Extradiegetic: Sleeping Beauty

Sleeping Beauty was Disney’s return to the fairytale formula that had served him so well just a few years before with Cinderella and jump-started animated cinema with Snow White.  Once again there are the usual fairytale trappings: a princess, a prince, magic, etc.  But the story of Sleeping Beauty presents a problem for a movie retelling; watching the title character sleep does not make for a compelling movie.  The story also involves a large time gap that needs to be bridged, between the princess being cursed and the curse being fulfilled.  Disney solved this problem by shifting focus to more of the characters, so the titular character wasn’t carrying the entire film.  We see more of the Kings and the Prince, but the real stars are the fairies.

Flora, Fauna and Merryweather provide a stable group of character for the movie to focus on.  They are there at the beginning, providing a crucial role of bestowing their gifts on Aurora, most notably altering Maleficent’s curse.  They also conceive and initiate the plan to keep Aurora hidden until after her 16^th birthday.  Though they seem to serve primarily as comic relief, they are actually the ones driving the story forward.

Aurora has her brief period of action as she meets the prince, falls in love, finds out she’s a princess and then fulfils the curse and falls asleep.  But from there the focus is fully back on the fairies as they realize Prince Phillip’s kiss will break the curse and mount a rescue.  Then do all the heavy lifting as he escapes and slays Maleficent.  Ultimately Prince Phillip does little more than act as a warm body to hold the magical weapons they conjure up.  Even the death blow against Maleficent in dragon form is more Flora casting a spell on the sword, than the actual flinging of the sword.  The only reason he’s useful at all is the curse-breaking kiss.

But even as the action follows the fairies, they maintain the feel of side characters, operating just off to the side of the Prince and Princess; giving the feeling the movie is still more about them.  The way they are used in this movie in general demonstrates how a story can still be made to work by still providing interesting characters to support it, even if they’re not the characters that are expected.  The fairies are what hold this movie together. Without them it would be a disconnected series of scenes and lacking in much of the depth and humor. 

Extradiegetic: Lady and the Tramp

Lady and the Tramp runs counter to the conventional wisdom that the protagonist needs to change over the course of a story. In this film the protagonist is clearly Lady.  The story follows Lady throughout the film.  She is clearly the protagonist.  Usually as such she would be expected to change and grow over the course of the story.   But that’s just one way to tell a story.   There’s also the reverse were the hero is challenged with temptation and threat to compromise their beliefs.  But they remain steadfast, and in the end they change others by their conviction.  Lady and the Tramp is this type of story.

Lady believes in being part of a home and family.  Early in the film she’s very proud when she receives her license, showing it off to the neighbor dogs.  This scene is an efficient setup, establishing the beliefs of Lady and also introducing the characters of Jock and Trusty.  When her belief is first tested by the reduced attention caused by Darling’s pregnancy she is presented with two conflicting philosophies.  Her friends reinforce her belief in loyalty to home, as they explain what a baby is and how nice they can be.  Their point of view is rebutted by the Tramp who shows up and tells her “when a baby moves in, the dog moves out.”  

Ultimately, her faith in home is reaffirmed when the baby finally arrives and Jim Dear helps her get a look at the baby.  She’s still part of the family; it’s just a bit larger now.  But soon after she is challenged again as Aunt Sarah arrives to take care of the baby while Jim Dear and Darling go on vacation. Aunt Sarah doesn’t want Lady anywhere near the baby, and after being framed by a pair of Siamese cats Aunt Sarah takes Lady out to get a muzzle.   Lady panics and runs out, getting lost.  She’s found by Tramp who begins to show her how he lives without a home.  He argues that when he lives without a home, he gets only the best by visiting a different home every night.  Lady isn’t immediately swayed by this argument, but neither is she clamoring to return home immediately.

Tramps lack of commitment with a home is repeated in his attitude toward dating many women. Also, despite the time they spend together, he is still reckless with her safety, and endangers Lady by insisting they chase chickens around for fun, only to end up getting shot at and Lady captured and taken to the pound.  While the evening before showed the benefits of living untethered, this next day presents the pitfalls.  It also has Lady realizing that she’s not the only dog in Tramp’s life, and he has a reputation as a ladies man.  Not only is some of the worst of this lifestyle on display in the pound, but it also reinforces her connection to home as it is her license that saves her from it.  The dogs at the pound say they would give their left leg for one to get out of there.

