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Damsels Not in Distress · Mythmakers

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  Hello and welcome to Nick Bakers.
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  Nick Bakers is a podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy creative,
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  bought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy.
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  My name is Julia Golding and in this episode I wanted to give a review
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  of the new Netflix stream film,
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  Danzel, starring Milly Bobby Brown and then widening that out into discussion of these
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  fairy tale type heroines that are becoming, I guess, the new cliché of films.
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  Anyway, so just first of all starting with the film.
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  Okay, so it's obviously a streamed film so it's supposed to be a family film.
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  I watched it feeling a bit under the weather and as you can hear from my voice
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  and I found it thoroughly entertaining but I was also thinking how some of the things
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  they're saying in the promotion for this film, like on the posters it says this is not a fairy tale.
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  Actually we have seen quite a lot of what's happening in this film already so it's as though
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  there's a new shorthand for this is the right kind of fairy tale heroine so no longer
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  do we have a sort of buttercup style heroine from the princess bride we have
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  you know LOD the the the girl who picks up her father's sword literally and becomes the hero
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  very much a hero rather than the old traditional heroine waiting for the hero to come and rescue her.
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  It's written by a man called Dan Mazzo and directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo
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  and that did make me think about a film which is all about women's empowerment. I wondered where
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  the female voices were at the very top other than Millie Bobby Brown herself so that was just
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  a little question I had them filmmakers maybe there were layers below that with more women present
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  but I did wonder if it's always almost a shorthand now for a more feminist flavoured film that okay
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  yeah we must do this and don't actually look at who's behind the camera that was one question I
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  heard but also when I was talking about the new clichés they do a bound so basically all the
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  male characters are terrible everyone everybody I'm trying to think of a redeeming male character
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  no even the dragon turns out to be a female dragon so yeah so there's that and I do think that
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  for old men do need positive role models as well the other clichés that's in it is how her
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  dress kind of breaks apart so gradually she gets dressed up to be married and this isn't a
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  plot spoiler because it's in the trailer is cast into a ravine to be you know killed by the dragon
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  and gradually as she fights for survival her dress gets more and more broken down till it becomes
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  a sort of bodicea style armour and short skirt thing or Roman gladiator maybe so I've seen that
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  before in other films there is plenty of them like one one area where I think of it is I've
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  seen in parts of Caribbean where that sort of heavy costume gets kind of taken away but I'm sure
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  you can think of your own cliche in that area and another place where I've seen the cutting of the
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  hair which is another move she makes to make her weaponry yeah so the cutting of the hair I've
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  seen that in Tangled which was a reimagining of Rapunzel the animated film from quite a few years
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  ago now so yeah it's packed full of the nuclear shades of the feminist take on a fairy tale but
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  oddly written by what from the names suggest men and starring obviously one of the the best
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  young actors of her generation but it is enjoyable so there's me griping away I don't want you to
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  go away thinking let's not bother I actually think it's predictable but enjoyable and looking at
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  how it's been received on Rotten Tomatoes it's got just over 57% positive reviews but the audience
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  approval is as is often the case is up at 72% so yeah popcorn movie stuff it certainly works
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  and also just thinking about it in terms of what does it do differently I think there are
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  several things here which I wanted to say you know well done that that was great to the filmmakers
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  one is I think it's got some beautiful cinematography and striking images so we obviously take a
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  while to meet the dragon you don't want to spoil your your best it's at most vicious monster right
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  at the beginning and there's a moment where the dragon dragon's arrival is heralded by burning
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  bats and it was hauntingly morbidly beautiful with these bats that have been caught fire flying
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  through the cave and I thought that was very good the other thing I really appreciated about it was
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  that the injury is hurt so early on there's quite a lot of milli bobby brown very convincingly looks
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  as though she's both bruised and battered but also burned and that is often missing from fantasy
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  films that it's all that sword fighting and maybe a sort of artistic cut on the cheek or something
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  she looked really hurt and that was great and it didn't just get forgotten by the next scene it
