The Princess Bride Providing Poor Female Representation? Inconceivable!

When watching The Princess Bride as a child, my main take-aways were that I loved Princess Buttercup’s orange dress, I wanted for long, flowy hair like hers, you can survive drinking poison if you train yourself, and that while rolling down any type of hill, you must yell “as you wish”. Watching it as I get older, I have become much more critical of the film, mostly of Princess Buttercup’s helplessness throughout the movie, her many opportunities to be empowered that she refuses to take advantage of, and the obvious sexualization present in the film.

According to bell hooks, it is important to develop an oppositional gaze when analyzing films. Developing this ability to critique the film by being aware of the absence of correct representation is important in giving the option “not to identify with the film’s imaginary subject because such identification [is] disenabling” (hooks, 254). In this analysis of The Princess Bride, I am going to use an oppositional gaze to analyze the female role that is represented by Princess Buttercup’s character. Buttercup is depicted as completely powerless, tossed between two men, and sexualized throughout the movie.

This movie was intended to be a fairy tale love story. It is not a surprise that many people love this film, because it has striking similarities to Disney princess movies, or any fairy tale story you’ve ever read. But there are still many flaws in this film regarding how Princess Buttercup’s role as a woman is represented. This type of movie follows a specific plot. In Greg Smith’s article, “It’s Just a Movie”, he challenges the readers to think about how many aspects in a movie are just automatically known by the audience, because we “read into” the movie with past experience (Smith, 131). Our past experiences of romantic films allow these negative stereotypes of how women are represented to be presented because they follow our expectations of how these fantasy movies should be.

It is no surprise that a film intended to be a princess, fairy tale movie depicts the main character as helpless and just a pawn in a man’s romantic journey, but this film also fails to create any type of character development for the main character, Buttercup. Buttercup’s character stays pretty static throughout the movie.

In Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, Laura Mulvey writes about Budd Boetticher’s critique of female representation in film. Budd writes that “what counts is what the heroine provokes, or rather what she represents. She is the one, or rather the love or fear she inspires in the hero, or else the concern he feels for her, who makes him act the way he does. In herself, the woman has not the slightest importance” (Mulvey, 33). This is evident throughout The Princess Bride.

Princess Buttercup character appears to be important solely in order to provide a reason for the two men who are fighting over her, Westley and Prince Humperdinck, to show off their manliness through sword fights, scaling cliffs, and drinking poison. Buttercup’s character seems to provide nothing by itself, but its purpose in the film is to create an interesting plot for the male characters to be able to develop. She is shown as an object, being moved between men with little regard for her feelings.

Buttercup is seen as a helpless woman throughout the film. One of the obvious examples is after when Westley is attacked by a Rodent of Unusual Size and Buttercup refuses to do anything but play the victim, providing another opportunity for Westley to become the hero. Through this scene, it gives more value on Westley’s character, making him appear selfless, strong, and heroic, while just reiterating the fact that Buttercup’s character would not be able to fend for herself and needs a man to save her. This is also an example of an opportunity where she could have presented herself as a strong and independent woman. She had just figured out that the love of her life is still alive, and when he is attacked, she does absolutely nothing to try to kill or fight the creature.

Another way this movie was flawed was in its inability to pass the Bechdel test. The Bechdel test is a measure of a women’s representation in a film. This is measured by three criteria:

1. Two women are in the film
2. The two women need to talk to each other
3. The two women need to talk to each other about something other than a man (“Bechdel Test”, 2018)

These criteria are pretty wide, and it seems like it should be very easy to find movies which fit all three criteria. But, unfortunately, this is not the case, or else there would have been no need to create the Bechdel test to analyze women’s representation in film. The Princess Bride fails to meet these criteria. Buttercup is one of three women in the movie who have any type of dialogue, and the other two women play insignificant roles. One of these women is the woman who boos Buttercup in her nightmare, so it isn’t even a true part of the plot. After hearing the woman boo, Buttercup says “Why do you do this?”, but then the subject quickly switches to talking about why the woman was booing in the first place: Westley, a man, therefore not allowing The Princess Bride to pass the Bechdel test.

Sexualization of Buttercup is evident throughout the movie. This again brings us back to Laura Mulvey’s Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, where Mulvey introduces the idea of “looked-at-ness”. Women are often portrayed in films as to be the source of the male gaze. They are objectified through men being the “bearer of the look” (Mulvey, 33). This creates the idea that women are not to have importance in a film, but just to be an object of the male gaze

Buttercup’s main sources of attention come from the fact that she is beautiful. Even towards the end of the film, when she is planning to take her own life, she kisses Humperdinck’s father, but then tells him that she is planning on killing herself “once [she] reaches the honeymoon suite”. Although this information is quite morbid, the only thing the King apparently got out of the interaction was the fact that Buttercup had kissed him.

