Hating Disney Princesses Has Never Been Feminist pt. 3

Thus far, we've looked at the lack of credibility that the anti-princess backlash floats on as well as the emptiness of the criticism itself. I want to spend this final section looking at the fallout of this backlash that has come to define this modern age of Disney Princess hysteria, and I use the term "fallout" somewhat tenuously because I do think this modern epoch of Princess-hood has offered some exciting developments. But, you probably already know what those are because that's where the headlines tend to go first. There has been a dearth of coverage, meanwhile, on the more negative consequences of a brand of princesses marketed solely on the premise of not being weak (like those other princesses ...)

    While it might feel like Princesses have always been the backbone of Walt Disney animation, princesses have entered the chat at very irregular intervals. Snow White, Cinderella, and Aurora came over a twenty-year period, and this was followed by a thirty-year gap between Sleeping Beauty in 1959 and The Little Mermaid in 1989. Compare that to the modern landscape and the seven years it took Disney to launch Tiana, Rapunzel, Merida, the Frozen sisters, and Moana. Disney has never been more invested in turning it into a functioning brand than it is now, and so it’s interesting that the dialogue it creates has been so self-deprecating. 

A part of this renewed interest in princesses can be attributed to the incentive Disney felt in the late 00’s to reinvigorate the presence of Walt Disney Animation Studios, and the simplest way they knew how to do that was by using the princesses as a lightning rod. This was not necessarily an easy sell, and after The Princess and the Frog waddled through the box office, Disney had to basically trick the filmgoing public into seeing Tangled by making the movie look a lot dumber than it actually was. (For more on this campaign, see my Tangled essay.)

With this revival we have also seen a narrative about a supposed redemption of the Disney Princess, this sense that Disney has learned its lesson and is finally creating heroines that won’t be damaging to your kids. After all these aren’t regular princesses, or so Disney assures us. They have learned the errors of their ways, and they’re committed to giving the girls of today strongfemalecharacters to look up to. Earlier princesses are pictured with their fists on their hips looking like they just stole back their lunch money from Maleficent, and newer princesses are handed storylines that let them actively rebuff old conceptions of princessdom.

And the press has eaten this up, congratulating Disney on making fairy-tales that comply with our modern understanding of gender politics. And how has Disney responded to this positive reinforcement? By doubling down on not just on the number of princesses, but the marketing line about these princesses being better than the old guard. It’s there with Emma Watson explaining why Belle is a better role model than Cinderella. It’s there with Disney trying to promote Moana as their first “bad-ass” princess. It’s there with the internet princesses wearing pajamas with hashtags on their shirts.

I’ll say up front that not every innovation, even those born directly from criticism of Disney Princesses in their classical form, has been bad. Most within the Disney fandom think it’s just fine to have films that acknowledge that courtship and marriage are not the only significant thresholds girls will have to cross or to possess qualities that are described as not just virtuous but heroic. And nobody loved “Let it Go” more than tried and true fans of the Disney brand. But the crowd that champions these new princesses at the expense of the classic ones tends to overlook a few things.

Among the many offshoots of Disney Princess mythology, you have Tangled: The Series (later rebranded as Rapunzel’s Tangled Adventure) which follows a three-season arc wherein Rapunzel learns where she fits into this world she’s been watching from a window all her life. In my experience, the four people who know that Tangled has its own tv show assume it’s something like Sofia the First when the final product is much closer to Avatar the Last Airbender. It crafts this epic tone across storylines that are traced out over multiple episodes, even multiple seasons. There’s a lot of enjoyment to be had for people who love the animated film and like the idea of Rapunzel’s character getting to develop beyond the confines of the film’s 90 minute runtime. (Sidenote: if you decide to watch the show yourself, you’ll need to watch the tv special “Tangled Before Ever After” which functions as the first two episodes of the show. Bear that in mind.)

    But one of the things that’s really interesting to me about this show is that the writers never put Rapunzel in a position in which she needs to be saved by Flynn (simply addressed as Eugene by most of the characters in this show). Over the course of roughly sixty episodes, Rapunzel is never put in any position which might bear a passing resemblance to a damsel in distress scenario. If there are instances in which Rapunzel needs to be rescued, then it’s usually by the hand of her gal pal, Cassandra (an original character unique to the series), or Pascal. The lizard does more to protect Rapunzel than her own boyfriend.

