Fairy Tale and Film

Arabian Nights
presents a number of females serving as crucial assets 
for male heroes, such as the fairy Peri Banou, and a sorceress who gives her 
life battling a merciless jinni. The fact that Morgiana has no such powers 
yet is willing to perform mass homicide to defend her master’s household 
affirms her as an exceptional heroine, and it is consequently perplexing that 
her name does not appear in the title. Interestingly, Marina Warner reveals 
that Hanna Diab originally named the tale ‘The Stratagems of Morgiana, Or 
the Forty Thieves Exterminated by the Skill of a Slave’ (2012: 360), yet the 
printed version by Antoine Galland unfairly cedes heroic recognition to her 
master. Although Warner has questioned whether the tale was genuinely 
archived from the Orient, she nonetheless references Morgiana in citing 
‘clever and courageous slave girls’ among her litany of positive female char-
acters advanced by Scheherazade to persuade her husband of women’s worth 
as trustworthy allies (2012: 4, 16).
10. Some other notable female swindlers in film include the eponymous heroine 
in 
Jackie Brown
(Quentin Tarantino, 1997), a middle-aged black woman – and 
single mother – who manages to outwit a group of male cons and gets away 
with the entire haul, while Lateesha Rodriguez (Mo’Nique) is equally memo-
rable in 
Domino 
(Tony Scott, 2005), performing a robbery – with female 
cronies – to pay for her grandchild’s operation, with the remainder sent to 
needy children in Afghanistan! 
11. Bottigheimer contends that, as a rule, greed is generally punished in the 
Grimm Tales
and women are seen as a threat to wealth, citing ‘The Fisherman 
and his Wife’ as an example where the wife’s escalating arrogance squanders 
the couple’s good fortune (1987: 129). It is possible to see Sarah as a similar 
figure of blame, with every piece of advice given to her husband backfiring. 
Many female characters pay for greed in some way, yet there are no hard and 
fast rules in crime dramas. Sometimes stealthy women get away with crimes, 
while a modest and virtuous wife like Carla Jean, who wants no part in her 
husband’s acquired money, still pays a tragic price.
12. Another link between both films, which adds some fairy tale resonances, 
is the fact that chasing an animal leads both groups to their unlucky finds. 
Hank and his cohorts veer off into the woods pursuing a fox that crosses 
their path (an icon of stealth that backfires for the group), while Llewellyn, 
seeking to make some extra money hunting, follows a wounded pronghorn 
to the scene of a drug deal gone awry (emulating a familiar Grimm trope in 
which the pursuit of a deer is often the catalyst for misfortune). What both 
men learn, sadly far too late, is that they were better off as they were, the 
animals that lead them to tainted treasure evidently leading them astray.
13. The title ‘Three Kings’ may also refer to the Grimm tale, ‘The Water of Life’, 
in which the virtuous hero saves three kings by sharing his fortune with 
them, and is, in turn, redeemed by their gratitude.
14. Generically labelled ‘political thrillers’, we are taken on an extraordinary 
adventure where a message strives to be heard, a quest for wealth replaced 
by loftier goals for heroes aiming to redistribute money where it ‘rightfully’ 
belongs. Interestingly, these are American films that criticise US involvement 

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Notes to Chapter 4 
183
in overseas conflicts, yet in which a happy ending necessitates the few select 
beneficiaries becoming exiles from their own countries. Money gets the cho-
sen few out of a desperate situation, without any more democratic solutions 
offered. A caustic variant is offered by 
Buried 
(Rodrigo Cortés, 2010), rewrit-
ing Poe’s ‘Premature Burial’ in a cold geopolitical light. A hapless American 
truck-driver wakes to find himself in a coffin, buried somewhere in the Iraqi 
desert, with a torch, a knife and a mobile phone. His kidnappers demand 
that he negotiate ransom money for his release, yet it is his US employers, 
ultimately, who are cast in a much dimmer light, cannily deciding to termi-
nate his contract to avoid an insurance pay-out to his family. Stealth, greed 
and ruthlessness, we are reminded, are intrinsic to survival and prosperity, 
and human life relatively worthless. 
15. Examples of female craftiness in the 
Grimm Tales
include a wily servant in 
‘Clever Gretel’ who gets a free chicken dinner by lying through her teeth, 
while in ‘The Three Spinners’ (ATU 501) an idle gluttonous girl achieves 
a royal marriage, freed from ever having to spin again, solicited through 
her mother’s boast. The wish-fulfilment fantasy of not having to work is 
generally couched in domestic terms – making a good marriage in which 
the woman is allowed some sovereignty – sometimes deceiving her husband 
to evade work (as occurs in ‘The Lazy Spinner’ (ATU 1405)), or even getting 
away with an affair, if she is crafty enough (see the tale type entitled ‘Trickster 
Wives and Maids’ (ATU 1741)). In other examples, wiliness is used as a form 
of protection, to avenge a rape, as occurs in ‘Maid Maleen’, or to get out of 
an unhappy marriage, like the girl in ‘The Hare Bride’, abducted and abused 
by her beastly husband, who steals away one day and returns to her family.