Donkey Skin
Oct. 8th, 2005 09:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatJust finished watching the 1971 french film Donkey Skin directed by Jacques Demy, the director of the Umbrellas of Cherbourg, on DVD courtesy of netflix. The film stars Catherine Deneuve, Jaques Perrin, and Jean Marais and is a smorgesborg of colorful images and symbols. Extras contain three tid-bits worthy of viewage: 1) footage of an old interview with Jacques Demy, 2) three French analysts deciphering the symbols and themes, and 3)a review of the book art related to the fairy tale from 1700s onwards.
The fairy tale was written by Charles Perrault in the 1700s for children. A fantastical tale against incest told by nurses to children. (Or so the analysts stated in their discussion.)
The story is a simple one - about a princess who goes into hiding to escape her father's marriage proposal. What is fascinating about the proposal is why the father makes it - it's because upon her death bed, his queen and the girl's mother requested he not marry anyone who was not more beautiful than she was. The counselors state that this is a vain wish that the king is honoring and isn't goodness and prosperity more important than surface beauty? The king ignores them, insisting on beauty. And of course in the king's eyes the only woman beautiful enough for him is his own daughter. The analyste's interpret this as how all father's see their children or indeed the king's wish to resuscitate his dead wife via his daughter (it helps that both the queen and her daughter are played by Catherine Deneuve. ) But another possible interpretation is that beauty is all that is important. Later on in the story, we have the prince notice the princess not in her dirty donkey skin, but in a lovely golden dress looking in her mirror - and it is in her mirror that she sees him looking at her. To obtain her, he asks all the princesses in the land to try on a ring, stating you have to have a "slender" finger in order to fit it. Beautiful and "slender".
For a while I was uncertain whether this was the filmmaker's choice or the writers, but learned in one of the extras that the filmmaker had more or less taken the story word for word from the Perralt's poem, the fairy tale was told in verse. The only choices the director/filmmaker made was to emphasize the incest and question the taboo that lay at the center of it. So watching it, I was struck with and disturbed by two themes. One the fact that in order to find a mate, a woman must be beautiful. And beauty is equated with thinness, wealth, and cleanness. This of course is not true, I know because I've met more than one beautiful woman (as described by the fashion mags and society) who was unattached and could not find anyone, and more than one woman considered unattractive by society (overweight, etc) who is happily married or in love with someone - but both the fairy tale told to the children at an early age and the film also directed towards children emphasize this myth.
The other theme is the incest. It is stated twice in the film that all girls want to marry their fathers or find someone like their father. (And indeed what woman has not been accused of wanting this either by an analyst or by her mother or a friend?) It's completely natural to want this but also completely wrong as the lilac fairy tells us (of course the lilac fairy does have an alterior motive, she wants the girl's father herself). Equally, it is hinted at that all fathers wish to marry their daughters or are attracted to them. That men have an interest, repressed, in the child of their wife. While the fairy tale insists this is wrong, the filmmaker questions whether or not it is. An odd and risky choice, which the analysts say is fairly subtle, but I'm not so sure it was.
The filmmaker examines the incest taboo symbolically. When the girl is proposed to by her father - her father makes a sexually suggestive remark about a ring and leans in close. [*Important to note here that the father hadn't seen his daughter in a year, he'd told her to stay away from him since his wife died and she reminded him too much of his dead wife for whom he was grieving. So when he sees her portrait, he has no idea who she is and accuses his counselors of keeping her from him. That's when they inform him that she's his own daughter. ] He is seen granting her every wish - the obliging parent, and kisses her chastely on the forhead - yet by the same token covers her with the donkey skin she requested from him. Later, when the daughter seeks to hide via the lilac fairy's help, she asks the fairy who dresses her in the dead donkey skin and smears her face with mud - "why must you make me ugly?" And the taunts of the children and townsfolk in the film are - you are filthy, smelly and hairy. So being smeared with excrement or just mud, placed in an animal skin, and reduced to menial tasks - cooking, cleaning, tending pigs - makes the princess ugly in everyone's eyes. Diseased. Exiled to a hut in the forest amongst the other animals. The father is equally exiled, separated from his loved one.
