Disney’s upcoming live-action film, “Cruella,” is a prequel to “101 Dalmatians.” Emma Stone plays the title character of Cruella de Vil, showing her backstory as a budding designer in 1970s London. Set in the anti-establishment punk rock era, the film reimagines the fur-obsessed puppy-napper as a sympathetic and even feminist figure. Or, at least she appears to be a heroine worth rooting for. That is, until we see her behind the wheel.
The tale shows de Vil’s rise from scrubbing floors to rising fashion star and then, a car thief, hot-wiring a stolen neoclassic luxury car and skidding through the streets of London.
This view of an unhinged de Vil driving madly through the city is a familiar one. Within the first seconds of the “Cruella” trailer, we see a Panther De Ville with a vanity license plate spelling out DEVIL. Likewise in the “101 Dalmatians” films, both the 1961 cartoon and 1996 live-action adaptation, de Vil’s car made its way down the road before she even appeared. It is the car that stands in for de Vil herself, in all of its glamour, excess and danger.
Ironically, in the 1956 children’s novel “The Hundred and One Dalmatians,” written by Dodie Smith, de Vil does not drive at all. Instead, she is driven by a chauffeur. Why then did the Disney films make de Vil’s car synonymous with her villainess? Perhaps because depictions of crazy or even evil women behind the wheel are deeply rooted in American culture. And they are not innocent. In fact, for more than a century, such depictions have been a way to undermine women’s push for social and political equality.
During the early 1900s women’s movement, which focused on attaining the vote, elite women embraced driving as a form of empowerment. Female drivers symbolized the New Woman who embraced social emancipation, participation in the public sphere and even pleasure.
In the Progressive Era, suffragists organized auto parties and crossed state lines to advocate for feminist politics. They challenged gender norms by participating in competitive racing and cross-country tours. And, they embraced the simple thrill of being a woman behind the wheel, a prominent symbol of freedom.
But, traditionalists resented this challenge of dominant gender norms. They sought to use ideas concerning automobiles and safety to reassert social control by marking women’s mobility as problematic, immoral and even criminal. The Mann Act first passed in 1910, for instance, branded women’s mobility as suspect by prohibiting the transport of women across state and national lines for “immoral” purposes. In practice, it was often used to criminalize interracial relationships, especially those between Black men and White women.
In the 1930s, psychological studies and cartoons in national newspapers questioned whether women had the discipline and mental agility to drive, depicting them as easily overwhelmed and exceptionally accident prone.
The deployment of the Crazy Woman Driver trope to dismiss the autonomy of women drivers has been particularly pointed in the case of women of color. In Depression-era Los Angeles, Latina drivers were frequently cast as deviants. One of the most notable examples was Camilla Lopez, a character in John Fante’s 1939 novel “Ask the Dust.” Lopez used her car as a means to distance herself from racial slurs, but her efforts to claim autonomy and American identity were in vain. Ultimately, Lopez, too, was depicted as a madwoman, one who was transferred to a psychiatric hospital and later disappeared into the desert in an apparent suicide.
Accounts of other Latina drivers echoed the Crazy Woman Driver trope, but often with the added element of stereotypes leveled against Latinos more broadly. In the 1930s radio show “Calling All Cars,” Latinas were cast as overtly sexualized, femme fatales, or accomplices in major crimes. In an episode titled “Missing Mexican Sheiks,” the Latina antagonists are portrayed as morally corrupt drivers who aid male criminals. Their behavior and subversion of gender expectations lead to their arrest, and that of one of their male companions, reflecting rising police attention to young Latino drivers overall.
This show reflected how, across the 20th century, driving has been a platform where cultural debates over diverse groups have played out.
Perhaps no one woman embodies the crazy woman driving trope more than the 1960s Cruella de Vil. Here, it also became a way to tarnish the image of feminism.
In the iconic 1961 cartoon, de Vil displays characteristics akin to the modern woman. She is financially independent, seemingly unmarried and unabashedly assertive. At the onset of the second wave feminist movement, as women’s rights began to challenge male authority, de Vil’s most empowering traits appear in an unhinged form. She seems all the more threatening when compared to the 1950s femininity of unassuming and newly married housewife Anita Dearly, who welcomes a large litter of Dalmatian puppies into her home.
The dangers of de Vil’s modernity are most acutely displayed when she is behind the wheel.
Her inability to control her car is reflective of her mental state. Her obsessive desire to acquire the Dalmatian puppies heightens as she leers over her steering wheel, speeds through city streets and bulldozes through fences in her single-minded pursuit. As the animated film neared its climax, her driving became all the more reckless, causing imminent harm to those around her. One driver yells out “Crazy woman driver!” when she nearly pushes him off a cliff.
In the trailer to the new live-action film, de Vil once again embodies this undercurrent of madness. She notes in a voice-over, “The thing is, I was born brilliant. Born bad. And a little bit mad.” Told from de Vil’s perspective, the film is likely to present a more nuanced view than previous depictions in which male screenwriters thrust madness upon her. Certainly, there is potential here to outline the story of a woman wronged who then deliberately embraces the very traits that are deemed mad in a highly hierarchical, misogynist world. A world in which women must fit a preconceived mold to be viewed as moral or even sane.
In an era when audiences have seen the Wicked Witch of the West transformed into an animal rights activist and Harley Quinn depicted as a sympathetic anti-hero, not every villain needs to be recast as a misunderstood subversive. Yet, with the coming release of “Cruella,” there is an opportunity to correct an outdated trope through the most infamous crazy woman driver of all. Whether filmmakers will embrace this opportunity is yet to be seen. But with female writers, producers and actresses in prominent roles, we are at least moving in the right direction.