Abstract
The purpose of this study is to explore how selected works by Walt Disney Pictures, Angela Carter and Diane Victor make use of the theme of ‘beauty and beastliness’ in such a way that they either reinforce or challenge traditionalist notions of femininity. The research question will be investigated by means of a comparison of the representations of women in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, Angela Carter’s “The Company of Wolves” and selected works by Diane Victor, with specific focus on XXX (2002) and Untitled (“City of Pricks”)(1985). I critically analyse the modes or devices the director/author/artist has used to either sustain or unsettle the dichotomy of ‘beauty and beastliness’.
The tale Beauty and the Beast was originally written in 1756 by French governess Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont and was conceived to serve a distinct pedagogical purpose. As a result the representation of the female protagonist in this tale is informed by eighteenth-century ideals concerning the nature and behaviour of women. In 1991 Walt Disney Pictures released its cinematic interpretation of Beauty and the Beast, a film which reworks the 1756 story in such a way that it is ostensibly relevant to the frameworks and perspectives of late 20th-century audiences. However, I argue that the Disney production in fact maintains traditionalist understandings about femininity through its emphasis on the dichotomy of ‘beauty and beastliness’. The short story “The Company of Wolves” (1979a) by Angela Carter is a feminist or revisionist tale which parodies the fairy tale Little Red Riding Hood (1697) by Charles Perrault. I contend that this story challenges inherited notions of femininity (particularly those perpetuated through patriarchal fairy tale discourse) by unsettling the dichotomy of ‘beauty and beastliness’. Through her work, contemporary South African artist Diane Victor often deals with the interplay between fragility and the bestial as well as the misleading and sinister nature of appearances. I am interested in exploring the way in which Victor represents femininity as that which is subversive and, above all, un-idealised...
M.Tech. (Fine Art)