Angelina Jolie: Maleficents stolen wings story is a metaphor for rape
Angelina Jolie managed to find a sack dress in convenient pants-form. These are some pics from Day 2 of Jolie and William Hague’s Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict. Sack pants!! Angelina attended some of the speeches (she cried) and she gave an interview to BBC Radio’s Woman’s Hour (what, we only get an hour?) about the summit. The conversation turned to Maleficent, which is turning into the biggest hit of Angelina’s career. Full disclosure: I still haven’t seen it! I will. I don’t think this is a spoiler considering it was in some of the teaser trailers, but still – SPOILERS. You’ve been warned. Apparently, Maleficent had wings but they were stolen from her. She was drugged and her wings were torn off her body. And Angelina told BBC Radio that the “stolen wings” story is a metaphor for rape:
Angelina Jolie spoke to BBC Radio’s Woman’s Hour in a live broadcast Tuesday, June 10, where she compared one harrowing scene in Maleficent to rape. Addressing more than 300 government dignitaries at the London-hosted Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict, UN Special Envoy Jolie was asked about the scene in the fairy tale fantasy film, in which the titular character’s wings are torn off her body by a childhood friend.
“We were very conscious, the writer [Linda Woolverton] and I, that it was a metaphor for rape,” Jolie said of the harrowing sequence, in which Maleficent’s wings are stolen as she’s in a drug-induced sleep. “This would be the thing that would make her lose sight…. At a certain point, the question of the story is what could possibly bring her back?”
Jolie explained to BBC Radio, “The core of [the film] is abuse, and how the abused have a choice of abusing others or overcoming and remaining loving, open people.” She added, “The question was asked, ‘What could make a woman become so dark? To lose all sense of her maternity, her womanhood, and her softness?'”
Jolie spoke about her 2011 directorial debut, In the Land of Blood of Honey, which tells the story of the rape of Bosnian women during the 1995 Bosnian War. “I didn’t realize how emotional this would be,” Jolie said of the film, which, after its release, prompted the Hague to become involved with the issue of rape in times of conflict.
The star’s reasons for tackling tough issues comes from her own life experiences, Jolie explained, revisiting her 2013 op-ed, in which she shared about her preventative double mastectomy.
“Having lost my mother [Marcheline Bertrand, along] with the thought that if she had the surgery, she may have been around years longer to have met my other children… The thought of telling my children I had cancer—because I didn’t have the surgery—was more frightening to me. It was very important, and I am very happy that I made a decision that will help me be around for my children. I wanted to speak to other women, I wanted them to know there were options. It was, in fact, an easy choice.”
Will this stolen-wings-as-a-rape-metaphor story upset people who think Angelina might be trivializing actual rape? It does not upset me. From what I understand, the scene in Maleficent is harrowing and I think representing that kind of physical violation can be used legitimately in a work of art to represent rape. She’s not saying “being photographed by the paparazzi is like rape,” like some people. She’s talking about a fictional representation, an artistic metaphor. But I’m consistently surprised by what some people choose to complain about when it comes to Jolie.
PS… I’ll have the new photos of Jolie & Pitt in another post later today.
Photos courtesy of Getty, Pacific Coast News.
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