Today I published my 75th Book Riot article! I wrote about the myths and historical theories about The Pied Piper of Hamelin. As usual, I followed it up on Medium.
On Medium, I also expanded on a recent post where I discussed ableism in Just Ella by Margaret Peterson Haddix and feminist Cinderella retellings in general. Link below:
Cinderella and Topical Feminism
However, like many ’90s movies and books did, Ever After uses an inaccurate term for its Romani characters. I like other aspects of Ever After and think they hold up today, though.
Cruella is Ableist/Saneist
(adapted from my Twitter thread)
Wow, Cruella is an ableist, incoherent mess. It has a great soundtrack (more like a playlist because it’s incoherent), costumes, and sets, but still. In this movie, genetic mental illness = evil! Saneism is a more specific form of ableism against mental illness. It’s like the girlboss feminism I criticized in the Camila Cabello Cinderella and Just Ella in the Medium link above, but turned up to 11.
Estella “Cruella” was born with black-and-white hair, has an alter ego named Cruella, is evil because of hereditary mental illness, & her adoptive mom was killed by Cruella’s bio mom with her Dalmatians…
But also she…loves dogs…somehow?
It makes no sense. It could be a homage to, or a parody of, everything from The Devil Wears Prada to The Hunger Games series if it were original, which I don’t think it is.
More importantly, though, it equates evil with hereditary mental illness and uses this ableist, saneist view to explain Cruella’s villain origin story. It frequently uses ableist slurs like psycho–but not as reclamation. It’s an explanation by way of conflating villainy and evil with genetic mental illness.
There have been many threads and essays about this before mine.
Small Site Update!
I also added a search box to the bottom of this WordPress site! I sometimes use ctrl + f to find my own work on it because there’s so much now. Of course, I know exactly what I’m looking for. I hope this is easier for everyone. It also displays more full posts, fewer previews.
My essay on ableist language was included in this handout for a 2021 SCBWI (Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators) conference. Thank you! Typos happen, but I find it amusing they misspelled my name as “Frace.” As a kid writing an unpublishable novel about cloning, I received a subscription to Scientific American addressed to “Frace.”
Grace Lapointe 