On...Take A Bite, Dearie -- Part II

Last week, I followed the words and ended up writing a lot more on Disney Princesses + eating than I had planned to, and honestly, I'm not mad about it. This was all inspired by a social media post about the girls in K-Pop Demon Hunters and last week I focused on Disney's first two animated feature films, Snow White & Pinocchio.

The overall take-aways were:

1. ...women / female characters were not shown eating on-screen, but

2. ...women / female characters were shown baking / cooking / preparing food, connected to a domestic setting

3. ...male characters in Pinocchio were shown eating and

4. ...the consumption of food was largely associated with temptation / excess (an overall negative connection)

So, what's next?

Let's fast-forward a little bit to the 1950s. After Disney's Golden Age (which ended right around the time the US entered WWII), Disney and his studio were largely concerned with producing wartime propaganda. A fascinating time, but not super relevant to feature animation.

The 1950's is colloquially known as Disney's Silver Age -- lasting until about Walt's death in 1966 -- and is characterized by bright colors, milder villains (with the exception of Maleficent, as delightfully unhinged as she is), and an ornate, artistic aesthetic.

Overall, food plays a sporadic role throughout the Silver Age. Two of the most well-known films of the period have almost iconic scenes involving food: 1951's Alice in Wonderland and 1955's Lady and the Tramp.

Both of these films seem, to me, to be outliers in terms of representations of food and eating in Disney films.

The first, Alice, is based -- however loosely! -- on Lewis Carroll's 1865 novel. The portrayals of food -- specifically, Alice eating random things and those things creating chaotic changes -- may have been intentional by Carroll. According to one blog, Alice's eating in the novel may have been a "commentary on the famines of the Victorian era." It may have been that Carroll "included the tiny pieces of food...to express that Alice is essentially scrounging for her meals" and "is often left looking about for more food to return her to normal."

So, Disney may have just lifted elements from the text without much deeper connection to Carroll's original intentions, especially since the film overall is a trippy, chaotic adventure.

The second, Lady and the Tramp, involves the iconic spaghetti scene. The film was a largely original Disney concept, so unlike with Alice, there's no adherence to source material. But, the depiction of animals in Disney films, however anthropomorphized they may be, is starkly different than the depiction of human characters. While they may be stand-ins for humans occasionally, they are ultimately animals and are held to different standards.

So, what are the Silver Age Princess films, and how do they depict women's relationship to food?

Cinderella (1950)

Cinderella was one of the stories Walt was most excited to tell, and was originally intended as a follow-up to 1937's Snow White. Production on the film stalled during the war, but was finally released at the start of the decade in 1950.

Much like Disney's OG Princess film, women (well, one woman) are shown preparing food, but not consuming it. And, much like in Lady and the Tramp, animals are shown eating, especially in moments of heightened emotion (comic relief here, as when Gus Gus is trying to collect corn kernels and romance in Lady and the Tramp).

Food plays an overall minimal role in this film, and is used primarily to highlight Cinderella's servitude. In the opening scenes of the movie, it is Cinderella's job to "wake up" the household: this involves feeding the animals -- cream for Lucifer the cat; corn for the chickens and mice -- and preparing breakfast for the family.

We see Cinderella -- much like Snow White -- at the stove/hearth preparing something out of a big pot (the internet seems to agree that it's porridge, which makes sense--the family's fortune has evaporated, so porridge would be the cheaper option).

She ladles it into only three bowls, however; she prepares only three trays, with three bowls of porridge, and three cups of tea: one for her stepmother, one for each of her stepsisters, and none for her.

Finally, we see Cinderella deliver the trays and the scene is largely intertwined with the comic relief of the B-plot. As she carries the trays up the stairs, the 'camera' / perspective shifts down, to follow Lucifer as he tracks GusGus hiding under one of the empty tea cups. We see Cinderella enter each bedroom, serve the breakfast, and exchange the tray for a load of laundry, as the door shuts behind her. The other women presumably consume their breakfast, but do so 'off-screen,' in the privacy of their own spaces. You can see the shifted perspective in the video below:

Much like Snow White, Cinderella both connects the preparation of food as a female duty in a domestic space and also neglects to show human, female characters actually partaking in the food they make. There isn't any association with excess here, which I suppose is a positive move.

