Tuesday, December 4, 2007
Film / Family Diss Enchanted
Posted by Felicia Feaster on Tue, Dec 4, 2007 at 10:50 PM
(Photo courtesy © 2007 Walt Disney Pictures)
I saw Enchanted with my son, who liked it. He tends to like virtually any film roughly targeted at his age range, which scares me. If I had my druthers, we would be having mother-son screenings of The 400 Blows at the Plaza Theatre, but I’m in the minority on that one. The whole film rubbed me the wrong way, maybe because though prissy, I was not exactly a princess-y kind of little girl, nor am I a princess-y woman. All of those little girls in tulle and crowns at the screening freaked me out. The whole princess-ification of girl culture in general disturbs me for playing into rescue fantasies and uber-girliness I thought contemporary women were beyond but appear to enjoy nurturing in their daughters.
I loved Amy Adams in Junebug, but her wide-eyed princess act (above) in Enchanted and those Barbie-hands she kept making made my teeth ache, as did the film’s heavy emphasis on matchmaking. I don’t remember so much cultural reinforcement on boyfriend-girlfriend when I was a young’un, but kids now seem spoon-fed the message of heterosexual coupling.
Enchanted just left me feeling tired and vaguely irritated at the film’s lame meta-attempts at tweaking the standard-issue fairy tale, though in the end it felt like more same old-same old.
See for yourself:
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/SMD8nO5gg9o" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]
Comments (2)
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Great idea about "400 Blows"! Doesn't the Criterion DVD have an English-language version? Or is the son just not into Nouvelle Vague just yet? Bet he'd dig "Bicycle Thief," but I digress. (Wrong genre, too!) Which updated fairy tales do you dig? I can't see "The Princess Bride" too many times, because it was all of a piece and not just about a princess being rescued. In fact, I liked how tough Robin Wright's character was even if she WAS being rescued. Can you think of other "sweet spot" movies about young kids that would appeal to both you and your son? Just curious.
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