Why We Need Disney Princesses: An Intro
Rachel Beth Ahrens
Opinions are my
own, 2023 Lady in the Blue Box Publishing. All Rights Reserved.
Reader Discretion
is Advised for most of this blog post. This is geared towards people 16+ in
age. This is an op-ed article for those wanting to know more about why we need
Disney, even though things are crappy in this day and age.
Spoilers galore of multiple movies.
You are warned.
After a long
sabbatical from my Blogger account to tend to my Patreon page, I am back and
writing again for my blog, Lady in the Blue Box.
I know I haven’t
written in months since I saw Hamilton at the Hippodrome in Baltimore in 2022,
but I think the wait is over for me to write more about things that are
currently on my mind at the time of the holidays.
For more
information on how my writings are doing, please visit my new Ream page-
reamstories.com/rachelbethahrens
Also, if you haven’t
done so already, become a patron of my Ream account to see my completed unabridged
version of Debutante of Cassiopeia, now live on my Ream page! Or, if you want
to support my female neurodivergent owned small business, become a patron on my
Patreon here: patreon.com/arachelbethahrenscreation
Now, let’s get
down to business on why I’ve started another brand new Disney-themed mini
dissertation on the Disney girls… And why we need them…
Now, I know what
you’re thinking and you’re definitely right. Disney’s methodology has changed in
recent years to be more inclusive and more progressive, which is actually a
good thing, but the whole hero’s journey bit with every Disney Princess out
there has got to stop. That is absolutely true, I’ve got your back. Every Disney
Princess through each movie with a female character is told and programmed to
work hard to make their dreams come true, and honestly, after what I’ve seen of
the things people say on social media and in real life, yes, it’s got to end
and I empathize. I’m sick and tired of seeing Mary Sue types and tropes out in
media.
The only exception
is in the movie Strange World, where there are strong female characters as
well, but only as two dimensional characters in the background for the most
part, with the exception of the mother character who pilots the ship around the
land to find out what is making the energy source Pando sick. We’re mostly
following teenager Ethan Clade, his father Searcher, the farmer and botanist who grows
Pando in the backyard, and Ethan’s grandfather, the legendary traveler and
explorer Jaeger Clade, who decided to go under the mountains to keep exploring their
world.
Strange World is super cool
because this is the first time we see a three dimensional young character as
Ethan, a gay teenager who loves this super awesome card game that’s all about
working together with your resources and other players to make a living with
what you have, which is a clue on how to save their planet—(Spoiler here) Besides,
the entire civilization of people in this movie is living on the back of a big
creature that looks like a turtle!
Of course, this
movie got horrible reviews and bombed in terms of revenue as the 61st animated
movie of Disney Animated Studios, because people thought it was “too woke” and
too progressive for people and kids—To which I say, fuck DeSantis and all this
garbage about how this movie should be banned. I happen to LOVE Ethan Clade the
most, he’s the best character in it and he ends up showing his dad and grandfather
the best and most noble part, the moral part of the story: TAKE CARE OF YOUR
PLANET, YOUR PLANET WILL TAKE CARE OF YOU! It’s the same principle in Pixar’s WALL-E,
but in doing so, showing the evil darker side of capitalism in that if you don’t
take care of your planet, bad things will happen for your future and other generations
to come.
Now, back to the
Disney Princesses, I’m going off on a tangent here… But I adore Strange
World, it’s a great movie to show your kids. Screw this garbage about LGBTQ
hate—Ethan is an awesome character, and love is love for God’s sake…
If you remember Disney’s
Encanto in my December 2021 episode of The King of Broadway is Dead…, I
made it perfectly clear on how Mirabel Madrigal is definitely fitting in nicely
as the newest Disney Princess in the fold, especially for the big number 60 in
the number of animated movies by Disney Animation Studios, before there was Strange
World and Wish. In the same principle of this theme of Disney
Princesses, not only did Mirabel win the hearts and minds of many children and
audiences around the world, translated into many languages, including Spanish
for it was even shown as far as Mexico and South America, Encanto is one
of the biggest movies to do well in the Box Office after 2020 with COVID19,
especially doing phenomenally well on streaming on Disney+. Even though the
numbers at the Box Office in 2021 were staggering to make ends meet, it was
really because of COVID19 that those numbers didn’t do so well at theatres when
people went to the movies. A ton has changed since 2020 with streaming, and sad
to say, Lin-Manuel Miranda still didn’t get his Oscar for the award winning song,
they gave it to Billie Eilish for James Bond’s latest film No Time To Die.
(Who cares, in my opinion—because
I preferred Adele’s theme from Skyfall. How many times do they have to
give Oscars to the Bond movies? Can the Academy stop being racist and give the
Oscar to Lin-Manuel Miranda just once and stop feeding the masses with
Hollywood’s richest white people??? Also, I hated the last Daniel Craig Bond
movie because of the ending, my father would have hated it also- for the love
of all that’s holy, don’t kill off Bond.)