Falling for her father, the bad thoughts, taint her - and make her dirty. She isn't cleansed until she falls for a handsome prince, who is dressed all in red. The filmmaker's choice. Red for love or red for menstration? The prince's bed is even red. The prince is also lead to her by a rose, pink. And the cake that he finds her ring in - one of love, with no frosting - the ring in the cake is an old folk custom, the woman bakes a cake and the man who finds the ring, marries her - I remember hearing a similar version in the Guaine Valley (okay I know I spelled that wrong but too lazy to look it up) in Wales way back in 1987. At any rate, the symbolism shows us that they are no longer innocent. Yet, it switches back again, in a dream sequence, after he eats the cake, where the two cavort like children stuffing their mouths with cake, they are dressed entirely in white, innocent. So they may not be innocent in reality - the hormones, but in their dreams - in the fantasy, they remain children. One of the analysts (who discussed the film in the DVD extras) suggests that the ring on the finger, much like Cinderella trying on her slipper is the most sexual image in the film. Yet, another analyst points out, we're back to innocence again when the couple is wed, everyone is in white, clean. Including the father and the fairy godmother, whom he has decided to wed.
It's at the end that the filmmaker questions the sancticty and happiness of the couples. The fairy godmother leans in to tell the princess she is to marry the father and tells her to try not to look vexxed. The princess does indeed look vexxed, until her father reassures her that now they'll never be apart. Which makes us wonder two things - was the godmother's advice to the princess to refuse her father in self-interest? And was the father right to want to marry the fairy - should the father and daughter in fact have been together? Happy in their perfect blue kingdom? Then again the father's comment - that now we have found mates, we shall never be separated again - thus our love can go back to the clean platonic variety allowed by law and nature. Very disturbing sequence, made me wonder a bit about Jacques Demy in somewhat the same ways I've been wondering about Joss Whedon and his obsession with super-powered, attractive, adolescent girls. By the same token, I can't help but wonder if this is just part and parcel of being human - these dark desires repressed inside, coming out unbidden in our art - a way of safely expressing something without hurting anyone?
On the other hand - the beauty requirement or constant reinforcement of it does do damage. And I've found myself wondering lately as I scan more than one tv show and movie - about the predominence of only extremely pretty/sexy thin women in tv shows, specifically as the leads - there's only a few exceptions: The West Wing and Arrested Development that I can think of off-hand. And Arrested Development has Chariz Theron and the sister, both very thin and blond with fashion model looks. While every single show on tv has men that are not attractive, with the possible exception of Nip/Tuck (which I adore because it's the only show on TV in which the male leads are more prettier than the female leads - this may be why so many women watch it). Even the commercials sandwiched between each tv show and the drama, tell us that we have to look a certain way to find a guy but in contrast, we women should not be as shallow as men, and be willing to be open-minded.
The beauty myth in our society is perpetuated by our media, fairy tales, and it is directed primarily at women. Oh men get it, but not as strongly.
The analysts after Demy's film all state that it is very feminine for a woman to have a looking glass and that women all know when men notice them (not true by the way, quite a few of us are oblivious), that it is a female trait to dress up for a man to get his attention. I remember recently, two female friends told me that they never bothered putting on make-up that they found their husbands didn't care much about it, nor by extension do most men. But I can't help but wonder if they'd still feel that way if they were single and not married or did not have a significant other?
It's rather easy, I think, not to worry about what you look like when you are receiving positive reinforcement or have obtained love. Also it does not help that we are bombarded by images of what we should look like every day.
