What of Witches & Fairies

The title of the essay is intriguing; I've also recently watched the referenced film at the friends' home. So I read it. It talks about how Disney deals with the image(s) of their most powerful witches in their Disney storylines. It’s a short 12-minute piece titled ‘Deconstructing Disney: Motherhood and the Taming of Maleficient’, written by Jeanna Kadlec, and published in Longreads, October 2020.  

The writer noticed how Disney has been treating their witches, especially towards Maleficient, seen as the most powerful and evil of all in drak lore. Maleficient is technically a Dark Faerie — a fairy, not a witch. A faerie more powerful than any in the realm of magic. But she casts spells and she is a woman, so erm... villified too. ‘Maleficient: Mistress of Evil’ (2019) has just been released on Disney+. It’s the sequel to Angelina Jolie’s glorious portrayal of Maleficient in 2014, and she reprised the titular role. This is a Disney film. The ending is erm... a sort of satisfying ending, and Prince Philip and Princess/Queen Aurora live happily ever after. 

In the reboot, Aurora, raised near the Moors, develops a strong relationship with Maleficent, who she understands to be her Fairy Godmother. That Maleficent eventually experiences a kind of compassionate softening and internal transformation through her relationship with Aurora is not, in and of itself, problematic. However, this is a Disney film, and it is no accident that a maternity narrative is represented as the primary way for a woman to experience self-realization. The 2019 Maleficent sequel, Mistress of Evil, only affirms that a mother’s abilities are not ultimately for herself, but for her children. Although a witch is an autonomous, unchecked power, when she becomes a fairy-tale mother — especially the mother of a princess — she still devolves into a plot device with no individuality to speak of. She is beholden to the continuation of the nation-state. Her success lies in self-sacrifice.

This is Disney’s ultimate magic trick: Rebooting “feminist” stories where women, even if they are witches, obliterate themselves.

Historically in reality (for example, the Salem witch trials in Massachusetts, 1692), films and books, witches are put down. Hung and burnt. They call them a coven. Women are painted out to be such horrifying creatures who don’t conform to the male notions of a woman’s place and roles in the home and society. Sorceresses have a slightly better brand image than witches. Still. Disney would be the one production company that has merrily featured absent mothers in all their Princess films, along with evil stepmothers. Cue, 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs' (Disney, 1937).

Okaaaay. Maleficient is painted as compassionate, stoic beneath her adult pain. Someone who's willing to sacrifice for Aurora. I'm like... WHAT. Please don't confuse me, Disney. While I love that the production studio tries not to vilify women, and introduce more layers and perspectives to their villains, I find it disturbing that they try to blur the lines like they're a real show. Sorry. How do I put it gently? Like they have a brain. I obviously don't have high expectations of cerebral Disney films. 

Witches in films, Disney or otherwise, are painted as villains, intrinsically evil and incorrigible. Most are scarred by some sort of human pain, either inflicted by their own mother and relatives, or by men. There could be cute witches.. like 'Charmed' (eight seasons, 1998-2006), 'Practical Magic' (1998, Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock) and 'Kiki's Delivery Service' (1989, Studio Ghbli, directed by Hayao Miyazaki). Witches in films can be multi-layered, conflicted, torn, for and against war, and generally make-up makes them look wonderful. Witches can come in the form of a suitably non-supernatural but equally horrifying Mildred Ratched. Witches of course can be mothers too. Most suffer great pain or loss before discovering their powers, or turn away from light and walk down a dark path. Disney capitalizes on that as well.

These days, Disney doesn’t kill witches — at least, not as often as they used to. These days, Disney is interested in the ultimate rehabilitation project: How do you make these archetypal wonders, this sublime femininity, less frightening? Less powerful — particularly to people invested in women and queers behaving in normatively gendered ways?

You make the witch a mother.