(However, for the
record—Billie Eilish’s song from the Barbie movie dir. Greta Gerwig,
which was called “What Was I Made For”, was beautiful and poignant, definitely
worth a Golden Globe award for Best Song. The song plays at the right moment
between Barbie and her creator, and that moment almost drove me to tears a
second time—the first time I actually cried in the theatre watching Barbie
was America Ferrera’s incredible feminist speech about how women are all tired
of the bullshit we’re fed by men and the patriarchy of this country. It’s well
written and well executed. There, I’m done.)
Anyway, I felt so
much for the people who made Encanto, in my opinion, because Disney
finally won an Oscar for Best Animated Feature for that movie, which was well
deserved. In my book, that’s a big win for those who needed representation, and
it’s a flawless, whimsical, colorful, gorgeous film about Mirabel Madrigal, a
teenager with no gift in her magical gifted family and a magical house, only to
discover that the magic and the miracle are both fading, and it’s because she
was given no gift and Mirabel is underrepresented in her family.
It's about time that Mirabel is given the opportunity to shine as the newest Princess, because she actually DOES get a gift at the end—from the get go, we know that Mirabel talks to the house, Casita (Spanish = little house), and the house itself is sentient, having sweet reactions to everything she says and does. Mirabel is only trying to help her family, and Abuela Alma tries to crush it because she still believes Mirabel has no gift and is a problem child for only getting in the way of everyone. But Mirabel is actually misunderstood, and everything Abuela is doing to stop her is literally crushing her soul—we hear Mirabel’s voice as her soul is being crushed in my favorite song “Waiting on a Miracle”. But in the end, we discover when Mirabel gets a brand new doorknob as a gift from her family, after rebuilding the house from the ground up because it had to break and fall apart when she and Abuela were fighting. As a result, when Mirabel puts in the new doorknob that has an M on it, M for Madrigal, but also notice that Mirabel’s initials are M.M., the only Madrigal family member with those initials, that means, the magic of the house belongs to her!!! The magic and miracle of Casita return, restoring the factory settings on the house. And we really do discover at the end that her magical family gets all their gifts back, but it's all because of HER, Mirabel.
After all, after the song “Dos
Oruguitas”, when Abuela Alma returns with Mirabel and Bruno in her arms, she
sings, “The miracle is YOU.” That’s a clue that the real miracle goes to
Mirabel, she’s next in line in the family to have the house belonging to her.
She does have magic.
Also, unlike the
rest of the Disney Princesses- Mirabel does NOT need a man to save her!
The whole hero’s
journey and the whole patriarchy of said trope needs to stop, you’re absolutely
right. They mention this problem call back in Wreck It Ralph: Ralph Breaks
the Internet, where Princess Vanellope Von Schweetz meets the other Disney
Princesses, back before we had Disney’s newest Princesses in Encanto and
Wish. Back when we just added Elsa and Anna from the cursed Frozen
(Sorry, but I’m kind of sick of that movie, it’s been done to death in the media,
and I’m sick of hearing about Olaf the Snowman. Every Christmas, I get tired of
hearing about Frozen, my bad, so sorry, it’s my least favorite Princess
story from the conglomerate), Queen Elsa mentions if Vanellope has magic hands
like she does, and Vanellope says no to all of the Princesses’ questions. From
that to, “Kidnapped or enslaved?” and Vanellope says, “Ew, no! Is there a problem
here, should I call the authorities?”
Until she says,
finally, “I don’t even have a mom!”
Princesses (the
ones who have no moms, like Ariel and Jasmine): ”Neither do WE!”
And finally, Rapunzel
asks the million dollar question trope of the mother of all hero’s journey
issues with all the Princesses in Disney itself: “Do people assume that all
your problems were solved because some big strong man showed up?”
Vanellope: “YES!
What is up with that?”
All Princesses: “She
IS a Princess!” (Snow White sings.)
Yes, it’s a funny
joke that even makes me laugh, but only up to a point because that was the
whole Walt Disney methodology until VERY recently. It’s getting tiresome and it’s
about fucking time that the princess saves herself and she doesn’t need a man
to show up and save her ass.
The hero’s journey
trope does need to stop, because we want to be more inclusive of status, sexual
orientation, gender, and neurodiversity.
It’s about damn
time that the hero’s journey was blown apart with movies like Encanto
and especially Wish. Here’s why.
