ABSTRACT

This chapter approaches questions of postfeminism in contemporary popular cinema through a discussion of the 2007 Disney production Enchanted (Kevin Lima), a film that combines animation and live action, exploiting and reflecting on the long history of the Disney brand. Enchanted plays out an ironic, tongue-in-cheek scenario in which the youthful and naïve princess-to-be Giselle (Amy Adams) is propelled by evil Queen Narissa (Susan Sarandon) from the magical animated Andalasia into real-world Manhattan. Such fictional, yet somehow plausibly named magical kingdoms are a common feature of Hollywood’s princess preoccupation (Genovia in Disney’s Princess Diaries films, for instance [Garry Marshall, 2001; 2004]). And, as I’ll argue, magic forms are as significant a feature of the contemporary romantic comedy as fate; if a defining feature of realist drama is the refusal of the fantastic deus ex machina of melodrama, then the genre’s embrace of magical resolutions and fairytale tropes is telling of a retreat from contemporary gendered realities. New York (a site invested with its own magical or fantasy status in numerous fictions) is the scene for most of the narrative action in Enchanted. Here, Giselle’s fairytale ideas about true love are tested while she waits for Prince Edward (James Marsden) to rescue her, in the process developing romantic feelings for divorce attorney Robert (Patrick Dempsey). Robert, whose wife, we learn, left him to raise their 6-year-old daughter Morgan (Rachel Covey) alone, seeks to conduct his relationship with partner Nancy (Idina Menzel) along rational rather than emotional lines. Giselle’s romanticism and Robert’s bruised cynicism position them as the typical romantic comedy couple—opposed in almost every way, and yet clearly destined to be together. The narrative obstacles, which romantic comedy uses to defer the formation of the “right” couple till the closing scenes, have here to do with a clash of animated and “real” worlds, of fairytale endings and emotional complexity. The climax stages fairytale tropes in the real world, with a pitched battle between Giselle and Queen Narissa that allows the naïve heroine to defeat a monstrous foe and rescue her lover. 1 That the film’s representative professional woman, Nancy, departs to Andalasia with Prince Edward suggests a fundamental dissatisfaction with contemporary gender norms, embracing instead a fantastical mode of fantasized femininity that can only be termed postfeminist.