Enchanted

Most of us have grown up hearing fairy tales. We can recite by heart all the times the prince came to the rescue of the princess, whether she was stuck in a tower hanging her long braid out the window, in an enchanted sleep from a bite of a poison apple or a prick of the needle of a spinning wheel, or imprisoned at home with a pile of chores to do and an evil stepmother watching her every move. These stories, as our parents and teachers may have pointed out to us, tend not to allow the girl to do much but wait for the guy to come and get her.

But what happens when a princess from one of those fairy tales has to live in the real world? Will she be any braver, more capable, or more independent?

According to the movie Enchanted the answer is…. kind of.

Enchanted is a charming movie that makes you feel really good. And it’s hard to say anything negative about the lead character, Giselle. She is kind, sincere, curious and, at the end of the movie when she chases down the dragon who wants to kill her true love, brave, too. I also applaud the filmmakers for making Giselle on two separate occasions admire the looks of non-white women (although one of them is a statue).

But Enchanted isn’t perfect. It’s true that Giselle defies some stereotypes of fairy tale princesses. During her time in New York City, she learns that a prince will not always be there to catch her when she falls and that she will occasionally have to fight for what she wants. However, the movie includes a couple of scenes that disappointed me even as I enjoyed the movie.

For example, in one scene Giselle goes shopping with Morgan, the daughter of Robert, the man she eventually falls in love with. This is a sweet scene in which the two characters bond because neither has ever been shopping with her mother. However, it relies on stereotypes of females to allow this bonding to occur. Why is it shopping and a trip to the beauty shop that brings Giselle and Morgan together? Couldn’t they have done something less traditional?

Also disappointing were Giselle’s only talents: cleaning and sewing. Even in the closing sequence of the film we see that she has chosen to open a store that makes princess dresses for little girls. While there’s nothing wrong in theory with that career path, Giselle’s not blazing any trails – for fairytale princess or real-life women – by choosing such a traditionally female, appearance-focused way to spend her life.

Finally, at the end of the movie after all she has experienced and learned, Giselle’s life is still just about a man and a child, not about any dreams she may have that exist outside of a marriage and family. Even though the person she falls in love with isn’t who she expected, her life follows the fairy tale script very predictably. Sure, the movie is a love story, but it would have been great to find out a little bit about Giselle’s interests beyond Robert and Morgan.

All in all, Enchanted truly is a fun, mostly positive film. If these few old-fashioned portrayals of females would have been left out, though, the movie would have been even more interesting and less typical of the limiting fairy tales it seemed to try to leave behind.



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