Sleeping Beauty (1959)

Let's skip forward in time to the end of the decade, when Disney's 3rd princess film is released. I don't often teach Sleeping Beauty, so I was surprised when I was able to vividly recall in my mind the three scenes of characters eating in this movie. Like, I accurately remember Merrywether magicking the cookie out of thin air and chomping on it out of frustration with Maleficent. Which...is an (anecdotal) testament to the power of these movies.

Again, like the two princesses movies before it -- a trend is starting to emerge... -- Sleeping Beauty once again:

1. ...associates food preparation as women's work, specifically in a cozy, domestic space. Fauna (the green fairy) is shown making Aurora's birthday cake twice (once with magic, once without) in the small kitchen of their forest cottage. The food at the castle feast, however, is merely depicted on the table; this is a film about royals, after all, and not a medieval Disney version of Upstairs, Downstairs. We can assume that the food was prepared by an army of (female) cooks -- although the chef is more likely to be masculine -- but we don't need to see the sweaty, chaotic bustle of the royal kitchens.

2. ...fails to depict women actually eating the food they prepare / which is prepared for them, while male characters do indulge more freely. Right before the two kings (and the minstrel) get hilariously drunk -- Disney today would never! -- we see King Hubert partaking of the feast on the table. It is worth pointing out that there is a stark visual difference between King Hubert (shown above, chomping on a turkey leg) and King Stefan, who is taller, leaner, and more lanky. It's also worth noting that we only see the...rounder King Hubert eat, not King Stefan. (And sure. If we wanted to do some armchair diagnosing, we could argue that Stefan is likely anxious over the return of his cursed daughter, whereas Hubert is only looking forward to the engagement party. But that's all speculation.) Similarly, Aurora never gets to eat the birthday cake Fauna prepares. When she returns to the cottage, flushed with excitement about meeting 'the stranger from the woods' (which is super creepy out of context), her aunts break the news that she's a princess, and engaged, and going home that night. Understandably, Rose breaks down crying and runs upstairs to fling herself on the bed and sob -- she is just 16 -- leaving the beautiful birthday cake untouched.

   
   

There is seemingly an exception to this point: before the fairies whisk baby Aurora away to the woods, we see them fuming over Maleficent's curse and plotting a way around it. Fauna magicks an Emotional Support Beverage (presumably tea) out of thin air, and the fairies sip as they conspire.

Only Merrywether also magicks two cookies/biscuits out of thin air to drink with her tea -- and we actually see her eat them.

It's a rare moment -- seeing a female Disney character not only pick out what she wants to eat -- a cookie! not an apple, or a salad or some other 'healthy' option -- but then actually eat it.

Now, why isn't this more important? Because, as many scholars -- including Elizabeth Bell and Carrie Cokely -- have noted, Disney often draws a distinction between their female characters, age-wise. (This isn't necessarily exclusive to Disney films; but that's a soapbox for another day.) That is, there are 3 main categories of Disney women:

1. The Princess -- young, (conventionally) beautiful, innocent, naive, sweet

2. The Wicked Woman -- middle-aged, smart, ambitious, wants "more" than she's allotted

3. The Grandmother -- old, soft, wise, maternal, nurturing

I mean...again, this isn't exclusive to Disney. The witches of ye olden days weren't actually sinister, magic-practicing agents of evil; they were just women who dared to step outside of the proscribed norms of the time.

In Disney, then, the first and third types -- all good. That's where we want women to be. And The Grandmother figure? Well she's past her prime; she's done her time. Her goal is to help the younger generation, protect them from the scheming, ambitious wicked woman, and if she gets a little hungry along the way, she can have a snack. Her goal isn't marriage; it's preservation of order.

So, yes. We see Merrywether eat. But we also have yet to see a young Disney princess tuck in with glee and joy the way Rumi, Mira and Zoey attack their carb-loaded snacks.

There is a 65+ year difference between the two films, however, so next week we'll zoom into the Disney Renaissance. These heroines are spunkier and more rebellious, loudly declaring that they aren't "prizes to be won" and that they "want adventure in the great, wide somewhere" -- so let's see if that progressive attitude extends to food as well.