A while back, my siblings and I decided to try and rate the Disney princesses (and pseudo-princesses, like Mulan) based on whether or not they were good heroines. I’m trying to recreate our list, modified slightly. Here’s how I’m going to do it: each princess starts out with 5 points. She loses points, all the way down to 0, for weakness of character, complacency, having others solve problems that she could have dealt with herself, and just generally being a negative role model (for anyone, but girls in particular.) She gains points, up to 10, for the opposite things: for being proactive, for having a personality, for taking control of her own destiny, for earning the respect of those around her, and for being a positive role model.
(This is Bug. I will be inserting my commentary on everything Cates says, and utterly interrupting the flow of her writing any time I feel like it, because she offered me the chance to give my own two cents on everything. Partially because I helped to come up with a lot of what she says here, and partially because I delight in criticizing everything she says, I will probably have a lot to comment on.)
To be perfectly, absolutely clear: this post isn’t meant to bash the Disney boys. In fact, maybe I’ll go back and address the same thing with the princes/heroes at another time. This is simply meant to be an analysis of the princesses as heroines. I’ll also make (some) allowances for time period: Snow White came out in the 1930s, and thinking (about women, among other things) was simply different back then than it is now. Anyways, enough disclaimers. Here we go.
Snow White: 4 Snow White loses a point for not running away from her stepmother, or at least seeking better circumstances, and she gets a point for teaching the dwarves about hard work. As will soon become apparent, I’m a sucker for any story, Disney or otherwise, in which the characters don’t just get handed things, but are taught the value of earning what they want. She also loses a point for being an idiot and accepting an apple from a random creepy old lady. At least in the original story she refuses the first two gifts. I’d like to take away an additional point for having the prince fall in love at first sight, but that’s not Snow White’s fault, so she finishes with a four. Not bad for a film made in 1937.
Snow White actually suffers adaptation decay in the translation to the Disney movie, because in the original legend she refuses to eat the apple offered by the random old lady until the random old lady eats a bite of it herself (unbeknownst to the princess the witch has charmed it so only the green spot is safe for this exact reason), and rather than waiting for the huntsman to tell her to run away, Snow White actually talks him out of killing her and helps him cook up the scheme to fool her stepmother. But she’s also not a total loss; much like Cinderella she takes lemons and makes them into lemon-scented Clorox when it comes to having an evil stepmother that makes her actually (heaven forbid!) do her own laundry and clean her own house. However, I’ll agree that the heroine of this one does pretty well for herself for all that she’s in a 1930s movie based on a 1230s legend, and though she doesn’t live up to modern standards she still does okay.
Cinderella: 2 Oh dear, where to begin…? It sucks because in many ways this movie rocks—adorable animals, good songs, the nutty godmother, the terrifying stepmother—but Cinderella herself is an epic fail, which isn’t so much Disney’s fault as the original source material, but it doesn’t change the fact that Cinderella is just an absolute failure of a role model. Point off for not defying her stepmother and sisters. Point off for having to rely entirely on others to solve her problems. Point off for falling in love at first sight with absolutely no conversation whatsoever. Ugh. The lesson of this movie, as shown by Cinderella, is literally sit on your a**, don’t try to better your circumstances, and some day, through no hard work or effort on your part, someone will step in and solve your problems. I’m not even sure she deserves a two.
Actually, to give credit where it’s due, many of the aspects of Cinderella that are so objectionable are not, in fact, just the original source material; many of them were made much worse in the Disney movie. In the original legend Cinderella goes out and gets her dress and shoes for herself from her mother’s grave instead of sitting around crying about it and waiting for first the Helpful Animal Friends and then later her fairy godmother to get that stuff for her. Cinderella also gets to know the prince a lot better in the original legend than in the movie—in the legend there are three balls instead of just one, and each one lasts the entire night, so they have a lot more time to get to know each other before deciding to marry. For that matter, in the legend she’s entirely financially dependent on her father, who is forcing her into her circumstances, whereas in the film her father is dead and she apparently does have at least a few real-world skills; she just never uses them. So, in my opinion, this one is all adaptation decay.
