Domesticating Designs

"Above all, the film placed before the 1990s audience Hollywood's domestication of feminism itself"
Marina Warner on the Disney animation,
Beauty and the Beast

 
 


For this week-end's assignment, think of what happens when wild animals are 'domesticated.'

Something outwith the control of humans, with an independent, autonomous life of its own is 'tamed' (made safe? made non-threatening? made comfortable?) to cohabit with, and be used by, the dominant culture.

Domesticating is about taking the potentially disruptive or radical and remaking it into the very specific version of orderly acceptable at a particular time and place.

Think of the way in which Cinderella's feminism and political consciousness in Ever After led not to a change in the status of women but to a change in the opinions of one particular man. And though the Prince is stirred by her picture of the wretched condition of the poor, he does not decide to share his wealth with them in any way.

 

 
 

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Lesley Smith and Mary Lechter, 5 March, 1999