Evolution of the Disney Princess

In 1937, Snow White hit theaters. She wasn't just the first Disney princess. She was the first full length Disney film, and, for that matter, the first full length animated film. Snow White made history. That, and her inclusion in the Disney Princess franchise, is primarily why we can remember her today. The next ten movies Disney cranked out weren't much to look at. We got stuff like Bambi and Dumbo as well as obscure ones like Fun and Fancy Free and The Three Amigos. The first real Disney movie-that is, the only one people care about today-is Cinderella. Walt's twelfth film. Nine years later Aurora came out and did horribly in the box office. Sleeping Beauty was the last princess movie produced in Walt's lifetime.
It's important to note that Snow White, Cinderella, and Aurora weren't associated in any way. Not anymore than, say, Wendy Darling and Alice. They did not appear on products together.

After Walt's death, Disney went through a creative slump. The last movie he had a hand in was The Jungle Book. The company cranked out crap films like The Fox and the Hound and The Great Mouse Detective. And The Black Cauldron, which features a largely forgotten princess.



Eilonwy is not happy about being left out of the franchise.

In short, they weren't doing so hot without their leader. Things picked up again in the nineties. They entered what's known as the Disney Renaissance with the release of Little Mermaid in 1989. In the next decade, we met Belle, Jasmine, Pocahontas, and Mulan. The Renaissance also saw the creation of favorites like Hercules, The Lion King, and Tarzan.
Still, they were not grouped together as Disney princesses. Belle and Jasmine had no special connection with each other that Jane and Meg didn't share.
The Official Disney Princess line was born when Andy Mooney, Disney Consumer Products Chairman, went to a Disney On Ice Show. While waiting in line, he found himself surrounded by hordes of girls in princess costumes.
Not Disney princess costumes. Home made, generic princess costumes. An unexploited demographic! A franchising goldmine! A gross corruption of the individual princess mythologies, or so the rest of Disney claimed. Why would princesses from completely separate movies made over the course of several decades show up on lunch boxes together? But he managed to sway them.

Meg and Jane

They considered putting Meg and Jane in the franchise but felt they didn't fit the mythology. Tinker Bell was originally included as well, but they dropped her. Now she rules her own product line, the Disney Fairies. Somehow, Mulan  got in, despite not being a princess by birth or marriage.
In 2009, Disney kicked off the third generation of princesses with the release of The Princess and the Frog. Tiana was joined a year later by Rapunzel. Merida, Anna, and Elsa soon followed.
In the late nineties, Andy Mooney, chairman of Disney Consumer Products, went to a Disney on Ice show. Standing in line behind a cluster of girls in generic princess costumes, he realized
The rest of Disney was skeptic at first. Clump together princesses from completely separate movies in the same franchise? But Mooney managed to sway them.
Disney princesses have evolved over time. The original trio wished for things. This is apparent in songs like Cinderella's "A Dream Is A Wish Your Heart Makes" and Snow White's "I'm Wishing". A non princess example from this time period is Pinocchio's "When You Wish Upon A Star."
In the second generation, princesses moved from wishing for things to wanting them.

I've got gadgets and gizmos a plenty
I've got whozits and whatzits galore
You want thingamabobs? I've got twenty!
But who cares? No big deal,
I want more

I want to be where the people are
I want  to see, want to see them dancing

I want much more than this provincial life!
I want adventure in the great wide somewhere
I want it more than I can tell
And for once it might be grand
To have someone understand
I want so much more than they've got planned

A want is more concrete than a wish, but it's still abstract, especially because the things they want are intangible. Ariel and Belle both want adventure, something we see in Jasmine and Pocahontas as well. But Mulan, the last of the second generation, wants something different: acceptance. She struggles between finding her own sense of identity and pleasing her family.

Now let's look at the third generation. Tiana doesn't wish or want. She has the very concrete goal of owning a restaurant.

 

I remember Daddy told me
Fairytales can come true
You gotta make 'em happen
It all depends on you
So I work real hard each and every day
Now things for sure are going my way
Just doing what I do
Look out, boys, I'm coming through

After Tiana, Disney decided they'd repented enough for their damsel days. With Rapunzel they step away from doing and go back to dreaming. Tangled analyzes what it means, exactly, to have a dream. Rapunzel's dream-to see the floating lanterns gleam-is concrete but fleeting. After the lights sail into the sky, she's not sure what to do with her life. Brave blatantly defies previous princess tropes. Merida's concrete goal-shooting for her own hand-morphs into saving her mother halfway through the film. Anna starts out with no goal in particular while Elsa's tormented by her need to hide her powers. 

