Glen Keane, animator of Ariel, the Beast, and Aladdin, found himself at a bit of a loss after finishing work on Tarzan. He was assigned to work on Treasure Planet, where he was responsible for the innovative animation used for John Silver, but he was not entirely happy with the project. He felt that Treasure Planet was yet another example of stepping away from what, in his opinion, Disney did best—fairy tales. Keane began putting together ideas for one of the few remaining “major” fairy tales that Disney had not yet animated—Rapunzel.
His plans for a Rapunzel feature ran into just a few small snags.
Spoilery, since this is a film I can’t really discuss without discussing the ending…
First, despite the launch of the very successful Disney Princess franchise, the Disney animation studio had, for the most part, backed away from the fairy tale films to explore other things—dinosaurs, bears, transformed llamas, aliens invading Hawai’i, and things apparently meant to be talking chickens. That most of these films did far worse than the fairy tale features, even before getting adjusted for inflation, did not seem to stop the studio. Second, Keane found himself struggling with the story (he had previously worked primarily as an animator, not a scriptwriter, although he had contributed to story development with Pocahontas and Tarzan) and with technical details, most involving Rapunzel’s hair. After four years of watching this, the studio shut down the project in early 2006.
About three weeks later, the studio opened the project again.
During those weeks, John Lasseter, previously of Pixar, had been installed as the Chief Creative Officer of Disney Animation. Lasseter admired Keane’s work, and if not exactly sold on the initial concept Keane had for the film, agreed that focusing on something Disney was known and (mostly) loved for, fairy tales, was a good idea.
The next decision: how to animate the film. Lasseter, not surprisingly, wanted Tangled to be a computer animated film. Keane originally had a traditional hand drawn film in mind, but a 2003 meeting with computer animators, which focused on the comparative strengths and weaknesses of hand drawn and CGI films, convinced him that computer animation had potential. But Keane wanted something a bit different: a computer animated film that didn’t look like a computer animated film, but looked like a moving, animated painting. Even more specifically, he wanted computer drawings that looked fluid, warm, and almost hand drawn. He wanted CGI films to use at least some of the techniques that traditional animators had used to create realistic movement and more human looking characters.
If at this point, you are reading this and wondering why, exactly, if Keane wanted a film that looked hand drawn, he didn’t just go ahead with a hand drawn film, the main reason is money, and the second reason is that computer animated films had, for the most part, been more successful at the box office than the hand animated films, and the third reason is money. Keane also liked some of the effects that computers could create—a fourth reason—but the fifth reason was, again, money.
Some of the effects Keane wanted had been achieved in Tarzan or over at Pixar; others had to be developed by the studio. Animators studied French paintings and used non-photorealistic rendering (essentially, the direct opposite of what rival Dreamworks was doing with their computer animation) to create the effect of moving paintings.
This still left animators with one major technical problem: animating Rapunzel’s hair. Hair had always been difficult for Disney animators, even when it consisted of one solid mass of color that didn’t necessarily need to move realistically. Watch, for instance, the way Snow White’s hair rarely if ever bounces, or the way most of Ariel’s hair remains a single solid mass. Rapunzel’s hair, however, served as an actual plot point in the film, and therefore had to look realistic, and in one scene even had to float—realistically. It’s quite possible that the many scenes where Rapunzel’s hair gets caught in something, or proves difficult to carry, were at least partly inspired by the technical issues of animating it. Eventually, an updated program called Dynamic Wires solved the problem.
By this point in development, Disney executives realized that Tangled would be a milestone for Disney: its 50th animated feature. Animators added a proud announcement of this achievement to the beginning of the film, along with the image of Steamboat Mickey. They also added various nods to earlier films: Pinocchio, Pumba, and Louis the alligator all just happen to be hanging out in the Snuggly Ducking pub, though Louis is less hanging out, and more condemned to servitude as a puppet, and Pinocchio is hiding. When Flynn and Rapunzel visit the library, they find a number of books telling the stories of previous Disney princesses, and somewhere or other, Mother Gothel managed to find the spinning wheel that proved so disastrous to Princess Aurora. Such touches were hardly new to Disney films, of course—the next time you see Tarzan, pay careful attention to Jane’s tea service—but Tangled has more than the usual number.
(Incidentally, my headcanon is that Mother Gothel, impressed by Maleficent’s admirable skin care program and skill in psychological warfare, picked up the spinning wheel as a memento of her idol, but I have to admit this is not actually supported by anything in the film.)
Tangled also had to contend with other Disney marketing issues—for example, the decision to put Rapunzel into a purple dress. Sure, purple is the color of royalty, but wearing purple also helped distinguish her from blonde Disney princesses Cinderella (blue) and Aurora (pink.) Even more importantly, this also allowed the Disney Princess line to finally offer small children a purple dress, which was apparently felt to be a decided lack. That didn’t completely solve the color problem, since the Disney Princess lineup still doesn’t have any sparkly orange and black dresses—small emo children also want to sparkle, Disney!—but I think we can count it as progress.
The other major marketing issue had less to do with merchandising, and more to do with the recent release of The Princess and the Frog, a film that, despite its trademark Disney fairy tale status, had proven to be a slight disappointment at the box office. Disney marketing executives believed they knew why: the word “Princess” in the title had scared off little boys, who had flocked to The Lion King and Aladdin, two films without the word “Princess” in the title. Why, exactly, those same little boys had not flocked to The Emperor’s New Groove, Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Treasure Planet, Brother Bear, and Home on the Range, films all notable for not having the word “Princess” in their titles, was a question those marketing executives apparently didn’t ask. Instead, they demanded that the new film drop any reference to “Princess” or even “Rapunzel” in the title, instead changing it to Tangled, a demand that would be repeated with Frozen.
That left animators with one remaining issues: the story. After health issues in 2008 forced Glen Keane to take a less active role in the film development, the new directors took another look at the story treatment, and made some radical changes. Keane had originally planned something somewhat close to the irreverence of Shrek. The new directors backpedaled from that, instead crafting a more traditional Disney animated feature. They did avoid the near-ubiquitous sidekick voiced by a celebrity comedian, although Zachary Levi, cast as the hero, comes somewhat close to fulfilling this role. Otherwise, the film hit all of the other Disney Renaissance beats: amusing sidekicks (not voiced by celebrity comedians), songs, an Evil Villain, a romance marked by a song that could be (and was) released as a hit pop single, and a protagonist desperately wanting something different from life.
Which is not to say that Rapunzel is quite like previous Disney heroines. For one thing—as with all of the more recent Disney animated films—she’s not hoping for romance and marriage, or trying to escape from one. Indeed, as the film eventually reveals, she genuinely believes that she is in the tower for her own protection, an argument most of the other Disney princesses—Aurora and, to a lesser extent, Snow White, excepted—fiercely reject. To be fair, the other Disney princesses are essentially ordinary girls. Rapunzel is not. Her hair is magical, which means, Mother Gothel tells her, that people will want it, and possibly harm her in the process. That “people” here really means “Mother Gothel,” does not make any of this less true: the innocent, naïve Rapunzel really is in danger if she leaves the castle, as events prove, and it is quite possible that others might try to make use of her magic hair. To be less fair, the good fairies and the dwarfs really are trying to protect Aurora and Snow White by hiding them in the forest. Mother Gothel mostly just wants to make sure than no one else can access Rapunzel’s hair.
The other chief difference is the brutal, abusive and terrifying relationship between Mother Gothel and Rapunzel. Mother Gothel may seem, by Disney standards, to be a low key sort of villain—after all, she isn’t trying to take over a kingdom, kill adorable little puppies, or turn an entire castle staff into singing furniture, so one up for her. On the other hand, at least those villains had ambitious goals. Mother Gothel just wants to stay young. I sympathize, but this is exactly what spas were invented for, Mother Gothel! Not to mention, spas usually offer massage services, which can temporarily make you forget the whole aging thing! Spas, Mother Gothel! Much cheaper and healthier than keeping young girls locked up in a tower! Disney even has a few on property!
Instead, Mother Gothel, in between shopping trips and expeditions where she is presumably enjoying her stolen youth, not only keeps Rapunzel from leaving her tower and seeing anything else in the world, or, for that matter, helping anyone else in the film, but also emotionally abuses her. The abuse comes not just from keeping Rapunzel locked up in the tower, with little to do and no one else to talk to, but also telling her, over and over again, how helpless and silly and annoying and above all, ungrateful Rapunzel is. This was not entirely new to Disney films, of course: it’s a center part of Hunchback of Notre Dame, and Cinderella’s stepmother and stepsisters were masters of cruel dialogue. But—and this is key—they did not combine this cruelty with constant assurances that no, no, they were just joking, and their targets need to stop being so sensitive. Mother Gothel does, adding the assurance that no one—no one—will ever love Rapunzel as much as she does, summing everything up with her song “Mother Knows Best.” It’s all the worse for being cloaked in words of love.
Also, apparently Mother Gothel has never bothered to buy Rapunzel any shoes. I mean really.
Nor were previous Disney protagonists quite this isolated. Aurora had three loving guardians plus various forest animals, and Cinderella those adorable mice. Even Quasimodo had the Archdeacon and the ability to watch other people from a distance. Mother Gothel is the only person Rapunzel ever sees or interacts with, other than her little chameleon, Pascal, who can’t talk back. It’s no wonder that Rapunzel becomes so emotionally dependent on the witch, and no wonder she tries not to rebel against any of Mother Gothel’s commands. It’s not just that Rapunzel genuinely loves this woman, who does, after all, bring back special treats for Rapunzel’s birthday, and who has agreed to isolate herself in this tower to keep Rapunzel safe. As far as the girl knows, this is the only person in the world who can and will love and protect her. Of course Rapunzel responds with love and admiration and obedience.