When the Tramp visits Lady to apologize she makes it clear she’s not interested in his lifestyle or him anymore.  That the Tramp tries to apologize at all is significant.  It’s unlikely he’s done that in past relationships instead of simply moving to the next girl.  He leaves, but returns when he hears Lady barking at a rat.  Chained to the doghouse, Lady is unable to stop the rat from entering the house, so it’s up to the Tramp hunt down the rat.  Tramp manages to kill the rat, but Aunt Sarah, not realizing the rat was there, thinks Tramp’s just been wrecking up the place and barricades him in a closet before calling the pound.

This moment was predicted earlier in the pound.  Where the other dogs postulate that when the Tramp does fall in love, he’ll get careless and dog catchers will finally capture him.  This indicates that the Tramp is indeed in love with Lady and he has changed. Things happen very quickly now as Jock and Trusty realize what happened along with Jim Dear and Darling, who had just arrived back home.  Trusty and Jock are able to stop the pound carriage and save the days, though Trusty does end up breaking his leg.  In the final scene we see that Tramp is now part of the family, with his own collar and license.  He has changed and followed Lady’s example because of his newfound love for her.  

Stories with a steadfast protagonist are less common, but it is a useful form of storytelling.  Seeing a character withstand an assault on their values and remain steadfast can be just as inspiring as seeing one swayed by those values.  Lady and the Tramp could’ve been flipped around so that Tramp was the protagonist.  But, they chose to focus on Lady.  Neither way is necessarily correct, but each provides its own benefits and pitfalls.  It’s important to remember that there’s more than one way to approach a story.

Extradiegetic: Cinderella

For any story, it’s important to quickly establish the boundaries of your story.   The first few scenes should set the tone, and inform the audience what sort of things are and are not possible.  People bursting into song, talking animals, magic; these are all things that audiences are willing to suspend their disbelief for, but not if they’re suddenly presented halfway through the movie.  Disney’s return to full length animated movies with Cinderella has a lot to set up, and it does it very smoothly and quickly.   

Cinderella begins like Snow White, with a literal storybook opening.  A brief narration establishes Cinderella’s backstory.  As is typical of Disney princesses of the era, she possesses nearly unlimited optimism and is a friend to all living things.  The opening scene is easy to overlook, but it conveys a lot of information about the movie very quickly.  As the movie begins we see she lives at the top of a tower, both separated from, and above the rest of her family.   The view moves into her room, sparsely decorated with secondhand and broken furniture.  Patches spot her bed sheets.  These visual cues set up her current position as a servant in her own home.  It speaks to the attitudes of the Stepmother, only allowing Cinderella to use what has already been thrown away by them.  

Next, Cinderella is woken by a pair of birds.  They don’t speak, but they are wearing bits of clothing.  This in addition to their actions establishes that the animals are intelligent.  A fact quickly reinforced as we see many other animals acting with greater than natural intelligence, including the mice who can even speak.  Once awake, Cinderella quickly moves into singing “A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes”, thus marking this as a musical movie, where people break into song.  

Within five minutes of the film opening (including credits) the audience is set up to expect a fairy tale musical in which animals are intelligent and songs are commonplace.  This is clearly not the reality of our world, but because these facts are established so early on the audience has no problem believing these things for the rest of the movie.  This sets the tone for the rest of the movie, and gives the viewer a frame of reference for what is and is not possible.  

Much like Snow White before her, much of Cinderella’s strength is in her ability to make friends.  Her freeing Gus from a trap then clothing and naming him demonstrates her kindness and her ability to make friends with even those others would ignore at best, and consider pests at worst.  This friendship with the animals pays off throughout the movie, but especially at the end where they free Cinderella just in time. While Cinderella might not seem active, it was her actions early on that set her up to succeed later when she’s otherwise powerless.

Gus also provides the role of outsider, giving the other characters an excuse to explains things to audience.  This role is very common in stories and is often filled by the protagonist, when they are suddenly thrust into a new situation by the plot.  Since Cinderella is already in an established situation, not having a character to explain things to could result in characters speaking to each other in unnecessary detail about things they already know. This logical inconstancy that can take the viewer out of the native.

When Cinderella goes down to the kitchen she finds Bruno, the dog, dreaming of chasing Lucifer, the cat.  After singing about how great dreams are, she now chides Bruno for his dreams and tells him that his dream is bad.  This is an ironic mirror of her own situation, as her dreams are suppressed by the Stepmother, so she is doing the same thing to Bruno.  But, ultimately it is Bruno following his dream and chasing Lucifer that literally frees Cinderella to follow her own. 

The magic of the fairy godmother is a sudden shift in what is an otherwise non-magical world.  Presenting magic this late in a story can be problematic, but Cinderella has a few things helping it out.  First of all, it’s not unreasonable to expect the audience to familiar with the genre of fairy tales.  And magical intervention is a common occurrence in them.  Additionally the characters themselves treat the magic as something unusual and exceptional.   Because it’s novel to them, it’s okay for it to be novel for the audience as well.  The audience doesn’t feel like they should’ve known like something like this was possible.  