The original trio all meet and marry a prince after knowing him for a song and a few lines of dialogue. Aside from Ariel, each one of the second generation turns down either a specific suitor or the concept of an arranged marriage.

The most obvious of these is Mulan. 

This trope continues with Tiana and Merida but skips over Rapunzel. Having lived in a tower her whole life, she has no need to deny male company. With Frozen, it's okay for a girl to fall head over heels into a legitimate love triangle
Another third generation trend is titles. The first and second generation take their title from a fairytale or the heroine's name. After The Princess and the Frog flopped in box offices, Disney put the blame on the name: apparently men won't see a female lead movie, but if they called the next one Tangled, they could trick them into buying tickets. Thus Merida became Brave and Anna got Frozen.
The 2018 film, Moana, will finally buck this trend-and another. Over half the second generation were women of color. Aladdin, Pocahontas, and Mulan are beloved 90's classics. But The Princess and the Frog did fail, remember, and I don't buy the gender excuse. Anyone who watches the Tangled trailer can tell it's a Rapunzel movie. And she more than doubled Tiana's box office dough. Perhaps Disney was afraid of a different demographic.
Disney played safe by portraying golden haired Rapunzel as golden haired and making Scottish Merida a white redhead. But when they dared make two Scandinavian heroines Scandinavian, outraged fans decided they'd gone too far.

Moana concept art

Polynesian Moana gives Disney fans exactly what they want: something to obsess over for the next four years and something to complain about when the movie finally comes out. Just watch, they'll do something wrong. Disney made several changes to Tiana's inital character. Her original name, Maddy, was dropped because it sounded too close to Mammy. She swapped her maid job for waitressing and her prince became black as well. After hiring Oprah Winfrey as a technical consultant, Disney figured they were good-until the complaints rolled in. The heroine spends seventeen minutes as a black princess and the rest as a green frog? Green gowned Tiana plastered on green watermelon candy? Why is she the only black princess, anyways?

But perhaps Moana will pacify feminists, the diversity crowd, and-dare we say it? A new generation of kids who will grow up with Moana dolls. There's quite a gap between her and the last princess film, though it's smaller than the one between Mulan and Tiana. Let's see if Moana continues the tropes, trends, and traditions established by the third generation, or if she's a new kind of princess entirely.


Three Things Everyone Ought to Know About Marie Antoinette

1. Who She Was
You can say queen of France if you want. You'd be right. But please don't go around saying she was born in France, because the girl was Austrian. She married into the throne.
2. What She Look Like

Because Marie Antoinette was into bare shoulders

And lacy knee socks

Also sandals.

For the record, here is what Marie Antoinette actually wore.

Fun fact of the day: She had four children. Sophie died before the picture was finished, so they painted her out.

3. What She Said

The words "let them eat cake" never left her lips. There is no record that she said so. The earliest mention of this quote comes from Rousseau's Confessions:

Finally I recalled the stopgap solution of a great princess who was told that the peasants had no bread, and who responded: "Let them eat brioche."

Marie Antoinette was nine years old at the time and living in Austria. The quote comes from Maria Theresa of Spain, who lived a century before Antoinette.

Journals. Do They Still Matter?

