Why Are All the Cartoon Mothers Dead?—Revisited

Sarah Boxer originally asked this question in the July/August 2014 issue of The Atlantic and I wondered right along with her in a previous post. She points out that not only do children’s filmmakers kill off the mothers with brutal regularity, but they are now replacing them with perfect fathers.

She saw this as a last, desperate chauvinistic power grab. An attempt to establish a kinder, gentler patriarchy.

And I suggested that it was the film industry’s attempt to model good fathering to a nation of underachieving dads.

Disney Studios’, the most matricidal of all filmmakers, latest release follows Ms Boxer’s scenario with chilling exactitude. Into the Woods is a fairy tale composed of fairy tales; and since fairy tales are littered with dead mothers we should expect this.

But Into the Woods exceeded even my most fevered imaginings.

The plotline is composed of four fairy tales smushed together.
• Rapunzel: In which a wicked witch steals a couple’s first-born child because the husband stole some salad greens from her garden. The witch imprisons the child in a tower where she is eventually saved by a handsome prince. Number of dead mothers? 0
• Little Red Ridinghood: A little girl stops to talk to a wolf on her way to her grandmother’s house. The wolf runs ahead and eats the grandmother and then Little Red Ridinghood. A woodsman comes and kills the wolf and frees the girl and her granny from the belly of the beast. Number of dead mothers? 0
• Cinderella: A young woman whose mother is dead is abused by her wicked stepmother and stepsisters. Her fairy godmother helps her attend a ball where she meets the prince who falls in love with her and they get married. Number of dead mothers? 1
• Jack and the Beanstalk: A young lad sells the family cow for a handful of magic beans that grow into a giant beanstalk which he climbs and brings back a fortune. He chops down the beanstalk and kills the giant whose fortune he stole. Number of dead mothers? 0

However, Into the Woods changes those fairy tales.
• Rapunzel: The man and his wife have another child, a son this time. But the witch laid a curse on the boy rendering him unable to father children. Into the Woods opens

with the now grown child and his wife running a bakery and wishing for a child. The witch appears and gives the couple a quest for four items and gives them a child when they procure them for her. The wife then dies trying to help find Jack. Number of dead mothers? 1

• Little Red Ridinghood: Both her mother and grandmother are killed by the giantess who comes down another beanstalk to find Jack, who killed her husband. Number of dead mothers? 2

• Cinderella: No change here. Number of dead mothers? 1
• Jack and the Beanstalk: Jack’s mother dies trying to save Jack from the giantess. Number of dead mothers? 1

Final dead mother count:
The Brothers Grimm: 1
Disney Studios: 5
Yikes!

But wait. There’s more.

The Baker, who couldn’t even hold his own baby without making it cry, heeds the advice of his father’s ghost (the father who deserted him and his mother when he was a boy), and becomes a model dad.

But wait. There’s more.

The Baker takes in the now orphaned Jack and Little Red Ridinghood, and Cinderella becomes his wife–thus forming a model American mixed family.

I’m not quite willing to agree with Ms Boxer, although Into the Woods seems to prove her point in spades. I still believe that the film industry is simply telling us the story of our times and suggesting a way out—functional fathers.

But Into the Woods seems a bit heavy handed. Too many dead mothers—and not only mothers.

For good measure Disney kills off the wicked witch and the giantess, the two villains of the story, who of course are women. The giantess could be a metaphor for a powerful, angry woman; and the witch, who put her “adopted” daughter in a tower, is the quintessential over-achieving helicopter mom. The only grown up female characters that survive are the indecisive Cinderella, the wicked stepmother and stepsisters, and Rapunzel who rides into the sunset with her Prince Charming. Not a single man was killed or even harmed in this movie.

The way out for our culture is not just functional fathers. We desperately need functional mothers too. But with their role in society also morphing and changing, women are just as confused, stressed, and overworked as men. Unfortunately, the film industry has very few role models for them and even less advice. All it seems to be able to do is kill them off.*

Time for a new plot line, Disney.

*I totally enjoyed this film, but the witch and feminist parts of me needed to write this.