Sleeping Beauty (Aurora): 3 This movie is a good example of the fact that just because the main female character is a wash-out, that doesn’t mean that all the girls in that movie are failures. The fairies, quite simply, kick butt. They’re smart, sassy, and they defeat a dragon! (Okay, the prince does. But he couldn’t have done it without them.) But I’m not here to rate the fairies, I’m here to rate Aurora, who unfortunately doesn’t stand up quite as well. She loses a point for falling in love at first sight, and another for having no personality, but honestly, I can’t take anything else away, because she literally does nothing for the entire film. I can’t even fault her for touching the one frickin spinning wheel left in the entire kingdom, because as far as we know no one told her about that. Meh. Let’s call it a three and just focus on the fairies. (On an unrelated side note: Aurora’s parents are named Stefan and Leah, and Philip’s father is Hubert. Could they have picked worse names if they tried?)
See, I may just be biased because this has to be my all-time favorite Disney animated classic, regardless of who the heroine is, but I still don’t think that Briar Rose deserves as much of a bad rap as all that. Yes, she is a pretty passive character as a whole, and stuff happens to her most of the time, but she does, in fact, get to know her prince for a little while before falling in love with him, and her decision to run away is motivated by more than just a pretty face. She may not be a Hun-killing force of nature like Mulan, but she does make the decision to leave home in lieu of going “oh, yay, I’m a princess,” and in her defense she’s kept in the dark about a lot of things. Plus, I feel like she should win back a few points for having the awesomest supporting female roles—and male roles, for that matter—of any Disney princess. Oh, and she really can’t help it if her in-laws have unfortunate names.
The Little Mermaid (Ariel): 7 I love this movie. So so so much. And I love Ariel. Yay for a relief from frickin Aurora, who’s so dull that the title of her movie refers to a state of unconsciousness. Ariel loses an initial point for her outfit (or lack thereof) but immediately gains points back for challenging her destiny, not accepting circumstances that make her unhappy (are you listening, Snow White and Cinderella?), and making proactive decisions to change her life. This is also one of the only Disney movies where the princess saves the prince first. She loses a point for making a deal with the devil, and another for falling in love at first sight, but she also gains two back for rushing off to save Eric when she discovers the truth and helping him fight off Ursula. Whew. So Ariel finishes with a solid seven.
Although I agree that Cinderella especially could learn a thing or two from Ariel, I don’t think she’s as great as all that. The whole sequence where she basically decides to give up on the guy she’s been working so hard to get just because he saw another pretty face rubs me the wrong way, and there is the unavoidable fact that Eric is so very much not worth the trouble she goes through to save his sorry little butt; he falls in love with a girl he’s never seen, falls in love with another girl after two days of knowing her, dumps that girl in favor of someone who is apparently this girl he’s never seen, and then changes his mind back again at the drop of a hat. It’s cool that she’s so dedicated and all, but think about the message this movie sends: Girls, if you want a guy, you should sell your soul to the devil, give up all your family and friends, completely change who you are, suffer through pain and humiliation without a word, and pretend not to notice how fickle he is while remaining undyingly loyal to him to the end. Great movie, but not so much in the way of role models.
Beauty and the Beast (Belle): 8 This movie presents some difficulties, because while at the end Belle is in what is clearly an emotionally abusive relationship, there’s only so much Disney could do because it’s in the source material. So we’ll take off a point but not address that one in too much detail. Belle quickly earns back the point for having a personality, which goes along with her determination to be herself and not let others’ opinions influence her. She also gains a point for setting off after her father and sacrificing herself for him. Further point for not immediately giving in to the Beast and standing up to him. And then a final point for saving the Beast at the end—and going after a mob of 50 Frenchmen all by herself. Belle gets an eight, which I totally think she earned.