Then, as Westley finds Buttercup in the honeymoon suite, with a knife pressed to her chest, he says “There’s a shortage of perfect breasts in this world, it would be a pity to damage yours”. This comment completely ignores the fact that she was incredibly unhappy to the point of actually attempting to take her own life and places her life value as less important than her boobs through objectifying her.

Although this movie is a favorite for many hopeless romantics, it’s important to understand the flaws in female representation in the film. Women are constantly being portrayed as helpless, unable to live on their own, and sexualized and objectified in mainstream media. It’s important to be critical of these films because through critiquing these films, we are developing an oppositional gaze and choose to not identify with the misrepresentation of our identities in mainstream films.

 

Sources:

“Bechdel Test.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 24 Oct. 2018, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bechdel_test.

Hooks, Bell. “The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators.” Movies and Mass Culture, 1996, pp. 254.

Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Issues in Feminist Film Criticism, 1990, pp. 33.

Smith, Greg M. “‘It’s Just a Movie’: A Teaching Essay for Introductory Media Classes.” Cinema Journal, vol. 41, no. 1, 2001, pp. 131

Dystopian Disaster: Analyzing Gaze In Divergent Series

Since I can’t focus on the series as there is WAY too much to discuss, I will concentrate on Divergent- the first book.

The Divergent series was written in 2011 by Veronica Roth. She wrote four books for the collection, and turned three into a 4-part series. When the film first came out, I was extremely excited and fell in love right away. Whilst in the middle of this class, however, I’ve noticed that this young girl is quite fond of following a negative female stereotype outside of her strong woman portrayal. Beatrice Prior is presented as whiny, indecisive, and dependent.

Divergent is about a young girl who lives in a divided world. Everyone is divided into factions based on their characteristics; whether you are kind, brave, honest, smart, or selfless. The main character, Beatrice, was born into Abnegation (selfless), but has felt that she doesn’t quite fit in. When children become of age, they are able to make their own choices and a test can help them decide which faction to choose. Her results are inconclusive, stating that she fit into more than one faction which makes her a Divergent. Apparently, this is not a good thing as they are people to be feared and could end up killed or factionless. In the end, she pulls through… with help from a man.

Throughout the story, she proves herself to be strong. Unfortunately, it all seems to be in the hands of Four, one of the leaders and trainers for Dauntless (brave). He navigates her around being a Divergent and how to go about their training and tests undetected because he is Divergent as well. This plays to be a huge factor in her survival because it is played out through the entire series. The other male characters work hard to belittle Tris (new name for Beatrice) as much as possible and make her the focus of their gaze. In one scene, Tris gets jumped by three guys who are said to be intimidated by her. They attempt to throw her into a chasm when Four comes along and saves the day. He lets her spend the night in his room to be safe. He teaches her how to fight because, coming from a “weak” faction, she really doesn’t know how. Although, you never see Four attempting to correct anyone else’s fighting stances and practices. Before initiation, she takes off a jacket while Peter yells “yeah stiff, take it off…  [mumbled] put it back on…” May I also mention, “stiff” is a taunting slur for the people of her faction basically stating that they don’t have fun.  Tris’ faction is known for being selfless- women wear gray long-sleeved dresses to the ankle, they forbid mirrors, and eat very bland food that they also share with the factionless. Basically, they are just a step above the factionless (homeless) because they don’t use a lot.

Tris does indeed grow as a character; from choosing her faction to saving her family. She controls her fate from beginning to end along with the fate of those around her. She has moments that make me proud that she is portraying a strong woman from her shooting an egocentric trainer in the leg, to her standing up for her friends and biting the bullet for him. Unfortunately, she is mostly portrayed as a whiny child who is upset that she was put in the faction she is in, but when she chooses another faction, she doesn’t want to leave her family. Over time, she seems to grow into a young adult who can take care of herself, but is still dependent on the reassurance of her male counterpart. I believe that this is a great example of male gaze which, while they try to create equality between genders, it still kind of lacks in a sense that men are still displayed as physically stronger than all women featured. Women are mostly displayed as meek or subservient to male counterparts.

Beside the male gaze presentation, there is also a show of the well-off factions versus Abnegation. I related to Abnegation because there was a point in my life that my family didn’t make a lot of money. My mother started delivering meals on wheels and, since we couldn’t afford daycare, my sister and I would go with her. We bought our clothes from the thrift store (and believe me, 1998-2003 were rough for me). Children at my school took my gaze away and were bestowing it on me with nasty looks and judgements.

Moving forward and how this film “appeals” to women, “…it allows them [the spectator] to oscillate between passivity (watching the suffering woman) and activity (empathetically suffering along with her)” (Hollinger 43). Tris goes through a lot of suffering throughout the film. She has to move away from her family with the potential of never seeing them again, is threatened multiple times to be killed/factionless, she has to shoot one of her best friends in self-defense, both of her parents die, and she winds up factionless and being hunted down at the end with the unknown ahead.

BUT OH, LOOK…

at least she has her man.