Disney’s Cruella and the Problem with making Shameless Childhood Villains Sympathetic
What is it that makes Disney villains so fun to watch after all these years? Why do we have our favorites? And what is it about this film that throws a wrench in the fun.
Trigger Warnings and Content Warnings for Talks of Mental Health, Mental Health Treatment, Personality Disorders, Mania, Depression, Trauma.
Disney’s Cruella released in the last few days of Mental Health awareness month. Talking about mental illness is hard. Talking about mental illnesses that are personality disorders are even harder. Even the term personality disorder is stigmatizing to some. Speaking as someone who has a personality disorder, when I watch TV and movies I often find myself holding my breath when a character is given a mental illness that is likened to the one I have. The stereotypes of characters written with personality disorders in media are so easy to call that I can make a drinking game out of it by now.
The game would go like this: Take a shot if the character is a murderer. Take a shot if the character is verbally or physically abusive. Take a shot if the character neglects their children. And the game would go on and on. I and countless others have grown up watching mainstream Hollywood movies and television shows treat people with mental illnesses like they are not human beings. I can recall plenty of fictional TV Moms from my fuzzy memory as a child flipping through cable, as they lay with hollow eyes and their children scrapped and scraped for food in the streets or stole from corner stores. I’ve watched countless people on medical dramas come in and typically be unwillingly admitted to the dreaded psych ward, which is usually just shortened to psych, a part of the hospital that is usually never shown.
When a main character has a mental illness in media, the character is typically turned into a walking stereotype to showcase everything wrong with people who have said mental illness and are rarely treated with the nuance they deserve. For example, Bipolar Disorder is one of the most common and well known mental illnesses in the United States, but it is still highly stigmatized. In media, when a main character has this illness, writers show characters displaying highly exaggerated mood swings every time they are on screen, having aggressiveness that ranges from verbal to physical, and employing a heightened state of mania. This is all done to entertain the audience for however long that character’s storyline is until they can be written into the background without actually dealing with the treatment aspect of having this mental illness, or just killing the character altogether.
I say all this because when I sat down to watch Cruella upon release, I expected some soft digs at people with mental illnesses. After all, Cruella De Vil, played by the incredible Glenn Close, in the Disney canon is no stranger to being jailed and treated for her puppy skinning impulses by Dr. Pavlov himself by way of electroshock therapy, aversion therapy, and hypnosis in 102 Dalmations. Here she spends most of the second act of the film genuinely changed, and even wants to be called Ella because Cruella sounds too cruel, but she reverts back to her old ways midway through the film after hearing the loud chiming of Big Ben which undoes all of the hypnosis. I don’t expect a 2000’s children’s film to have heavy commentary on how mentally ill people are treated in society, and I can forgive this movie because it’s literally Cruella De vil. She wants to skin puppies, and this film never pretended to be anything else. Who is Cruella De Vil if not an eccentric woman who simply wants her extravagant Dalmatian coat, and in this sequel to 101 Dalmations her extravagant Dalmatian coat with a fur hood?
Cruella offers us an origin story that gives us a look into Cruella’s upbringing. She is born Estella, an imaginative and creative child with a large personality. One that she and her Mom agree to call ‘Cruella’ and to hide away in social situations in order to interact with people appropriately. After a night out at a social gathering, Dalmatians kill Estella’s Mom. Estella believes she was the cause for this, but we learn later in the film that the Dalmatians were commanded to kill her Mom at the hand of the Baroness, who is also Estella’s birth Mother.
What this film does well is showing Cruella going through a period of mania. Estella, having lost her Mom, was forced to live a life of poverty alongside Jasper and Horace, and use her talents of fashion design to commit crime. Halfway through the film the viewer can plainly see when Estella is triggered and taken back to the moment where her Mom is murdered by the Baroness. In the very next scene, we witness Cruella play a balancing act between maintaining a professional relationship with the Baroness as ‘Estella’ by day, and create her own designs and be the new up and coming fashion idol Cruella by night.
Mania is described as periods of great excitement or euphoria, delusions, and overactivity. People with mental illnesses are not a monolith, but I can share my experiences with mania and why I think Cruella is one of the most accurate portrayals of a manic episode I’ve ever seen in film. When Estella is triggered, Cruella makes her appearance and the plan to take down the Baroness begins. Jasper and Horace are immediately aware of her change in demeanor and how she treats them. It’s Jasper that says “But it’s her Mom innit? We gotta cut her some slack and help her out.” Jasper acknowledges that Cruella is struggling in the moment having been triggered by the Baroness and is forgiving of some of her rude transgressions toward him and Horace.
In the next scene we see Cruella reconnect with a childhood friend, Anita Darling. Anita is a reporter and Cruella unashamedly wants to use her talents to gain publicity for herself and in turn tear down the Baroness. She plays up the fact that there would be something in it for Anita if she were to run prints for Cruella, but there is still a sprinkle of manipulation here that Anita is definitively aware of. Because from the moment Cruella sits down, Anita recognized her as Estella, and that is an important distinction to make. In manic episodes I personally am extremely talkative, friendly and social and can find myself with texts, notifications, and direct messages across different types of social medias, connecting with friends old and new. This scene felt familiar to me, as friends who’ve known me since I was very young or my wife who has lovingly cared for and supported me through manic episodes have sat and looked at me in the same accepting way that Anita Darling looked at Cruella in this scene.