I absolutely agree on all points. Belle herself as Disney does her is very cool—she’s a nerd with spunk, which is refreshing in a girl, and she sacrifices herself to save her father, which is very cool—but there really isn’t a lot to work with in this original legend, which basically boils down to the fact that it doesn’t matter how nasty-seeming (or even animalistic) your husband is, you should do what your father tells you and hope that there’s a prince deep down inside the beast you’re confronted with. That said, Disney does a good job with it anyway. I would almost give Belle another point for a total of nine for turning down Gaston as well, when there are clear advantages to be had from marrying him. Either that, or for actually remaining fully clothed throughout the entire movie, and in reasonably modest dresses as well.
Aladdin (Jasmine): 7 Again, initial point off for the outfit. But she gets points back for, like Ariel, not accepting her destiny and trying to change things for herself. Jasmine also gets a major, major point from me for not falling in love with either Aladdin or Prince Ali on first sight, but getting to know them first. She’s got snark, and she’s not afraid to use it. I thought about giving her a point for helping fight off Jaffar in the last scene, but her part consists entirely of trying to seduce him, when she totally could have pulled a Princess Leia and strangled him with the chain, so I’ll just avoid the issue and not give or take any points for that one. Jasmine gets a seven, with a bonus star for snark.
What always confused me about Jasmine was what exactly she thought of Aladdin. She bumps into him in the market, gets her butt saved by him, and then goes back to where he lives, where he admits to having to steal to make a living, and talks about daydreaming about being rich enough to live in a palace, with apparently no awareness of the drawbacks of such a life… But then she totally believes him when he claims that he was a prince all along and was just lying to her about living on the street, and acts all surprised when she finds out that he was telling the truth the first time around. Either she gives him way too much credit for being a really good actor, or she is more gullible than she first appears. Plus, she utterly fails to notice that everyone in the entire freaking palace, including her own father, is frequently hypnotized by the not-so-subtly-evil grand vizier, so I’m going to go with her being gullible to the point of idiocy rather than her having an unusual amount of faith in Aladdin’s acting ability. Then there is the fact that she does end up just being the sex object for the male characters throughout the movie, and that she weakly facilitates her own rescue but ultimately just plays the damsel in distress and sits around waiting to be rescued. I wouldn’t rate her nearly as high as Cates, but I won’t deny her the bonus point for snark, nor yet for creative use of a strangely intelligent tiger.
Pocahontas: 6 Pocahontas gets an initial point for being able to dive over a waterfall and survive. Seriously, that’s major skills, y’all. She also gets a point for trying to get to know John Smith instead of trying to shoot him, although I have to say, I’m getting really tired of the stereotype in television and film that women are always the ones who are accepting and open to new ideas, while the (generally white) men are the racist, violent ones. But that’s not Pocahontas’s fault, so I won’t take away points. Pocahontas loses a point for being a screaming stereotype, and another for basically getting poor Kokoum (sp?) killed, but gets one point back for being willing to sacrifice herself to not only save John Smith, but to prevent a war. Props, girl. Props. Maybe she deserves more than a six, but I’m going to stick with that for now.
Although I am inclined to agree that there are serious issues with this movie as a whole (can anyone say “noble savage syndrome”?), I also think that Pocahontas gets props as a whole for subverting the original story, because in that she was twelve (12!) and John Smith was thirty-four, and she married him on the spot after saving his life, and actually historical scholars have gone over John Smith’s journals (which are the only source of this story), and now they think that there’s a significant chance that he made the whole thing up, or if he didn’t he was just misinterpreting a ritual of the Powhatan tribe and that wasn’t actually what went down at all… However, in the movie Pocahontas is shown as being genuinely conflicted when it comes to caring about her family, caring about her beau, and actually wanting to try and do what is right, instead of rebelling for the sake of doing so and damning the consequences. One place where she does win points over Kayley.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Esmerelda): 5 Like a couple of others coming up on this list, Esmerelda is neither a princess by birth nor by marriage. Esmerelda gets a point for standing up to the crowd and treating Quasimodo like a person, and another point for saving Phoebus’s life during the burning mill sequence. She loses a point for over-using her sexuality (seriously, this is the most sexually explicit Disney movie, and that’s saying something. The scene where Claude Frollo sniffs her hair? Squick!) but then I think that’s about it. She neither gains nor loses points during the second half of the movie, because she doesn’t do a whole lot. She’s either tied up or unconscious for the majority of it. She does, however, lose a final point for just falling into Phoebus’s arms. Seriously, she saw him save some family’s life, and then he helped save hers, but that’s it. They’ve barely talked, they haven’t even spent more than ten minutes in each other’s company. Sigh. Esmerelda gets a five.
