Ella Enchanted: Kant gets lost in a fairy tale

For those who know a little of the uncharted wasteland of teeny-bopper television, what I am about to write will come as a surprise: Ella Enchanted is genius.

I'm not referring to the esthetics of the movie, nor even its humor (which is pretty good), but, oddly enough, to its philosophical basis. Unexpectedly, this seemingly frivolous movie places itself in dialogue with Kant, Lacan, and Zizek. But before I go on to defend this radical thesis, let me tell the story:

Ella is born into a home where fairies are part and parcel of everyday life, and though the story is based (very loosely) on Cinderella, it steals a conceit from Sleeping Beauty. The fairies find themselves in a kind of contest to give the best present to the baby, and the final fairy gives the best thing she can come up with: the "gift of obedience." For the parents, this gift is often a blessing: they can tell the child to sleep or eat or behave, and Ella has no choice. She will obey.

Any parent will have mixed feelings about such a gift, because as much as we prize the autonomy of our children (and I even like Helena's rebellious streak), there are times when we just need them to do what they are told. How much despair leaked into my life because Helena would not sleep when I was totally exhausted, and how many fights have we suffered when she simply refuses to eat broccoli even as she recognizes that it is one of her favorite foods. (That
is not a misprint: when not being stubborn, she loves broccoli, squid, octopus, raw fish, and any number of foods you would not expect a five year old to  enjoy). In the end, though, to our modern, liberal ears, obedience sounds more like a curse than a gift.

The first half of the movie plays the "gift of obedience" for laughs, and with no little success. As Ella's stepsisters learn that she will always do exactly what they command, they condemn her to a series of misadventures and petty crimes; her first encounter with the prince is complicated by the simple orders of "stay here and wait" or "listen to me," the stuff of daily conversation that we only see as an order as we laugh at Ella's response.

Finally, Ella heads off on her mission to find the fairy and ask her to take back the gift/curse. Walking through the woods as she begins her quest, the cries of "help me!" force her to obey and save an elf from his torture. As he screams advice to her, she takes the words as commands; and since she must do what she is commanded, in fact she fights like a king-fu master.

In the tumbles and turns of the plot, Ella learns of the oppression of the ogres and giants, finds a weak ally in the prince and heir to the throne, and finally makes her way to the capital city of the kingdom. To this point, the plot seems rather like that of Shrek, a simple inversion or deconstruction of fairy tale tropes, but with Ella's encounter with the prince's uncle, the evil Regent Edgar, the tale becomes much heavier. Edgar discovers the gift of obedience and commands Ella to kill the prince in the hall of mirrors at midnight, though she has (of course) fallen in love with him.

In spite of all of her attempts to overcome the regent's evil command, Ella finds herself in the hall of mirrors with the prince, a dagger in her hands. She tries to resist, but the gift of obedience does not brook exceptions: the blade moves closer and closer to her lover's heart, and all of the commands she has heard in her life echo through her memory. Then, suddenly, she sees herself in a mirror, and recognizes the secret: instead of being commanded by others, she will command herself. Looking at herself in the mirror, she declares, "You will no longer be obedient!"

Suddenly, instead of just being entertained by a funny movie, we find ourself face to face with German idealism, with the quandary of free will, and with the basic challenge of rearing a child.

If we look carefully at ourselves, we see biological demands (hunger, warmth, etc) and environmental influences (we have learned to do certain things, picked up other habits...). Looking at almost any "free" decisions we make, we can explain it as an inevitable result of biology and psychology... so where is free will? We are all, looking at it scientifically, cursed with the "gift of obedience".

Emmanuel Kant may have been the first philosopher to formulate the virtue of human autonomy as split in two. With reason (he postulates reason, but we can also talk about tradition, love, even the mirrors of a fairy tale), we can formulate what is right and project ourselves upon it: this is what Kant calls duty. "Duty?" the reader asks. "Isn't that just another kind of obedience?" And in fact, it is... but a different kind of obedience. For Kant, reason and duty are a kind of mirror which allows us to step back, look at ourselves in a cruel, objective light, and command ourselves. The opening between what I naturally or culturally want and what I declare to be my duty opens up a gap, a way to decide between one and the other. It's that decision, that break, that shows us to be truly free.

We can talk about the same issue in terms of parenting. Many progressive parents try to help their children to be free by allowing them to do what they want. After all, in politics, a government that controls personal behavior is tyrannical; we want to avoid that kind of oppression at home, as well. The problem is, however, that children are not instant adults. Obedience may be the negation of our desire to "do what we want", but it also allows us to make a second, later step, that of commanding (and obeying) ourselves, instead of someone else. (there's a long essay here on Kant's relationship with Hegel and the negation of negation, but I'll spare you).

Ella Enchanted seems like yet another throw-away, a flash in the pan directed to pre-teen girls... but in fact, it may teach them one of the most important lessons they (and we) have to learn.

