[New post] Deconstructing Disney: Motherhood and the Taming of Maleficent

Jeanna Kadlec posted: "Jeanna Kadlec| Longreads | October 2020 | 3,234 words (10 minutes) How do you tame a witch? Historically, you don't: You kill her. Burn her. Hang her. In tales, the witch is often a her. A she-devil, if you will, a woman who sleeps with Lucifer, who is S" New post on Longreads Deconstructing Disney: Motherhood and the Taming of Maleficent by Jeanna Kadlec Jeanna Kadlec| Longreads | October 2020 | 3,234 words (10 minutes) How do you tame a witch? Historically, you don't: You kill her. Burn her. Hang her. In tales, the witch is often a her. A she-devil, if you will, a woman who sleeps with Lucifer, who is Satan's mistress, who bears a demonic mark. Read the 15th-century witch-hunters' Malleus Maleficarum, it'll tell you. Her very existence, her body itself, is a portal from this world to others, and she must be put down, lest she tears a rip in reality itself. Wicked witches, the stuff of historical legend and nightmarish fairy tales, inspire a terror that verges on the sublime, that feeling Edmund Burke articulated so long ago — of standing on the edge of a cliff where you feel the simultaneity of danger and spectacular awe. Mountains are sublime. Milton's Satan is sublime. Sublimity only exists in things that could kill you, which bring you to the edge of yourself. The untamed feminine, then, surely falls into this category: Witches exist on the margins, in the shadows, ever threatening to invade and disrupt the sanctity of the social order. These days, Disney doesn't kill witches — at least, not as often as they used to. These days, Disney is interested in the ultimate rehabilitation project: How do you make these archetypal wonders, this sublime femininity, less frightening? Less powerful — particularly to people invested in women and queers behaving in normatively gendered ways? You make the witch a mother. *** Read more of this post Jeanna Kadlec | October 7, 2020 at 6:00 am | Tags: Angelina Jolie, Aurora, Deconstructing Disney, Disney, feminism, Jeanna Kadlec, Maleficent, motherhood, Sleeping Beauty | Categories: Featured, Story, Writing | URL: https://wp.me/p4KhvY-BuR Like Unsubscribe to no longer receive posts from Longreads. Change your email settings at Manage Subscriptions. Trouble clicking? Copy and paste this URL into your browser: http://longreads.com/2020/10/07/motherhood-and-the-taming-of-maleficent/ Thanks for flying with WordPress.com