How to start a story is an important consideration, with many factors to balance.  Cinderella is an excellent example of how to quickly give the audience an understanding of what sort of story to expect.  When someone comes into a story for the first time, they come in willing to accept things that would otherwise be illogical.  This brief openness allows the writer to create fantastic worlds.  But this period of acceptance is quick to close.  An early foothold is necessary for people to take a story seriously.    Without that solid foundation, you risk losing the reader later.

Extradiegetic: Make Mine Music

Disney continued with anthology movies amid continuing production issues related to World War II, releasing with Make Mine Music in 1946.  There were originally 10 shorts included in the film.  However, one of them, The Martins and the Coys, was not included as part of the DVD release, primarily due to concerns over the amount of gunplay in it.  Again, many of the shorts are more musical and abstract without any real plot.  There are a few standouts though, such as Casey at the Bat, All the Cats Join In, Peter and the Wolf, and Johnnie Fedora and Alice Blue Bonnet.  But for this article I’ll be focusing on the final short of the film; The Whale Who Wanted to Sing at the Met.

Despite the absurd sounding title of, The Whale Who Wanted to Sing at the Met is actually about a tragedy of misunderstanding.  The story does not begin with showing titular whale directly.  But instead presents a series of stories in the newspaper about mysterious singing at sea that attracts more and more attention.  This build-up is there to lead into the introduction of the antagonist of this story, Tetti-Tatti, and impresario who hears about these operatic songs coming from a whale.  He concludes incorrectly that the whale has swallowed an opera singer and heads out on an expedition to save them.

At this point the short shifts to the protagonist, Willie the whale, out in the ocean singing to seals.  While Willie doesn’t directly express his goal to sing at the Met, the narrator and Willie’s actions make his goal to sing professionally clear by presenting this as an opportunity for the two to meet.  When Willie finds out about it from his seagull friend he immediately heads out to intercept the ship.  So the short has now established the protagonist, antagonist, and set them up on a collision course.

When Willie finds the ship, Tetti-Tatti is still under the impression that Willie has swallowed an opera singer and orders his crew to harpoon the whale.  But the crew rather listen to Willie’s singing.  Tetti-Tatti continues to insist they save the opera singer, but is repeatedly stopped by the crew.  The narrator then reveals that Willie, abilities are even greater than was already known.  He has the ability to sing in three different voices at the same time. While in stories it’s good for protagonist to have flaws they overcome, it’s also important for them to have things that they are good at as well. This ability is a version of that, but it also sets Willie up as even more amazing than was originally thought, making his ultimate destruction even more tragic.  Tetti-Tatti’s misunderstand and resolve only grow with this revelation however, as he hears the addition voices from Willie he concludes that the whale has swallowed additional opera singers.

 

The story then does something very deceptive here.  The narrator chides Tetti-Tatti for not seeing Willie for what he was, and continues with the narrator saying “Just imagine a whale singing opera on the very stage of the Met.”  The scene then fades from Willie singing in the ocean to him singing on stage, with Tetti-Tatti conducting.  This is followed by additional scenes and newspaper headlines showing his great successes everywhere. Finally we see Willie singing as the devilish Mephistopheles which then fades to Tetti-Tatti once again back on the ship, manning the harpoon, revealing to the audience that what they had just seen wasn’t real.  He fires and jubilantly exclaims that he got him.  The previous sequence was presented as imaginary from the start, but it’s easy for the audience to overlook that, and think that the scenes are Willie’s dream coming true.  The subtle setup leads to a sudden return to reality can be jarring and effective.  But it depends heavily on external expectations of the audience.  That cartoons have happy endings.  That a whale can become an opera singer.  These are assumptions that can then be turned on their head by clever presentation.  

As Willie thrashes away among a stormy sea and an angry red sky, it leaves no question as to Willies fate.  The narrator does put a positive spin on it as it shows Willie singing up in Heaven, forever and ever.

I found this short in particularly interesting because it’s so complete and nuanced for such a short story.  The antagonist isn’t an evil person.  Tetti-Tatti was trying to save lives he thought were in danger (though it was so he could then promote them as opera singers).  But his narrow-minded approach made him blind to the greater talent right in front of him, but in unusual form.   And then the short plays off the expectations of the audience to give them a false happy ending before delivering the sudden reversal into tragedy.  

For other writers I think there are two main lessons here.  Antagonist don’t have to be evil, they just have to have goals that interfere with the protagonist’s goals.  And secondly, it can be very effective to play on the expectations of the audience, and then subvert them.