Myths, idolatry, escape: Shrek

Last week, I talked about how A Bug's Life and Monsters Inc tried to teach kids about ideology.  The criticism of the power of myth is even stronger in the Shrek movies, where everyone becomes imprisoned in the idea of what they “should be.”  The  power of “should be,” defined in Shrek like a fairy tale or legend, is what the thinkers in the Frankfurt School call “ideology.”

When the movie narrates the rescue of Princess Fiona, it illustrates well the power of myth in a person’s life.  Fiona’s parents locked her up in a huge tower, guarded by a ferocious dragon, knowing that only her “true love’s first kiss” will break her spell.   She spends her time in the tower practicing martial arts and in reality, is a very very strong woman.  Nonetheless, when a knight in shining armor arrives to rescue her, she passively situates herself on the bed, with a flower on her chest, just like the Sleeping Beauty.  After confirming that the unconscious Shrek is okay, she runs to her bed to create a scene out of a Disney moive from the 1950s.  For her, the rescue scene has to be perfect: when Shrek wakes her up, she says, “This should be a marvelous, romantic moment”.  If reality conflicts with this Should, it is the Should that is going to prevail.

Princess Fiona talks a lot about destiny, understood as the force that transforms the world

Helena, dressed as Snow White.

from what it is to what it should be.    She explains that her destiny is to kiss her first love, free herself of the spell and marry the Prince that kissed her.  This obession with destiny makes it so that she can’t exercise her own free will, that she always chooses “what should be” instead of what she wants.  It is the same for the ogre, Shrek;  he’s ready to abandon his love for Fiona because he believes that world doesn’t work in this way, that he “should” be stronger than his desire.    When the princess goes to the palace to get married to the horrible Farquaad, Shrek returns to his bog and with perverse enjoyment says, “This is how it has to be.”  To abandon his own free will and conform with the absolute power of Should, becomes a pleasure.

Shrek uses other words to reflect on Should, especially “myth” and “fairy tale”.    It is the people who believe in it who give myth its power.   “The whole world knows what happens when you find your true love,” says Fiona, waiting to lose herself in the eyes of a lover, the Prince Charming who will rescue her from everything evil.    Waiting for the love that “the whole world knows”, she remains blind in the face of true love and chooses to abandon Shrek for the ridiculous Lord.   Lord Farquaad rides a horse-way better than an ogre who walks alongside a donkey!-therefore, this “should be” true love.  

As such, it’s important to distinguish between ethics as it is and the Should.  The Should stems from what “the whole world thinks”, which in reality, is not really what everyone thinks, but what I think others believe in or hope for.    Just like the “they” from “you know what they say”, the Should ought to be an empty category; probably no real person says what “they” say since we all know what “they” say.  It’s possible that no human being really wants to marry a man like Lord Farquaad, but “the whole world knows” that a princess “should” marry a prince, that’s why Fiona did it.    Shrek intentionally creates confusion between fairy tales and Should, because the two teach us how to behave and what to expect from the world, but without much reflection.  The poor and oppressed girl “should” be rescued Prince Charming;  it doesn’t matter if she is stronger than any prince, she should always be the victim.  It doesn’t matter if she doesn’t love the prince, she should always love the prince.  This is how the myth is established.

The ethical, in contrast, stems from reasoning, reflection, and love.   It is a decison that I make in dialogue with tradition, with the world, and other people, and it isn’t something that I passively receive.    In many cases, the ethical is the exact opposite of the “Should”.   Boy and girls live in this cross between the ethical and the Should, which is why children’s movies also raise the issue.  

Lord Farquaad embodies the opposition beween the Should and the ethical.   What the “whole world wants”-at least in the world of the Should-is power and prestige.    Lord Farquaad doesn’t love Fiona, but he will marry her because it is part of the path that will allow him to be King.    Nonetheless, it isn’t really clear if he wants to be King.  The Should teaches him that he should be King.    He thinks that everyone else thinks he wants to be King.  Because he should want to, he does.     And dominated by the Should, the Lord has very little time to consider the ethical.  He will make many people suffer and sacrifice themselves—this means he will oppose the ethical—because the Should makes him do it.

In the first scenes of the movie, there is a social cleansing campaign against magical creatures, which follows the same logic.  Lord Farquaad wants a “perfect” world, where perfection is understood in terms of Should.  What "the whole world" wants is cleanliness and prosperity, order and progress, but the kingdom that Farhquad creates is not viable, it is a place where no one wants to live.  No one is around when Shrek and the donkey arrive at the castle.  In reality, for all its perfection, it is an intolerable place.  The scene reminds me of my first trip to Brasilia, an ultramodern city created to be the capital of Brasil.  The government buildings surround a grand quadrangle, with perfect geometric proportions, green grass, and complete cleanliness, and there isn’t anyone there.  No one.  Even the government employees escape to other cities on the weekend.  It is a city that should be perfect, the incarnation of what the whole world wants and is a place where no one wants to live.  