Eugene, meanwhile, is occasionally put in heroic positions to rescue other characters (usually Rapunzel’s parents or some village orphans), and the series doesn’t shy away from scenarios in which Rapunzel must rescue Eugene. There's also something to be said for all the ways Eugene learns to be a strong emotional support for Rapunzel. But there’s this standing fear that if he ever has to prove his devotion to Rapunzel in the most archetypal of fashions—even once—then Rapunzel will just shrivel into a damsel in distress, and girls everywhere will grow up in a world without strong female role models. It drops this awkward elephant in the room and puts it on Rapunzel to carry their relationship in a way that feels neither fair nor realistic. Disney has been so traumatized by the “damsel in distress” line that they are willing to recast invisible labor as empowerment.

But it’s also not enough for modern Disney Princesses to be strong, they have to tell the audience that they are strong, and usually that means telling the audience that they are stronger than other princesses. This generally results in newer films like Moana, Frozen, or Brave using shorthand to actively communicate that today’s princesses won’t sabotage little Suzie’s chances at being a doctor. Brave is probably the best example, at least from animation, of how trying to float a princess movie solely on the premise of fast-food feminism doesn’t make for a better character or better movie.

This is another one of the reasons why I actually find Frozen II to be a stronger offering than its predecessor. It takes everything that works about the first Frozen film but doesn’t waste its time on appeasing the anti-princess crowd. It actually puts in the hard work of letting its princesses be multi-dimensional characters, not through tried and true “subversion,” but by letting Anna and Elsa experience complex emotions and explore the nuances of what it means to be human. It allows them to have moments of distress, recognizing that the human experience can feel overwhelming at times, but allowing them to address these experiences rather than eschew them. Yes, Elsa wrangling the water horse on its own turf was awesome, but if we want to talk about strength and courage, then our attention really needs to fall on something like Anna climbing out of her literal and metaphorical tunnel of darkness.

Another problem with this new-age princess dialogue is that it is very repetitive. The idea that Disney Princesses are in desperate need of a good role model has led to five or six "first good Disney Princesses" since 2009. Mom and Dad just keep giving little Jenna a new trike for the last ten Christmases hoping that it counts as love.

    But few observers of this discussion have ever bought into the idea that Disney is just benignly forgetting about Tiana and Rapunzel, not any more than they benignly forgot about Ariel defying Triton's xenophobia or any other act of independence demonstrated by earlier princesses. Disney has learned that there is a real money to be made in the business of "good female role models," and what better way to manufacture the urgency of this market than to pretend girls have literally never seen one before? Disney knows just how far they can be carried on a line about how "it is so important that little girls see strong female characters like this--and that's why it's so important that you pay to see them in theaters this holiday season!"

     Critiquing this new approach to Princess-ism is difficult for the same reason it’s difficult to critique the larger scrutiny of the brand. Skeptics are just assured that the only people who would take issue with girl-power princesses are so attached to their childhood brands that they can’t abide any honest interrogation. 

Again, there isn’t anything wrong with expanding the princess label to include princesses with more overt defiant streaks or princesses whose stories don’t include romance. That’s not really what Disney fans are scared of when these PR lines about “strong female role models” start making circulation. Rather, there’s a lingering irritation at how these new characters are inevitably going to be weaponized against them and their favorite films. 

    You have people like Dan Lin, producer of the Aladdin remake, who insisted that the animated film was one of his favorite Disney movies but also said things like, “… as much as you and I loved it growing up as kids, we didn't think it held up in today's day and age of female empowerment.” This is the kind of phrasing that elicits so much pushback from Disney's established fanbase. But in the name of curiosity, let’s put those feelings aside for just a moment and assume that Lin is acting completely in good faith and take a look at what exactly changed about Jasmine in translation:

The remake gives Jasmine a handmaiden character, Dahlia, played by Nassim Pedrad, so that Jasmine is not the only named female character in the movie. There’s also an added plotline where instead of just calling out the rigidity of the laws of her land, she wants to become the ruler herself so she can enact change from the inside. They also find a way for Jasmine to contribute in the climax besides just using her body to distract the villain. Her culminating moment comes when she gives an impassioned speech to the head of the guard to not serve Jafar even though he wears the sultan’s crown, and her treatise on holding onto one’s principles in the face of opposition feels in line with not only Jasmine as a character but also the larger princess mythology. This all plays out alongside the strengths of Jasmine in the animated film which carry over into the remake: Jasmine is principled, she is discerning, she is keenly aware of the worth of not only others but of herself.

