Exploring The Fairytale Themes In Netflix’s The School For Good And Evil
Are you a Never or an Ever?
Based off the popular book series by Soman Chainani comes Netflix’s fairytale film The School for Good and Evil. The story follows two best friends: Sophie, a beautiful girl who believes she’ll change the world by being a princess, and Agatha, who is bullied and called a witch in their small town. They are kidnapped and taken to The School for Good and Evil, an enchanted school where aspiring heroes and villains are trained to protect the balance of good and evil. But things don’t go the way they expect and their friendship is tested when Agatha is dropped at the School for Good and Sophie is dropped at the School for Evil.
This is Paul Feig‘s (Bridesmaids, A Simple Favor, Last Christmas) first foray into the fairytale fantasy space. While there are a lot of stories about magical schools (see: Harry Potter), they did a good job differentiating this story from others in a way that didn’t feel like they were rehashing things we’ve seen before. There were a lot of practical elements built into the sets as well when it came to bringing the magic to life, like the way all the dresses magically flounced out on their own in the groom room scene.
High School Musical: The Musical: The Series star Sofia Wylie takes on the role of goodhearted but misunderstood Agatha, while Sophia Anne Caruso, best known for originating the role of Lydia Deetz in Beetlejuice on Broadway, plays the “princess with a dark edge” Sophie. The two are perfectly cast, bringing so much authenticity to their layered roles. Wylie brings a self-awareness that always has you on her side, while Caruso delivers an edgy bite that really works with her character and explores being a villain with her own unique flair. Shadow and Bone’s Kit Young shines as the evil and charming Rafal, bringing so much depth to the role. Unfortunately veteran actors like Charlize Theron, Kerry Washington, Michelle Yeoh, Lawrence Fishburne, and Patti LuPone are severely underutilized.
What excites me most about The School for Good and Evil though are the themes the film tackles and how they explore fairytales in an out of the box way. Sophie has spent her whole life believing she would change the world, she would be a princess, but when she gets to the School of Evil, they don’t want to hear her pleas to switch schools. They underestimate her to the point that she starts to go to the extreme to get what she wanted. They basically force her to tap into a dark side of herself… but if they had given her a chance to be at the School for Good, would it ever have gotten to that point? There is something very interesting about the perceptions people place on you. How do you break out of that mold and prove them wrong or is what you’re going to do prove that they’re really right? When Sophie is finally given the opportunity to prove that she’s good during the Trial by Tale, she ends up failing. But is it because she’s not good or because she wasn’t given the same tools to succeed as someone who had been training at the School for Good? She hasn’t take the classes that teach you about pretty flowers that are evil or living scarecrows that will attack. Without those equal opportunities of knowledge, she was essentially set up to fail.
As the film goes on, it becomes clear that the school’s Agatha and Sophie were dropped off at weren’t really a mistake. But then it makes you consider, is this just because you are forcing young people into a box? Agatha is the only character who can really see beyond the stereotypes of “good” and “evil.” People are complicated, they’re human, they have a little bit of everything in them. Nobody is perfect. And not only are they putting people in boxes, they’re shallow boxes. We saw princesses from the School of Good (re: Beatrix) be mean and selfish and even bully people. There are a lot of things going on at the School for Good that aren’t really good and that contradict what they stand for. How can a school be good when they transform people who have failed the classes into the misunderstood creatures that help princesses progress in their fairytale stories? Later on, we learn this has been part of Rafal’s big plan for the last two centuries, to under-mind and corrupt good from the inside out by tweaking fairytales under the radar with a Brothers Grimm twist.
Another powerful theme in The School for Good and Evil is true love and strong female friendship. There’s a superficial element to what the character’s believe is true love’s kiss at the beginning of the film, when the reality is Sophie and Agatha are the only characters with a real connection and history. Sophie believes getting true love’s kiss will prove she’s been put into the wrong school and she becomes conniving and underhanded to try to prove herself. They even explore a sort of blasphemous version of it with true love’s evil kiss, which also brings up the idea that maybe villains are “evil” because they aren’t given the same opportunities for love or happy endings as heroes. But the real true love’s kiss in this story is between Agatha and Sophie and the strong friendship they have. Even though Agatha has the chance at a happily ever after with a charming prince, she just wants to be with her best friend and she puts that first. That’s something we don’t often see, especially when women are often pitted against each other in both real life and our media. Sophie and Agatha’s friendship does go on an evolution and struggle at times, but no matter what Agatha is always there trying to save her life.
On that topic, there are archetypes within the fairytale world that this film flips on its head. Who’s good, who’s bad, who’s the prince charming, who’s the evil charming, who’s the princess, who’s the witch, all of those labels change throughout the film. At the start of The School for Good and Evil, Sophie is the princess and Agatha is the witch. Then Sophie becomes the witch, while Agatha becomes the princess. By the end of the film, Sophie and Agatha are each other’s princes in a way. During the Trial by Tale, there’s an opportunity for Sophie to save Prince Tedros that she doesn’t take because she feels the prince should save the princess, not the other way around. But by the end of the film, both Sophie and Agatha are ready to give their own lives up to save each other.
The film ends in a way that teases a possible sequel inspired by the events of the second book in the franchise. It used to be about good vs evil, but now that Agatha and Sophie changed the game with their story, they’ve set the stage that they don’t need a prince to save the day. The School for Good and Evil becomes The School for Girls vs The School for Boys, which seems like it could tackle a lot of fascinating themes related to feminism and the patriarchy through a fairytale lens.
All in all, The School for Good and Evil is ambitious in its themes and makes you question the fairytales and archetypes we’ve come to know. There’s a powerful message within this film about how stories impact both society as a whole and our individual self-worths in positive or negative ways.
The School for Good and Evil is currently streaming on Netflix.