At first, it’s not
really canon that Mirabel has magic powers like the rest of her family, because
when she was a child during the gift ceremony, the door disappeared before her
eyes and the magic candle of Casita flickered in Abuela Alma’s hands. That was
a clue that maybe Mirabel didn’t deserve that happening to her, and it was a
clue that Abuela was wrong and Bruno’s visions never lied—The house had to fall
apart because the family was dysfunctional, even though the townspeople of Columbia
thought the family Madrigal was perfect. It was far from perfect. I mean,
Abuela Alma had to raise her triplet children from birth by herself, and she
was dealing with a ton of trauma from losing her husband, Abuelo Pedro, after
he was killed in front of her by the Columbian soldiers during the civil war of
the late 1890s. Abuela Alma couldn’t keep the house running all by herself
without help from EVERYONE in the family, she couldn’t afford to leave anyone
out, but she left someone out anyway… Poor Mirabel and Bruno.
This is not really
a hero’s journey that we’re talking about in Encanto, per se, because
this was really a person versus society and family trope in the plotline of the
movie.
With Disney’s Wish,
same thing. There are a ton of tropes of new progressive plotlines in the movie
that I saw last weekend with my boyfriend Alexander: Asha, the newest Disney
Princess, is the very first ever Princess who is of Afro-Caribbean-Latina
descent, as she’s also played by an actress who identifies as Afro-Latina and
queer, Hamilton’s Ariana DeBose. And this time, there is NO big strong
man in her way to get what she wants in this plotline! Asha’s best friend Dahlia
is also the very first Disney best friend character to have a disability too! This
is fully awesome to end all antiquated Walt Disney tropes going as far back as
the 1930s.
As a matter of
fact, this is the first time we see Chris Pine playing a villain, as King
Magnifico, who is incredibly vain and full of himself, doing what Disney
Princes do at some parts. But he’s more of a Gaston character who is arrogant
and conceited, but he’s got magical powers that he eventually abuses later in
the film. This debunks another conglomerate trope that eventually too much
power corrupts someone. If we think about this politically, King Magnifico is
definitely corrupted not just by magic, but having ultimate power as a sorcerer
and a king. This is why our Founding Fathers of the United States back in the
late 18th century said no more kings, we need to elect a President and only
allow him to serve limited terms, so that the government is rigged to protect
itself. We do not want a dictatorship or we’d end up with someone worse than
Hitler in WWII, and we don’t want another oligarchy because nobody wants
apartheid either. We don’t want people in power too long because corruption
happens all too often and greed can turn people into something ugly.
Unfortunately,
this is also how I feel about the positions of Congress and Supreme Court, that
at some point, something’s got to give, and honestly, those seats in Congress
and SCOTUS both need to serve limited terms at some point, that way it’s fair.
We keep voting for the same people every 2-4 years for each Delegate and Senator,
it’s getting maddening out there when each of those people gets their tenure
renewed and no one is doing anything about it. It’s got to stop. Also, DeSantis
is a bastard anyway.
Now, back to Wish:
The thing about Asha is she’s an honest hero trying to rip open the truth about
the corrupted King of Rosas, but no matter what she does, he keeps getting in
the way of her. The most amazing part of this is, Asha has this big MAJOR wish
that she wishes on a star that literally comes to life in her own forest,
granting so much magic and energy for all plant life and animals too. Her goat
Valentino talks! (Voiced by the legendary voice actor and former pilot of the
Firefly Serenity, Alan Tudyk) And we all love the goat, he’s hilarious. With
the help of Star and Valentino, Asha makes it a mission to give everybody in
the city their wishes back. But King Magnifico things that granting everybody’s
wishes are just too dangerous, when he’s already corrupted and becoming too
dangerous himself, and even his wife, the Queen, sees it! The Queen of Rosas
sees right through him and actually becomes a secret double agent for Asha,
plotting a plan to take down the monarchy and the corrupted king himself, which
is warranted. A double cross on a very bad monarch. This is feminism in the
right way, people.
Also, if I might
add, this movie has been in the making for a good century, guys. Since Disney
was founded in 1923, Walt Disney’s dream started with a wishing star during a
movie. That movie that he made later in the 1930s and 40s was eventually Pinocchio,
where Jiminy Cricket is singing the classic Disney song that paved the way to
be the theme song for Walt Disney Pictures, for all of his movies long after Walt’s
death from lung cancer in December 1966. Walt Disney wanted to make a picture
based on a wishing star character, but he never got around to making it,
because he died before making that dream a reality.
In 2018, more than
50 years since Walt’s passing, the creative team at Disney Animation Studios
got to work on the movie Wish, as a tribute to Walt Disney’s dream. This
time, it was constantly scrapped, in rewriting and revision numerous times, and
in 2020, COVID19 hit, and the movie was on hold for another year or two because
of the virus killing millions in hospitals and putting production on hold for
all movies in Hollywood.