The idea of adding a new power anthem for Jasmine also isn’t a terrible idea. Disney fans are basically always here for more music, especially for characters like Jasmine who did not receive their own solos in their original film. And you know what? This new song might as well coincide with a personal victory for her. In execution, I actually really enjoy both the number and the scene in which it features.

    These are not radical departures from Jasmine as depicted in the animated film--this is not Ready Player One turning the peace-loving Iron Giant into a living laser tank. I myself would classify these changes more as additions than revisions. But I also can't really blame Disney fans for putting their defenses up here seeing how this kind of thing is still accompanied by Disney trying to gaslight its fanbase into thinking that Princess “I am not a prize to be won” Jasmine does nothing in her film but mope in a corner about how she wishes she had a man to tell her she’s pretty. 

Again, in the words of Lin, “In the original movie, it felt like she was a Disney princess that was just looking for love.” That is patently untrue. Jasmine describes her feelings toward romance one time in the film when she says, “If I do marry, I want it to be for love,” which is a really weird way for her to say, “Once I am wed, I will be whole.” Having a clear sense of self-worth is arguably animated Jasmine's defining quality. Before we have even seen her onscreen, we see what Jasmine does to men who disrespect her when a vile potential-suitor storms out of the castle after she sets her tiger on him. This is not Disney lovers desperately scraping the bottom of the barrel for some crumb of subtext that might counter Lin's point. There are multiple episodes within the animated film that directly refute the claims being tossed at Jasmine specifically and Disney Princesses as a whole.

    And this is what I mean when I say that critics of the brand are not privy to some deeper truth about the universe that is lost on the enthusiastic recipients of the mythology. Either detractors are deliberately misrepresenting the character to bolster their own viewpoint, or they are just in fact very, very bad at reading film and probably should not be making public statements about these movies. You want to let the princess character spread her wings more? I’ll be the first in line. But to throw your fanbase under the bus hoping it’ll make the cool kids want to see your movie? That is not only a bad look on your product, it also erodes public trust and respect. And that, even more than the inconsistent quality of the films themselves, is why these remakes, and the post-modern Disney Princess conversation as a whole, leave such a bad taste in the mouth.

    And you might be thinking, "Well, what about all the times Disney advances their female representation without trashing their existing princesses?" And to that I say ... there really aren't any.

    And while it is easy to take grievance with The Walt Disney Company for returning to this tagline, the larger audiences did choose to eat it up for the longest time. It’s only really been in recent years that the public has started to catch on to what Disney fans have been complaining about since the beginning.

That all on the table, there is one relatively recent development in the Princess discourse that I feel we should address before we all go home.

    My biggest question going into this piece was whether or not I was going to bring up the upcoming “Snow White” remake starring Rachel Zegler. I’d seen this essay coming for a while, and I had also known that I wanted it to coincide with the start of the marketing around this remake–when the discourse around Disney Princesses would be especially relevant (and I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for those meddling release date changes). When certain creative choices became known about this film, specifically the girlbossifying of Snow White, I figured out that not only was it a film not made for people who genuinely like the animated movie, it was being made by filmmakers who don’t think such people even exist. And so I figured that with this deep-dive on Disney Princesses, I would just talk around the “Snow White” remake without giving it any extra airtime.

Then the internet went all Evil Queen on Rachel Zegler.

It’s very clear that this remake is perhaps the crowning jewel of the princess backlash, and that Zegler is the product of an entire generation that has been raised on skewed takes about Disney Princesses. A lot of clips have circulated with Zegler labelling the 1937 film “obviously dated” or calling Snow White’s Prince a stalker, and she’s admitted to having only seen the movie once as a kid. The kindest words she seems to be able to offer to the film she’s remaking is that “Oh, it was good for its time, I guess, but don’t worry kids, our Snow White is too empowered to ever sing a song like 'Someday My Prince Will Come,'” and that has made a lot of fans of the animated film understandably very mad. 