This week on twitter, @Farah_Gazan, a sixteen year old girl who has tweeted through the Gaza siege, described herself as a modern day Anne Frank.. This sparks a question. Is a twitter account really comparable to a paper and ink diary? Which is more valuable?
I love paper journals. I (usually) like social media. I can't think of anyone else who's more capable of holding this argument, so I'll do it with myself.
Team Paper: I'm nearly finished with my thirteenth diary in six years. Paper is the way to go.
Team Digital: I have three blogs, a twitter feed, and a facebook. Digital is the way to go.
TP: A diary has more in length and depth than anything you can find online.
TD: Yes, but what social media lacks in quality it makes up in quantity. Oh, and speed. They help you reach an audience faster.
TP: Most diarists aren't meant to have audiences. Some bloggers treat their blogs like diaries anyways, spewing forth secrets and opinions for all the world to see. "Paper is more patient than man." Everyone gets in that mood sometime where they need to get their words out of their head. Paper is a safer way to do it because you get that satisfaction of fathoming your starry thoughts into constellations without having to write for an audience.
TD: Some diarists do write for audiences. If Anne Frank were alive today, she wouldn't keep a diary. She'd have a twitter account.
TP: That's the worst idea I've ever heard. Twitter is public, moron. She wouldn't tweet out her location to the Nazis.
TD: Fair point. But she wanted to share the story of her time in hiding, right? Let's pretend staying alive isn't an issue for Anne. Wouldn't she want to reach an audience FAST?
TP: No, she wouldn't. What lots of people don't realize is The Diary of a Young Girl is more than just Anne rambling on paper. She intended for it to be published. She went back and edited what she wrote. I can't see her posting typo-filled tweets without polishing them first.
TD: Oh, you're worried about readability now, Team Paper? Tell everyone why you can't read your journals from eighth grade.
TP: Wait, no need to bring eight grade into this-
TD: They're in code. She can't even read them now.
TP: I can too read them. It just takes forever. Besides, Anne Frank made up the code I used, so it's cool.
TD: She made up one of the codes. You used, what, five? You're only fluent in two now.
TP: I still have the keys somewhere....let's get back on subject. Journals are a valuable historical resource. And not just for Anne Frank. When we watch documentaries on the Civil War, they read passages from soldier's diaries. I'm doing a project on the Industrial Revolution right now. Harriet Hanson's writings about her time in the mills is one of the most valuable resources for anyone interested about the role child labor and women workers played in the advancement of the factory system.
TD: Oh yes, and there are so many people who care about that topic. What a narrow universe you live in. Besides, the only reason journals are a valuable historical resource is they're all we have. When you watched a documentary on 9/11 last year, did you read diary entries? Or did you watch news clips? Two hundred years from now when someone's doing a report on the 2010's, they won't go to your journals for information. You will never be Anne Frank. You will never be Harriet Hanson.
TP: Oh, is that how we're going to play? Well, you're never going to go viral. That sneezing baby panda on youtube will always have more views than you do. And it doesn't even know how to use a computer!
TD: I no longer aim to go viral. I just want to reach the people out there who care about what I have to say. I can shout my thoughts in the void just as well as you can. Actually, I like being a low profile blogger. It means I don't get death threats via comments like real stars.
TP: I'm reaching my audience, too. My audience is myself ten years from now. She'll read through my hundreds of thousands of words.
TD: If your house burns down, your blogs are all you've got.
TP: Oh yeah? If blogger ceases to exist, your journals are all you've got.
TD: We know which is more likely.
TP: Well, I happen to like ink flowing from my fingers to the page in elegant little loops.
TD: There's nothing more satisfying than the click-clack-click of the keyboard under my fingers. Besides, I've been able to type faster than write since you were on your fourth journal.
TP: Paper has a quiet dignity about it.
TD: Digital has a fresh, fast feel to it. Let's stop soon. We're approaching nine hundred words and I, as the superior record keeper, know how to keep posts short.
TP: I write short all the time! Wait, Team Digital?  Team Digital? Where'd you go?
 

In the Brain

I volunteered with a group of special needs people this last year. I'll never forget the day one of the "buddies", a woman named Lindsay, stood up at the front of the room and said, "How many of you have depression?"
Hands went up.
"How many of you have anxiety?"
Hands went up.
She rattled off a list of friends and relatives she knew with one or both. Then she said, "My friend passed away of anxiety and depression. I have anxiety and depression. So if you have one of these and you need a friend, come talk to me."
We had almost as many volunteers as buddies. Together, we numbered around 200. Yet as I looked around, I noticed none of the volunteers raised their hands. Surely in a group of this size someone was waging a war inside their heads. They just didn't feel like they could raise their hands.
Our leaders never tossed around euphemisms like "differently abled" or told them, "You're not a special needs person. You're just a person with special needs." None of the buddies who could talk were shy about saying "I have down syndrome" or "I'm autistic."  One boy even had a bright orange shirt that read CAUTION: AUTISM AHEAD.
We have this idea that an illness needs to be visible before you're allowed to talk about it. From down syndrome and autism, all of them had something going on in the brain. Something that showed up in their face or speech or the way they carried themselves. Two were deaf and many used wheelchairs or walkers. And in addition to that, they had "normal" mental disorders. The kind you're supposed to conceal instead of fighting your battles in public.
One of the most powerful words in the English language is community. It's a fighting word, and more importantly, it's a defensive fighting word. Community implies people banding together. Community garners respect. I tell people I volunteered with the special needs community. Our school's Christmas fundraiser wasn't set up to help deaf people buy hearing aids, oh no, they're for the deaf community. People acknowledge the visibly handicapped as a community, as they do religions and ethnic groups.
Never once have I heard a reference to the depression community. They exist, there's no denying that. Robin Williams' death has brought them out into the open. They may not meet for lunch every other Tuesday, but there are lots of them, and I don't think it's a stretch to use the c word.
I am not clinically depressed. But I live in Utah, depression capital of the universe, so three of my five closest friends are and a fourth lost her father to suicide. So often, I've seen that the "problem child" isn't always the one with piercings and hair dye. Plenty of people prefer to conceal their depression instead of living a stereotype. It's amazing what you can hide just by putting on a smile.
What can we do to help fight depression? The biggest thing is for people who don't have clinical depression to stop tossing around the word. Never say you are depressed. You can say you're feeling depressed today, but please remember that it's also a medical condition, and you are not depressed after a bad break up any more than a man with an injured foot is a paraplegic. Only then can a depressed community distinguish themselves. Only then can the very word be a cry for help. Only then can we give the depressed community the help they need.