In the Shrek movies, the powerful myths have to do with love and power.  In other children’s movies, they also talk about money as a myth that imprisons people: in Robots, the bad guy is the head of Bigweld Industries, an executive who wants to kill all of the poor robots in order to increase his company’s value.  However, even his wickedness is ambiguous.  In reality, more than evil, he is insecure around his powerful mother and on several occassions it becomes apparent that he doesn’t even know what he wants.  He lacks a clear desire-and without a clear ethic—he easily falls prey to the enchantment of money.  He abandons good values—solidarity, creativity, affection—because “there is no profit in that,” but neither is it clear what he wants out of all of the money he gains from being evil.   Even among the worst people, it’s the Should that runs everything.

Liberation Theology made an important advance in the criticism of ideology, a critique that first that arose in Europe and the United States in between the wars.  For thinkers such as Juan Luis Segundo, Enrique Dussel, and Franz Hinkelammert, ideology has the structure like idolotry: meaning, to worship a false god.  Money has turned into our divinity, and capitalism, its cult.  

The evil head of Bigweld Industries in Robots expresses this reflection very well.  In the middle of an existential crisis, not knowing who he is, the boss returns to easy pieties, the religion of the whole world.  He doesn’t know which god he wants to worship, so he worships the god he “should” worship: money.  In reality, it’s not just the head of Bigweld Industries who takes the easy way: I remember my last year of college very well when all of my friends were looking for the next step in their lives.  Very few had a clear path, so they took jobs they thought they “should” want: banks, Wall Street, law firms.  Like the bad guy in Robots, they entered a passive idolotry.  It’s not that they really believed in the money god (Mammon, as the theologians would say), but it was easier to believe in it, rather than to challenge the  “whole world” who seems to believe in it (money god).

In Shrek, the power of ideology imprisons everyone, the oppressed as much as the oppressors.  Lord Farquaad makes a “perfect” world instead of reflecting upon his own desire; Fiona marries Farquaad because that’s what a princess “should” do; Shrek thinks that he only deserves to live in his bog.  Nonetheless, there are some people who know how to manipulate myth for their own benefit, as the Fairy Godmother shows us in Shrek 2.  She – perhaps enchanted by her own Should of money and power—wants her son, Prince Charming, to marry Fiona.  In this way, her son will become the King of the Kingdom of Far Far Away.  Knowing that Shrek gets in the way of this goal, the Fairy Godmother starts a campaign against him, doing everything possible so that her son seduces the princess.

Shrek, oblivious of the Fairy Godmother’s scheme, goes to the magic factory to buy a potion that will resolve the conflicto with Fiona’s father, who doesn’t want his daughter to marry an ogre.  The Fairy Godmother, furious, searches through all of her fairy tales, showing that neither in Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Hansel and Gretel, nor in any of the others, is there an ogre who lives “happily ever after.”  In the world of Should, ogres are not happy.  

In her first argument, the Fairy Godmothehr appeals to a Should for Shrek—that an ogre shouldn’t have a “happily ever after”-but doesn’t convince him.  The ogre already learned how to escape the Should in the first Shrek movie.  But later on, when Shrek sees the princess with Prince Charming for the first time, the Fairy Godmother presents another argument.

"I only wanted her to be happy", says Shrek.
"And now, she can be," responds the Fairy Godmother.  "She has finally met the prince of her dreams...it’s time for you to let her live her fairy tale.  She is a princess and you are an ogre.  And this is somthing that no potion will change."
"But I love her."
"If you truly love her, you will let her go."

Now that the argument that Shrek himself should or shouldn’t be happy has failed, the Fairy Godmother talks about what a princess “should have” in order to be happy.   Shrek enters this scene very insecure.  He has already seen bits of Fiona’s childhood-diaries where  she pictures herself as Prince Charming’s wife, dolls of wandering knights—dreams she had of her future.  He had met her parents, and the King had made it very clear that a princess should not marry an ogre.  With this sadness in the background, the Fairy Godmother’s argument is powerful: it’s impossible for a princess to be happy with an ogre, so if he wants her to be happy, he has to abandon her.  In the first Shrek movie, the Should makes Shrek deny his own desire.  In the second, the Should makes him deny his desire for Fiona.

With this critique of ideology, neither the movies nor I are saying anything new.  These are the same lessons that any mom would teach her sons and daughters: “It doesn’t matter what others think or do,” “Be faithful to yourself,” “It’s more important to be good than it is to be rich” and other simple and true lessons.   However, these are lessons that many adults only remember during encounters with their children.  In other moments, we are prisoners of the false gods of money, prestige, power, and myth… precisely the gods we don’t want for our children.  Because of this, it is worth it to re-examine the criticism of ideology with our kids, because  it also helps us be more honest.