![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
It occurred to me yesterday that neo-Disney's "princess don't need a prince" romantic story template* just flipped the script on girl-stuck-in-tower-or-behind-dragon; somebody still needs to get rescued, but it's now the guy. But since they're guys, they don't have to be rescued from a lack of institutional power; they need to be rescued from their overweening male privilege. Beast is selfish and an ass to poor people. John Smith is selfish and a colonialist. Mulan's guy is a sexist jerk. Aladdin is selfish; I don't even know where to start with the Princess and the Frog dude, who I despise above all others.
Thank god Disney turned an about-face from the hellish world of Cinderella and Snow White, in which two kind people meet and like each other.** What a strong woman wants is an opportunity to devote her life fighting to reform some patriarchal asshole. Oh, Disney, you have understood us feminists.
* Romantic story template = princess films, but by Disney standards where they don't always involve princesses. So Mulan counts, but Tarzan and Hunchback don't. When I say "neo-Disney," I put the dividing line just after The Little Mermaid and just before Beauty and the Beast. Mermaid was the first in what's now called the Disney Renaissance, and was made basically as a love letter to the older films. Beauty and the Beast is kind of a mix of the old and new, and the new got a lot of PR mileage out of the idea of "new classics," with "new" implying an improvement from the bad old days. Never mind that the older Disney films always courted a female audience by flattering them, and gave their princesses a lot of agency.
My theory does not address Tangled and Frozen, partly because I haven't seen them and partly because 3D's a different medium with different traditions and personnel, in much the way film is a different working environment from digital and this influences the stories you tell.
** Even Prince Eric, who gets a bad rap. The worst you can say of him is that he thinks he's mistaken the identity of someone he met once after she transformed into somebody else. He was still nice to her afterward, and set to work to make things right when he got clued in. Mermaid has never been one of my favorites, but it's definitely old-school Disney playbook.
Thank god Disney turned an about-face from the hellish world of Cinderella and Snow White, in which two kind people meet and like each other.** What a strong woman wants is an opportunity to devote her life fighting to reform some patriarchal asshole. Oh, Disney, you have understood us feminists.
* Romantic story template = princess films, but by Disney standards where they don't always involve princesses. So Mulan counts, but Tarzan and Hunchback don't. When I say "neo-Disney," I put the dividing line just after The Little Mermaid and just before Beauty and the Beast. Mermaid was the first in what's now called the Disney Renaissance, and was made basically as a love letter to the older films. Beauty and the Beast is kind of a mix of the old and new, and the new got a lot of PR mileage out of the idea of "new classics," with "new" implying an improvement from the bad old days. Never mind that the older Disney films always courted a female audience by flattering them, and gave their princesses a lot of agency.
My theory does not address Tangled and Frozen, partly because I haven't seen them and partly because 3D's a different medium with different traditions and personnel, in much the way film is a different working environment from digital and this influences the stories you tell.
** Even Prince Eric, who gets a bad rap. The worst you can say of him is that he thinks he's mistaken the identity of someone he met once after she transformed into somebody else. He was still nice to her afterward, and set to work to make things right when he got clued in. Mermaid has never been one of my favorites, but it's definitely old-school Disney playbook.