I’d agree that it is annoying when these players become the figureheads of the conversation when there are millions of fans who love Snow White as she is and would love to see her represented in love and admiration. It also doesn't look as though many conversations were had around, say, developing Snow White's relationship with The Prince, as they did in the Cinderella remake, or highlighting aspects of her character outside the romance. With live-action Jasmine, they built on a foundation. Here, they're just bulldozing, and this to me betrays a lack of curiosity on part of the creative team that is maybe worth discussing intently.

    There is a valid concern buried in all this noise. It is frustrating that this project, which ought to be an occasion for Disney fans to fill the streets to celebrate a landmark film not just for Disney but cinema as a whole, is instead laying the source material on the sacrificial altar. The talent attached to this film is using this opportunity to reinforce ill-founded talking points that will be weaponized against a branch of fandom that continues its uphill climb to be seen as legitimate in the eyes of the public, and that's really uncool.

But that's not actually what's compelling me to talk about this now. After players like Emma Watson basically sold their projects on this kind of dialogue, many of us had seen this coming. What really caught me off guard was the way the internet has responded to Zegler and her comments. It has been, in a word, vicious.

One might say that when a celebrity gives a poor read of the film they are remaking, of course they're going to get pushback, but the internet's reaction to Zegler has been atrocious, in a way that goes beyond just the entitlement that the YouTube comments feel to rain fire on whoever’s trending. The dialogue has gone well past whether she’s giving due credit to the princess she is portraying and leapt straight into savage attacks on her as a person.

For perspective, actresses like Keira Knightley and Kristen Bell, both of whom have also done high-profile work for Disney, have made similar comments about Disney Princesses, but they weren’t met with calls to chase them out of Hollywood. (And to be clear, I’m not saying they should have been. The world doesn’t need more of that.) As I was editing this, I saw a clip from a video responding to Zegler mentioning receiving death threats, and this YouTuber just brushed this off with a snarky “What’s she so worried about? I thought she could just save herself haha” and her co-host laughed about how if the police tried to help, she would just accuse them of stalking her. 

Belittling the severity of the violent language thrown toward women is a part of the reason why violence against women still persists. It is not something to be laughed at. I don’t see this vitriol doled out toward Zegler as nature correcting itself or Zegler getting some due comeuppance, I just see hatred. Ugly, undignified, needless hatred. There are certainly appropriate ways to voice one’s discontentment with the direction of a creative project, but death threats–or laughing at death threats–falls nowhere in this vicinity.

    I would also be remiss to not acknowledge that this backlash about Snow White “going woke” extends beyond just the girl power talking points. Some people lack the imagination to allow a Latina actress to embody a traditionally white role. (My own feelings on this are very similar to those of letting Halle Bailey portray Ariel, and I have already released an essay on this matter that has some overlapping points.) I doubt many of these folks actually feel so passionately about the legacy of Disney animation, and they will use the “woke” banner to attack any attempt at leveling the playing field. In our efforts to find legitimacy among the critical discourse, Disney fans should retain a measure of prudence in who we ally ourselves with: we should feel no loyalty to or sympathy for this crowd and we should definitely not aspire to elevate the dialogue of those who are committed to hindering fair treatment and representation.

I'd clarify that the majority of Disney fans I observe and interact with are good about finding appropriate ways to express their frustration without spilling into nastiness. That said, the segment that is dogpiling Zegler is doing very real damage. As audiences who embrace stories about kindness and goodness, and who see firsthand the dissonance with using feminism to tear down other women, Disney fans should absolutely be disturbed by what’s going on here. To that, we have an obligation to speak out against this kind of cyberbullying, whether or not you think that Zegler should have been saying the things she has. The world needs to know that this is not what the fandom has ever been about.

There will always be people who refuse to understand why we resonate with these stories. That’s fine. We don’t owe them an explanation. We don't even owe them our animosity. We know why these stories outlast the confines of the time in which they premiere. Detractors will probably continue to look down on people who are excited to take their daughter to meet Cinderella at Disneyland or have “Part of Your World” on their road trip playlist, and that just can’t be helped.

But what can be helped is whether we as fans of the Disney Princess choose to internalize the ideas guiding these films. The world has always needed help learning how to stand up for oneself in a way that doesn’t demean or belittle, and as fans of a mythology built on kindness, dignity, and virtue in the face of opposition, we know exactly how to offer that–probably even better than most.

    --The Professor