Coconuts, Kaleidoscopes, and Charlie Chaplain

In the beginning, there were coconuts.
The reason is simple. Radio shows needed a way to create horse hoof sounds without dragging a live horse into the building. Coconut smacking was the way to go. Then technology advanced to the point where actual horse hoof sounds could be used to create horse hoof sounds.
But they kept using coconuts.
Why? Because even though people ride horses everyday, and they know horses don't sound like that unless they're cantering across a firm surface, millions of other people have never been close to a horse. They knew what a horse sounded like from the radio. And if it didn't sound like a coconut, it was wrong.

Charlie Chaplain once entered a Charlie Chaplain lookalike contest. And lost. Because he didn't bring his props, counting on his Charlie Chaplain face and Charlie Chaplain body instead. The judges weren't looking for Charlie Chaplain. They wanted a guy who dressed and talked and walked and acted like Charlie Chaplain.
Today, an adult on facebook asked if this generation knows what a kaleidoscope looks like. I replied that I own one. Then I logged off facebook and didn't think about kaleidoscopes until seven hours later, at my aunt's house. I found my Grandma Smith's kaleidoscope resting innocently on a side table. Now, I've always known what a kaleidoscope looks like, but maybe I was an anomaly all along. Research time!
I called for my cousin Miah, the closest human being to the kaleidoscope at the moment. "Hey, Miah! Do you know what this is?"
"No."
Miah has a brother. "Hey, Xander! Do you know what this is called?"
"Yeah. It's a thingy."
Xander has a sister. "Tage! Take a look at it and tell me what it is."
"I don't know."
I have brothers. "Weston, what's this thing on the table?"
"How should I know?"
"Jacob, do you know what this is?"
He gave the kaleidoscope a good long look in case there was something hiding behind it. "Do you know what it is?"
"Yes I know. But I want to see if everyone else does."
"It's a kaleidoscope." Once the words were out of Jacob's mouth, everyone but Xander said they knew perfectly well what a kaleidoscope looked like. This one just didn't look right. Miah told me, "It's not like the kaleidoscope on Webkinz."
There are kaleidoscopes. Then there are Webkinz kaleidoscopes. Then there's the keychain sized kaleidoscope that lives in my jewelry box. But none of them look remotely like this kaleidoscope.
A picture would be appropriate here, wouldn't it? I didn't take one. Guess I'll have to build one for you. Picture a brass tube fixed to a wooden stand. There are two drawers, large enough to hold four stained glass circles, which can be changed out. They're also large enough to hold a note that says For Jessie in my Grandma Smith's handwriting.
When we found that For Jessie note, we tore down paintings from the loft and checked the backs. We lifted up china dolls to search their stands for notes. But even though Grandma Smith was the type of dollmaker to spend three hours repainting eyelashes, even though she cared for art, there was not a single object in her house that needed to find the right owner when she died.
Except for the kaleidoscope. This brass and glass kaleidoscope that looks more like a kaleidoscope than any other kaleidoscope I will ever meet. Because I knew it before I had a jewelry box and before Webkinz was conceived. It outlived Grandma Smith and Jessie and it will outlive Jessie's parents.
But it does not look like Miah's definition of a kaleidoscope.
Horses don't worry whether or not they sound like horses. Charlie Chaplain didn't wake up every morning, look in the mirror, and wonder if he could pass for Charlie Chaplain. That kaleidoscope knows it's worth more than any other kaleidoscope its lookers will meet. It doesn't worry about passing itself off as itself.
But we still expect horses to sound like coconuts. And Charlie Chaplain to walk with a cane. We expect things to look and sound like they look and should instead of being themselves.
Still. If you ride a horse you'll know it sounds like horse. If you could walk with Charlie Chaplain, you'd know what he looks like. And if you screw on the glass circles, press your eye against the tube, and shut the other one, you'll realize it can't be anything but a kaleidoscope.

