CN: child abuse, Matilda spoilers]
I recently saw Matilda the Musical. I’m deprived, it was my first musical and it was really well produced and everyone in it super-talented. But the characterisation of Miss Trunchbull spoiled it.
Miss Trunchbull is the antagonist in the story of Matilda (and apparently the movie and musical follow the book reasonably closely). She is the headmistress of Matilda’s school who openly hates children and revels in inflicting horrible punishments and abuse on the students. This sets up a nice foil for the audience to root against, especially since she’s not merely “mean”. Roald Dahl makes her a stand-in for the disciplinarian philosophy of education with its stifling of expression and treating students in an adversarial way.
Still, the word that best sums her up is abuser. Take a look at a quick clip from the movie below:
She does much more explicitly violent things at other times but throwing furniture around is violent in itself, seeking to terrorise the children. But the other really noticeable aspect of the movie is that Trunchbull is portrayed as very masculine. The kid’s “sir” just makes it explicit: it makes the kids laugh and we’re meant to laugh along with the kids. Because that’s apparently meant to be the chink in her armour, that she does not have the traditionally feminine presentation of say a Jenny (Matilda’s teacher). Women who can be called sirs are funny.
This is taken to further extremes with this YouTube compilation of Miss Trunchbull moments.
It’s a perfect storm. A lot is made of her gorging on food. The audience is supposed to find women like her disgusting and the cake and chocolate is just meant to highlight that FAT PEOPLE EAT ALL THE TIME AMIRITE. We’re also meant to find the accompanying song (She’s a Lady) funny. Because clearly the most important thing about Miss Trunchbull is not that she’s a child abuser and murderer but that we’re supposed to find her sexually unappealing.
Miss Trunchbull. “Miss”. The audience is supposed to have the “who’d want to marry her” thought.
This is taken to the nth degree by the musical, since it has a man playing Miss Trunchbull. Here’s a short official preview of the character:
Matilda the Musical has become a brand spanning multiple countries but every casting is of Trunchbull as a man. In the UK it’s Craige Els, in Australia James Millar and in the US Christopher Sieber on Broadway and Bryce Ryeness in the tour version. Of course the casting of blokes as Trunchbull is also a case of throwing trans people under the bus as the play just reinforces the idea that someone who doesn’t conform to the audience’s acceptable notion of gender is just “a bloke in a dress” and is both laughable and contemptible.
The musical also has a bizarre obsession with Trunchbull’s knickers, relishing in building up the audience’s disgust at her body. Again it’s about whether we’re sexually attracted to her.
It’s a bizarre situation. Matilda is a play whose primary purpose is an anti-bullying message, but it also endorses another type of bullying and transphobia. It doesn’t matter what you do, the play says. You could be as horrible as Miss Trunchbull and we’ll still make fun of you for being too masculine. As Zinnia Jones so aptly put in this tweet:
Now Roald Dahl was a nasty piece of work so all bets are off about his messaging. (Especially since his original plan for Matilda was apparently very different to what we see now.) But the adapters of his works should know better.
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