Indeed, the most remarkable thing about Rapunzel is that she has any self-confidence left after all this. Not that she has much, but she at least has enough to head off to fulfill her dream—seeing glowing lanterns float up into the sky. (Really, everyone’s goals in this film are remarkably low key. Except Flynn’s, and he sorta gives his up, so that doesn’t really count.) I credit the magic in her hair for granting her some sense of self-worth.
It helps, of course, that almost everyone who meets Rapunzel—including Mother Gothel—almost immediately loves her. True, Mother Gothel seems mostly fond of Rapunzel’s hair, not Rapunzel herself, and more than once finds Rapunzel aggravating, but here and there the film hints that Mother Gothel has a genuine fondness for the girl, to the extent where she can have a genuine fondness for anyone. She does, after all, keep making that chestnut soup for the girl. Meanwhile, the random thugs are so charmed by Rapunzel that they burst out into song, confessing their true dreams. The toughest thug shows her his unicorn collection. Even Maximus the horse, in general deeply unimpressed by humans, is charmed.
The exceptions to this instant love are the minor villains the Stabbington brothers (who barely meet Rapunzel in the film, and are completely won over by her in the cartoon short, Tangled Ever After), and the film’s hero, Flynn, partly because Rapunzel starts off their relationship by clunking him over the head with a frying pan and mostly because Disney was now trying the radical romantic approach of insisting that its hero and heroine hang out for a bit and talk before falling in love. (I know!) Eventually, of course, Flynn—after admitting that his real name is Eugene—falls for her. It’s easy to see why: she’s adorable. It’s a little less easy to see why Rapunzel falls for Eugene, a thief, especially given his initial interactions with her, but he is the person who helped her leave her tower in the first place, and the two have a rather wonderful first date, what with dancing, hair braiding, a visit to the library, stolen cupcakes, and a magical boat ride beneath glowing lanterns.
It’s sweet and cute and even, on that boat ride, beautiful, and far more convincing than many other Disney romances and it’s all lovely until one moment that for me, nearly ruins the film.
I’m speaking of the scene where a dying Eugene cuts off Rapunzel’s hair.
That hair has given Rapunzel some decided challenges. It frequently gets caught on things, and tangled, and—because cutting it destroys the very magical properties that Mother Gothel so desperately wants—it’s never been cut, and seems to be about fifty or seventy feet long. Rapunzel often has to carry it in her arms, and it’s enough of a nuisance that one of her happiest days comes after her hair is carefully and beautifully braided by four small girls (they put flowers in it.) Finally, Rapunzel can join the citizens of the town in a dance. The hair is why she’s spent her entire life in a tower, believing that she’ll be in danger if she leaves. She is terrified that Eugene will freak out when he sees her hair glow with magic and cure the wound in his hand.
But Rapunzel also uses her hair to swing, to climb, to save Eugene and herself, and to hit people. Not by coincidence, the two times that she’s captured also happen to be the two times when she can’t use her hair—when she’s a baby, and when her hair is tied up in a braid. At other times, she’s able to use her hair to keep Eugene and others tied up and helpless. Her hair can heal people. It’s magic. It’s a disability, yes, but it’s a disability that has made her what she is. It’s a disability that she’s turned into a strength.
In a single stroke, Eugene takes that away.
In doing so, Eugene not only removes Rapunzel’s magic (and, may I add, the hopes of various people who could have been cured by her hair) but also goes directly against Rapunzel’s express wishes, refusing to accept her choice to return to Mother Gothel. To be fair, Rapunzel, in her turn, was refusing to accept his choice (to die so that she could remain free), but still, essentially, this is a scene of a man making a choice for a woman, as Eugene makes this decision for Rapunzel, choosing what he thinks is best for her.
And that’s debatable. It’s not that I think that Rapunzel returning to Mother Gothel is a good thing—it isn’t. But as noted, Eugene is dying. Rapunzel wants to save him. As chance happens, just enough magic remains in the cut off hair—conveniently enough—that she can save him. But neither Eugene nor Rapunzel know that this will happen.
And it’s also not clear that cutting off her hair will even free Rapunzel—at least, not immediately. Yes, without the daily dose of Rapunzel’s magic, Mother Gothel will age rapidly and presumably die—presumably. The other side of this is that Mother Gothel is a witch who has already arranged for Rapunzel’s kidnapping—twice—and attacked Flynn and others. At that moment, Eugene has no reason to think that Rapunzel, without her hair—her major weapon—will be particularly safe after his death.
Interestingly, Mother Gothel spends the entire film insisting that she’s doing what’s best for Rapunzel as well.
Granted, the haircut scene happens in part because by that point, Tangled had worked itself into a rather tangled (sorry) plot situation: Rapunzel, watching Flynn bleed out (THANKS MOTHER GOTHEL) promises to stay with Mother Gothel if—and only if—Rapunzel is allowed to heal Flynn. Mother Gothel, no idiot, agrees to this, and since the film has already established that Rapunzel always keeps her promises, and since Rapunzel’s promise did not include any careful wording that would have allowed Rapunzel to go with Mother Gothel and cut off her hair—well, having Rapunzel trot off with a gleefully happy and young Mother Gothel would not have exactly been the happy ending Disney was looking for.
Still, I wish the film had chosen any other way of extricating itself from that mess. Anything that did not involve robbing Rapunzel, who has spent a lifetime locked away in a tower, from making her own choices about what to do with her own hair.
In the film’s defense, Tangled is otherwise a surprisingly realistic take on just how difficult it can be to escape an abusive relationship. In 1950, Cinderella felt absolutely no guilt about escaping a similarly abusive home situation for just one splendid royal ball. In 2010, Rapunzel does—until the powerful moment when she independently works out her true identity, and realizes that Mother Gothel has been lying to her for years. Cinderella, of course, has more people to talk to, and is never under the impression that her stepmother is attempting to protect her. Rapunzel has only a little chameleon, and a few books, and what Mother Gothel keeps telling her—that she is fragile and innocent and unable to take care of herself and will be harmed the moment she leaves the tower. Rapunzel is only able to learn the truth after two days that teach her that yes, she can survive on her own.
As long as she has a frying pan.
I just wish she’d been able to rescue herself at the very end as well.
It’s only fair to note that after all this, Rapunzel kisses Eugene, and marries him. Clearly, she’s less bothered by this than I am.
Otherwise, Tangled has a lot to love: the animation, in particular the boat and lantern sequence, is often glorious; the songs, if not exactly among Disney’s best, are fun—I particularly like the “I’ve Got a Dream” song, where all of the thugs confess their innermost hopes. Tangled also has a large number of delightful non-speaking roles: the animal sidekicks Maximus the horse (who does manage to express himself quite well through his hooves and whinnies) and Pascal, the little chameleon, and several human characters: Rapunzel’s parents, who never speak; one of the two Stabbington brothers, and Ulf, a thug with a love for mime. Ulf’s contributions are all ridiculous, but I laughed.
Tangled did well at the box office, bringing in about $592 million—above any other Disney animated feature since The Lion King. (It was later outdone by Frozen, Big Hero Six and Zootopia.) Rapunzel and her sparkly purple dress were swiftly added to the Disney Princess franchise. If, for some reason, you hate purple, Disney’s official Disney Princess webpage allows you to dress up Rapunzel in a host of different colors, as well as putting her against different backgrounds, and giving her a paint brush. Never say that I never alerted you to pointless time wasters on the internet. Rapunzel and Eugene make regular appearances at all of the Disney theme parks, and are featured in the new Enchanted Storybook Castle in Shanghai Disneyland Park. They also occasionally appear on Disney cruise ships, and an animated series focused on Rapunzel is arriving in 2017.
That, and the booming success of the Disney Princess franchise, was enough to convince Disney executives that they were on the right track.
Time to skip two more films:
Winnie the Pooh was Disney’s second go at animating the Winnie-the-Pooh books by A.A. Milne. A short (63 minutes) film, it proved a major box office disappointment, almost certainly because it was released on the same weekend as Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows Part Two. The film did, however, have two lasting effects on the studio: it continued the Disney legacy of getting a lot of money out of the Winnie the Pooh franchise, and it found the songwriters who would later be hired for Frozen.
Wreck-It-Ralph, about a video game villain desperately trying to go good, is a Disney original. It did well at the box office, grossing $471.2 million worldwide. At the time of release, it was the third most financially successful film from Walt Disney Animated Studios, after The Lion King and Tangled. (It has since been surpassed by Frozen, Big Hero 6, and Zootopia.) Wreck-It-Ralph was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Picture, and, along with Tangled, was hailed as proof that John Lasseter had, indeed, saved the studio with his arrival. A sequel is supposedly still in the works.
The studio’s biggest success, however, was still to come.
Frozen, coming up next.
Mari Ness lives in central Florida.
I also HATED his cutting her hair.
The only song I remember out of this is “Mother Knows Best,” which is as creepy as you say.
And the recent version of Winnie the Pooh is full of ear-worms and charming, and perfect for young toddlers, but very close to what you described about the prior go-round, so it makes sense to skip it.
I’ve never been much of a fan of Disney movies, but I have admired Glen Keane’s character designs, so I wanted to see this one because I was so captivated by Rapunzel in the commercials.
