By Jeffrey Weiss
Politics Daily
December 12, 2010
http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/12/11/disneys-tangled-takes-on-the-serious-issue-of-emotional-child/
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A week or so ago, thousands of Facebook users changed their identifying photos to cartoon characters in a vague attempt to "raise awareness" of child abuse. Ironically, at the same time a new hit movie was using animation to focus on the same subject in a more sophisticated manner.
The movie? Disney's "Tangled." No kidding. Slipped inside the gorgeous images, entertaining songs and fairy-tale narrative is a clear-eyed look at the way predatory abusers maintain control of their victims. The villain may be Disney's skin-crawlingly nastiest because her evil is so un-magically human.
[SPOILER ALERT: I'm not going to reveal much more than you'd get in a good movie review, or than you'd learn from the first five minutes of the film. But if you're the type who wants to learn no details in advance, go see the movie first. I'll wait. (And btw, it's a splendid flick if you appreciate animated films. And maybe even if you don't.)]
"Tangled" is a substantial reworking of the Brothers Grimm story of Rapunzel.
It starts with a magic healing flower that a woman named Gothel selfishly hides to maintain her own youthful appearance. The flower is discovered and used to save the life of the very ill and very pregnant queen of that land. When the baby is born, the magic has transferred to the child's hair. Gothel kidnaps the infant from her crib and holds her in a hidden tower where she assumes there is no chance anybody will find them.
She raises Rapunzel to believe she, Gothel, is her mother. And as with the flower, only Gothel gets the benefit of the youth-delivering magic hidden in Rapunzel's hair.
The story picks up on the day before Rapunzel's 18th birthday. She has never, ever been allowed to leave the tower, even to walk on the ground she can see outside her window. For her birthday, she wants to be allowed to – not escape – but leave only for a short trip.
Gothel tells her that she is far too weak to survive in the cruel, violent outside world and that it is only through Gothel's protection that Rapunzel lives at all. How can Rapunzel repay her kindnesses by asking to leave?
They stand in front of a mirror together. "I see a strong, confident, beautiful young lady," Gothel says to Rapunzel. "And look, you're here, too!"
And they exchange a series of lines that made me squirm for what they hide.
"I love you," says Gothel.
"I love you more," says Rapunzel with a giggle.
"I love you best," replies Gothel, ending the conversation.
Best? That's an emotional shiv wrapped in the language of affection, a way of telling Rapunzel that she can't measure up. And just in case I didn't get it the first time, the same lines are exchanged later in the film.
The rest of the movie is about how Rapunzel does escape the tower and Gothel. Yes, there's a host of side characters, including a couple of funny animals. And of course there's a romantic love story. (It's a Disney "princess" movie, after all.)
But most of the initiative for the escape is taken by Rapunzel. Not that it's easy. Shortly after she leaves the tower she whipsaws repeatedly through giddiness at her new-found freedom followed by near-catatonic weeping over what a horrible thing she was doing to her "mother."
The emotional climax of the movie comes a few minutes before the end. Rapunzel has figured out who she really is. And she has accumulated the courage to face her abuser and hurl the one word that she'd never been able to say: "No!" She may be a captive, but she will no longer be a willing victim.
At the last, Rapunzel needs a bit of help to irrevocably sever the physical and emotional bonds with which Gothel has tied her (using a lovely visual metaphor that I won't spoil for you.). But by that time, Rapunzel has done most of the heavy lifting.
Disney has a long history of great animated villains, going back at least to Maleficent in the 1959 movie, "Sleeping Beauty." (One of my first clear memories is being terrified by Maleficent's transformation into a dragon.) But her evil is unreal, empowered by magic. Scar, the wonderfully creepy villain in "The Lion King," has no magic. But like the rest of the movie's characters, he's a critter, which allows for some emotional distancing. Cruella DeVil from "101 Dalmatians"? Too marvelously over-the-top to stay scary.
Gothel, on the other hand, is neither magical nor unhuman nor utterly weird, only a bit mysterious. And the tools of her abuse are the same emotional weapons used by abusers everywhere. She's a smiling sociopath, selfish and utterly uncaring about the effects of her abuse and treachery on anyone else. (And that there's no hint of sexual involvement does not make the abuse any less damaging.)
This isn't exactly an angle that Disney is playing up in the ads, though the movie does have a PG rather than a G rating, unusual for Mouse House full-family fare.
David Clohessy hasn't seen the movie but he knows something about abuse and abusers. He's the national director of SNAP, the Survivors' Network of those Abused by Priests, and a survivor of abuse. His organization was formed in 1989 to respond to the scandal of sexually predatory Catholic priests but has since given its attention to other abusive clergy and to broader issues of abuse.
The "Tangled" fantasy, he said, sounds like it manages to avoid some of the dangerous myths about abusers. Abusers can seem normal and even attractive to other people. That's how they gain access to their victims and maintain their power.
"If you go to a party and there's one guy sitting over in a corner sitting by himself and gives you the willies, that's not the child molester," he said. "The child molester is the guy giving the party."
Ditto about how an abuser can come across to his or her victim -- seemingly loving and caring. The threat of overt violence is often not a part of the abuse.
"Not everybody who is bad wears a mask, carries a gun or grabs you suddenly and throws you into a van to carry you away," Clohessy said.
He hopes that parents who see the movie with their children take the time to talk some of these issues out afterward.
"Tangled" is bringing in the viewers, grossing more than $100 million in its first 16 days. And because it's a Disney movie, it is guaranteed to have a long shelf life for as long as kids watch videos and Disney can make a buck selling them.
That means "Tangled" can offer a teaching moment that lingers far, far longer than those Facebook cartoon pictures.
Jim Hmurovich is the president of Prevent Child Abuse America. He's not seen the movie yet, either. But like Clohessy, he hopes it inspires some serious conversations. In his case, he hopes the film inspires adults to take action.
"What role could a neighbor, a friend or any us play in helping all children have a fair and level playing field in starting their life?" he said. "How can we effectively change our policies, practices, social norms and behaviors in America to make child abuse and neglect totally unacceptable and replaced with a change that does not simply say 'we are child and family friendly," but 'we are showing it.'"
I don't want to leave the impression that "Tangled" is a dark and sad tale. It's actually manically cheerful in the main with plenty of laugh lines and some of the best visuals Disney has ever done. (The scene with thousands of floating lanterns over a lake is on my Top Ten Ever list.)
That may be what makes the movie so unusual: It uses the standard Disney cartoon apparatus to address a deadly serious issue -- without losing the glitter needed to make a kid's film a hit. Or as a villain-less previous Disney movie told us: "A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down."
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