{"id":3174,"date":"2011-11-04T13:13:14","date_gmt":"2011-11-04T18:13:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/girlwpen.com\/?p=3174"},"modified":"2011-11-04T13:13:14","modified_gmt":"2011-11-04T18:13:14","slug":"pop-goes-feminism-what-a-difference-a-strong-snow-white-makes-a-review-of-once-upon-a-time-and-grimm-two-new-fall-prime-time-tv-shows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/2011\/11\/04\/pop-goes-feminism-what-a-difference-a-strong-snow-white-makes-a-review-of-once-upon-a-time-and-grimm-two-new-fall-prime-time-tv-shows\/","title":{"rendered":"POP GOES FEMINISM: What a difference a strong Snow White makes: A review of Once Upon a Time and Grimm, Two New Fall Prime-time TV Shows"},"content":{"rendered":"

Though two new shows in the fall line-up \u2013 Once Upon a Time<\/em> and Grimm <\/em>– both use fairy tales as the basis for their narratives, blending the \u2018real world\u2019 with the \u2018fairy tale\u2019 world, the similarities pretty much stop there. The two shows are radically different \u2013 and especially so in their representation of gender. Grimm <\/em>has <\/em>far less of a female focus and frames women as victims, functioning like CSI: The Fairy Tale Version <\/em>while Once Upon a Time<\/em> is centered around strong female characters, functioning as a sort of Snow White: Disney Princess Slayer.<\/em><\/p>\n

Much like Hoodwinked, Grimm<\/em> functions as a fairy-tale crime scene retake. <\/em>However, while Hoodwinked <\/em>gave us a wise-talking Red and a go-to Granny, Grimm <\/em>focuses on a male detective and thus far has put females on the sidelines \u2013 and, in accordance with rape culture \u2013 represents them as potential victims who had better \u201cstay out of the forest\u201d it they want to stay safe.<\/p>\n

The season premiere opened with a young woman jogging in a red-sweatshirt listening to the Eurhythmics song Sweet Dreams<\/em>, a song that will later be hummed by her wolfy attacker as he ominously adds another red sweatshirt to his basement wardrobe collection, indicating he has kidnapped and killed quite a few \u2018litte Reds.\u2019 As the use of the Eurhythmics song suggests \u201csome of them want to abuse you.\u201d Never fear though, as the intrepid male detective duo of Nick Burckhardt (David Guintoli) and Hank Griffin (Russell Hornsby) are on the wolf\u2019s track, serving as would-be woodsmen to save red damsels in distress.<\/p>\n

Earlier, these same two detectives watch women walking down a street. Hank asks David \u201cWhat you looking at?,\u201d to which David notes that something seems remiss about one of the women, noting her low salary does not match her Armani outfit. Hank scoffs in reply \u201cWhy can\u2019t you just watch her ass like the rest of us?\u201d This may be the most obvious moment of a sexualized male gaze in the premiere, but other aspects of the show indicate it will be more akin to Supernatural <\/em>(where two male leads are the key demon hunters) than to Alias <\/em>(where a strong woman was front and center).<\/p>\n

Granted the premiere introduces us to Mary \u2013 Nick\u2019s guardian since he was 12. She is the one strong woman thus far, telling Nick about his true \u201cfairy tale hunter\u201d identity and then battling a monstrous baddie. This fight lands her in hospital (and if male-hero Nick hadn\u2019t shot the monster, would have likely resulted in her death). This, and the fact she earlier told Nick she\u2019s been given only weeks to live, suggests Mary won\u2019t be around for long \u2013 too bad, as putting\u00a0 (good) strong women at the helm of fairy tales is a rare occurrence \u2013 there are plenty of evil female villains, but not many heroines, unless you consider talking to animals or finding a prince a particularly heroic trait.<\/p>\n

The most intriguing plot point of the premiere comes when Nick targets the wrong creature, a reformed wolf. The wolf\/human insists on his innocence, angrily telling Nick \u201cyou people started profiling us over 200 years ago.\u201d It will be interesting to see if the show builds on ideas of racial profiling or if (please!) it includes some strong women and non-prince charming detectives, until it does, I will get my strong-women-in-fairy-tales fix watching Once Upon a Time.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n

Once<\/em> features not only a re-vamped Snow White, but her kick-butt daughter, Emma Swan.<\/p>\n

While in Grimm, <\/em>the setting is modern-day Oregon, in Once, <\/em>the characters are trapped between two worlds \u2013 the fairy-tale past and the modern world, including the town of Storybrooke, where an evil spell cast by the Queen has frozen all the fairy-tale characters in time and taken away their awareness of who they are. In the modern world, The Queen is Storybrooke\u2019s dictatorial mayor, and her adoptive son Henry is on a quest to save the day. He seeks out Emma Swan, the daughter of Snow White, who lives in Boston and works as a bail bondsperson that reveals the \u201cevil\u201d of philandering men. Not knowing her \u201ctrue identity,\u201d Emma goes with Henry to Storybroooke, staying there when he convinces her only she can undo the curse.<\/p>\n

