I can’t believe I missed it. After nearly 20 years of analyzing films for Plugged In, you’d think I would have been more perceptive. But it just goes to show how subtle some errant spirituality can be, especially in a film as fun, charming and disarming as Tangled.
Disney’s new princess story focuses on Rapunzel, a perky teen with long golden tresses who’s trapped in a tower. How’d she get there? Well, the film’s prologue talks about an enchanted flower being used to save the life of a queen about to bear a child. Thanks to a little petal power, her highness pulls through, but the glowing, healing properties of the flower are transferred to her newborn’s hair. This doesn’t set well with wicked Mother Gothel, a woman who’s been hoarding the plant for years in order to stay eternally young. So she kidnaps baby Rapunzel and locks her away, raising the girl as her own while relying on her hair to stave off wrinkles and osteoporosis.
Spiritually, no biggie, right? I mean, at this point it’s fairy tale mysticism on the level of the enchanted flower in Beauty and the Beast. No Pocahontas earth-mother animism. No “good voodoo” as in The Princess and the Frog. Not even a shaman baboon assuming the lotus position, a lá The Lion King. But wait… Any time Rapunzel needs her hair to glow and heal someone (or presumably battle dandruff, repair split ends, etc.), she sings a sweet little song that goes like this: Flower gleam and glow/Let your power shine/Make the clock reverse/Bring back what once was mine/Heal what has been hurt/Change the Fates’ design/Save what has been lost/Bring back what once was mine.
If this were coming from a creepy, black-clad character reciting from a dusty old book, it might put a check in your spirit, no? Instead the words are sung almost as a lullaby by a noble young heroine activating her “superpower” while engaged in a breezy, brightly colored adventure. Yet the words are what you might hear recited out of that old book, including a passing reference to the Fates, a trio of goddesses from Greek and Roman mythology.
How do I know Fates is a proper noun? Because that’s how it appears in the liner notes of the Tangled soundtrack—in the song titled “Healing Incantation.” Frankly, it didn’t feel like an incantation in the movie. Which is why I missed it at first. But upon closer examination, that’s exactly what it is.
Is this supernatural shortcoming in itself reason to avoid Tangled? I don’t think so. Strictly as depicted onscreen, it’s not likely to corrupt our kids or point them toward the occult. But I wouldn’t ignore it, either. Parents should take advantage of this teachable moment by reminding children that spiritual counterfeits can be conveyed in subtle, winsome ways. It’s an entertaining lesson in why we need to look past the packaging and ask, “What’s really going on here?”
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