
Knocked Up
(2007) and 
Role Models
(2008), in which male 
slackers are transformed by parental responsibility.
11. Although an early draft of the screenplay makes a spurned lover (and 
apparent witch) the catalyst for Phil’s curse, wanting him to pay for his curt 
treatment of her, the film leaves us without any specific cause.
12. A later film starring Black, 
Gulliver’s Travels
(2010), is another contribution 
to the ‘slacker gains responsibility’ sub-cycle, the magical device in this case 
being a Bermuda Triangle-style phenomenon that transports the hero to 
Lilliput. Again, the message is that true love will happen once a sense of 
commitment to others is shown, literally helping the ‘little people’ in this 
case. Although some critics deplored the lack of Swiftian satire in the film, 
the fact the hero is romantically rewritten stands in pleasant contrast to 
the misogyny displayed by the original novel’s hero, who returns from his 
travels so repulsed by his wife’s smell he prefers to sleep in the stables!
13. The fact that Mike seeks to address his daughter’s self-image and attitude to 
boys (claiming this is the specific responsibility of 
fathers
and not mothers) is