Disney Princess 101: The Classic Films

I can say with the utmost confidence that there is nothing special about me for having grown up on Disney movies. And growing up loving them certainly doesn't place me in an elitist cult either when you look at the way so many families worldwide will save up their funds for years to make that holy secular journey to the theme parks on both coasts. But I am quite proud to say that when Mulan first hit theaters I was in my mid-twenties, and a buddy of mine who I'd known since elementary school told me that I was the only guy friend he had with whom he could go see a Disney movie. So while my perspective on the nearly eighty year legacy of Heigh-Ho's and Hellfire's isn't a unique one, I at least feel it comes from the outfield.

Since I've already explicated my Weird Al library and pitted the Muppet movies against each other it only makes sense that I take a retrospective look at the Disney classics, and movies that will predictably become classics as well.

I'm not going to be going through these film by film because there's frankly more titles in the catalog than thoughts in my head. (Remember Bolt? I sure as hell don't.) But I'm going to try to at least analyze the iconic titles and give nods to the lesser entries.

So let's start with the old school princess trilogy Snow White, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, which are arguably the same movie. When someone says "Disney" it's conceivable one's conscious mind will go to the word "princess" even before the mouse shows up. There's that castle. And that music. And all the freaking merchandise. If Disney was a college major then Disney Princess would be a series of core classes with an option of specialization. Countless girls grow up wanting to be Disney princesses, some even going so far as to get nose jobs and breast implants just for the chance to tell little children that they're perfect the way they are.

Snow Obviously White and the Seven Doormats

If you haven't seen this movie then you at least know the story. Princess Snow White is pretty and her step mother (the Queen) hates her for it. The Queen orders a Huntsman to murder Snow White, but he doesn't because she's pretty. Snow drifts through Tim Burton's backyard until she arrives at the dwarf cottage and moves in, essentially taking over by rite of prettiness. The Queen finds out Snow is alive and goes to kill her in a method more complicated than need be (stabbing her in the face was not one of the suggestions in the Queen's Murder Manual). Snow dies sort of and stays pretty. A prince known to his friends as The Prince arrives and revives Snow because she's pretty. Snow abandons her posse at the first sign of a better deal. The political aftermath of the former king(queen)dom is unresolved. And there's a song about soap.

To be fair, the importance of Snow White in the history of film animation cannot be overstated. Walt and his crew set out to make a full length version of a seven minute cartoon and they succeeded. But so often Snow White is referred to as Disney's masterpiece. It isn't. It was a really good 'first' with a LOT of overlookable shortcomings by virtue of being the first, but if Snow had followed Pinocchio the film would have felt like a step backwards.

Let's break it up a little bit. First there's Snow. She's pure and innocent, with a Shirley Temple vibe. You almost sense that she's Betty Boop a few years before puberty. She has a childish voice, sings to animals, and basically just exists. She's iconic, because there is nothing to her character besides this basic metaphor. You can refer to a real woman today as a Snow White and instantly convey one of two extreme opinions about her; either you think she has managed to preserve something innocent about herself in an unnurturing world, or you believe she lacks the experience necessary to handle her current situation (probably more often than not it's the latter). But as a character, Snow is flat out boring and unrelatable.

I had a theater teacher who once asserted (quite assertively) that the strength of a character is dictated by how well they convey to an audience what they want and how badly they want it. I'm sure there are cases where this isn't a complete definition, but it certainly applies to the weakness of Snow's character. What does she want? I don't know. She wants a prince? Maybe? He practically shows up as a jump scare and it doesn't seem to register with her as "Hey! That's my childish goal." I haven't seen the movie in years but I don't think Snow even mentions him again the whole movie until he shows up at the end to deflower her.

Speaking of the prince, what does he look like? I cannot keep an image of him in my head. It's like he's so dull and unremarkable that my brain won't process him.

Then there's the dwarfs. There's Dopey. Every kid loves Dopey. If Snow is childish innocence then Dopey is a flipping newborn. You know what? I outgrew Dopey. He's the comedic sidekick character in all Disney films that the adults are willing to tolerate because he keeps the kiddies in the theater focused on the screen. Then there's a bunch of other dwarfs who never develop characters past the traits of their own names.

And then there's Grumpy.

I find it significant that Grumpy is the only dwarf character on Once Upon a Time to have been listed as a regular cast member. Grumpy is the REAL prince of this story. Pessimistic, workaholic, and yet somehow not the boss, this whole movie could have been brilliant if Snow had fallen in love with him instead of the pretty boy on the horse (Maybe that's why the ending of the movie bothers me so much. As soon as Royal Blank Slate meanders onto the scene Snow dumps her loyal friends like the Heigh-Ho she is).