In Donkey Skin - the princess is ignored because of her appearance, or revered because of her appearance, nothing else about her matters. Same with many fairy tales - from Snow White to Sleeping Beauty. Rarely is the woman revered for her talent, her brains, her good deeds, or her winning personality. Yet, there are a few tales here and there that go that route - the Little Mermaid, the Snow Queen, Psyche myth. But the ones that fall within our popular culture hit the themes of beauty beyond all else. Even the Bible, the old Testament, tells us that the revered queens were beautiful. The homely ones didn't get very far. But is this really true? In the long run physical beauty does not last and changes. It's also relatively unimportant, not to mention in the eye of the beholder. We all have different concepts of what is beautiful - for one person it might be a rose, another a daisy, another a lily. Some like yellow, some prefer purple, some like both. But in most fairy tales and stories, we only see that it is unimportant in tales about men - such as Beauty and the Beast or the Average Joe, a reality series that was very popular, or Revenge of the Nerds - where the lead nerd ends up with the breathtakingly beautiful yet dumb as a post cheerleader. Or Marilyn Monroe marrying Arthur Miller. Rarely do you see the opposite. This begs the question are men truly more shallow than women? Do they only care about the size of a woman's breasts or how thin she is? Hardly. That is as much a myth as the view that men only want slender pretty girls. I remember doing a dating service with a friend a while back, an online one, they asked us to match our preferrences. My friend eliminated all men that were 10-20 pounds overwieght. When I questioned her on this - she stated, "I don't want a fat guy", she equally eliminated all men under the height of 5'8 (my friend is roughly 5 foot), again I questioned it. "I don't like guys that are my height." Trust me, women are as shallow as men and the fantasy about the goregous woman wanting the nerdy guy is no different than the fantasy about the goregous guy wanting the nerdy girl. We see it in Pretty in Pink which I adored partly for that reason. And in Sixteen Candles. But rarely after that. Mostly they are girls who are made up to look nerdy but aren't really, a la Allyson Hannigan as Willow in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and American Pie who had to be the most attractive nerdy girl I've seen in my life. To give Whedon credit, Xander was equally so. But at least the series had Jonathan. It's not until S5-7 with the intro of Dawn, then later some of Dawn's friends or colleagues that we get more realistic women on the show. Perhaps one of the reasons I liked Joan of Arcadia so much, was the girls on the show were not fashion model pretty, they looked like the girls I went to school with, the ones I hung with, they looked like me. Don't misunderstand me, I'm not saying I think they aren't attractive, I'm saying that they weren't the photogenic fashion model pretty of the magazines.
I ponder this as I wander online hunting male companionship, fearing rejection. Also when I stand on the scale in a movie theater and note that my weight for my height range is still five pounds past what is considered the maximum proportionate to my height. Or is it? Who came up with these absurd ranges anyways? And can you realistically put a range for all body types? Big boned and small? And I wonder to what degree are we responsible for continuing to push these stereotypes and myths on to our children and children's children?
At the end of Donkey Skin, there's a disturbing sentence - that the fairy tale will be remembered as long as their are grandmothers and mothers to tell it to their children. The beauty myth has indeed become a curse we pass on, without thinking about it...this is what you have to do, this what you have to be, this is what is necessary...and maybe it's true, part of me sort of believes it - still believes it actually, even though I've been presented with more than enough evidence to the contrary.
If you've never seen this film and are a film buff or into fairy tales, I heartily recommend it. It's available on DVD and you can get it through netflix. The film is a beautiful one, with all sorts of colors and symbols. Also some lovely songs. It is in French with subtitles.
Well worth the time.
The fairy tale was written by Charles Perrault in the 1700s for children. A fantastical tale against incest told by nurses to children. (Or so the analysts stated in their discussion.)
The story is a simple one - about a princess who goes into hiding to escape her father's marriage proposal. What is fascinating about the proposal is why the father makes it - it's because upon her death bed, his queen and the girl's mother requested he not marry anyone who was not more beautiful than she was. The counselors state that this is a vain wish that the king is honoring and isn't goodness and prosperity more important than surface beauty? The king ignores them, insisting on beauty. And of course in the king's eyes the only woman beautiful enough for him is his own daughter. The analyste's interpret this as how all father's see their children or indeed the king's wish to resuscitate his dead wife via his daughter (it helps that both the queen and her daughter are played by Catherine Deneuve. ) But another possible interpretation is that beauty is all that is important. Later on in the story, we have the prince notice the princess not in her dirty donkey skin, but in a lovely golden dress looking in her mirror - and it is in her mirror that she sees him looking at her. To obtain her, he asks all the princesses in the land to try on a ring, stating you have to have a "slender" finger in order to fit it. Beautiful and "slender".
For a while I was uncertain whether this was the filmmaker's choice or the writers, but learned in one of the extras that the filmmaker had more or less taken the story word for word from the Perralt's poem, the fairy tale was told in verse. The only choices the director/filmmaker made was to emphasize the incest and question the taboo that lay at the center of it. So watching it, I was struck with and disturbed by two themes. One the fact that in order to find a mate, a woman must be beautiful. And beauty is equated with thinness, wealth, and cleanness. This of course is not true, I know because I've met more than one beautiful woman (as described by the fashion mags and society) who was unattached and could not find anyone, and more than one woman considered unattractive by society (overweight, etc) who is happily married or in love with someone - but both the fairy tale told to the children at an early age and the film also directed towards children emphasize this myth.