Still, I only saw it because the sound system broke down when I went to Tron: Legacy, so I picked it as my backup plan. Glad I did. It’s an excellent movie all around, and I’m saying that as someone who doesn’t like Disney stuff as a rule. It was basically doing a Disney-style story with a Pixar sensibility — and I don’t just mean CGI, I mean the style of writing, characterization, and humor that John Lasseter brought to Pixar and then to Disney. And Rapunzel is a gorgeously executed character, both from a “Damn, what a beautiful woman” perspective and from a “Wow, that’s superb character animation” perspective.
Am I the only one who thought that Rapunzel’s frying pan made a much more entertaining “sidekick” than the chameleon? I dug the frying pan.
Eugene’s decision to cut off her hair was fine. Yeah, sure, it would have been nice if he’d asked first, but somehow I don’t think the witch would have allowed him to cut it had the plan made it out of committee. It allowed his character to be selfless and more worthy of her love. It was a decision Rapunzel couldn’t/wouldn’t have made because it would’ve killed Eugene.
I suppose he could have killed himself before she agreed to stay with the witch, but once she’d made the agreement it was too late. And it’s not at all unrealistic for her to need some outside help to escape an abusive situation.
On a different subject than the haircut debate. . .unless literally no one on the huge Disney staff noticed the on-point and cruel pun, Tangled is the only Disney film to (obliquely) acknowledge an aspect of medieval-ish cultures that we’re a lot more familiar with seeing elsewhere on tor.com. It has a hero who is clearly a bastard. In the technical sense, not as an insult. Fitzherbert, “Flynn Rider’s” real surname, is what an English nobleman named Herbert would name a bastard son–“Fitz-” is the real-world equivalent of the “standardized bastard surnames” from ASOIAF. And giving him the first name Eugene–literally “well-born”, with decided class connotations, makes the whole thing too perfect and too sad to be a plausible accident. But as a non-accident, it’s an intriguing and psychologically convincing bit of implicit backstory for Eugene that, for obvious reasons of the MPAA and box office, is subtext only. But I just can’t believe I’m seeing a coincidence rather than subtext here.
Rapunzel isn’t my favorite Princess (that’s Belle) but I thought this movie was cute. I really enjoyed the frying pan and the thug dreams sequence. I think I like the version where you can periodically cut the hair and when it grows again it’s still magical. On the upside there is no blinded Prince to deal with in this movie. I also like purple best.
Yeah, I’m not really comfortable with bashing Eugene for ignoring her wishes, but letting Rapunzel basically off the hook for ignoring his. Especially since her wish was to lock herself into an abusive relationship for the rest of her life and, as was pointed out, he was dying & probably didn’t have much time, or blood flowing to his brain, to consider alternatives.
And I always felt that since it was her tear that healed him, the magic was still a part of her and not just about the hair.
Him cutting off her hair bothered me. More so, she already had so much of it! Couldn’t he have cut it off lower, so that she could trim it evenly? After all, it’s been shown that it won’t grow again, and now she’s stuck with one short haircut forever!!!!
Ok, I might be missing the greater implications of making a choice for her. Just sayin’.
I did adore the frying pan. It implied that she’s not some frail, wilting flower, those things are bloody heavy!
@3/Werechull: “And it’s not at all unrealistic for her to need some outside help to escape an abusive situation.”
Regrettably, it’s more complicated than that. In college, a female friend once told me that her boyfriend didn’t want her to spend time with me anymore, which I recognized as a warning sign of abuse. I went to the college’s women’s center for advice on how to deal with it, and the counselor I talked to gave me the sad but invaluable advice that I couldn’t compel her to get help, that trying would make me no better than the boyfriend (if indeed it was an abusive situation). I could express my concerns, send a letter to let her know that there was help available, but otherwise I could only respect her request to stay away. It was natural to want to help her, but ultimately, only she could decide to take control of her own life; by definition, nobody else could make that choice for her. Imposing “help” against her wishes would’ve been something I did for myself more than for her. (She managed to extricate herself on her own, though unfortunately we never reconnected for long.)
So I think I did have a problem with Flynn making the choice for her at the end. True, it’s a complicated situation, and he was nominally sacrificing himself to free her; but the way in which he did so was problematical, because it entailed a man making a major alteration to a woman’s physical self — and arguably her whole lifestyle — without her consent. However noble the intentions, there’s something intrinsically creepy about that. True, Gothel wished to take away her control of her hair and her life as well, but that doesn’t mean it’s better to have someone else take that control away instead. It would’ve been better if the climax had been structured in a way that let Rapunzel be the one to choose to cut off her hair, although that couldn’t have worked in the context where Flynn’s life was at stake.
The “man makes decision for woman” trope usually bothers me, but it didn’t here. Part of the reason it works for me is what #3 said, and part of it is because the choice Rapunzel is making here is to go back to her abuser forever, which is neither a freely made choice nor one that people should just stand by and say “well, that’s what she wants” about in real life either.
On top of that, Rapunzel is an emotional abuse survivor who was told all her life that she was weak and no one would ever want her for anything but her hair. Flynn’s action at the end is the ultimate proof that it isn’t true–even when he desperately needs her hair, he still values her well-being more. And that, in turn, leads to her discovery (when she brings Flynn back to life at the end) that the magic wasn’t in her hair, the magic is in her. That’s why the hair doesn’t work when it’s disconnected from her, and that’s why her tears work even after she loses her hair. Because she has the power. Mother Gothel was wrong.
Thematically, I think it works. (And for what it’s worth, my husband–who was raised by emotionally abusive parents and who usually hates Disney movies–absolutely loves this movie, in large part because of the “Flynn sacrifices himself and Rapunzel discovers her own power” scene. It really resonated with him.)
Mari, you forgot to mention that Winnie the Pooh was also Disney’s actual last attempt at traditional animation.
I’ve never understood the massive amount of love for Frozen, and the seeming apathy for this movie. In my opinion, it’s by FAR the better of the two movies – not only in story, but animation, songs, and characters. Probably my second favorite disney movie (behind Beauty and the Beast.) I really wish it got more love as the excellent movie it is.
@@@@@8. ChristopherLBennett
Jealousy is a sign of an immature/unhealthy relationship, not necessarily an abusive one. I hope that wasn’t the only indication you had before going to the women’s center. That’s like enrolling your kid at Betty Ford ’cause he’s moody.
I think skipping Wreck it Ralph here calls for a Disney original re-watch.
Could not disagree more about the hair cutting scene. Rapunzel is imprisoned by her hair. Eugene was freeing her at the cost of his own life.
@12/Werechull: That’s not fair. I was concerned for my friend, and I went to the women’s center by myself to ask for advice about how to cope with the situation. I didn’t “enroll” my friend in anything; I didn’t even tell them her name, since that would’ve been a breach of her privacy. Of course I knew there was no proof of abuse, but I was concerned enough to want to seek professional guidance about whether there even was a problem, and if so, whether there was anything I could or should do about it. Although as soon as I told them about the boyfriend’s ultimatum, they immediately got me brochures on domestic violence, suggesting that they considered it a pretty clear warning sign. (After all, it wasn’t just jealousy, it was outright forbidding her to have male friends.) I mailed her those brochures along with a letter expressing my concerns, as recommended by the very kind and helpful counselor I spoke to, and that was all I did.
@14/Austin: Historically, a lot of women have been imprisoned by their wombs, required to function as baby factories and thus deprived of freedom. Does that mean, though, that it would’ve been okay for a man to perform a hysterectomy on a woman without her consent as a way of “freeing” her? Sure, cutting someone’s hair may seem less drastic, but Rapunzel’s hair had been a constant part of her for her entire life, she’d never been without it, it constituted a significant percentage of her body mass*, and she routinely used it as a functional appendage. So for her, getting her hair cut should’ve been as traumatic as an amputation. Doing that to her without giving her a say in the decision is problematical no matter how good the intentions.
*According to IMDb, Rapunzel’s 70 feet of hair weighs 10.4 pounds, while Rapunzel herself is reportedly 95 pounds. If that includes her hair, it would be 11% of her body’s weight.
The only good song is ‘Mother Knows Best’?
Check out THIS!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yD_IEqxp-e0
Zac Levi has an amazing set of pipes :-)
I haven’t watched this movie since its release, so what’s the deal with her hair again? It’s magic, okay, but can it not grow again after it’s cut? She used it as a weapon/tool/appendage. That’s cool. Now take a page from Doctor Jones’ book, Rapunzel. Get a bullwhip. Not as heavy and not attached to your head.
@@@@@ChristopherLBennett I don’t know what your friend’s situation was & I’m sure you don’t want to go into it too much, but this wasn’t a case of an abused person willingly staying with or returning to her abuser. Rapunzel was kidnapped and forced back to the tower and was being dragged away when she made her ‘deal’ to save Eugene’s life (ignoring his wishes). She was ready to leave Mother Gothel at that point and was being forced/extorted into staying.
Could the ending have been written better? 100% Yes! It would have been nice to have Rapunzel save herself, but as written, it was a completely messed up situation. And it bugs me that the OP is pretty much saying it’s ok for Rapunzel to ignore what Eugene wants to do with his life/body because she was trying to save him, but it’s bad bad bad for Eugene to do the same even though he was also trying to save her. Nobody gave a damn about bodily autonomy or consent in that scene.
It would be interesting to see the aftermath of this event in a non-Disney/non-children’s story though.
