Depressingly enough, politics tend to seep into our appreciation of culture and popular entertainment a lot more than one would have thought or wished. Therefore, it's heartwarming when there's a meeting of minds across the political divide. The other week, two YouTubers in my feed who are on completely different sides ideologically had just about the same reaction to the trailers for the upcoming (live-action) Disney film Cruella. Which was: have Disney completely lost it? Are they seriously expecting us to root for a woman who wanted to skin puppies to make a fur coat??
The comments beneath the trailers are often in the same vein. What the heck - are they really turning Cruella de Vil into a "girl boss"? Cruella, who is generally considered both irredeemable and unforgivable? There is a musical parody called Twisted, where apparently - in a clear dig at Wicked - Jafar from Aladdin is shown to be a good chap, really, who's only been maligned. I haven't seen it, but I've heard one of the songs from it, where Jafar meets a bunch of other Disney villains who give their - more or less - credible takes on their tales. The sob stories are well under way, when Cruella suddenly appears exclaiming: "I only wished to have a coat made out of puppies!" "You're not helping", Scar growls. "Disregard that".
Even Once Upon A Time, normally a fictional villain's best friend, went with the "Yeah, no, she's just a psycho" explanation in Cruella's case - evil, in this particular instance, was born, not made. (Cruella shouldn't really be in the Once universe in my opinion, seeing as she's not a fairy-tale character, but she was fun and one of the more bearable things about Problematic Season Four, so I'll not complain too much.) If you can't catch a break in Once, you can't catch a break anywhere. Public opinion is, not unreasonably, fixed: no sympathy for the potential dog-skinner.
While agreeing that it would be a disaster to try and prettify Cruella's misdeeds, I was interested to see that people draw the line here, because I don't remember there being much of an outcry over Maleficent when it appeared. But she's just as bad, surely? I mean, she cursed an innocent baby to die - not right away, granted, but on her sixteenth birthday! Even if you change the story so that Maleficent herself softens the curse to eternal sleep which can only be lifted by True Love's Kiss, she doesn't come out of it smelling of roses (especially if she doesn't believe there is such a thing as TLK). And yet Disney, disastrously, didn't settle for the Once recipe of adding nuance and complexity to a villain by telling their back story (which I would have been totally on board for): they tried to more or less exonerate Maleficent. Yes, they grudgingly seemed to admit, the baby-cursing was perhaps not the greatest thing she ever did, but couldn't we see her point? (Er... no?) Didn't she make up for it afterwards by protecting Aurora? (Again... no?) Most of the time, good old Mal was just a kick-ass protector of the Moors, and the mean king who stole her wings was the real villain. People seemed pretty much to accept this head-scratching take on the bad fairy, but when it comes to giving Cruella the same treatment, they rebel. So... cursing babies is OK, but killing puppies is not OK?
To be fair, though, I think much of the negative reaction to the Cruella trailers might be a delayed response to what Disney did with Maleficent. The trailers themselves don't really seem to be in an exonerating vein. The Cruella we see appears pretty cracked from the start and not likely to turn out to be someone we will sympathise a whole lot with. So what if she has trouble with her boss? So what if she starts out scrubbing floors? It doesn't follow that we are meant to feel sorry for her. My guess is, she'll be a bad lot from the beginning, and the unfortunate quote "I am woman. Hear me roar" in the trailer is not to be whole-heartedly embraced. Nevertheless, because Disney messed up so badly with the Maleficent back story, commentators are on their guard and prepared for another botched villain make-over. I don't think we need worry that the film will go down the "poor little mistreated Cruella" path, though - I can't see it becoming a thing.
However, even if Disney steer away from a Maleficent disaster, it doesn't mean that the film will be good. The trailers hint at a rags to riches story, but wasn't Cruella rich to begin with? I remember watching a YouTube video on the "which Disney villain are you based on your star sign" theme, as you do. Being a Leo, I was hoping to get Scar, but instead I got Cruella. I was miffed, but when I saw the scene they'd chosen - where she sweeps into her old school friend's house as if she owns the place, drawling "Anita, daaarling", displaying massive condescension towards Anita and contempt for the decent but in worldly terms unsuccessful Roger - I had to admit it was sort of a fair cop. That sense of entitlement struck a chord. A "sharpening of villainy through hardship" back story seems a very poor fit for this fur-wearing diva. It might conceivably work as a prequel to the live-action 101 Dalmatians where Glenn Close's Cruella was more of a nut case than anything else - but do we really need an explanation of her? Although I basically never think a villain back story is a bad idea, I may have to concede that in Cruella's case, the less you dig beneath the surface, the better.
Will I watch the film, though? You can bet on it, darling.