The other theme is the incest. It is stated twice in the film that all girls want to marry their fathers or find someone like their father. (And indeed what woman has not been accused of wanting this either by an analyst or by her mother or a friend?) It's completely natural to want this but also completely wrong as the lilac fairy tells us (of course the lilac fairy does have an alterior motive, she wants the girl's father herself). Equally, it is hinted at that all fathers wish to marry their daughters or are attracted to them. That men have an interest, repressed, in the child of their wife. While the fairy tale insists this is wrong, the filmmaker questions whether or not it is. An odd and risky choice, which the analysts say is fairly subtle, but I'm not so sure it was.
The filmmaker examines the incest taboo symbolically. When the girl is proposed to by her father - her father makes a sexually suggestive remark about a ring and leans in close. [*Important to note here that the father hadn't seen his daughter in a year, he'd told her to stay away from him since his wife died and she reminded him too much of his dead wife for whom he was grieving. So when he sees her portrait, he has no idea who she is and accuses his counselors of keeping her from him. That's when they inform him that she's his own daughter. ] He is seen granting her every wish - the obliging parent, and kisses her chastely on the forhead - yet by the same token covers her with the donkey skin she requested from him. Later, when the daughter seeks to hide via the lilac fairy's help, she asks the fairy who dresses her in the dead donkey skin and smears her face with mud - "why must you make me ugly?" And the taunts of the children and townsfolk in the film are - you are filthy, smelly and hairy. So being smeared with excrement or just mud, placed in an animal skin, and reduced to menial tasks - cooking, cleaning, tending pigs - makes the princess ugly in everyone's eyes. Diseased. Exiled to a hut in the forest amongst the other animals. The father is equally exiled, separated from his loved one.
Falling for her father, the bad thoughts, taint her - and make her dirty. She isn't cleansed until she falls for a handsome prince, who is dressed all in red. The filmmaker's choice. Red for love or red for menstration? The prince's bed is even red. The prince is also lead to her by a rose, pink. And the cake that he finds her ring in - one of love, with no frosting - the ring in the cake is an old folk custom, the woman bakes a cake and the man who finds the ring, marries her - I remember hearing a similar version in the Guaine Valley (okay I know I spelled that wrong but too lazy to look it up) in Wales way back in 1987. At any rate, the symbolism shows us that they are no longer innocent. Yet, it switches back again, in a dream sequence, after he eats the cake, where the two cavort like children stuffing their mouths with cake, they are dressed entirely in white, innocent. So they may not be innocent in reality - the hormones, but in their dreams - in the fantasy, they remain children. One of the analysts (who discussed the film in the DVD extras) suggests that the ring on the finger, much like Cinderella trying on her slipper is the most sexual image in the film. Yet, another analyst points out, we're back to innocence again when the couple is wed, everyone is in white, clean. Including the father and the fairy godmother, whom he has decided to wed.
It's at the end that the filmmaker questions the sancticty and happiness of the couples. The fairy godmother leans in to tell the princess she is to marry the father and tells her to try not to look vexxed. The princess does indeed look vexxed, until her father reassures her that now they'll never be apart. Which makes us wonder two things - was the godmother's advice to the princess to refuse her father in self-interest? And was the father right to want to marry the fairy - should the father and daughter in fact have been together? Happy in their perfect blue kingdom? Then again the father's comment - that now we have found mates, we shall never be separated again - thus our love can go back to the clean platonic variety allowed by law and nature. Very disturbing sequence, made me wonder a bit about Jacques Demy in somewhat the same ways I've been wondering about Joss Whedon and his obsession with super-powered, attractive, adolescent girls. By the same token, I can't help but wonder if this is just part and parcel of being human - these dark desires repressed inside, coming out unbidden in our art - a way of safely expressing something without hurting anyone?
On the other hand - the beauty requirement or constant reinforcement of it does do damage. And I've found myself wondering lately as I scan more than one tv show and movie - about the predominence of only extremely pretty/sexy thin women in tv shows, specifically as the leads - there's only a few exceptions: The West Wing and Arrested Development that I can think of off-hand. And Arrested Development has Chariz Theron and the sister, both very thin and blond with fashion model looks. While every single show on tv has men that are not attractive, with the possible exception of Nip/Tuck (which I adore because it's the only show on TV in which the male leads are more prettier than the female leads - this may be why so many women watch it). Even the commercials sandwiched between each tv show and the drama, tell us that we have to look a certain way to find a guy but in contrast, we women should not be as shallow as men, and be willing to be open-minded.