I may not be able to put this into words, but part of the reason I think it is wrong to fault Eugene for cutting Rapunzel’s hair is that she is more than just her hair! She is someone’s daughter, the kingdom’s lost princess, a funny and unique and lovable person and none of that changes hair or not. Keeping the hair means giving up everything else she possibly ever was or could be in submission to one aspect of her self-hood. Cutting the hair frees her to be all the things she was but could never be because the magic hair (and the abusive CHILD KIDNAPPER who abused her way into being seen as a mother figure) locked her into one role as a magic youth milk cow. True, one thing she can’t be is magical physician to the entire kingdom (presuming that she wants to be that instead of just being forced or guilt-tripped into it), but she can be everything else she is. She can be a fully realized person. And we have every reason to think that it was at least reasonably likely that she would have chosen to cut off her own hair, if not for Eugene being almost killed by her ABUSIVE CHILD KIDNAPPER “mother.”
Do we seriously still think Eugene got it wrong?
@@.-@ Fitzherbert is his surname, and such names are hereditary, so all we really know is that he or one of his ancestors was a bastard child of some important Herbert.
@16 This movie might be the reason Zack was nominated for a Tony this year- best actor in a musical.
probably wouldn’t have been on anyone’s radar had he not first voiced and sung this part. Not all Disney movies use the same person for the speech and song.
Good grief, I composed this essay separately and can’t C&P into the box? What?
ANYWAY, women who were raised in U.S. fundamentalist Christian homes say that this movie maps eerily closely to their experiences. Here’s how the story goes:
Once upon a time, there was a cultural group (the kingdom) that valued a religion (the sun symbol). One family (the royals) credited the religion with saving them (the magic golden flower). They had a healthy family life and offered unconditional love and trust (the crown) to family members. However, one couple (Gothel) fell into a fundamentalist strain of the religion (hoarding the magic golden flower) in which parents derive power and status (eternal youth) from having their daughters, particularly the eldest (Rapunzel), correctly perform daughterhood (the magic hair). This couple chose to “separate from the world,” as they put it, including shunning their “lukewarm” relatives and co-religionists (kidnapping Rapunzel and fleeing).
The daughter was raised in a carefully circumscribed world (the tower) in which all information was under parental censorship (note the three books: geology for the rocks in the tower, botany for potted plants, and cooking). As she matured, the list of requirements for correctly performing daughterhood grew ever longer (the hair grows to 70 feet) and the role began to feel more and more like makework (“When Will My Life Begin?”), but the daughter was also able to make use of it (it’s super-flexible, super-strong, magic healing hair). Still, life as the perpetually infantilized “stay-at-home daughter,” as they put it, was beginning to chafe, so she innocently asked her parents for more freedom–and got shot down as they gleefully pushed every button they had spent her life installing in her, leaving her terrified and isolated (“Mother Knows Best”). Still, she was not as transparent to their contemptuous gaze (Gothel only speaks lovingly to Rapunzel while looking at her hair) as they thought (Pascal).
One day, somebody stumbled into her carefully arranged world (Flynn Rider; in the real world, some moment of human connection not planned by the parents, perhaps somebody who responded to the ritual of humiliation known as tracting by actually talking to her like a person and listening, or a neighbor who kept reaching out despite the nasty attitude of the parents). That person reminded her of the unconditional love she dimly remembered from the days before “separation from the world” (the crown appears). And they did not have pointed teeth! She approached her parents about a little more freedom with renewed confidence and they stopped pretending that she had a choice (Gothel says point blank that Rapunzel can’t ever leave).
But she had seen the cracks in the facade and could not unsee them. While submitting outwardly, she made her bid for freedom (in the real world, perhaps hiding her brother’s jeans in her backpack and wearing them while shopping, or talking to secular types online). Her decision was fraught because she had been taught all her life that the consequences of stepping outside her tiny world would be dire to her and to her parents (the flip-flop scene). She was terrified of talking to people, but when she tried it, she discovered that these weird-looking outsiders were really nice (the Ugly Duckling; in the real world, practically anybody).
In the course of her secret ventures, the daughter grew up and learned the benefits of belonging to a larger community (compare Rapunzel’s stumbling “bit of ballet” to her glorious dance after the girls in the city help her put up her hair). She found out how capable she really was, and people took notice (“Frying pans! Who knew, right?”). But her parents found out! Their spiritual meal ticket and proof of status could not be allowed to escape! So they conspired to fool her into thinking she was in danger (the big ugly Stabbington Brothers: a big ugly lie).
But the daughter remembered now: the world was wide and full of light, and the family she had been taught to shun really loved her and had never stopped trying to let her know that (the lanterns; in the real world, any attempts at contact). Things got really ugly in her formerly cozy little world as she tried to assert her rights as a free human being (Rapunzel identifies herself as the lost princess while making Gothel look her in the eye–then Gothel locks her down, which is paralleled by actual attempts at confining adult children or destroying their phones, etc.).
The daughter’s new friends did not forget her and made plans to help her get out (Flynn, Maximus, and the Cuddly Thugs to the rescue). They confronted her parents, who retaliated by unleashing their most dire tactics (Gothel stabs Flynn; in the real world, anything from claiming the ability to pray somebody into damnation to trying to get a person fired by sending nasty faxes to their boss). But the friends refused to cave, even though it seemed to the daughter that Death was in the room. And in that moment, the daughter realized that her parents had no power over her (Flynn cuts off Rapunzel’s hair), that they had no place in her life (Gothel goes to dust), and furthermore, that she had value, strength, and capability regardless of how well she performed her assigned role (she heals Flynn even though the magic hair is gone).
In the closing chapter, we see the daughter as a confident adult, who, after years (this is in the script, hooray!) of freedom, chooses a relationship based on friendship and mutual admiration in which nobody battens on anybody else (she marries Eugene). She is surrounded by chosen family and a healthy community, where she is respected as a full adult and loved unconditionally (she wears the crown).
Hope this posts…
Pascal is one of favorite all-time Disney characters. And he communicates with Rapunzel just fine.
I also enjoy this movie a lot more than Frozen.
Meh. It was OK.
In motive and methods, Gothel reminds me of Ursula — an older sorceress leeching off a young woman’s powers to make herself seem to be a lovely lady, while convincing the victim that it’s for her own good. Ursula could make herself look young and beautiful; she only needed Ariel’s voice (and that only because it was what Eric would recognize), but in both cases the depredations left the maiden highly isolated in one way or another.
Gothel definitely had a more nuanced relationship with Rapunzel, and it was done well, as you’ve all described. I especially remember when she first leaves the tower and spends a while vacillating between running around shouting with joy at her new freedom and weeping with guilt at being a ‘disobedient daughter.’
Pascal weirded me out a bit in this setting, but I guess he’s not quite Displaced Wildlife, as a captive pet who Gothel probably bought from some exotic pet importer. Chameleons are apparently popular pets in our world too; I just have trouble picturing them anywhere but the treetops for which they are so supremely adapted.
No Brave? *looks it up* Oh, it was “made by Pixar and released by Disney.”
Someday, I’m going to watch Frozen and try to learn why it’s so very popular with kids and adults.
I was with two little girls when they saw Tangled for the first time. There was a lot of distraught, “She cut her hair!” “She cut her hair!” at the end.
That issue aside, I really like this one. “I’ve Got a Dream” is my favorite musical number.
The trailers for this looked intriguing enough that I made a point of catching it very promptly when it opened, and I came away pretty favorably impressed. Musically, it struck me as the first Disney animated feature since Hunchback of Notre Dame to feature genuine Broadway-class material — “Mother Knows Best”, “I’ve Got a Dream”, and “I See the Light” are all excellent (and as kasiki notes, by this time Disney was casting its leads with a much more deliberate eye toward musical ability). Mother Gothel was unusually nuanced for a Disney villain at that point, too, though on reflection I rather hope that she and Frozen‘s Hans don’t constitute the start of a trend.
As to Flynn’s choice at the climax — I wonder if what we’re running into is a distinction between ethical and moral judgments/codes. It seems to me that most of the arguments against Flynn’s decision to cut Rapunzel’s hair are framed in what I’d call an ethical context — that it’s unethical for Flynn to make that choice for her. By contrast, the arguments in favor of Flynn’s action are grounded in more of a moral context — that in the specific circumstances, his action is justified because it serves a greater good. Both positions are reasonably framed and defensible within their individual contexts…but here, I come down on the side of the moral judgment given the overall situation with which we’re presented. That said, I also tend to agree that the movie had written itself into a corner at this point, and that the analysis I’ve given here was almost certainly not going through the writers’ minds when they were drafting the scene in question.
Tangled is the best Disney movie ever, it’s the only Disney movie I own. I have overprotective mother issues and “Mother Knows Best” is very emotional for me.
However best thing in the movie is Maximus beyond a doubt.
And speaking for short haired brunettes everywhere – finally a Disney Princess that looks like me! Now if only the merchandising had her in her final form…
Warning in advance: This is a LOT longer than I intended. I have a lot of personal feelings about this movie, and I had an incredible sequestered and isolated childhood and adolescence, the internet being what saved me in the end. I ended up going into more detail than I thought, and please do heed where I say trigger warning, because it needs it.
I have to say, Tangled is an amazing movie and I loved it, but I don’t think I could watch it twice. My exes and I watched it at home, and I had a massive breakdown afterward. “Mother Knows Best” contains exact. damn. lines. that my Dad used to say to me. It didn’t hit me until credits were rolling, and then I lost it. It definitely speaks to how well they did and how accurately they portrayed an abusive parent, but dear gods. Triggers upon triggers.
