'Someday My Prince Will Come'

As a young girl, I never questioned the ideals presented though the objects and encounters of my childhood; perhaps it is as we mature than we can begin to question the gender roles presented to us as children, and to the children of today. Writer’s such as Kathy Acker and Angela Carter inquire into the presentation of females within such children’s stories. Carter’s ‘The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories’ portrays a modern, feminist takes upon traditional fairytales - published in 1979, she is free to show her reader classic tales, such as the Brothers Grimm’s 1812 ‘Little Snow-White‘, through a twentieth-century perspective. In this case, ‘The Snow Child’ shows the danger of male desire upon females, and that, in reality, women can never reach the epitome of male fantasy, and in trying to do so simply harm themselves. The Count in this tale is both a characterisation of male sexuality and male power; he has no need to justify his desires, he simply “wants” and displays the unrealistic and unattainable ideal of femininity, which the Countess realises she can not aspire to. Notions of such a phallocentric order, in which men are granted the position of power for theorists such as Judith Butler demonstrates the manner in which ‘the “structure” by which the phallus signifies the penis as its privileged occasion exists only through being instituted and reiterated’ (1993). Through her influential text ‘Bodies That Matter’ (1993) Butler explores the theory that separation of the penis from the phallus leads already to a sense of loss; the phallic ideal can never live up to the physical penis, leading the male to desire greater sense of phallic power. Men have the phallus in so much as they have control. Women are the phallus ‘to the extent that they are the objects of men’s desire’ (Stelmok, 2006) - as Lacan suggests ‘the little girl must ‘be’ [the phallus] for someone else… this will include her male partner who desires her phallic body’ (1958).

'Someday My Prince Will Come', (2012) video, 4 minutes 9 seconds

Continuing from my previous piece 'I'm Wishing', and inspired by the appropriated video works of Dara Birbaum, particularly her 'Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman' (1978-79), 'Someday My Prince Will Come' is an experimental piece exploreing the possibility of an alternate ending to 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs'. Tension created by the heightened sound and repetitive act of biting the apple offers no resolution - perhaps we should question why so desperately want Snow White to enter into the ‘compulsory and naturalized heterosexuality’ (Butler, 1990) presented to us as the logical and "normal" conclusion to this tale.