Though I left the theater after seeing Disney’s latest villain-centric film Maleficent having enjoyed it cinematically for the most part, I did feel that something did not sit quite right with me. That’s when I realized that despite the film’s PG rating and categorization as a ‘family film’, there were still strong themes of rape and abuse rooted in this plot.
The film starring the stunningly brilliant Angelina Jolie is all about humanizing this anti-heroine. It’s about a powerful fairy who loses her gentle and benign nature after her wings, which are important to her emotional and physical stability, are literally cut from her body from someone she had thought to love and trust (Stefan played by Sharlto Copley). In the middle of the night, after he’s lulled her with sweet words and drugs her, he then does what he wants with her, AKA removes her wings. If the subtext isn’t clear enough in the initial act, the aftermath of it drives it home obviously and in the most devastatingly real way possible. When Maleficent wakes to find her wings gone, she realizes first what has happened and then reacts with awful screams in mourning. It is a very unsettling scene and doesn’t quite fit with the rest of the fairy-tale, light-hearted aspect of the film.
Although the debate about what really happened in Maleficent has been at a surprisingly low level since the film hit the big screen two weeks ago, Jolie herself has no sounded off on the meaning of both the scene and actions that followed. The actress discussed the events on the BBC Radios’ Woman’s Hour (via US Weekly and Cinema Blend) saying, “We were very conscious, the writer [Linda Woolverton] and I, that it was a metaphor for rape. This would be the thing that would make her lose sight. The core of [the film] is abuse, and how the abused have a choice of abusing others or overcoming and remaining loving, open people. The question was asked, ‘What could make a woman become so dark? To lose all sense of her maternity, her womanhood, and her softness?’”
In summary Maleficent seeks to clarify why she took out her anger on a tiny baby and is really a story about a women who is raped and acts out by being evil to innocents around her since evil was done to her innocent self as well. Her personality and actions stem from abuse. She’s a battered, that’s the extent of her origin story, and everything she does afterwards is in reaction to the loss of “her maternity, her womanhood, and her softness”. It’s driven home even more sense when it’s revealed that Aurora is in fact the daughter of the man who did this to her.
In some way it’s gratifying to hear Jolie giving major credence to the clear subtext of the film, a topic that has not been discussed as much as it should have been, especially since Disney displays awful topics consistently and is hardly ever called out for it. But the take on the material feels a little problematic and unsettling. The idea of humanizing Maleficent, but still keeping her recognizable, isn’t that compelling in general, and the disconnect between crafting this ‘new’ Maleficent, but still retaining some of her signature qualities is on full display in the film. It’s especially shown during the christening speech scene, which is taken from more traditional Sleeping Beauty narratives and feels jarringly unlike the rest of the film. Disney, however, seems intent on keeping up with this kind of revisionist history thing, and their next project is to tackle the terrifying Cruella de Vil. I find it hard to believe that they’ll ever be able to make a puppy-killer for fashion empathetic, but we’ll see.
Sure, it’s a starting place into existing material that could occasionally lead to a more insightful feature and Maleficent’s financial success will likely spawn more of these kind of films. However if the best we can do is explain why a woman is ‘dark’ and abusive to other people is because she was abused as well, it’s not really a good thing. That’s a simplistic, dangerous thing that doesn’t do much to make abused people feel more understood and somehow humanized, in fact it villainizes them.
The film says that Maleficent is a monster because someone else was a monster to her. It’s not original and it’s extremely problematic in it’s overly simplified approach. If they’re going to continue this idea with villains they’re going to have to expand their knowledge in what makes dark people who they are and stop making them subjects of victimizations. C’mon guys, we can do better.