(I typoed this as Tigger… which… is ironic because Dad’s nickname is “Tigger.” The reason being that Mom, whose home life was abuse cranked to 1000x and I think I may be underestimating, described his ragefits as “bouncing”. Hence, Tigger. My family puts the “fun” in dysfunctional, all right. *sigh*)
I know a lot of people have issues with Flynn’s actions and Rapunzel’s lack of agency, but… I think by the point she was at, she’d already surrendered herself and any agency she had back to Gothel. I don’t think she could have made that decision, especially when it would have killed Flynn. Could the filmmakers have come up with a better alternative? Certainly, and I would’ve liked to have seen it. But it didn’t bother me, because I still can’t see a way with the given scenario that Rapunzel would have willingly rescued herself, and Flynn essentially sacrificed his own life (since he also believed Rapunzel’s healing powers were in her hair) in order to free her. I’d have loved to seen a scenario that allowed Rapunzel the (believable!) agency to rescue herself and get out, but…
OK. I need to add a trigger warning from here on out. Abuse, obviously, although not sexual.
Okay, so, I have perhaps a different view than most because I was isolated not quite to Rapunzel’s extent but damn close. I was homeschooled, and the only friends I saw where when Mom was able to manage with her work schedule (night charge nurse, frequent overtime because she’s a pushover… plus it got her away from Dad), which lessened extremely after I was about 10 and Dad started emotionally abusing her nightly. I went to the furthest room away from theirs and could still make out the words from him yelling and then her breaking and yelling back things that were really damaging for me to hear (who wants to hear their mother driven to being suicidal?).
Dad classified seeing friends as “Mom’s job”, so when she got to a point that she was so beaten down by the abuse, plus her work administration were being complete a-holes and she was wondering if she was still going to have a job (thank you nurse’s union for slapping that shit down! I will forever defend unions, because the nurse’s union went above and beyond), so… yeah. I saw a friend maybe… mmm… every six months after I was ten? On a good year?
I had one major advantage that Rapunzel didn’t, and couldn’t have because of the setting, and that was unfiltered internet access. I made friends in a writer’s community, a lot of them, many I’m still friends with over a decade later, and I ended up involved with a friend there who was living with other friends from the same community, so I knew everybody, plus they were vetted by multiple other people in the community who had met them IRL. Robert, my ex, was very concerned about me coming from a home so sheltered to live with my fiancee, for a couple reasons.
One, he thought I needed the experience of independent living, and two, he (correctly) assumed I would want to do ALLLLL the normal things that even unusually emotionally mature (as commonly happens to child abuse survivors) young adults want to do. He was much older, and extremely cognizant to not take advantage. Which he didn’t; none of our relationship issues were due to age. PTSD, diametrically opposed disability needs, and the fact that he is so. very. male. If you see all those stereotypical “this is how men communicate” things on Facebook? Yeah, that’s him to a T. But because of his disability, he wasn’t able to do ALLLLL THE THINGS and very little outside due to being terrified of being trans in public in Texas in 2003/4 (and my niece who is there now says it’s not much better).
But, all of that was trumped by my Dad becoming about 10x more abusive when I said I needed to take a break from college to figure out what major I wanted to pursue and in the meantime I’d get a job and work on my writing. See, Dad wanted to be an English teacher, so me not wanting to do that meant he couldn’t live vicariously through me, which meant I was “betraying” him… yeah…
So, um. Yeah, I moved a lot sooner than intended to keep me out of the psych ward, because I was actively suicidal by that point. Either that or I would have been on the evening news. But I had that option, plus other friends who were willing to have me. I’m not sure how much that counts as rescuing myself, though, because while I did have to take the action to move, I also wouldn’t have had that opportunity without the support of others.
And that support came from a resource Rapunzel never had. She didn’t have a wide-reaching support group who would have offered her safe places to stay. My sister never had those resources because she was 14 when I moved and Dad demonized the internet and computers to the point that even now at 27 she knows about as much as our parents in their 60s and 70s. And she’s terrified to learn more. I’d say using a computer is to some degree triggering for her.
Flynn was really the only person that Rapunzel had who *could* help her. If I look at it logically, from a feminist standpoint and angle of film review, I can see why it’s problematic. But my emotional reaction is much more of a “Good for him!” because it got her out, and she wouldn’t have done it on her own because of the agreement she had already made. It’s also not uncommon for an abuse victim who has only recently had a taste of being “out” to slide back into old patterns; this is why there is a pattern of those who are in abusive relationships having a revolving door of leaving/back together/leaving/back together/rinse and repeat. I can attest to that one w/ a previous relationship that was exactly that.
So… yeah. Emotionally, I am just glad that Flynn got her out safely, even if the feminist film critic in me does wish they had found another scenario. I’m just not quite sure what scenario they would have come up with that would have been believable to me, having had these experiences.
I honestly didn’t mean for this to go on this long. Sorry for the length. -_- But it probably also explains why I don’t think I’ll ever be able to re-watch it, even though it’s extremely well done and I loved the characters. Just hits too close to home.
… Dear gods that was even longer than I thought. -hides-
What @9 SKM said.
I have quite long hair – not, obviously, that long, nor magical – and, well, that hair is basically the only thing that makes me noticeable. I would never ever let anyone cut it, because it is such important part of my appearance. I’m “the one with the long hair”. That’s me. That said, I totally agree with what Flynn did to Rapunzel.
I’ve seen this movie last Christmas for the first time, and, after Episode VII and all that, Christmas being a little bit Star-Wars-rewatch themed, I thouht Flynn looks a lot like Han Solo.
Great review. I didn’t read it as the magic being in the hair, at the end, but in her tears. We don’t get to see much, but I assumed that as Rapunzel’s life continues, she finds that she has just as much magic—without fifty pounds of hair to tote around.
I forgot to mention that part. I also interpreted her magic as being in herself, as shown by her magic still working after her hair is cut, through her tears. I think they could have been a bit less subtle about it, because it seems to have bypassed a lot of people, including our gracious re-watcher and several commenters, who interpreted it as her hair having just enough magic left. I don’t think that’s what was meant, and I think they should have made it more explicit vs. going the subtle route.
@31/Brian: Well, 10.4 pounds of hair, apparently. But even having 10 pounds weighing down on your head constantly can’t be pleasant. Imagine the neck exercises she had to do…
The hair cutting reminds me of Bujold’s haut ladies in the Vorkosigan books. For them, cutting their hair is the last option in dire situations or a violation severe enough to offer a plausible screen to preserve her privacy about the rest.
How can you publish this long an article and 34 comments on “Tangled” an have nobody even mention that the best and only reason to see this film is Maximus the Horse? As Disney Princess movies go (and the commentary supports), this one wasn’t that great. But the horse was one of the funniest things ever put in a movie throughout. My son and I love, love, love this movie, and not because “Chuck” is in it. That is one damn funny horse.
This is one of my favorite Disney movies. The graphics were beautifully done, and the characters were all a lot of fun. It had action, adventure, comedy, romance. And some real emotional jeopardy and feeling in the center of it. I never gave too much thought to the hair cutting thing, I just saw it as Flynn trying to save her by cutting her bonds. And for all the nifty things her hair could do, in the end, it was what bound her to Mother Gothel and her abusive manipulation. While I now see why people have objections to Flynn making the choice for her, at the time I just saw it as him doing what fairy tale heroes do–save the princess.
Tangled Tangled Tangled Tangled! :)
This is probably up in my top 5 or 3 Disney movies, so I’m pretty pumped for this slogan. I can’t remember when I saw it (not when it first came out but probably within the last 5 years) but it hit all the right beats for me right at a time I was wanting them – fairy tales, gorgeous animation, fun songs, and a sweet romance (to me). I’d say that of all the songs When Will My Life Begin is my least favorite simply because I’m not quite as in to the music style. But I was definitely hooked on the movie once it hit Mother Knows Best – I thought the portrayal of the villain and the abusive/manipulative relationship were an interesting choice. Plus I loved the Broadway style of it and it had kind of an Into The Woods air to me as well ;)
All that said: I See the Light is my favorite Disney song of all time, probably, and I have it on a You Tube play list and listen to it at least once a week (I have several of the other songs on this playlist too, including a lot of the score). It’s perhaps not as catchy or clever as the other songs, but something about it – it’s simple, sweet and the moment itself it is portraying (and the animation of that scene) to me kind of represents everything I love about Disney movies and am usually craving when I watch one of the ‘classic’ movies. I am kind of a sucker for the whole idea of meeting a person/having an exerperience that opens your eyes to things and helps you see the world in a new way.
There are some things that bother me about the climax too though – as you said, Flynn cutting her hair off and her losing her magic (although I can understand why as a snap decision it was made) is a bit of a let down; perhaps it could have been softened if, as you say, Rapunzel rescued herself, or had at some point perhaps voiced an opinion that she sometimes wished she didn’t have the burden of magical hair, or felt like Mother Gothel was using her because of her hair, etc. But I agree with others in that it also shows Flynn believes her to be more than her hair. I also find the way the loss of her magic hair meaning that suddenly the magic dissapears suddenly from Mother Gothel too; wouldn’t that mean that Flynn’s hand would no longer be healed either?
