Fairy Tale and Film

Notes to Chapter 1
the final instalment, 
Shrek Forever After 
(Mike Mitchell, 2010), is Fiona given 
an alternative role to being Shrek’s wife, although the embittered warrior 
version, railing against ‘true love’ as a lie that failed to save her, scarcely 
seems preferable – requiring a Disneyesque denouement to put everything 
right. Although I believe Bacchilega and Reider neglect any positive ele-
ments in the 
Shrek
films, this highlights a key problem with postmodern 
parodies, as is discussed further in Chapter 6.
17. At the time of the sequel’s release, producer and star Sandra Bullock affirmed 
a desire to confront the conventions for women in comedy, stating, ‘Why 
does the girl have to end up with the guy? Why can’t it be a buddy film?’ 
The fact that it bombed is perhaps sufficient answer.
18. There is also a more negative reading of this casting choice, affirming heroines 
to be male-identified. Having lost her mother, young Cinderella has only a 
male parental influence and it is curious that this is echoed in a number of 
films, effacing the mother completely. While some critics have objected to the 
fact that Perrault exchanged the dead mother’s spirit with a fairy godmother in 
his version ‘Cendrillon’ (1697), thereby removing the daughter from a power-
ful maternal presence to watch over her, cinematically casting the godmother 
as male might be read as an even greater removal from a female mentor. 
19. An early tale that bears some kinship with both ‘Cinderella’ and the animal 
groom tale is of course ‘Cupid and Psyche’ (ATU 425A), part of Apuleius’ 
book 
The Golden Ass
. As John Gilbert summarises, ‘this long tale has all the 
elements of myth and fairy tale – a king with three daughters, two of them 
wicked; an unseen lover, rumoured to be bestial and in this case of divine, not 
merely noble, birth; a sequence of apparently impossible tasks ... and a jour-
ney to the underworld’ (1970: 138). Like ‘Cinderella’, sibling rivalry almost 
curtails an unfolding romance and like ‘Beauty and the Beast’ an arranged 
marriage is shown to be both perilous and pleasurable – the bride realising 
her true feelings only when she loses her partner, literally going to hell and 
back to prove herself! The fact that Venus plays the wicked stepmother, envi-
ous of her rival, yet with a touch of Baba Yaga in administering Psyche’s ‘test’, 
further adds to the mythic richness and significance of the tale. 
20. Tatar (1992) reminds us that many such tales have violent denouements, 
with beast-grooms requesting to be beheaded or skinned, testing the hero-
ine’s devotion and maturity as she is physically forced into close contact with 
the beast (and required to perform a task considered repellent). As Warner 
(1995) notes, the beastly female in Mme d’Aulnoy’s ‘White Cat’ similarly asks 
to be beheaded as a final test of love.
21. Marriage to a beast who is beyond romantic redemption provides the flipside 
to this scenario, with its antithesis ‘Bluebeard’ (ATU 312) further discussed in 
Chapter 5. 
22. Warner argues that this moderating stance towards marriage is atypical of 
the ‘critical and challenged rebelliousness of the first generation of women 
fairy tale writers’ (1995: 294). For further discussion of the 
conteuses
, and 
the criticism they have had, particularly in relation to marriage, see Harries 
(2001) and Seifert (2004).
23. Giambattista Basile’s tale ‘Sun, Moon and Talia’, collected in 
The Pentamerone
, 
has an even older forebear in the fourteenth-century romance ‘Perceforest’ 
(author unknown). ‘Perceforest’ differs from Basile’s version in terms of the 
sleeping princess not being violated by a stranger, but a man she fell in 

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Notes to Chapter 2 
177
love with before being enchanted. Troylus is urged by Venus to give in to 
his desire and has intercourse with Zellandine, and she subsequently gives 
birth to a child that awakens her when it sucks the poisoned flax from her 
finger. Venus’ temptation is reminiscent of the blame placed on the devil 
in ‘The Maiden without Hands’, a tale that similarly side-steps sexual abuse 
and emphasises motherhood as a form of rebirth and renewal. In both 
early examples of ‘Sleeping Beauty’ the incumbent heroines bear no grudge 
towards their attackers, and blame is diverted towards threatening females, 
just as Perrault’s version casts a vengeful fairy as antagonist and romanticises 
the conduct of the ‘prince’, substituting rape with a chaste kiss. 
24. 
Lady Snowblood 
(Toshiya Fujita, 1973) has been cited by Tarantino as a 
primary influence on 
Kill Bill
– a story of a young woman whose life is 
dedicated to seeking vengeance for her lost family.
25. Brünnhilde – according to Norse legend – was a wilful Valkyre who displeased 
Odin and was punished by being placed in an enchanted sleep. A ring of 
flames substitutes for Perrault’s deadly thorns in protecting her from being 
violated. Although the hero, Siegfried, manages to gain access and awakens 
her – removing her armour in some versions, in others, with a kiss – he does 
not succumb to ‘passion’, laying his sword between them when they sleep. 
However, in contrast to the other ‘Sleeping Beauty’ tales cited, their relation-
ship ends in tragedy, the heroine’s love for a man who forgets and betrays her 
marking her downfall.
26. Madonna Kolbenschlag, author of 
Kiss Sleeping Beauty Good-bye
(1981), has 
provided one of the most inventive ways of trying to redeem this figure by 
reconsidering her potential meaning. Arguing that it is time for what con-
stitutes masculine and feminine roles to be re-evaluated, she affirms that 
women can play the part of the prince in the tale, and wake themselves to 
consciousness.
27. An interesting contrast is seventies curio 
Some Call it Loving 
( James B. Harris, 
1973). A young woman, asleep for eight years and exhibited as a ‘sleeping 
beauty’ in a travelling carnival, is bought by a wealthy yet lonely man, who 
learns that her ‘coma’ is contrived through medication. As she awakes she 
recalls being abused and becomes increasingly unhappy, finally asking to 
return to her endless sleep. Contradicting the romantic revamp the Grimms 
gave the tale, Jennifer is not saved, and not what her ‘prince’ expected. Leigh’s 
film focuses so much on the abuse experienced by the (mostly naked) protag-
onist that it comes close to prurience at the expense of its intended message. 
28. Kenneth Branagh’s plans for 
Cinderella
(due for release in 2015) were quickly 
picked up by the media, seizing on an ‘independent’ Cinderella as an appar-
ently novel idea. See, for example: www.gazettenews.co.uk/uk_national_
entertainment/10963493.Branagh_My_Cinderella_independent/ (posted 
25 January 2014).