Thus far, it is not clear who knows they are stuck in a fairy tale and who doesn\u2019t, but the lavish costumes, special effects, and attention to fairy-tale detail makes for a show that is far more enchanting than the film Enchantment<\/em> – Disney\u2019s attempt at a fairy tale redux that, in spite of excellent turns by Amy Adams as princess and Susan Sarandon as Evil Queen, ultimately gave us the same old message \u2013 someday your prince will come, he will \u201csave\u201d you, and your \u201chappy ending\u201d equals being \u00a0a happy wife\/mother.<\/p>\n

Where Enchantment<\/em> failed in a typical Disney way \u2013 by trying to \u201cmodernize\u201d a sexy message and make it palatable via the inclusion of catchy tunes and cute talking animals, Once <\/em>succeeds by NOT being cute \u2013 instead we have the nasty Rumpelstilskin morphed into the modern evil capitalist Mr. Gold, the newfangled Snow as an excellent, caring elementary school teacher, little Red and the Fairy Godmother as hotel proprietors, and Jiminy Cricket as child therapist. Further, though the show accords with the \u201cevil stepmother\u201d meme of fairy tales \u2013 it complicates it as well, suggesting that \u201cevil\u201d women might just\u00a0 be the result of a society that does not value single mothers and questions powerful women in the workforce.<\/p>\n

But, the biggest difference is the fact Emma Swan is framed as the heroine – that her \u201chappy ending\u201d is NOT about finding a man or going to a ball all gussied up, but about detective work, about building a relationship with her son Henry, and about seeking the \u201ctruth\u201d as to why time stands still in the corrupt Storybrooke world. For once a female is poised to be the hero \u2013 and with no prince charming by her side. Woot!<\/p>\n

The themes and content of the show thus far circulate around issues of gender, class, education, mothering\/parenting, beauty, aging, and power \u2013 yes, these are common fairy tale concerns, but the difference is Once<\/em> \u2013 at least so far \u2013 takes fairy tale tropes and give them a feminist\/social justice twist.<\/p>\n

The queen\/mayor is not just an evil witch of the all powerful women are bad, but a woman stuck within capitalist patriarchy \u2013 where Mr. Gold (Rumplestilskin) calls the shots. Even more intriguingly, Maleficent (played by True Blood\u2019s<\/em> Kristin Bauer van Straten) is portrayed as recognizing the bind inherent in the good\/evil binary and the way it too simplistically frames some women as witches, and others as princesses. In one humorous scene, The Queen and Maleficent complain about Snow White and Sleeping Beauty, noting how those prissies ruined their lives. Underneath this banter lies the suggestion that what really turned them evil was neither Snow or Sleeping, but patriarchy and the marriage imperative imposed by fathers.<\/p>\n

The show also interestingly puts a new twist on \u201ctrue love\u201d \u2013 the focus of so many fairy tales. When the Queen wants to release her dark curse, Rumplestilskin tells her she must sacrifice \u201cthe heart of the thing you love most,\u201d which we soon discover is not some Prince Charming character, but her father.\u00a0 Just before she kills him, her father tells her \u201cPower is seductive, but so is love, you can have that again\u2026I believe given a chance we can find happiness again, but the choice is yours.\u201d\u00a0 Alas, she chooses power over love and kills him, using his heart for the curse that transports the fairy tale inhabitants to Storybrooke and freezes them forever in time.<\/p>\n

Henry, who bears the namesake of the slain father of the Queen, seeks Emma out to release the curse, telling her she is the only one who has the power to do so. Embedded within this quest is Henry\u2019s own search for true motherly love. However, the show is careful not to suggest that Emma\u2019s love is \u201cbetter\u201d or \u201cnatural\u201d because she is his biological mother \u2013 rather, it suggests that, as a good person, she cannot help but help Henry, and in doing so, she disproves her claim that she is \u201cnot fit to be a mother.\u201d The show also is careful not to demonize her for putting Henry up for adoption and notes the age\/class factors that contributed to her decision. Moreover, it opens out what \u201cmothering\u201d means \u2013 it is not about having money and power (like the Queen\/Mayor), but about the type of nurturing both Emma and the newfangled Snow White (Henry\u2019s elementary school teacher) offer Henry.<\/p>\n

Emma of course doesn\u2019t believe she can save Henry nor Storybrooke, but, as Henry points out, \u00a0\u201cthe hero never believes at first, if they did, it wouldn\u2019t be a very good story.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for me, I believe this is going to be one heck of a good story, and I hope against hope that it will lead to the \u201chappy ending\u201d of finally FINALLY! having a mainstream fairy-tale that doesn\u2019t sideline females or suggest they are only good for cleaning up after dwarves, marrying princes, or beautifully sleeping. \u00a0As for me, I am not awaiting \u201ctrue love\u2019s kiss\u201d \u2013 nope, I am counting the days until episode two of Once Upon a Time<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Though two new shows in the fall line-up \u2013 Once Upon a Time and Grimm – both use fairy tales as the basis for their narratives, blending the \u2018real world\u2019 with the \u2018fairy tale\u2019 world, the similarities pretty much stop there. The two shows are radically different \u2013 and especially so in their representation of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1921,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21110],"tags":[21330,21350,21410,129,21666,5007],"class_list":["post-3174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pop-goes-feminism","tag-fairy-tales","tag-feminist-heroines","tag-grimm","tag-media","tag-once-upon-a-time","tag-pop-culture"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1921"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3174\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}