(That said, I agree it was a monumentally stupid idea to cut it – unless he was somehow banking on it killing Mother Gothel immediately, he basically was removing her only value to Mother Gothel at that point; surely Mother Gothel isn’t going to let her go so she can reveal her kidnapping to the world…)
Also, Pascal’s killing her is a bit cold for a Disney sidekick (he trips her and is the cause of her falling out the window) – I think it’s an interesting bit of characterization that even then, Rapunzel’s first instnct is to try and rescue her.
I think the tear drop healing Flynn is a bit of an homage to the original fairy tale, but I wonder if it’s permanent or just a last drop of magic.
I have also wondered about the more real world implications this would have on a person – what kind of therapy would a person need after being reuined with their real parents after a life of thinking they were somebody else, and that person was completely controlling/manipulating them and feeding them a very skewed version of reality, in the name of protection? How does a person like that manage to have healthy relationships or even know what they look like? I am willing to assume they figure all this out in some way, but it’s definitely something to think about. (I do really like how they seemed to imply at the end that Rapunzel and Flynn don’t actually get married right away – it sounds like they spend a lot of time dating/figuring things out. Which he would probably need as well; he also probably had a lot of bad relationship patterns as well, and also has to prove he can be an upstanding member of the community).
Oh – and I love your explanation about the art as ‘moving paintings’ – there is definitely something unique about the animation style, and I love it.
One thing that disappoints me is that Mother Gothel was originally going to be played by Grey DeLisle (now known as Grey Griffin), the prolific voice actress and singer who played Azula in Avatar: The Last Airbender, Daphne Blake in post-2000 Scooby-Doo productions, and countless other characters. She’s an amazingly gifted and versatile voice actress and a beautiful singer, and I would’ve loved to hear what she could’ve done with the role. I suppose they went with Murphy because she was a bigger name and more of a Broadway star, but I’m not convinced they traded up in terms of talent.
Regarding the skipped movies:
The Winnie the Pooh movie is okay (my kids really liked it) but something about it is just a bit much – all the characters’ main ‘quirk’ seem like they are super exaggerated. Like Rabbit is REALLY cranky, etc. And even some of the violence in some scenes seemed a bit more than what I’d expect from a Winnie the Pooh movie, even if it was mostly comical (I don’t remember the details but I seem to recall somebody getting stuck in a pot or sack and they are beating it with a stick to get him out). But I like the weird Honey song :)
I adore Wreck it Ralph – I wasn’t sure if I’d like it since it didn’t have any songs, but since I like video games and the concept of going in and out of the game worlds, I figured it would still be fun. It’s probably also in my top 5 list – I think it has a surprisingly poignant message. I don’t know if a sequel will live up to it, but we’ll see…
Everybody –
First, I want to thank everyone for being so open and detailed about their own past experiences with domestic abuse – I think that helps explain why that ending scene strikes a chord with so many people and why interpretations of it are so different.
I did want to add two more quick notes to that: 1) I did acknowledge that Rapunzel was also ignoring – or trying to ignore – Flynn/Eugene’s choice; I’m not trying to let her off the hook for that. But she doesn’t get to go through with her choice; he does, so I focused more on that choice. 2) I realized, hours after this post went up, that I am, in part, approaching that scene from a disability perspective. And from that perspective, my concern is not just that Eugene/Flynn is ignoring Rapunzel’s express wishes and making a choice about her disability for her here, but that this is framed in a romantic light. That can be a dangerous framing.
With that, I will agree that the moments right after that, where Eugene makes it clear that he was always interested in Rapunzel, not her hair (unlike Mother Gothel), and that he loves her without her magical hair, are far more empowering and romantic.
On to other issues – 1) no fear, fans of Maximus the horse! I like him. I would have said more about him but this post was already incredibly long. 2) Although Disney marketing, for a number of reasons, classifies Merida as a Disney Princess, Brave is technically a Pixar film. 3) That said, regarding both the skipped films and the Pixar films…..well, keep an eye on this website.
I have to admit – I had never considered Rapunzel’s hair as a disability/from a disability perspective, so that was a really interesting way of looking at it and brings up a lot of important points.
If anything, I thought of Rapunzel’s loss of her hair as creating a disability. After all, it was a remarkably useful appendage for her, and having to get by without it for the first time in her life would’ve been a difficult adjustment for her, like trying to learn to function with one less arm or leg.
From an earlier comment Mari made in response to a post of mine, I thought we would disagree more on Tangled. As it is, though, I’m pretty much in agreement with this review. What I like about Tangled from the POV of the socialization of girls re: romance is that the two main characters do *not* fall in love at first sight, that they get to know each other over time and through trials before getting romantically interested in each other, and that they do not get married immediately once the adventure is over. True, not that much actual time transpires before they fall in love, but they go through a lot together and learn to know some important things about each other first. This was before Frozen’s outright explosion of the “love at first sight” trope, and it was very refreshing.
On the haircut: I agree with several commenters that the writers wrote themselves into a corner. You can certainly see Flynn’s action as both self-sacrificial and necessary as a form of intervention to free the abuse victim from her own self-sabotage…but it’s still problematic in the ways Mari points out. It doesn’t spoil the whole romance for feminist me, though.
I think the problem with the storyline in a larger sense (as others have noted in various ways) is simply that she loses her magical hair. No, you don’t want others to see that as her sole source of value. But on the other hand, it’s Very Cool and she should get to keep it or have it restored to her. The fact that she loses the magical hair forever when it is cut makes it feel a bit like a symbol for a mythologized virginity. You know, the way drinking virgin’s blood keeps the villain forever young.
You can sympathize with the children who are disappointed that she loses her hair forever, and with the marketers who went for toy versions of Rapunzel with magical hair intact. When the movie has invested so much art into making the hair fun and magical and glorious, there’s not really any way to have any compensatory gain at the end make up for its loss. Yes, it’s good to be free of the abusive/controlling “parent,” but it’s still sad to have to pay such a price.
I have to say, too, that the magical rules governing Rapunzel’s hair in this story are not very clear to me. Is that because I didn’t pay close attention, or is the script unclear? Where it came from, where the magical power came from, whether it goes away forever when once it’s cut and why. It’s certainly a different picture from that in the fairy tale source(s), and I don’t think it’s all that well thought through.
I *love* the “I’ve Got a Dream” song and sequence. Also much enjoyed Maximus, whose dog-like qualities seem to have found a new incarnation in Frozen’s reindeer. Count me among those who like this movie overall better than Frozen. Perhaps I’m just immune to the Lure of the Power Ballad.
@Saavik (awesome username btw :)
It’s VERY unclear about where her power comes from. I think the only hint we have that it is from her, not her hair, is the tear. As I mentioned, I would’ve liked this to have been more text than subtext. As is, it can be interpreted many ways. So, no, you’re not off on that at all. It might have been their intent, for every viewer to interpret how they liked, but I would have preferred a more clearcut answer myself. (Although as I’ve already said, my interpretation is that it’s her, not the hair, but it’s not set in stone.)
I love Tangled, and for a great many of the reasons mentioned in the article. I never had any issues with the ending scene and hair cut, but I can understand how others do with it laid out here. I won’t rehash while I’m still fine with it.
So I guess I don’t really have anything pertinent to add, but I wanted to mention my love for Tangled!
@45/Nonny: I don’t see how it’s possible to draw a distinction between Rapunzel and her hair. Her hair is part of her. It grew from her hair follicles, made of material from within her body. It physically came from inside her, so it stands to reason that its power came from inside her as well. I know, magic doesn’t always stand to reason, but still.
@37 Lisamarie: The reason Flynn’s hand wasn’t unhealed but Mother Gothel lost her youth is quite simple: she was actually holding the hair when it lost its magic, he was not. Also there is the fact she was using the magic to do something unnatural (retain her youth) while Rapunzel healing Flynn’s hand was just accelerating a natural process.
And to those confused about the source of Rapunzel’s magic, the opening narration by Flynn explained it: a drop of light fell from the sun and created the flower, the flower was later made into a potion for Rapunzel’s mother to drink to save her life, and her ingesting it passed the magic on to her child in the form of her hair. This also explains why it would be in Rapunzel, not just her hair, and thus could be in her tears, and may even mean the power is still in her and could be brought out in other ways. Beyond that there’s no explanation for the drop of light other than “it’s magic.”
@47 Certain movie nitpickers have pointed out the fact that, once cut, the hair turns brown, instead of it’s magical gold. Furthermore, Rapunzel’s coloring (particularly her brown eyebrows) and that of her parents (both brown-haired) all imply that the magical golden hair is not, in fact, a natural part of her body, but an external construct of the flower’s magic. This also explains it’s unnatural growth and resilience (as well as it’s dirt-repelling capabilities!).
In that view, cutting the hair was, once again, releasing Rapunzel to be herself, and not the artificial magical construct she carried around since birth.
@49/Shloz: But as macster points out in comment 48, the hair became magical because of a potion baby Rapunzel ingested. So the power still started out inside her and came out through her hair. That’s one of the functions of hair — it’s a path by which toxins, heavy metals, and the like are removed from the body. Forensic analysis of hair can reveal whether someone was slowly poisoned, for instance. Magic flower juice is presumably not a toxin, but it’s still a substance within the body that can become part of the hair as it grows out from the follicles. It doesn’t make sense to treat the magic as some kind of external force that’s constantly hovering around her, waiting to jump into the dead hair cells once they emerge from her scalp, but somehow unable to penetrate her living body. I suppose you could posit an external magic force that was kept out by the “interference” created by the life force of a living body, but that sounds more like something evil and inimical to life, while Rapunzel’s power is one that promotes vitality and prolongs life. And if the magic couldn’t exist inside her living body, then it couldn’t have healed her as an infant in the first place.