What does Grumpy want? I'm not really sure, but he does have moments where a passion for living breaks through his outer shell. And MAN when he finds Snow dead-ish on the floor he's at the head of the charge against the witch. I don't know what Sneezy and company thought they were going to do when they caught her, but Grumpy? You can tell from the look on his face that he's going to plant that pickaxe right in her damned forehead.

Now the real test of a fairy tale lies in the strength of its villain, and this is where Disney typically excels. I'm going to come back to the Queen at the end of the blog when I bring out all three villains together, but for now I'll say that the bulk of what makes this movie memorable is on the shoulders of the Queen. She carries half the movie, and she really is terrifying.

The music is classic, which doesn't necessarily mean it's great. I've never voluntarily popped in the soundtrack to this movie. Of course the songs get in your head and stay there, but none of them are all that interesting or particularly complex. Heigh-Ho, Someday My Prince Will Come, the one about soap; these are commercial jingles.

In the school of Disney, Snow White is a required course. If it weren't required, I wouldn't take the course. I don't get much out of it. You can watch the highlights reel and get the important stuff. Then go to youtube and check out one of the many traumatizing ride-throughs of Snow White's Scary Adventure (I've literally looked into the eyes of that animatronic witch one solitary time in my life and now I go through all dark rides with my eyes mostly closed like French Stewart). I'm not going to have kids and I'm not planning to babysit anything under the age of eight, so I'll probably never watch this movie from start to finish again in my life. There just doesn't seem to be a reason to.

Cinderblock

How come nobody's ever made the Stanley Kubrick version of Cinderella?

A young girl named Cinderella is psychologically unstable after the death of both her parents, acting out and bursting into song at inappropriate moments. Her stepmother and stepsisters try very hard to prepare her for integration into society, giving her routines and structure, but she continues displacing her personality onto the vermin infestation. One day the family is invited to a ball, and Cinderella expects to join them wearing the most God-awful rags she has pieced together, insisting it is a beautiful dress. They have to confront her with the truth that she is in fact out of touch with reality. Left behind now, Cinderella hallucinates visions of a woman who claims to help her achieve all of her dreams. When she shows up at the ball, wearing the same horrible rags, her stepmother informs the prince of Cinderella's mental state. He intercepts her and takes her far away from the rest of the attendees in case she suddenly becomes unstable. They finally get her home without incident, but Cinderella has become obsessed now with living in the castle. As her outbursts become more frequent, her stepmother has to lock Cinderella in her room until the royal guard can arrive to take her away where she spends the remainder of her days under constant supervision from the doctors of the time who could do very little for her. And she thought she lived happily ever after.

Walt Disney originally didn't want to make Cinderella because he felt it would be too much of a rehash of Snow White. But the Disney company was hurting financially, and Cindy bailed them out, and her movie was too much of a rehash of Snow White. Although in her defense she managed to be equally iconic and get a castle named after her. Snow is boring because there's just not a lot to her. Cindy is boring because she's being held back by an oppressive controlling force, and yes, I'm talking about Walt. With love.

I've noticed when people talk about Walt Disney, they usually either praise him to the point of deification, or demonize him. Neither extreme is fair. Walt Disney was a man, an artist, a producer, a businessman and he knew nothing about women. He probably understood the mindset of girls, which is why his fairy tales resonated so strongly, but I don't believe he ever saw grown women as anything more than taller girls.

Now there is a common belief that no man will ever truly understand a woman. Maybe there's some truth behind that, but not only do I not subscribe to the belief but as a man I find it kind of lazy. I write a lot of female characters because I find them really fun to write. I've been working on Caris and Zel for six years now, and if I ever get a book together I expect the female demographic will be my primary audience. And while I'm not so bold as to claim that I understand women, I do believe I really try to. And this is my frustration with Walt Disney. I don't believe he ever tried.

The shallowness of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was permissible because it was the first movie, and they were lucky it held together at all. Cinderella's shallowness was an unforgivable missed opportunity. Unlike most Disney fairy tales, Cinderella is never in any physical danger. All of the tension is psychological. Meaning, Cinderella's psychological journey is the heart of the story. But instead of letting us experience the entire plane of emotions she should be feeling, we only get to see the one dimensional spectrum of elated---cheerful---crying. The more 'unladylike' emotions like frustration and anger get handed off to the mice, along with the lion's share of screen time.