It was basically
the Sleeping Beauty problem, as I’ve been calling it lately. My mom once told
me during early 2020 when COVID hit Maryland next, that it was just like the
fairies putting the townspeople to sleep for 100 years because they didn’t want
anyone to find out that Princess Aurora’s curse came true and she was in
sleeping death by the poisoned spindle by the evil witch. The same thing
happened in 2020, in a more modern time, because more people were dying of this
horrible illness, and we needed to stop the spread of illness in its path. We
didn’t want people to get sick with this terrible thing, and we also wanted to
keep our people safe, so the only way we could do that was sleep away the year
2020, putting every project, every job, every family meeting on hold for the
entire year until we had the first COVID vaccine. Does that make sense?
Therefore, Disney’s
Wish proves something very important in the end of the film—Spoiler here…
The transition in
Act Three of the film almost got me to cry at the end of the film, and I
started forming tears after the climax of the movie was over. The biggest clincher
was when the true colors of King Magnifico were revealed to the entire City of
Rosas, and he was intent of destroying everyone’s wishes, their dreams, their
deepest desires, as well as Asha’s wish that became Star. He was just about to
use Star’s abilities for his own cause and draw in all the power for himself,
blocking out all the stars in the sky with clouds, and conjuring vines
throughout the city to make everyone kneel at his mercy. (A little Sleeping
Beauty reference with those vines and thorns there…)
But the thing here
is, Asha was the only one standing to get up against King Magnifico’s wicked
ways. She started singing her rendition of the song “This Wish” from the beginning
of the film, as a reminder to the people of Rosas that you can make anything
happen for YOU, for yourself, and to hell with what men making your dreams come
true.
The king is
furious as hell. He starts beating her to the ground with his new dark magic
staff made of mirrors and a wicked potion in his forbidden spell book. It
works, and I’m about ready to tear up because I feel like King Magnifico was
going to murder Asha in cold blood by stabbing her in the chest with his staff.
But then the amazing
happens—the town of Rosas is SINGING with her. The same lyrics of “This Wish”
was echoing back to her, just as the wishing well of Snow White and the
Seven Dwarves was echoing back to Princess Snow White herself in Walt’s first
ever movie, the Disney movie that started everything. That’s what breaks the
vines, and hurtles Star back up in the sky, forcing the curse to break and
putting King Magnifico trapped in his own spell in his mirror staff. Damn.
Even better than
that, I’m not going to spoil the real true ending that happens later, but
something magical happens between Star and Asha that she eventually gets the
power of a magic wishing wand, becoming the first ever fairy godmother. The
magic wand also represents the same wishing wand that is used by the beautiful
Fairy Godmother in a later Disney movie, Cinderella, of course. And no,
there is no romantic love scene between Asha and some dude, Asha gets her own
happy ending, because this is a Disney animated movie, number 62 in the number
of animated features Disney produced, it’s also 2023 now, so feminism reigns
supreme in getting the rest of the nation to wake up and see that no woman
needs a hero to save her to achieve her dreams and desires.
That said, we all
know the hero’s journey trope all too well, but this here with Wish is the
exception.
Princess Asha, the
origin story of the very first fairy godmother, is a feminist character telling
her story of how heroes don’t need a man, and if you set your mind to things,
you can do and be anything you want.
She was giving
viewers and children HOPE. The promise of hope for a better tomorrow.
That’s why her 100
year old grandfather, Sabino, voiced by acting legend Victor Garber, in the
last cut scene of the film after the credits, is playing a lute. And he plays
the song expertly.
What song, you
ask?
Jiminy Cricket’s
song, the most famous song of Disney Pictures, the theme song, “When You Wish
Upon a Star”. And the scene melts perfectly into the brand new Disney Pictures
logo and title for 100 Years of Wonder. Disney 100.
Effing brilliant.
Also, you need to
see all of the credits to get to the end of the movie, bar none, because the
end credits sequence is beautiful, showing you 61 Disney characters from all 61
animated movies, from Snow White, the very first ever directed Disney
movie from Walt’s mind in the 1930s, all the way to movies number 60 and 61
with Encanto and Strange World, respectively. And each of the
Disney characters are all outlined and sketched in glittering gold paint
throughout the credits. It’s unbelievable.
This may be a love
letter to Walter Disney, the man who created the wishing star story to all the
movies that followed even after his passing in the 60s, but it’s also a call
back to the true Disney mission statement that has been revised for 2023 for
the future of movies and everything we love. This was probably revised since
long after Walt died along with the whole antiquated white man frame of mind
that needed to be finished and gone a long time ago.
This is my take on
Disney’s new ideology for 2023 into 2024: To bring joy, innocence, love, light,
and hope to the future generations to come into this world, no matter what age,
no matter what race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, pronouns, gender identity, class,
disability, or neurodiversity.
This is the reason
why I end all of my Patreon posts with this statement:
“Everyone deserves
love.”
Happy New Year,
2024. And a very Happy Holidays to all. Welcome to beyond 100.
To be continued in part two…
