Fairy Tale and Film

Fairy Tale and Film
an overly sentimental idea, yet it’s one that 
Waitress
, which goes out 
of its way to demythologise motherhood, ultimately attests to. Jenna 
resigns herself to an unhappy existence until her daughter gives her a 
reason to live the life she wants. While Talia reconciles with the father 
of her children, keen to construct a conventional family unit (irrespec-
tive of the circumstances of their conception and what this reveals 
about his character), Jenna rejects the abusive Earl and forges her own 
path as a single mother.
Although very different in style, 
Kill Bill
(Quentin Tarantino, 
2003–4) has traces of the same source tale. The principal character, 
initially known only as The Bride (Uma Thurman) and later revealed 
to be Beatrix Kiddo, is first seen in a coma, sexually abused by two 
men. Waking during the assault, she violently defends herself, steals 
their car and mounts what will turn out to be an epic revenge mis-
sion against her former lover – the man responsible for having put 
her in the coma – together with everyone else involved. In a flagrant 
rebuttal of romantic inclinations, we learn that Bill (David Carradine) 
became filled with hatred for his former lover when she chose to marry 
another man, ordering a team of assassins to kill the wedding party. 
A flashback reveals that she was heavily pregnant at the time and we 
assume that she lost the baby as a result of her injuries, yet the shock 
denouement to this two-part film reveals that she had a daughter – 
and that her hated enemy has been raising her. After putting the child 
to bed she completes her mission and kills Bill. An interesting sense 
of serenity is finally allowed for The Bride in the closing scene, her 
life beginning again (indeed, finally becoming her own) now that 
she is united with the daughter she never knew she had. Given her 
first appearance, pimped out by a hospital orderly, Kiddo’s experience 
might be seen as a radically altered version of ‘Sun, Moon and Talia’, 
yet in place of a heroine characterised through victimhood and for-
bearance, this version gives us a woman motivated by revenge, whose 
feats are manifestly heroic, in the style of the martial arts epics that 
clearly influence the film.
24
Contending that ‘Sleeping Beauty’ might 
be understood as a story of death and resurrection, Zipes could be dis-
cussing The Bride’s narrative journey when he states, ‘The rising from 
the dead is an uprising, an attack on the borders of mortality. After her 
uprising, Sleeping Beauty will know how to avoid danger and death ... 
Once awakened, Sleeping Beauty is the knowing one’ (2002b: 215). 
Tatar discerns another ‘Sleeping Beauty’ reference in a later Tarantino 
film, 
Django Unchained
(2012), yet one that is much less inspiring. 
The hero’s wife, Broomhilda, named after the legendary Brünnhilde, 

---

Finding Love and Fulfilling Dreams 
45
emulates the fate of another mythic sleeping beauty, albeit without any 
of her fire: ‘When she finally appears on-screen, she emerges from a 
claustrophobic underground cage, naked, dehydrated, immobilized, 
and painfully vulnerable. Like her namesake, who was narcotized with 
a “sleep-thorn” and sealed off from the world, Hildy can do little more 
than suffer and endure, not just in the tomblike vault in which she was 
imprisoned, but everywhere else’ (Tatar, 2013).
25
Of the three ‘princess’ archetypes feminist critics have most objected 
to, it is small wonder Sleeping Beauty is the most difficult to recuperate.
26
Not only is she the most passive of fairy tale figures, spending her exist-
ence – from adolescence on – unconscious, a tawdry element to the 
source tale is still more disturbing. Julia Leigh’s