So what works about the movie? Well, as distracting as the mice are they have solid character designs. You'd almost think that Disney would rather have just done the movie about them. The soundtrack is much better than that of its predecessor, although Disney music took a leap forward with Pinocchio. And the human cast looks really solid, finding that balance between realism and cartoon. Cinderella is pretty; it's her defining trait. She moves like a princess from the get-go and has all of the traditional feminine qualities of grace and elegance and all that jazz. In other words, she's essentially a trope. If you ever manage to endure either of the direct to video sequels, the production team actually managed to find a select few character beats for both Barbirella and Prince Ken. In fact I would go so far as to say that the third segment in Cinderella II surpassed the original movie in terms of story content; Cinderella reaches out to Anastasia (performed by voice acting royals Jennifer Hale and Tress MacNeille) to help her find her true love.

The ultimate problem with Cinderella isn't how superficial it is, but the fact that the seeds for so much more were right there and ignored in favor of superficiality. The message conveyed in Cinderella is, if you're pretty you don't need to be anything else, in fact anything else is actively discouraged. That's one of the most terrible lessons you can teach children.

So would I recommend the movie? Yeah-ish, it's worth a look. Mostly because of the conversation that should be happening between caregivers and children about the content. It's entertaining more than it isn't, but when it isn't, God it's dull. Children should be encouraged to love certain things about it and criticize other things. And you should be doing a family counter-sing-along to the ballroom dance. "So this is love", "Oh no it's not", "Hm hm hm hmm", "He likes the dress".

Sleeping Audience

If these films had accurate titles, they would read "Dopey and the Dwarfs (with Snow White)", "Jaq, Gus and Her", and "Fairies and the Prince". If it weren't for the title character's one song she may as well not be in the movie.

Okay, let's talk Aurora. From her look and voice, which is all I have to go on, I'm guessing she's about 36? All of her human contact has been with non-humans. She meets a guy and falls for him, because Tchaikovsky. She finds out she can't be with him because she's betrothed to another (also him, because plot). She follows Navi to her execution, wakes up to a kiss and assumes everything worked out while she was indisposed.

I once asked a cast member who played Aurora at Disney World how she was able to adapt the character to a meet and greet setting with so little to pull from. She told me that, compared to Cinderella, Aurora was much more withdrawn but more motivated to find out who people were because she'd missed out on so much of her life. Cinderella was the hostess with her name on the castle. Aurora was the socially awkward girl subtly asking the children to help her come out of her shell.

The film Sleeping Beauty doesn't have the offensiveness Cinderella has but it's as much a missed opportunity. As live action remake happy as Disney seems to be getting I wonder if they'd ever REALLY stick their necks out and redo their classics as animated films again.

This should be an animated horror movie. Despite Mary Costa's trained opera voice, Aurora is sixteen. She's lived among fairies and inoffensive woodland creatures, essentially the way a child would live. On her sixteenth birthday she meets a guy and gets the pubescent hormones, at which point her world becomes shadows, Gothic architecture and thorns. This is the perfect symbolic representation of "Welcome to the adult world, bitch. Now bleed."

The pivotal scene in a remake would have to be the moment Aurora's finger is hovering over the spindle and Maleficent is commanding her to touch it. She should ask the one question nobody in this whole movie ever thought to ask. "Why?"

The sequence that follows could be a dream or a single moment in the fairy world, but Aurora and Maleficent need to spend some time together. That never happened in the 1959 film and I've always felt robbed by that.

I love this film. It is incredibly flawed and I'm more than happy to fast forward through the scenes with the spotlight hogging fairies (although Fauna had some potential). I love the ideas that never came to fruition, a princess who didn't want to be a princess, the political pressure, the nature of a dark fairy. Sleeping Beauty was in development for nine years, and while the movie was technically brilliant I feel Disney seriously dropped the ball on this one.

Would I recommend it? With all the powers of hell yes. But it's honestly because of Maleficent, whose presence alone saves this movie from obscurity. Prince Phillip is a step in the right direction but we're still not at the heroes of the nineties. Aurora as the introverted princess is more of a tease than an exploration of her character. And I honestly want to slap Merryweather (she murdered that raven). It's Maleficent who brings the charisma to a beautiful but flat film.

In fact, let's sit down with those cold hearted tyrants and see what it is about them with which we connect so strongly.

The Cool Kids' Table, Audley Enough

Well the first thing you'll notice is they're all women. During Walt Disney's life the male villains just didn't have the gusto his dark ladies had, which is a psychological discussion beyond the scope of this blog. While Walt's male characters in general had a pretty decent spectrum of personalities, the women were pigeonholed into two templates; good=passive, evil=proactive. As problematic as this is, we are at least treated to some truly iconic villains ruled by some base emotions.

The Evil Queen (Grimhilde, allegedly) may be the scariest human ever animated. According to Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, Walt felt that the animators had actually gone too far with her in terms of menace. You looked at her face and could SEE what she was willing to do for the most petty of reasons. She was a true sociopath. Walt actually held the animators back in creating frightening villains after that.