The beauty myth in our society is perpetuated by our media, fairy tales, and it is directed primarily at women. Oh men get it, but not as strongly.
The analysts after Demy's film all state that it is very feminine for a woman to have a looking glass and that women all know when men notice them (not true by the way, quite a few of us are oblivious), that it is a female trait to dress up for a man to get his attention. I remember recently, two female friends told me that they never bothered putting on make-up that they found their husbands didn't care much about it, nor by extension do most men. But I can't help but wonder if they'd still feel that way if they were single and not married or did not have a significant other?
It's rather easy, I think, not to worry about what you look like when you are receiving positive reinforcement or have obtained love. Also it does not help that we are bombarded by images of what we should look like every day.
In Donkey Skin - the princess is ignored because of her appearance, or revered because of her appearance, nothing else about her matters. Same with many fairy tales - from Snow White to Sleeping Beauty. Rarely is the woman revered for her talent, her brains, her good deeds, or her winning personality. Yet, there are a few tales here and there that go that route - the Little Mermaid, the Snow Queen, Psyche myth. But the ones that fall within our popular culture hit the themes of beauty beyond all else. Even the Bible, the old Testament, tells us that the revered queens were beautiful. The homely ones didn't get very far. But is this really true? In the long run physical beauty does not last and changes. It's also relatively unimportant, not to mention in the eye of the beholder. We all have different concepts of what is beautiful - for one person it might be a rose, another a daisy, another a lily. Some like yellow, some prefer purple, some like both. But in most fairy tales and stories, we only see that it is unimportant in tales about men - such as Beauty and the Beast or the Average Joe, a reality series that was very popular, or Revenge of the Nerds - where the lead nerd ends up with the breathtakingly beautiful yet dumb as a post cheerleader. Or Marilyn Monroe marrying Arthur Miller. Rarely do you see the opposite. This begs the question are men truly more shallow than women? Do they only care about the size of a woman's breasts or how thin she is? Hardly. That is as much a myth as the view that men only want slender pretty girls. I remember doing a dating service with a friend a while back, an online one, they asked us to match our preferrences. My friend eliminated all men that were 10-20 pounds overwieght. When I questioned her on this - she stated, "I don't want a fat guy", she equally eliminated all men under the height of 5'8 (my friend is roughly 5 foot), again I questioned it. "I don't like guys that are my height." Trust me, women are as shallow as men and the fantasy about the goregous woman wanting the nerdy guy is no different than the fantasy about the goregous guy wanting the nerdy girl. We see it in Pretty in Pink which I adored partly for that reason. And in Sixteen Candles. But rarely after that. Mostly they are girls who are made up to look nerdy but aren't really, a la Allyson Hannigan as Willow in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and American Pie who had to be the most attractive nerdy girl I've seen in my life. To give Whedon credit, Xander was equally so. But at least the series had Jonathan. It's not until S5-7 with the intro of Dawn, then later some of Dawn's friends or colleagues that we get more realistic women on the show. Perhaps one of the reasons I liked Joan of Arcadia so much, was the girls on the show were not fashion model pretty, they looked like the girls I went to school with, the ones I hung with, they looked like me. Don't misunderstand me, I'm not saying I think they aren't attractive, I'm saying that they weren't the photogenic fashion model pretty of the magazines.
I ponder this as I wander online hunting male companionship, fearing rejection. Also when I stand on the scale in a movie theater and note that my weight for my height range is still five pounds past what is considered the maximum proportionate to my height. Or is it? Who came up with these absurd ranges anyways? And can you realistically put a range for all body types? Big boned and small? And I wonder to what degree are we responsible for continuing to push these stereotypes and myths on to our children and children's children?
At the end of Donkey Skin, there's a disturbing sentence - that the fairy tale will be remembered as long as their are grandmothers and mothers to tell it to their children. The beauty myth has indeed become a curse we pass on, without thinking about it...this is what you have to do, this what you have to be, this is what is necessary...and maybe it's true, part of me sort of believes it - still believes it actually, even though I've been presented with more than enough evidence to the contrary.
If you've never seen this film and are a film buff or into fairy tales, I heartily recommend it. It's available on DVD and you can get it through netflix. The film is a beautiful one, with all sorts of colors and symbols. Also some lovely songs. It is in French with subtitles.
Well worth the time.