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| ((Image Courtesy http://wondersofdisney.yolasite.com )) |
I’m
sure we’re all familiar with the Disney Princesses to an extent. These are
women who girls from ages 3-13 (sometimes older) take lessons and social cues
from. They dance around and talk to their friends about them. Little girls
argue about who gets to be whom in games of pretend. These are the characters
they choose to emulate as they grow up. Disney tries to sell their Disney
Princess feature films as family friendly entertainment small children can
watch; but those children are still very early in their social, emotional, and
mental development. What sort of role models are presented by the heroines of
such Disney Family Favorites as Snow
White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty,
Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Pocahontas, and Mulan? What
about more recent heroines from Princess
and the Frog and Brave? True many
of these movies are based on traditional fairy tales, but let’s not pretend
Disney hasn’t before doctored the details in an attempt to made them “suitable”
for a larger audience. I don’t recall seeing Snow White’s stepmother dance in
iron shoes, and I certainly don’t remember decapitated feet and pecked out
eyeballs in Cinderella.
The
difficulty is in that these girls are immersed, nay, drowned in their exposure
of these women before they have any say in the matter. They have no choice in
what their parents put on the screen. Commercials for Disney World flash by
featuring Cinderella in her palace, and isn’t it wonderful, don’t you want to
meet her, be her? True,
proportionally speaking, none of the princesses are practical and if all girls
tried to emulate their forms it would cause a massive spike in eating
disorders. That however should be held against the cartoonists and animators;
what I question is the characters themselves. How does each princess deal with
the situation they find themselves in? Are these appropriate responses one
should attempt to imitate if found in the same scenario? What of their
personalities? What drives each Disney Princess through the course of their
adventures? Is their cause one we could consider just, or right? What of how
they handle romance? Are they simply trophy wives? Are they victims? How to
they win their men? Do their men fall for their personalities? What do they
risk for love? Who are their opponents, and why are they on opposite sides?
That
is what I am attempting to take a good, long, look at and identify. My intent
is not to criticize these women, though I might wind up doing so as part of
this blog. I am attempting to evaluate them as potential role models based on
the evidence about them we are presented in their movies of origin. What
resources did each heroine have, and how well did she use her? One may have
been very brave, but would her reactions be appropriate for a young girl
watching? This is to say each Disney Movie must be taken with a grain of salt;
usually the characters that get criticized receive it without much thought. We
contrast them to modern standards,
and while these should be kept in mind, is this to honestly say that a Disney
Princess who fails to be everything we
want in a role model might not have an aspect of their personality that is
worth emulating?
As
a result, my entries about each princess will mostly be identifying pros and
cons in each character, and questioning how they might apply to a modern young
woman. Additionally I will be evaluating possible lessons we might take from
each lady, even if overall they should not be emulated. Does each fictional
young woman have something useful that could be absorbed or learned from her?
This is the nature of the blog: to put the Disney Princesses in perspective.
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