The intriguing thing about the Queen is that she's already winning at the beginning of the movie. She's on the throne. She's beautiful, sort of (the mirror says so anyway). And not only is she not happy, but it's like she can barely withstand living. And when she discovers that something is going to upset the status quo she goes full Elizabeth Bathory. It's funny how much happier she seems when she turns herself into the hag.

I love the Kingdom Hearts series, and the Queen's long time absence from it always felt like a massive gap in the Disney legacy. She finally showed up in Birth by Sleep, and when she did I suddenly understood why she wasn't a good fit for the games. She actually has little to no ambition. No reason to collect heartless or team up with Frollo or go out and DO anything. She just wants her world to stay the same. The Queen represents narcissism at its absolute darkest.

Moving down the table is Lady Tremaine, older and sophisticated yet harboring a bitter hatred of her step daughter. Did you ever wonder what her damn problem is? Obviously Sycophella will never be able to please this woman and yet she still keeps trying. Does Tremaine see her as a threat to her daughters' happiness?

Other versions of this story have tried to provide some insight into this question, but as the Disney version stands, Lady Tremaine just seems to be a bully who delights in Cinderella's unhappiness. Perhaps this woman was broken at some point in her past and the only thing that ultimately matters to her is to be able to break someone else. If improving her station in life was her goal it would make more sense to try riding Cindy's newfound bandwagon. But that's not her ultimate goal. Lady Tremaine simply wants Cinderella to be unhappy.

This is one of those few movies where the protagonist and primary antagonist spend time with each other on a daily basis, a concept I don't think gets revisited until Hunchback. I sometimes wonder if Tremaine ever considered having Cinderella killed, like so many other Disney villains would have. I doubt it, but it's a question worth exploring. Maybe Tremaine would dismiss the notion as being beneath her. More likely, there's no pleasure to be taken over someone's grave since their suffering is over.

Lady Tremaine represents the kind of villain we're most likely to encounter in reality, someone who hates you through no fault of yours, just because. Tremaine also has the distinction of being one of Disney's undefeated villains. Cinderella may have escaped her, but she's still out there with a cloud of seething venom surrounding her. We can thank Eleanor Audley for giving a voice to that raw contempt.

And speaking of which, there's Maleficent. Man, she's awesome! I'm not entirely sure what it is about this character.  Maleficent is an imposing figure, yet surprisingly not in an immediate threat kind of way. She likes to talk and show off. She also has a range of emotions, from a sweetness towards her raven to an unhinged meltdown over her minions.

What the hell was all this death of Aurora about anyway? Apparently she held a grudge over not receiving an invitation to Aurora's...um...birthday? Really? That was it? We're supposed to believe that the villain who tops ninety percent of 'The Greatest Disney Villain' lists enacted a decade and a half curse over something so trivial? Nah, I'm not convinced.

Probably Disney and company meant it to be that basic, that's how it played out in the original fairy tale (convoluted though it was). But then they created Maleficent. And she's just too badass to accept such a ridiculous motivator. As a result, we're left with a gap in the premise.

The Kingdom Hearts series uses her as a major player in the overarching story, the only Disney villain to have that much focus. I'm going to be mad if she's not a playable character in Kingdom Hearts III. She gets to be the big bad in Fantasmic, even though the Orlando version should totally have gone with Chernabog. Hades invariably outranks her in terms of power, and yet we fully belief she would take the dominant role.

So why does she resonate so strongly with her fan base? It doesn't hurt that she transforms into the sleekest looking dragon in the history of fantasy. Her curse comes across as just mean, but her conviction to follow it all the way through seems a little puzzling. Does she actually have something at stake in Aurora's demise? She confides to Diablo that she hadn't slept well in sixteen years. Perhaps she does what she does because she truly believes it should be done.

Maybe that's the defining trait of Maleficent. The Evil Queen had to have been a really small person inside to have reacted so life or death to Snow White's first training bra. Likewise, Lady Tremaine had to have very little confidence in herself to be that positively affected by the abuse she inflicted on Cinderella. As far as we can tell, Maleficent stands to gain nothing through her curse, and yet she is willing to risk her life for its completion, almost like she sees a side of the world that the rest of the characters don't.

I have some modest thoughts on this issue. I think that Mistress of all Evil isn't just a title that she gave herself. I think it's her role. What if there are forces of darkness ready to spill into the world like the Firebird, and they are only being held back by the fairy's floodgate. Maleficent is the one who controls the release of pressure behind that gate. And when she promises the forces of darkness the life of Aurora, who got doubly (almost triply) blessed by the stupid fairies, it appeases the darkness back into sedation.

There's your premise for Sleeping Beauty II.