Sure, the color change suggests that the bulk of the magical energy was stored in her hair, but she’d grown 70 feet of it and had 18 years to infuse it with magical power. So there’s no inconsistency between the idea that most of the magic resided in her hair and the idea that the source of the magic resided within her. She just didn’t have that much magic left once she was cut off from the reservoir where most of it was stored.
(By the way, 70 feet of growth in 18 years comes out to a little under 10 centimeters per month, which is 8 to 10 times the typical growth rate for human hair. Also, most people’s hair tops out at a maximum length after which the strands just fall out; generally the adult maximum is about a meter or so, though some people can grow it even longer. The world record is 18 and a half feet. So clearly the magic has accelerated Rapunzel’s hair growth rate considerably, as well as enhancing its strength.)
@48 Macster, thank you for the recap of the opening narration/imagery. So the source of the magic is identified (though not exactly explained), and the way the healing magic got into Rapunzel is told. The nature and rules of the magical power are still pretty unclear, though, as witnessed by the fact that all the smart people on this thread can’t agree on the precise implications of Rapunzel’s haircut. Does she still have any healing magic in her? Is that demonstrated by the tear (which, I agree, is in part a callback to the fairy tale)? Could it come out in other ways in the future? Why wouldn’t it come out in magical golden hair again? Did she get a finite dose of the healing magic in infancy, which was later mostly (entirely?) stored in the golden hair, and thus forever (mostly) lost to her when the hair was (mostly) cut off? Or does the fact that the hair turns its natural brown mean that *all* the magic was lost when her hair was cut, just because them’s the rules? Did the sum total of her healing power increase in her childhood as her hair grew? If the magic would be totally lost at the first haircut, how did Gothel or Rapunzel ever figure that out? I miss having the equivalent of a fairy at the christening who would articulate the rules governing the magical healing power.
@51/Saavik: As I recall, there was a bit in the opening montage where someone did cut a small portion of Rapunzel’s hair and it turned brown and never grew again. She has a little sheaf of short brown strands tucked underneath all the gold. I think there was also a bit with the magic flower where it lost its magic when it was cut or a petal was pulled off or something.
Maybe the magic is gone now, but seeing as how her newest hair (which presumably kept growing all this time) still had the magic in it, that would seem to imply there was still some inner source of magic. I’d kind of like to think so (although it doesn’t quite explain why it turns brown as soon as it is cut and never grows back).
But as to 44’s point regarding her losing the magical hair the whole movie has been invested in showing us how cool it is – actually, one of the things I do like about Frozen (which on the whole I do not like as much as Tangled) is that in the end Elsa keeps her powers and is Queen. I think that’s pretty cool :)
@53/Lisamarie: I guess the spell is dependent on the host component being whole, being the result of natural growth. If its wholeness is severed by an outside force, it loses its purity and thus the spell is broken.
Random thought on long hair.
At one time, in my 20’s after I got out of the Army, I let my hair grow down to my waist. I’m a guy, and about as straight as can be. I let it grow because apparently I had awesome hair. Random women I knew would want to stroke it and say how lovely it was. Being a guy I had no objection to this. Any feminine attention… And it got me dates. More successful than any pickup lines I ever had. I just put it in a ponytail when I rode my motorcycle, because otherwise it would wrap around my helmet so that I couldn’t see. I lived in Utah, where the humidity is low, so it wasn’t particularly uncomfortable in the summer.
Then my job sent me to Duncan Oklahoma, in August, during a heatwave, and I spent the first day there helping install a ventilation system on a roof. It was like having a couple feet of hot slime on my back. So after work I went to a barber shop and told the barber to take two feet off the back.
Today, it being summer in DC, I have a high and tight.
I have long hair – not extremely long, but halfway down my back, and very thick. It is heavy. I loved that they made the hair magic because if anyone had that much actual hair they would not be able to move at all!
I don’t think the brown hair never grows again. I think it just grows at a normal rate for non-magical hair, and since it doesn’t respond magically it also doesn’t swoop around like the rest of it, so she keeps it short so it is out of the way. We don’t ever see the brown hair except when it has still just been cut.
I like that they came up with a version that has Rapunzel actually leave the tower and get to experience the world, rather than falling for literally the first person she ever meets besides the witch. And I loved that the person she met got to have such a dramatic character arc as well.
One more thing I have to mention – what Pixar’s Up did in its first ten minutes, this movie manages to do in about a thirty second period, when the queen and king are about to go out and send up the lanterns yet again. There is such anguish in the king’s face, and the queen trying wordlessly to comfort him while hurting herself… Just picturing that scene makes me tear up. Such amazing character animation, telling it all with no words, and you find yourself hurting along with them.
@56/Brenda A: We do see her brown hair long after it’s been cut. Like I mentioned, there’s a scene where Rapunzel reveals that she has a little tress of short brown strands hidden under all the blond locks, and that’s how she knows it never grows back after it’s cut. That’s the bit that Mother Gothel tried to cut off when Rapunzel was a baby, in order to steal its magic. It was when she saw that it lost the magic when cut that she abducted Rapunzel and made sure she never cut her hair again.
@57 – I meant that we only see her with the pixie cut, we don’t see her at the wedding or anything, when her hair would have grown out to look like her mother’s.
I already referred to the one bit of brown hair that Gothel had cut at the beginning. There’s no reason to think that once Rapunzel’s hair is cut and loses its magic, it stops growing at all! It just turns into normal, non-magical hair that can’t be used as an instinctive lasso – if it got very long it would get tangled and interfere with the golden hair… and it’s a reminder of a perceived failure – so Rapunzel keeps it short.
I’ve always found it odd that so many people assume her hair is in permanent pixie mode, that it will never grow again even at a normal rate.
@58/Brenda A.: “I already referred to the one bit of brown hair that Gothel had cut at the beginning. There’s no reason to think that once Rapunzel’s hair is cut and loses its magic, it stops growing at all!”
I don’t understand your logic here. That one bit of brown hair is the reason to think that. Gothel cut it when Rapunzel was a baby and it was still short 18 years later. Ergo, her hairs don’t grow back once they’re cut.
I have hair almost the same brown as hers. I have to cut it every six months or so. Just because it’s not magic doesn’t mean it stopped growing forever. I assume that Rapunzel keeps that bit of hair trimmed so that it won’t interfere with the “live” hair.
@60/Brenda A.: I really don’t think that was the intention. I mean, would Gothel even let her trim her hair? What if the scissors slipped and cut a few of the precious still-whole strands? Given how greedy Gothel was for their power, I don’t think she’d be willing to risk any degree of attrition. Not to mention that it’s the same length it was after it was cut in her infancy. Why not cut it even shorter?
Looking into it online, I see that this is an ongoing controversy among fans of the film. But I’m going with Occam’s Razor here, no pun intended. Films tend to employ streamlined storytelling, to get information across as efficiently and simply as possible. They wanted to use a single image to tell us something about how her hair worked, and that image was that the cut strand was the same length after 18 years. The most straightforward takeaway from that is that it simply doesn’t grow. The alternative interpretation requires bringing in ad hoc assumptions that aren’t hinted at by what we’re shown, so I doubt it’s what the filmmakers intended.
Occam’s Razor – the simplest explanation, right? It seems to me that it is simpler to assume that when magical hair gets cut and loses its magic, it subsequently behaves like normal hair… than to assume that when magical hair gets cut, it subsequently magically never grows ever again!
@62/Brenda A.: I’m talking about Occam’s Razor in terms of what the filmmakers intended the scene to illustrate. We were shown that cut length of hair as part of the exposition, so it stands to reason that they intended the image itself to tell us everything we needed to know. And the fact that they showed it to be the same length suggests that they intended to convey that it had stopped growing. Any other conclusion, as I said, requires positing ad hoc assumptions that, however much sense they might make in the abstract, have nothing to do with what the filmmakers chose to include in that particular shot. And I don’t think that’s likely. Animation is a very slow, meticulous process where every single image and movement is designed and constructed with great care. So I doubt that they would leave out any information that was relevant to understanding the situation, or that they would be careless enough to give an impression inconsistent with their intent.
And I have no trouble believing that her hair would lose its ability to grow after it lost the magic. After all, its life force had been so completely intertwined with the magic that I could buy it being essentially “dead” after the magic was gone. Besides, the follicles had been so supercharged by the magic that they grew hair up to 10 times fater than normal. Take away the magic that sustained their ability to function at that hyperactive level and they might well just burn out and never recover. (Although, granted, if the follicles died completely, the hair would just fall out.)
Anyway, it’s magic. It’s superlong and superstrong and it glows when you sing at it. No reason the aftereffects of its loss wouldn’t be just as arbitrary.
I find it somewhat interesting that, in every version I’ve read of the fairy tale, Rapunzel is the daughter of a peasant couple and the prince…well, that’s obvious. The movie reversed it, with Rapunzel secretly a princess and Flynn/Eugene a commoner.
I think of Maximus as the ultimate example of why Judith Tarr needed to write an extensive rant regarding how horses are NOT large dogs with hooves. He’s hilarious and an excellent character, but a horse he is not.
Then again, Disney take liberties with something? Say it ain’t so!
My own headcanon for what happens after Rapunzel’s hair is cut goes like this:
A princess naturally periodically has to hear petitions from the people, especially when she has a lot of catching up to do about statecraft. So Rapunzel sometimes hears some absolutely awful stories from people from all walks of life about their horribly ill relation, and can the royal family send their own physician, please? Or some potion? Something?
