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[Flashback] The Same Woman Wrote Maleficent and Beauty and the Beast—Here's How They're Linked
Time ^ | May 30, 2014 | Lily Rothman

Posted on 08/13/2022 3:48:09 AM PDT by otness_e

Linda Woolverton knows her Disney princesses. After all, the veteran screenwriter worked on Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King, Mulan, the 2010 Alice in Wonderland and the Sleeping Beauty reimagination Maleficent, which arrives in theaters today.

So she speaks from experience when she says that Maleficent, which stars Angelina Jolie as the titular villain, couldn’t have existed until this point in time — because the world wasn’t necessarily ready for such a strong, complicated female protagonist.

When Woolverton worked on Beauty, she says, it was shortly after the arrival of The Little Mermaid; the Disney princess was well aligned with Ariel’s interests, like combing her hair and giving up her voice for a boy she barely knows. It wasn’t that there was explicit pressure to make Beauty‘s Belle behave like that, but that, Woolverton recalls, those attitudes just went without saying. “It was very difficult to change the point of view of the Disney princess,” she tells TIME. “It was just that the point of view of a Disney heroine is this; it isn’t somebody who does this. That was hard.”

(Excerpt) Read more at time.com ...


TOPICS:
KEYWORDS: beautyandthebeast; disney; lindawoolverton; maleficent
Quite frankly, I think this bit, far more than even the 2017 live action remake for Beauty and the Beast, ruined the 1991 Disney film, at least for me. Didn't help matters much that I had to deal with a radical feminist professor in college only a few years before then, and started suspecting that movie pushed the same messages when thinking back on it. And here's another tidbit as well: Did you know that Maleficent being made into a full good guy in a complete disrespecting of the original movie and the entire POINT behind her character was Woolverton's idea, and more to the point, even Angelina Jolie, Maleficent's actress in that film, tried to rein in on her? It's mentioned in that making of documentary... by Woolverton herself.
1 posted on 08/13/2022 3:48:09 AM PDT by otness_e
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To: otness_e
So she speaks from experience when she says that Maleficent, which stars Angelina Jolie as the titular villain, couldn’t have existed until this point in time — because the world wasn’t necessarily ready for such a strong, complicated female protagonist.

You know what, lady?

The world STILL ain't ready!

2 posted on 08/13/2022 4:15:55 AM PDT by icclearly
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To: otness_e; All

The cultural left is deeply devoted to the morally divergent. A character with the amoral mentally of Cesare Borgia is not ‘a strong woman’ but an ethically debached one. Making such a character a sort of hero in a children’s oriented media presentation is propagandizing deviance to those to intellectually informed to know they are being manipulated.


3 posted on 08/13/2022 4:38:51 AM PDT by robowombat (Orth, all y aa)
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To: robowombat

You may be thinking of Cesare’s sister Lucrezia

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucrezia_Borgia


4 posted on 08/13/2022 4:48:25 AM PDT by SauronOfMordor (A Leftist can't enjoy life unless they are controlling, hurting, or destroying others)
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To: otness_e

From what I recall we’re talking about a character with the intellectual emotional development of a particularly mean self obsessed 12 yr old. Stupid vicious cow will do for me.


5 posted on 08/13/2022 4:58:06 AM PDT by TalBlack (We have a Christian duty and a patriotic duty. God help us.)
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To: otness_e

I don’t know... having read the plots of both Cruella and Maleficent in Wikipedia, I think that cruella is the “bad” movie in that Cruella does not reform. Maleficent is betrayed and this embittered and tries to get revenge, but regrets it. Cruella just stays bad and does not reform.

The whole issue of Maleficent being a strong and complex woman the world is not ready for is utter BS. It is disturbing when people make drastic changes to stories that are embedded in tradition, because people don’t like their views jostled like that, but the story of the movie Maleficent is also a common one: person is betrayed, vows revenge and becomes evil, sees the results, and reforms.

Cruella seems (from the description in Wikipedia) to be a story of someone who is embittered and just gets worse.


6 posted on 08/13/2022 5:29:58 AM PDT by Chicory
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To: robowombat

No kidding. And thanks to that and her OCD in trying to “prop up Belle” like this with this kind of talk, Belle’s wrecked as a character. Ironically, the 2017 remake may have if anything done more to fix her character ultimately. I sure as heck hope Woolverton doesn’t adore the French Revolution, because I currently fear 1991 Belle will end up becoming a Jacobin down the road.

Heck, it was such a bad idea to promote Maleficent as an actual good guy that even Angelina Jolie, the woman who played the character in this garbage film, was against making her a firm good guy if this is to be believed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlf0pDy43g8


7 posted on 08/13/2022 5:33:55 AM PDT by otness_e
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To: Chicory

The problem is that Maleficent even feeling regret for what she did, much less trying to redeem herself for it, goes against the entire nature of her character, basically Disney’s devil figure. It would be like, to use an example, Frieza from Dragon Ball all of a sudden regretting his misdeeds. Heck, in the original movie, she wasn’t even motivated by revenge, that was just an excuse, she just loved being a heinous villain.


8 posted on 08/13/2022 5:36:40 AM PDT by otness_e
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To: otness_e

Not directed at you personally, FRiend, but we what the heck is everybody talking about?! Really? An entire intellectual discussion thread about a Disney character??!! Sorry. ‘tis to laugh.


9 posted on 08/13/2022 6:13:19 AM PDT by Afterguard (Deplorable me! )
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To: Afterguard

It’s less the Disney character herself per-se, and more how the screenwriter for her film baldly admitted to trying to push a radical agenda onto kids in both that movie and one of her earlier works back in the 1990s.


