(this photo shows Christine Baranski as Cinderella's stepmother and Tammy Blanchard and Lucy Punch as her two blind sisters, complete with white canes and dark glasses, on set during filming of Cinderella's wedding at Dover Castle)
Into the Woods: A Review
A Guest Post by read_and_dream
While I loved Into
the Woods on a superficial level for its fun songs, clever
interweaving of various fairy tales, and its gentle mockery of Hollywood
stereotypes; I found the sexual undertones of it interesting as well, and the
implications of what “into the woods” actually meant. However, there was one
thing that I found problematic, something that wouldn’t have bothered me before
I started the course Blindness
and Vision in French Culture: this was how blindness was presented.
I was expecting the prince from Rapunzel to be blinded, as I already knew the
original story, but I was not familiar with the Aschenputtel version of Cinderella, in
which the two evil sisters are blinded by the birds that Cinderella has at her
command. It is not so much that I have a problem with this (although
considering blindness as a punishment is problematic), but it is the way in
which the sisters are presented after they lose their sight. Their blindness is
presented as comic, as they blunder around. Had they suddenly become deaf, or
wheelchair using, we would not have felt permitted to laugh, so why laugh at
blindness? I think it may lie in the theory that we laugh at things that make
us anxious; in this highly ocularcentric world, most of us, deep-down, have a
fear of losing our sight, as we perceive it to be our most important sense. Or
it could be classed as dark laughter; laughter that comes from a sense of
superiority over others who are suffering. Why do you think so many people
watch Big Brother?
It is not because it is good television. Going back to the film, I
definitely felt uncomfortable at the fact that people were laughing at the
sisters. I also felt uncomfortable at the tragic presentation of the
prince’s blindness; yes, it is horrible to fall on thorns and have your sight
removed in that way, but he still manages to find Rapunzel using his hearing,
and yet we are hardly given time to appreciate this before she has healed him
with her tears. He is not given the choice over whether or not he wants his
sight back; just like Gertude in La
Symphonie Pastorale, it is taken as a given. For once I would
like to see a film where someone is given the chance to regain their sight, but
refuses. I think that this would challenge people’s perceptions about the
tragedy of blindness and let them see that it is just another way of being. A
way of being without seeing.
