LES CONTES DE NUTTHELO - MANDSDRAGT

Il la fait habiller en homme (perte d'identité de genre), ... DÉSHUMANISATION - Sandra: je dirais DÉFÉMINISATION

Elle souffre le martyre à chaque balade à cheval, ...

French Instagrammer and fairytale geek Nutthelo on the mandsdragt scene. She sees the prince's decision to put the Little Foundling in a suit as a way to make her lose her gender identity (she was far more feminine until then) and calls it dehumanisation. I would say it is rather defeminisation, loss of a feminine identity... Nuthelo agrees with Jacob Bøggild that the Prince is doing it to protect his own straight male sexuality from temptation...

 and I add that the character is a teen who is discovering her gender and sexuality. Maybe she is, like Brienne of Tarth and others, a cisgender teen tomboy? Both Brienne and the Little Foundling are in unrequited love with handsome young men (though the Prince loves the Convent Girl and Renly loves Loras, a boy). 

Also, even if the Victorian/Biedermeier era was far more patriarchal, the Little Foundling is, just like she explores her body and identity, exploring the land kingdom with all the freedom that her suit/mandsdragt allows her, through outdoor activities like horseback riding and mountaineering (even though those activities were masculine-coded back then). She is, like Queen Christina, Julie d'Aubigny, Eugénie Danglars... a New Woman before New Women existed, a Proto-New Woman.

But the Little Mermaid was an introverted girly-girl as a child, and the most spirited (dynamic, we world say tomboyish) back then, her spiritual predecessor, was one of her older siblings, the Third Sister (yaaaay! New Andersen character introduced!) who was the one who ventured deepest into the human realm until the Little Mermaid changed species, and also the first to come into contact with humans.

Illustrations by blog_mellow: in his version the Third Sister looks like Ariel, while the Little Mermaid/Foundling is platinum blonde. The setting is Biedermeier (as usual); when we reach the mandsdragt scene, I will analyse her outfit once more...

The Third Sister, as a teen, swam up a river that empties itself into the ocean (it was summer, she had to cool her face by plunging it time and again); she came across hilly riverbanks with palaces, manors, forests, and vineyards (I headcanon this as the Loire Valley because 1) the Loire empties itself into the Atlantic; 2) the summer there is burning hot; 3) the landscape is the same, Renaissance châteaux and manors, forest, and vineyards), on the top of the riverbank hills).

In a little creek, the Third Sister came across some human children splashing around, and she played with them (neither party was afraid, both of them were curious), until the bark of their pet puppy drove her away at breakneck speed, back into the ocean. That, and the fresh water didn't agree with her marine system.

Andersen says that the Third Sister never forgot about her adventures, especially about the human kids who could swim so well without having tails (and who were as little afraid of her as she was afraid of them). It was a loud noise that drove her away, something unheard of underwater. I headcanon the Third Sister as being the Little Mermaid's favourite sibling and the one she most admired, the one whose adventures she listened the most to, the one who inspired her to collect thingamabobs from shipwrecks and, years later, to explore both her identity and the land kingdom through horseback riding and mountaineering in a bespoke man's suit (ignoring that her one true love did so in order to defeminise her and protect himself from temptation)...

"No male shall ever put on female's clothing; neither shall ever a female put on male's clothing, for both of these are Abominations unto the LORD." Deuteronomy 22:5.

This taboo is still held today by many patriarchal, conservative religions, especially evangelical cults like Jehovah's Witnesses or Remnant Bride. In some of these cults, women are not allowed to wear trousers in Church; in others, they're not allowed to wear trousers AT ALL (but in none of those cults can women SPEAK during the service because Saint Paul said so: Corinthians 14:34)...

And gays, lesbians, queers... have it even WORSE than straight women. Remnant Bride even claims that ladies' jeans were invented by SATAN... One of their worst rants against gender deviance is this essay on HYENAS, foul-smelling scavengers yet matriarchal and pseudo-hermaphroditic, that dynamic women like Mary Wollstonecraft and Schiller's sans-culottes were always compared to...

The hyena essay (take this with a grain of salt - evangelical propaganda!):

https://www.remnantbride.com/hyena/spotted.htm

The Schiller fragment - Marianna Wertz translation:

Then wives into hyenas growing

Do make with horror jester’s art,

Still quiv’ring, panther’s teeth employing,

They rip apart the enemy’s heart.

Sir Terry Pratchett famously satirises at once war, the patriarchy, and homophobia in his most glorious Discworld novel, Monstrous Regiment, set in a Ruritanian land where nearly all the men have been either killed or imprisoned in a decades-long war, leading many brave women to join the army en travesti, even though they risk eternal damnation due to a sacred text full of arbitrary laws (including Deuteronomy 22:5, of course).

