Stepmothers and Damsels and Dragons, oh my
Skip Damsel unless you're a stepmother.
I broke down and watched Damsel on Netflix. This is the Millie Bobby Brown vehicle that Netflix has flooded my social media stream with for the last several weeks. According to Wikipedia (according to Netflix), in the first three days, the film recorded 35.3 million views and placed number one in 79 countries. This speaks more to the appealing dark nature of young adult literature alongside the ad budget than it does to the quality of the film writing.
The story is clearly meant to be a young feminist tract. The daughter of an impoverished house, played by Brown, is traded in marriage to a rich royal dynasty to save her father’s and, theoretically, her own (?) people. The daughter, Elodie, travels to the rich kingdom with her family, is dressed up in expensive princess clothes, married to the rich prince and then sacrificed when the prince does HIS duty and throws her into a deep cavernous pit occupied by a bitter dragon.
Elodie survives the fall due to the magic of movies and embarks on her dark adventure, uncovering the lie at the bottom of the sacrificial tradition, thereby saving herself, eventually her sister, an unnamed third princess teed up for sacrifice, and the dragon. Pretty straightforward. Oh, and the dragon is female.
This story leans into the female part of the equation. The male characters are shallow and late to recognize their backbones. The prince is wooden, only showing some spark when discussing the possibility of travel and a modicum of courage when facing his own death by dragon. Fathers are pretty feeble in this tale. Elodie’s trades her for the promise of money for his kingdom, and then when he learns the truth of the deal stops talking to his wife and daughters, growing surly. He makes another appearance late in the tale.
The interesting bit about this story is the stepmother role played by Angela Bassett. And as a nod to those who know the genre, the casting of Robin Wright, who you will remember from A Princess Bride, as the evil queen. It is possible that Bassett was cast as a nod to inclusivity in the Shondaland universe (See Bridgerton also on Netflix) we now live in. Placing her in the role of stepmother neatly leaps over the very red hair Brown sports in this production.
More importantly, casting Bassett and the writing of this role calls into play the well-established fairy tale trope of the evil stepmother and turns it not quite upside down but definitely sideways. This is where Damsel does its best work.
At the beginning of the story, Elodie’s stepmother is portrayed as a fairly vacuous trophy wife to an aging king, played by Ray Winstone, who is wasted in this script. When Elodie and her family arrive at the rich royal castle for the planned nuptials, the stepmother continues to be awed by the wealth on display but soon becomes suspicious that something darker is afoot when her husband starts his surly descent. After a conversation with the evil queen, played with a certain glee by Wright, Bassett’s character tries to warn Elodie against the marriage. But the warning is only minimally acknowledged amidst the glistening gold.
Exposition over, the movie transforms into something akin to an action film. This is certainly the way Brown would like you to view it, as she has boasted about doing her own stunts. Her costumes are theatrically ripped, transforming from princess bridal gown to wrappings for her hands and feet, and her corset takes on a metallic quality, moving independently of her body as though it were knight’s armor. If that wasn’t clear enough, a crown is used as a rock climbing tool to scale the spikey depths.
I confess I found the second act long and predictable. Look, glow worms in a sleeve can act as a lantern. But wait, there’s more. They act like fantasy maggots, helping heal cuts and bruises. Bodies and ghosts of sacrificed brides appear helping the heroine on her way. And, a long conversation with the dragon reveals that she is a mother whose three daughters were killed by some, dare we say, ignorant men long ago. So she’s been taking out her grief and loss on the kingdom every generation by demanding sacrificial princesses. But as Elodie points out, the sacrificed girls were not royal. They had a smear of royal blood on them as part of a wedding ritual ripped from Outlander in turn, in theory, taken from Celtic traditions.
Elodie’s father returns in the third act, remorseful at trading his daughter’s life for money and determined to challenge the dragon. Weakness will out and he is easily killed by the dragon while shouting into the dark for his daughter’s forgiveness. The relevant part of this plot point is that he leaves a rope that Elodie can use to climb without needing the damaged crown.
By the third act, her stepmother has left her vacuousness at home with her other dress and joined the rescue party ineptly led by her husband. Bassett steps up as a warrior, sustaining a wound to reach Elodie and help save the day. Elodie emerges in her battle rags to announce that the lie has been exposed and the generational sacrifices will now end. To drive the point home, the dragon kills off Wright/Princess Buttercup by melting her golden crown. (See Game of Thrones season 1 episode 6)
Stepmother becomes Elodie’s most trusted advisor and in case that message doesn’t reach the audience, it is driven home when she is called ‘mother’. Step be damned.
The former Princess Buttercup/Claire Underwood, Wright, as the architect of evil, and Tina Turner/Ramonda Queen of Wakanda, Bassett, as the benevolent stepmother who becomes the best friend sidekick of the heroine is the trope laid on its side. As the character with the largest story arc, Bassett provides perhaps the most nuanced performance despite the simplistic script. Stepmother as a valued counselor is a new concept. Snow White should trade those untidy dwarves in for a 21st-century stepmother and get a dragon to fly alongside her ships as her literal wing-woman in another Game of Thrones reference. (See Season 6, episode 10 “Winds of Winter” when Daenerys takes ship to Westeros with her dragons flying beside her.)