In contrast to Anita’s immediate recognition of Estella as Cruella, when Cruella walks into Artie’s shop to get him to help with designs, he doesn’t recognize her at all. Mania, to me, can sometimes feel like I’m dressed up as someone else. This makes it easier to hype fixate or become even more entrenched in whatever creative state of mind I’m in. Especially in a new environment or around new people. After returning home, she is rude once again to Jasper and Horace, who have kidnapped the Baroness’ dogs to retrieve a necklace one of them swallowed.
“You can’t talk to us like that, we’re helping you here.”
Jasper is being more firm with Cruella than before because now she is pushing boundaries. Jasper and Horace are her friends, and she is beginning to treat them like common thugs for hire. Cruella ignores his complaint and rushes off to work with the Baroness, citing that:
“Cruella was in a box a long time. Now Estella can be the one who makes guest appearances.”
The montage of Cruella crashing all of the Baroness’ high profile events with her own pop ups and designs struck me as the perfect display of a person with mania who is in a heightened state of productivity creatively and also not sleeping. Both things I’ve had experience with at numerous points in my life since I was a teenager and only realized in hindsight when I came down from my mania and entered a mixed or depressive state. When I’m in a state of mania, sometimes I can fixate on a project for days, weeks, or months at a time with little sleep and not notice. A project or plan can become consuming for me until it is finished or I follow through with it. In this montage, we do not get a definitive timeline of how long it takes for Cruella to create all of these looks, plan these crashes, and escape routes, but it is clear that she has to do all of this and still balance playing Estella during the daytime. Granted she has some help from Artie, but Cruella is still the mastermind and has to design, sew, and manipulate everything into place to make her visuals look how she wants them to. By the end of the montage, it is very clear that her focus has taken a toll on her mental state and has effected the relationships closest to her, namely Jasper and Horace.
“I’m getting tired of Cruella.”
Jasper, though he does understand Estella’s past, is now trying to have a heart to heart with Estella. He brings her a cup of tea as she works on more designs by the fireplace. Jasper recognizes that Cruella has taken over much of her life and it is becoming more detrimental as the days go by. He tells her that he, Horace and Estella have always been there for one another, and he no longer wants to help Cruella. In response, Cruella says “Cruella gets things done.” I could relate to her tone and expression in this line. There can be a resentment when people reach out and try to help or express the ways that you’re causing harm when you’re in a manic state. Cruella genuinely feels that she is getting a lot of things done and doesn’t want to be told others are getting tired of her. It doesn’t feel good to feel like you’re being ‘too much’ around others, especially when you feel like you’re being productive and making a lot of progress that you hadn’t before. But Jasper has been a solid friend from the start, giving her space when she needed it, and now trying to step in before things escalate even further.
In the final act of the film, we learn that the Baroness is Cruella’s birth Mother. A ‘true narcissist’ she is called, and the reason we are given as to why Cruella has all of her creativity, brilliance and flair for fashion design. At first she is devastated in learning the truth about her parentage, but she quickly accepts and even embraces this information. She has a talk with her Mom, where she says “You were always scared that I would be a psycho like my real Mother.” And goes into further detail about how it was a shame she had to spend so much of her life hiding such a large part of herself because others would be scared of her brilliance and ‘madness’. Here she begins to take steps to embrace Cruella in a more healthy way, vowing to be better than the Baroness both in creativity, but also, assumingly, in intrapersonal relationships. The Baroness thrives on keeping others beneath her, whereas Cruella now knows that she needs to begin repairing the damage she did to the relationships closest to her.
“I went a bit mad, I’m sorry. You’re my family. You’re all I have.”
After rescuing Jasper and Horace from jail, in true Disney fashion, they forgive Cruella for using them for her own gain, calling them names, and being rude in general. The found family is back together again to take down the main villain, the Baroness, and Cruella puts ‘Estella’ in a grave next to her Mom so that she can live her life as Cruella De Vil. Cruella enters Hell Hall relatively well adjusted without a puppy skinning impulse in sight.
Then we hit the mid credit scene. Anita and Roger are gifted with young Pongo and Perdita. A note attached to one of the puppies says “See you soon! -Cruella” Unless I am to believe the next 101 Dalmatians is not going to be about Cruella De Vil wanting an extravagant Dalmatian coat, this entire film was a waste of great character development and narrative. Portrayals of mental illness in media is so poorly done that I genuinely think they didn’t intend for this movie to showcase a main character, let alone the protagonist, casually having a triggering event, a manic episode, and then making amends for damage done afterward. Or if they did, I can’t imagine why they would choose to do this with a character who would go on to intentionally want to skin puppies after ending this movie on such a positive note for our sympathetic villain. In that vein, it feels like more of the same in portrayals of mental illness in the media.
I never expect much, but this was more than anything I’ve gotten before. And to think that this will all be undone in the coming sequel makes me a little melancholy, because after all, who is Cruella De Vil if not a villain who simply wants her Dalmatian coat? That can not be stressed enough. But this movie laid down a heavier subtext that delved into Cruella’s upbringing and psyche. I’m going to go against the grain and say it would be a waste of originality at this point to watch this Cruella suddenly flip completely into a puppynapping puppy skinning Dalmatian coat obsessed woman when there was absolutely no indication of that in this origin story. It’s reminiscent of every poorly written character with a mental illness I’ve seen in media that is suddenly written into a state of hyper activity or over exaggeration just for the sake of the plot. I’m going to firmly say this iteration of Cruella deserves more than that.
All images in this article except for the image of Andrew Deluca played by Giacomo Gianniotti are ©Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures.