The premise of Monstrous Regiment reminds me of Chamsous-Sabah, ruling her land as a coloured child of eight or nine because she was the last one left standing, just because of her age and gender:

"All the men in my family have either been poisoned or killed in battle, either against enemies or against each other. It's sad, but existence has got to come to an end..."

PARTIAL REVIEW: FOODFIGHT!

Characters straight out of the uncanny valley (all, except the leading cast, meant to represent certain US grocery mascots), reptilian Nazi military going "BRAND X, BRAND X, BRAND X..." Yes, we're talking about Foodfight! That film so bad that it cannot be good, reviewed by the Nostalgia Critic among many other detractors.
Yet the most fricking emetic feature of Foodfight! are, IMOHO, a pair of secondary characters who embody negative stereotypes. To begin with, this cumshot of an ENT schnoz:

Dr. Si Nustrix, mascot for some fictional nasal over-the-counter drug.

And 80% schnoz (Yiddish for "nose," a word used of the large aquiline nose of stereotypical Jews).

As you can see, he is a caricature of a Jew, resembling Nazi depictions of Hebrew people. He looks like the "Jewshrooms" on the cover of Third Reich-era German storybook Der Giftpilz (The Poison Mushroom).

Si Nustrix also speaks with a nasal voice, fitting for such a schnoz, and has a neurotic/angsty personality.

In contrast, here's Yadoa, the old scholar and one of Princess Chamsous-Sabah's many tutors.

A man of the world who has seen and suffered a lot, 

speaker of many languages and keeper of eldritch knowledge.

This is what a Jew should rather look like in fiction. 

The only clues about his heritage are the fact that he speaks Hebrew (which he lectures his young ward in) and the Star of David on his study wall.

As he explains in French, his mother tongue: « Nous venons du même pays mais comme mon arrière-arrière-grand-père était né au loin, on me traitait d’étranger et on me tourmentait. J’ai dû me réfugier ici, où je poursuis mes recherches et j’enseigne le grec et l’hébreu à la princesse Chamsous Sabah. »

(He also sees great potential in his disciple:  (« Tout l’intéresse, elle est aussi intelligente que jolie, élevée avec les meilleurs précepteurs des quatre coins du monde et parle plusieurs langues. »)

If you have forgotten her own backstory: un personnage courageux et intrépide féminin. Elle est toujours vaillante, et son optimisme est de taille à tout surmonter: « Tous les hommes de ma famille ont été empoisonnés ou tués au combat, soit avec des ennemis soit entre eux. C’est triste. Oui mais il ne faut pas l’être, on n’en finirait pas. C’est à notre tour de vivre et d’être utiles. » Quand on demande à la princesse si la couleur de ses yeux ne la dérange pas, elle parle d’« enfantillages ».

For a positive depiction of a present-day Jew, Howard Wolowitz from The Big Bang Theory appears to be the best candidate. A US Jew who is also a NASA space engineer, suave and tenderhearted. Howard is a tad eccentric and a polyglot like Yadoa above...

In short: Nasal Jew: wrong. NASA (or royal scholar) Jew: right.

To return to Foodfight! and its offensive stereotypical secondary characters:

Vlad Chocul, ersatz Count Chocula (mascot for a breakfast cereal similar to Chocapic, with choco-marshmallows in it)... and gay stereotype, as seen by his flamboyant and effeminate personality. He wears sharp attire in pastel colours, makes theatrical asides as if he were acting on a stage, and lisps, no less. And he is made of chocolate. In short, Vlad Chocul incarnates the "queen" stereotypes, which are as offensive as the ones depicting the Jewish schnoz and nasal voice.

"Homosexual men are often equated interchangeably with heterosexual women by the heterocentric mainstream and are frequently stereotyped as being effeminate, despite the fact that gender expression, gender identity, and sexual orientation are widely accepted to be distinct from each other. The "flaming queen" is a characterization that melds flamboyance and effeminacy, remaining a gay male stock character in Hollywood. Theatre, specifically musicals, are a component of another stereotype, the "show queen", generalizing that gay men listen to show tunes, are involved with the performing arts, and are theatrical, overly dramatic, and campy."

Appearance and mannerisms

Gay men are often associated with a lisp or a feminine speaking tone. Fashion and effeminacy have long been seen as stereotypes of homosexuality. They are often based on the visibility of the reciprocal relationship between gay men and fashion. There is also the stereotype that most gay men enjoy shopping. A limp wrist is also a mannerism associated with gay men.

Recent research has suggested that “gaydar” is an alternate label for using stereotypes, especially those related to appearance and mannerisms, to infer orientation.

But queer characters can also be done right, by showing them as people (just like Yadoa and Howard when it comes to Judaism, look above). Ser Loras Tyrell, or Ymir and Christa, are much more than stereotypes: they're young people with their hopes, their anxieties, their traumatic experiences... whose coming of age is explored in detail. Their sexuality is just one of the many traits that makes each of these characters unique and a fully rounded person.