Fairy Tale and Film

Ever After
and Disney’s 
Enchanted
demand that we critically reflect about false and artificial gender 
definitions and the backlash against feminism’ (2010: xii–xiii). He has since 
differentiated strongly between these films, approving 
Ever After
for its 
portrayal of ‘a woman with power who could control her own destiny’ while 
deeming 
Enchanted
‘pitiful’ (2011: 186, 89), conclusions that are highly 
contentious yet affirm that, even as they both make use of postmodern 
tropes, such films can strongly divide opinion. 
7. Confirming the degree to which the ‘anti-tale’ has established itself as an 
approved style, we might note that Burton and del Toro are attached to vari-
ous forthcoming projects such as 
Pinocchio
and 
Beauty and the Beast
, having 
proven their ability to attract critical approval and commercial success.
8. See Christy Williams’ essay (2010) for a discussion of competing responses to 
the film and its politics. As Williams states, the frame amounts to little in the 
end ‘since the audience knows that the Grimms did not change their text’, 
further asserting that ‘Danielle’s transgressive behaviour is always enabled by 
men, in reaction to men, or framed by men and is therefore safely contained 
in a clearly patriarchal structure’ (2010: 103, 108).

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192 
Notes to Chapter 6
9. For Sanders the metaphysical connotations are thus: ‘As I see it the Queen 
is death and Snow White is life. The Huntsman is halfway between the two. 
He’s suffered a great loss and he brings life and death together to find their 
equilibrium, so the world can turn again. The Queen has stopped death; 
therefore nature is repulsed and has turned in against itself.’ Interview given 
in 
Empire
, Olly Richards, May 2012, p. 97.
10. There is some suggestion that the film was intended to have a sequel, 
explaining why the romance implied by the title is only hinted at in the 
end. Mercifully, another instalment seems unlikely, partly due to the scandal 
caused by the director’s extramarital tryst with his leading lady. 
11. As Kimberley J. Lau (2008) asserts, Carter’s version soundly trumps both 
Perrault’s moralising and the original cautionary folk tale by affirming the 
heroine’s sexual agency, having her not only willingly engage in sexual rela-
tions (stripping the wolf-man after undressing herself) but burning his clothes 
to ensure he remains a ‘beast’ and joining him in this animalistic state.
12. Zipes cites various deviations between Carter’s screenplay and the finished 
film, describing how the girl was originally intended to respond to wolf howls 
outside her bedroom by diving into the floor, an apparent symbol of having 
reached adulthood (2011: 148–50). In Jordan’s DVD comments, made 20 years 
on, he refers to this as ‘a lovely image’ which technical problems prevented 
him achieving, noting that with today’s CGI Carter’s vision would have been 
easier to emulate. He also acknowledges that his ending makes little sense, 
stating of the screaming girl, ‘if it had been entirely logical she should look 
at this creature the same way she looked at the huntsman, that same curious 
gaze, y’know?’ (Neil Jordan, DVD Special Edition, Granada Ventures, 2005).
13. Jordan’s film is not alone in failing to explore Carter’s most radical feature. 
Curiously, although Zipes dedicates his study 
The Trials and Tribulations
of 
Little Red Riding Hood
(1993) to Carter, and notes some interesting feminist 
revisions, including a tendency to stage a retaliation against ‘attack’, he 
seems reluctant to discuss Red Riding Hood as a symbol of sexual emancipa-
tion, regarding sexually confident depictions with some suspicion. 
14. 
Cursed
(Wes Craven, 2005) crudely reworks the same format: the sexually 
assertive wolf-girl is demonised and destroyed.
15. For an interesting analysis of the film’s allegorical parallels with the War on 
Terror see the article at www.reverseshot.com/article/archive_village.
16.