(the royal physician is good, but what most of these people want is a worker of miracles, and he isn’t that.)
But these stories get to her. Sometimes, they make her cry. When they do the King or Queen whisk her away at once.
They also sometimes cry themselves. So she quickly figures out why. When they cry, their tears don’t glow. She tests a tear, caught in a bottle, discreetly, on Pascal when he’s had a near-miss with a palace cat. Pascal is fine a few moments later.
Her parents explain their reasoning. If her glowing tears are noticed and people begin to suspect their healing properties, she will be pressured to cry for everything, and will either A) be genuinely miserable or B) get too jaded and cry for nothing.
Rapunzel (she actually has a different royal name that isn’t a lettuce, but nobody who meets her uses it for long outside ceremony. Soon enough, that includes her parents) keeps this to herself for a long while. But ultimately decides she’s not willing to let people – people she obviously feels for – suffer just to protect herself.
So she talks to Eugene, who has an idea or two how to pull off deceptions.
He teaches her how to hide a small vial inside a handkerchief, and they practice her catching tears in it until she’s fast enough that even Eugene can’t see if she’s really cried or not until she shows him the vial.
Periodically, after that, people who petition at the palace find a messenger bringing them a small glowing vial for their sick and invalids. It’s not entirely a secret, but people assume, since the magic glowing flower had been part of the legend, that the princess still has the flower, or a cutting. The princess rides out of the palace and kingdom into privacy for a few days on occasion, which reinforces the idea she might be harvesting a cutting. Eugene even contrives the odd glowing petal to be found – in wildly disparate locations – from the last traces left inside a few used vials. People search gardens, woods, and all kinds of places a plant could grow, in vain.
But nobody really wants to stop the princess, and later queen, from occasionally answering a petition with a miracle.
Ummm….doesn’t Rapunzel ignore Flynn’s wish to die for her & let her keep her hair and still escape Mother Gothel?
The hero’s decision was made by Rapunzel, not Flynn, and it was made on the basis of her love of Flynn. His actions were a consequence of that decision – it’s just not the consequence Rapunzel was expecting or had bargained for with Gothel. She sings about things lost that “once were mine”, and then we see the image of her in the tower holding Flynn with her now unmagical hair strewn about the floor. At that point, she has lost everything she has known – her (flawed as she was) mother, her sheltered life in the tower, her magic, her beautiful long hair (separate from the magic), and her love. It’s a heavy price to pay for her decision to run away to see the lights, and it powerfully sets up the satisfaction for the viewer when Rapunzel receives her rewards.
It’s not Flynn’s action that gets the story teller off the hook, it’s the tear – but that is also how the original fairy tale was resolved.
I wonder if Rapunzel was all that bothered by losing the hair. It was after the putative reason for her lifelong imprisonment not to mention being incredibly inconvenient. She might be feeling a little negative about it at this point in her life. As for Eugene, he’s just frantic that his beloved not be trapped for the rest of her life. He’s dying, he’s not thinking clearly. If he’d had more time maybe he’d have tried to find another solution but he didn’t. Chalk it up as the mistake of a desperate man.
BTW According to Disney the hair eventually grows back – Rapunzel is seen with a nine or ten foot braid in ‘Sofia the First’. How that happened is anybody’s guess. But the drop of sun was absorbed by Eugene’s body when he was healed and the consummation of a marriage involves an exchange of fluids… and maybe I should stop thinking about this….
Came here from the wrap-up post.
I was worried there would be a bunch of Gothel apologists; but I’m relieved to see that nope, it’s all about that cut, ’bout that cut, no tresses.
…I am so very sorry for that you don’t even know.
On the subject of the movie: IMO, it was the most Dreamworks I think Disney ever got. And that’s both good and bad. Good in that Disney recognized that there’s some fun to be had in playing with the neighbor kid’s toys, but bad in that I don’t think I’ve truly enjoyed a Dreamworks movie since Rise off the Guardians, and haven’t really LOVED a Dreamworks movie since their 2D animation days. I felt their 2D movies were mostly just better overall. (Yes, I like Sinbad and Spirit better than Shrek)
What was i talking about? oh yeah. Tangled.
Tangled found the ‘unconventionality’ in its fairy tale and made it work, mostly. For all that Frozen was the more popular film, I personally like Tangled a bit better. Granted, it has no show-stopping Idina Menzel number, but Mandy Moore is a surprisingly good singer/actress, and “When Will My Life Begin?” and “I’ve Got A Dream” are VERY good, with the “I See The Light” sequence never, ever failing to wring tears out of me. (Then again I cried no less than 5 times at Moana, so I could just be a massive sap).
Now for the talking point: The haircut thing.
Honestly, given the circumstances of Rapunzel trapping herself in a corner by virtue of her own character (which, props to the film for its consistency there), there was really no way out of that trap. She could either have broken her word and become a meme about dishonesty and lying (because the Internet), or the movie would have ended on a depressing, sour note with pro-abuse undertones, and Disney would lose a LOT more credibility
Now, she COULD have cut her hair herself, but that would have been her sacrificing Eugene’s life without HIS input, which presents a whole host of problems all its own. That’s a more “BioWare game” style of problem than something Disney should tackle, since I feel those are the kinds of questions best asked in a more intetractive medium than film.
As it is, the ending may be problematic in that she has no agency, but it ultimately feels like the lesser of two evils, and Rapunzel is free and reunited with her family, at the very least – granted freedom on a permanent basis, in exchange for that one decision being made for her. And the consequences – she’d lose Eugene – were seriously mitigated by the magic tears, so it worked out far better than it could have.
I’m rather bummed that so many people are focusing on it from an aesthetic perspective, either defending short pixie cuts or being nostalgic for the long blond hair-rope, and ignoring the deeper meaning. Like…guys, that is the least important part of the discussion.
I also completely disagree with the analysis of Eugene’s decision. This is one of the few movies where I felt like the hero and heroine saved each other as opposed to the generic hero-saves-princess trope. He did it to save Rapunzel at the cost of his life- why burden that decision with what is clearly a personal issue? I feel like the author of this is trying to make a plea for feminism, but really, I would argue Tangled does a better job expressing a strong female lead who still might need a bit of saving, just as the not-so-traditional hero needed saving as well. Put this story into the old school Disney- I would argue that if just about any traditional Disney prince been in Eugene’s shoes here, he would have done the exact same thing but for much more selfish reasons. The villains in previous films were big guys set on becoming all-powerful or killing an entire kingdom. Gothel just wanted Rapunzel, would have been content living secluded and young forever. Flynn didn’t do what he did to defeat a villain and rescue the princess, he did what he did because in that moment he put Rapunzel’s life and well-being above anything else, and the greatest threat to Rapunzel, not the kingdom, not him, was Gothel, and the best way to release Rapunzel from Gothel’s grasp was by cutting her hair.
If someone tells me to cut my hair, I say go to the pit. Theoretically, if my hair were the cause of my being imprisoned by an evil witch for the rest of my life and I couldn’t bring myself to cut it, I would hope beyond hope someone cared about be me enough to just do it. By cutting her hair Rapunzel was released from Gothel and able to return to her real family. I’d take that over shiny hair any day of the week.
Like other commenters, I’ve really struggled with this movie because of a history of emotional abuse from my parents. Upon watching it, flashbacks and night terrors started all over again. “Mother Knows Best” is so emotionally triggering for me, and the soundtrack (I think?) had an extra verse that could have come out of my mother’s mouth. It was helpful to have a wider cultural context, however, to bridge with the people in my life who truly wanted to understand what I had been through. Most media doesn’t touch emotional abuse, let alone in a film with such wide popular appeal.
I am very much pro-autonomy, pro-long hair – but I also think Flynn cutting off her hair was the right thing to do in that situation. Sometimes we have to override someone’s autonomy for their own good, such as when a child is in the path of an oncoming vehicle and decides they’re quite happy where they are despite the warning (maybe what they looking at is far more interesting than the knowledge that something is coming). I don’t think anyone would hesitate to override their choice by scooping them up out of the way of danger!
In terms of just having long hair, many people who have kept theirs long during childhood either because they weren’t allowed to cut it as short as they wanted, or they just did think about it, go on to cut it short and find it’s a relief (not as hot, shorter drying times, not having to put it up, not having to brush or comb it, whatever). In just the physical respect of Rapunzel’s hair, I imagine it would have been a huge shock at first because the change was so drastic, but ultimately in the overall context it was a relief because it freed her – and Flynn knew it would. The fact he was willing to sacrifice himself shows beyond any doubt that his intentions were nothing but good, it couldn’t possibly have been interpreted as in any way controlling over her.
Incidentally, I’m disabled and I have calf-length hair. To me Rapunzel’s hair was not a disability, just nobody had shown her how to deal with it so it didn’t get in the way. I suppose one could argue that her having to deal with it / accommodate it shows it was indeed a disability, but it certainly wasn’t something that couldn’t easily be mitigated.
magical boat ride beneath glowing lanterns surrounded by singing dolls?
I snicker.
I loved that ride as a kid. I distinctly recall singing that song for weeks afterwards. My poor parents.
Jon C. Bunnel: Word, “I’ve Got A Dream” kicks ass.
I never thought about the issues with consent regarding Flynn in the finale when I first saw it, But I can where the problems arise…. And why did he cut her hair so short?! #LONGHAIRFOREVER