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  stayed with her and you got it felt in that sense more realistic and less fairy tale so I thought
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  that was a really good innovation and there were some very nice things about the way the script
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  was constructed which I don't want to spoil here but there were some small details and for example
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  the glowworms which then have several points where they come into having more meaning I love this
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  because I've just been to New Zealand and seen some glowware caves so it was lovely to find that
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  the filmmakers were using the idea of glowworms in a cave in such interesting ways amazing creatures
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  so yeah the dams are a really good family film a little bit scary so not for the very very young
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  for example were quite shockingly one of the white horse gets fried so if you've got sensitive
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  children at home probably best just to skip that bit or you know prepare them for it no animals
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  were really hurt in the making of this film but I thought that yeah it's not bad however I think
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  there are a few things that wideness out here in this fairy tale world of the new kind of heroines
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  it kind of sets itself up as saying this there are you know no damsels in this movie but of course
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  there is her sister is becomes a damsel in distress so there is a little bit of damseling if that's
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  the word in this story but also it's not new is it and I got me to think about when did we start
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  to have princesses I suppose because she's a princess who are not victims and so I think this has
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  been around since at least the first Star Wars with princess layer turning out to be the most
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  competent of the three in the sort of dream team plus Chewbacca and her running a rebellion so already
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  she started that pattern and I think that if you go forward we've got plenty now of heroines
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  of basically it's women who make decisions and actually drive the action that's what we're looking
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  at and so we've got heroines like Wonder Woman we've got a catness in the Hunger Games
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  we've got re-workings or fairy tales like Snow White and Huntsman so it isn't particularly new what
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  they're doing in this film it's almost more shocking now to choose to make a film where the princess
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  is the damsel that's probably going to be the rebound isn't it where that happens and what is
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  going on here I think it's actually people have forgotten the origins of a lot of these fairy tales
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  because when you read the original fairy tales that underlie our understanding of fairy tales
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  very often both can fairy tales the the heroine is active they are taking decisions they are
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  standing up against oppression in the case of Cinderella they are going to grandmother's house
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  on their own red riding hood so they're not sitting in a castle waiting to be rescued I remember when
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  I watched Shrek they had a lot of fun with that idea that in some way Princess Fiona needs the
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  rescue but it turns out that actually her solution isn't being a princess it's turning back into
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  an ogre you know so we've been actually riffing on this idea for some time and I think maybe
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  that this idea that heroines are passive is more of a Victorian and 20th century idea particularly
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  the sort of Disney films of the the kind of the sleeping beauty sort which is the most passive
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  heroine you can imagine and so white in the seven dwarves that the Cinderella in that one
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  so the sort of dainty lady stuff was probably more an accretion later on rather than something from
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  the original source material so when people go about rewriting the damsel it might be they're
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  actually not creating something new but going back to something that was already there
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  at the root of a fairy tale so looking at the poster for damsel I will take issue this is not a
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  fairy tale yes it is a fairy tale but it is a fairy tale of the thought that we had forgotten
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  existed because we had followed a disneyfication of the role of the female heroes in these stories
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  so that's my little review of damsel yeah rainy day or when you're feeling a bit under the weather
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  not a bad film yeah so it is worth watching some of the locations look terribly CGI'd but the caves
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  in particular where most of the film take place actually are convincing there's some fantastic
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  places in the cave and it's well set out where they're going so there's a crystal sort of passage
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  where she has to climb up which I loved it felt hard it felt sharp it felt dangerous so yeah I
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  I really enjoyed that side a bit less impressed by the castles outside they all look like something
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  from a computer game but I guess that's kind of the way things go these days I found where she came
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  from this sort of northern kingdom was much more convincing of its harshness could have preferred to
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  stay there really rather than this impossibly beautiful iconic castle thing which yeah I didn't feel
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  real but anyway I would think not a bad thing to what but don't go in expecting to find your world
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  shake it so that was myth makers review thank you very much for listening
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