Should feminists feel guilty enjoying Tangled?

I was recently at a little soiree, dress code: Fairy tale characters. I was Dorothy in my red shoes of Wonder and glory and with my Mum’s worn old dog hot water bottle for Toto, L. Frank Baum having called The Wonderful Wizard of Oz his ‘American fairy tale’. Somewhere along the line, without my knowing, fairy tale had disintegrated into Disney. We had The Mad Hatter from Alice In wonderland and the wizard from the Micky mouse short with the dancing brooms (comment if you remember this wonderful piece of cinema). The hostess was the witch from Tangled, specifically Mother Gothel. But this room full of teenage girls, most who would happily call themselves feminist, came to an impasse. Should we feel guilty idealising the characters from these Disney films, how much were we belittling ourselves by calling complying with the fairy tale stereotypes? Angela Carter, who wrote The Bloody Chamber, would have looked down on us, we were sure. The translation of fairy tales most of us are familiar with, by Charles Perrault, promotes typical bourgeoisie values. Women are shown as ‘God or wolf’,  rewarded for taking on traditional oppressive female roles; the stay at home mother only appreciated for her beauty and good home skills, and punished for curiosity and having power (think witches). But does the film Tangled inevitably promote these values, being based on Rapunzel? Should that group of us in our crowns and witches dresses feels guilty? I’ll tell you in short what I think: No.

To begin with, we’ll take Rapunzel’s glorious long hair to represent adherence to traditional concepts of beauty as a redeeming feature, and its healing power to represent the mother healing role expected of woman. This hair is a desirable feature on a superficial level; it restores youth and heals Flynn’s hand. But overall does this bounteous gift improve Rapunzel’s life, is it shown as something we should all aspire for? Good grief no. It is the source of all Rapunzel’s problems in fact. By this I mean her kidnap and imprisonment. When she visit’s the City, which could be seen to represent real life in comparison to her tower, her hair is trodden on, gives her no end of trouble and has to be plaited up. And when cut off, which could symbolise the escaping of her oppression, she doesn’t lose her power, and critically, she does not stop being feminine and an admirable character. She keeps her healing skills, but rather than being tied up in her troublesome hair, she can access her power through her emotion. I would call this her base instinct, separate from any expected role. She appears as a powerful liberated woman. Therefore I don’t believe it can be said that Disney intends to show women as simply desirable for beauty and home skills. Rapunzel is spunky. And here we come to her weapon of choice; the frying pan.

‘Frying pans, who knew?’ Flynn Ryder exclaims to himself, in perhaps one of the lines most loved by the internet community. Critics would argue that it shows, as Rapunzel’s weapon of choice, that she can’t really escape her gendered role. If she could she would use a sword or another male weapon surely. I would say why on earth should she? Why shouldn’t women be able to access power through manipulating the meaning of items such as the frying pan? And throughout the film the pan becomes unisex, Flynn Ryder uses it and is surprised by how good it is, as if he didn’t realise before that actually, there is nothing wrong with taking on a female role. It’s actually quite liberating. So I find no guilt attached to laughing at Rapunzel repeatedly whacking Flynn over the head with her pan. Everyone loves a bit of slapstick anyway.

So what about our Mother Gothel? My friend in the long black dress, from whom the whole dilemma originated. She has to be the most delightful, sexy character in the history of Disney. The special thing about Madam Gothel is that she is not the ‘wolf’ character you expect of the evil witch. By that I mean she is not damned for her powerful character, I’m pretty sure everyone in the cinema enjoyed how she manipulated everyone around her. It is not Gothel’s power which is the bad thing. She is not punished with death as a woman who has overstepped her gendered boundaries; she is punished for her greed. Greed; a trait we all understand, we all might find her sympathetic. We all want something we shouldn’t have. Women and men. So, Gothel is perhaps not a character we should aspire to be, but she is one we can enjoy and not feel guilt about, as the budding feminists I’m sure we all are.

Only one more main character to go; the lovely ‘Flynn Ryder’. He was apparently inspired by all the most desirable celebrity features, and at the beginning expects he can get out of any situation using his ‘smoulder’. Rapunzel raises an eyebrow, as does the rest of the cinema audience. Just because Flynn is an attractive man, he is not any more powerful than Rapunzel, he in no way controls her, through his ‘smoulder’ or any other means. A lesson for all young women I would have thought. She refuses to be cowed by his visit to the vicious pub ‘The Snuggly Duckling’. Men aren’t something we should fear, the film seems to be saying, and we watch as Flynn stops his sleazy patronisation of Rapunzel throughout the film, at the end they save each other. It’s a mutual thing. Equality and feminism at its finest.

I could go on, talk about the Queen and the King, about the ‘dreams’ of the ‘Vikings’ from ‘The Snuggly Duckling’, and so on. But I think I’d just be repeating myself. So, I will conclude with the assertion that all of us at our little party should feel happy about confessing our love for Tangled, perhaps a child’s film, but no good film should appeal only to one audience. It makes me laugh, the scene with the lanterns takes my breath away routinely, and I can’t watch the ending without a little snuffle. And most importantly, I don’t feel guilty admitting this. If you would like to comment, please do. I would be interested to hear your feedback and (hopefully!) counter-arguments. Thanks for reading.

P.S. I’ve written this listening to My Head is an Animal by Of Monsters and Men. I’ve long loved this band, and I would thoroughly recommend Little Talks. Just sit down and listen to the lyrics some time, they never fail to move me.