10 posted on 08/13/2022 6:20:40 AM PDT by otness_e
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To: otness_e

Okie dokie. Thanks for the clarification. But it’s Disney, so....


11 posted on 08/13/2022 6:24:33 AM PDT by Afterguard (Deplorable me! )
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To: Afterguard

Trust me, this if anything just shows how far Disney’s falling. And quite frankly, this was ultimately Jeffrey Katzenberg’s fault. Let’s not forget, he’s the reason that feminazi Linda Woolverton’s working at Disney, and all because she left behind a copy of Running Before The Wind as her “resume.” That, and him demanding a feminist twist to the story because some critics hated that Ariel even WANTED to go for Eric, even after all the badass stuff she did including saving his hide twice. We had two planned renditions for Beauty and the Beast: Jim Cox and Richard Purdum. Katzenberg nixed both, and in Cox’s case, he never even bothered to give a reason for nixing it (and I’d argue Cox’s case was worse especially when he was personally recommended by Michael Eisner, back when he actually CARED about preserving Disney’s legacy).


12 posted on 08/13/2022 6:41:55 AM PDT by otness_e
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To: Afterguard
Disney films are propaganda for something being poured directly into children's minds. Propaganda for bad things is more culturally destructive than anything else.

And "NO!" ... it's not "just entertainment". It was NEVER "just entertainment".

13 posted on 08/13/2022 6:50:54 AM PDT by NorthMountain (... the right of the peopIe to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed)
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To: NorthMountain

Almost every Disney movie involves a child rebelling against their parents.


14 posted on 08/13/2022 7:19:23 AM PDT by dfwgator (Endut! Hoch Hech!)
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To: otness_e
Go with the 1946 French version by Jean Cocteau, as restored by Criterion.
15 posted on 08/13/2022 7:37:08 AM PDT by Roadrunner383 (;)
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To: dfwgator

No, actually, very few Disney movies involve a child rebelling against their parents, or guardians for that matter. Snow White ran away from her stepmother for a very good reason as the latter tried to KILL her. Cinderella never even entertained the thought of rebelling against her stepfamily, either. I guess you could make the argument that Aurora and/or Phillip might have rebelled technically, but I’m not sure dreaming of a prince really counts. Not to mention they were technically adults for that time. Same goes for Dumbo, Jungle Book, Sword and the Stone, etc., etc. Rescuers had the girl, an orphan, being kidnapped by a greedy psychopath, so she doesn’t count. Same goes for Cody in the sequel, who didn’t rebel against his mom, either. Belle didn’t rebel either (I guess the closest thing to an actual rebellion was Chip stowing away in Belle’s handbag). I guess you could say Ariel and Jasmine might have rebelled, but Ariel’s wasn’t exactly treated positively (and quite frankly, only the Ursula deal was an ACTUAL willful rebellion, which was definitely treated as a bad thing. The stuff before that were more OCD-type whims without really thinking).

Besides, Malcolm in the Middle for most of its run had far more actual child rebellions than Disney in its entire history ever did.


16 posted on 08/13/2022 7:24:35 PM PDT by otness_e
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To: NorthMountain

The most Disney did before Eisner or, more accurately, Katzenberg took the wheel was promoting traditional American values if we are to go by propaganda. Beyond that, Walt generally avoided pushing for any propaganda, even of his own side (otherwise, the films would be blatant promotion of Barry Goldwater for example).


17 posted on 08/13/2022 7:26:05 PM PDT by otness_e
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To: Roadrunner383

Thanks. Too bad even without Woolverton screwing up the whole film, ESPECIALLY in light of how Maleficent tried to push the same messages, Beauty and the Beast’s whole moral of “true beauty comes from within” I’m just downright cynical about. You can blame the likes of Jean-Paul Sartre and how he treated that moral as a complete joke with how he seduced and abused those girls for why I’m cynical of the moral as a whole (especially when Sartre was deformed yet the girls “followed the moral” by ignoring his defects, and then basically were porked until ignored and then made the subject of petty letters between himself and Simone de Beauvoir).


18 posted on 08/13/2022 7:28:59 PM PDT by otness_e
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To: otness_e
Walt Disney (and Warner Bros and others) definitely produced pro-America, Anti-Japanese, anti-German propaganda during WWII, and most of it was obvious and unapologetic. See Donald Duck in "Der Fuhrer's Face" for a hilarious example. "Propaganda" doesn't mean "bad" or even "dishonest". It means promoting a particular idea, belief, or agenda.
19 posted on 08/13/2022 8:15:37 PM PDT by NorthMountain (... the right of the peopIe to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed)
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To: NorthMountain

Point well taken (though I’m pretty sure wartime propaganda was kind of required to build morale). You forgot to mention Education of Death as well, also his original Chicken Little short (the book Foxy Loxy used to manipulate everyone and win? Originally it was meant to be Mein Kampf. It was changed to a generic psychology book in the final release to ensure it wasn’t a dated reference. Even there, the passages Loxy was reading aloud were taken directly from Mein Kampf, so the effect was still the same overall). Certainly shows that contrary to his critics right now, Disney NEVER supported Hitler (if he did, why would he make anti-Nazi propaganda during World War II?). In fact, if anything, he was probably one of the smarter and more ethical people by making sure that neither the Communists NOR the Nazis were supported (he played a huge role in HUAC after all).

Too bad “propaganda” now is treated as bad and dishonest right now.


20 posted on 08/14/2022 7:31:02 PM PDT by otness_e
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