5 Thoughts on Names

1. Girls have no problems going by guy names but guys are insulted if you call them a girl's name. Alexandra will be Alex. But I've never met an Alexander who goes by Lexie. When I look up my name I get "feminine form of Eric." But I can't think of a single name that would be described as the masculine form of something. Some names slip from gender to gender, like Taylor, but they're considered unisex names rather than girl names. If you ever meet a Joesph who goes by Sophie be sure to let me know.

2. Foreign names aren't always the kind of foreign you think they are.
While reading some family history today I came across a relative named Anita. Hispanic? Nope. Danish. Anita is originally a nickname for Anne or Anna, which are quite possibly the best international names. Plenty of countries have their own form. They're short and easy to pronounce. I know a Brazilian girl named Ana. When I talk about her, people hear the American form, Anna. Her sister Maria is more obvious. Never mind that Maria is used in plenty of European countries, especially German speaking ones. It's currently trending in Ireland.

3. Exotic names don't always work.
Another one of my Danish ancestors had the name Inger Sophie. Her daughter Ane, who emigrated to Utah, named a child Emma Sophia. She had several daughters but never called one of them Inger. I wonder why. Sophie travels well. Inger only works in Denmark.

4. Nicknames don't work internationally.
An American boy names Nicholas will go by Nick. But a Russian boy will be Kolya.

5. Not all belles are created equal.
Annabelle is classy. Clarabelle? Not so much. Isabelle wears silk gowns and kid gloves. Idabelle milks cows. Even though they're only one letter off, the two names conjure up very different images.
This goes for all old fashioned names. In 1914, Anna ranked #6 for girl names. It's timeless. Evelyn snags the #11 spot. It sounds cute and modern. Rose, #15, has a graceful old fashioned touch. But I've yet to meet a young Mildred (#7) or Florence (#13). They're too ugly and old fashioned.




 

The Rule of Barbie

My friend L'ren invited me over for a Barbie movie day. Yes, we're seventeen. No, we're not ashamed. We picked The Princess and the Pauper because it was my favorite as a child. That, of course, has nothing to do with the fact that one of the protagonists is named Erika. If you've never seen a Barbie movie, you probably don't expect much, but the plot's actually well drawn. That makes up for the animators' laziness. We kept seeing the same extras.
Even though the story tied together really well, I couldn't help but guess at the twists. It's been nine years since I watched it last. All I really remembered was
1. Character with my name
2. The kingdom, which seems to rely entirely on a specific empty gold mine, is saved when Princess Annelise discovers geods at the bottom. This bugged me as a child. Do you know how worthless those are? I had a whole box in my garage back in second grade.
But even with my limited memory, I knew this story already. The Prince and Pauper switch pops up a lot.

It started with the original Twain story

Mickey Mouse got in on the fun 

Pokemon didn't want to be left out

Neither did Disney Channel

A popular variant is The Princess and the Popstar.

Here's Veggie Tales

The Lizzie McGuire Movies uses this plot, though the title doesn't  tell it.

As does this Janette Rallison novel.

Barbie even did another one of these eight years after the original.

Did they really think no one would notice?

A story I see even more is A Christmas Carol.

And the inevitable Barbie movie.

Here's a good rule of thumb: If Barbie (or the Muppets) has made a movie inspired by it, then it is no longer a story, but a formula. I've heard it said that it's impossible to create a new story. Every idea you have for a plot comes from another plot. This is true. And so very, very wrong.
Let's strip The Prince and the Pauper down to its bare bones. We've got a Rags to Riches story. Let's see, who else has done that?

We've also got a Twin Swap story.

I'm sure Twain didn't pitch his book as Cinderella meets Parent Trap. But that's what it is. That doesn't mean it's bad or that he stole the idea. Ideas don't get recycled. They get smashed and twisted and blended and vaporized and reassembled again.
What about A Christmas Carol? We've got a holiday story. We've got a ghost story. We've got a change of heart story. Did anyone before Dickens think to combine those three ideas? Maybe. But he did it in a way that will never get forgotten.
The point of storytelling isn't to create something new and original. Stories have to power to make new things familiar and familiar things new. Don't stress about finding 'already done' elements in your favorite shows. Look at what they did to make them fresh and exciting.