It may not be the fault of the character herself, but the role that Esmerelda plays in this film is not remotely appealing. The writers of the Disney movie didn’t keep any but a few elements of the original Victor Hugo novel when making the musical, so I have no idea why they kept around the fact that Esmerelda is basically just an unattainable sexual object that the males of the story lust after with no real care for who she is as a person—and she continues to live up to that role throughout the movie by ending it with falling madly in love with the most worthy candidate. She does get a few moments of awesome, such as “God Help the Outcasts,” where she sings about how she doesn’t want anything for herself but she wants to make sure that the normally forgotten people of society are at least remembered by God, but she is basically just shown as the thing that everyone wants and can’t have, and doesn’t develop sufficient personality to show to viewers that she isn’t just an exotic face and a pretty body. Therefore, I would give the character herself a pretty decent rating, but her role in the story a very low one.
Hercules (Meg): 7 Meg gets a point for character development. We know she originally sacrificed herself for love, and while she learns why that may not have been the best decision, she doesn’t hesitate to make it a second time. She’s matured as a person without losing the essence of who she is. She also gets a point for trying to resist Hades, although she loses a point for going along with him for so long and helping betray Hercules. Additional point for not just blurting her feelings out, but taking time to consider them. Yeah, all things considered Meg’s pretty awesome. Solid seven.
Meg is totally awesome. She may have sold her soul to the devil, but she did it to save some guy that she loved. Disney gets points for that little detail right there: acknowledging that sometimes people are in love with more than one person over the course of a lifetime. And Meg may sell out the guy that she loves, but she’s doing it to save herself, not because she’s a weak passive little female, so she is not short on personality, even if her personality isn’t strictly appealing. Plus, if Jasmine gets a nod or two for snark, Meg totally deserves at least a special star:
“Are you always this articulate?”
“Aww, how cute. A couple of rodents in search of a theme park.”
“Don’t worry. The sea of raging hormones has ebbed.”
“Aww, how cute. A couple of rodents in search of a theme park.”
“Don’t worry. The sea of raging hormones has ebbed.”
And there’s even the fact that she outsmarts Hades in the end by allowing an unfortunate accident of fate (massive internal bleeding caused by badly-timed falling pillar caused by rampaging Cyclops) to create a loophole in Hercules’s agreement with Hades and save the day. Also, she deserves some credit for contrast to the original source material: in the myth, Megaera is passively conflicted about what to do but ends up poisoning Hercules to keep Hades happy. Not so in the Disney film.
Mulan: Gets a 12. No ifs, ands, or buts. Recapping her sheer levels of awesomeness and badassery isn’t possible in a single paragraph, but I’ll try. She doesn’t accept her prescribed fate. She challenges the norm. She argues with a cruel government official. She goes to war—war!—in her father’s place, knowing she has a high chance of dying either in battle, or from discovery. She refuses to give up during her training, despite being physically weaker, and makes it to the top of that pole. (Tell me you weren’t cheering during that scene.) She takes out an entire army in one move. Once she’s discovered, she doesn’t try to apologize or even beg for her life, she just says yeah, I did it for my dad. Sucks for you if you don’t accept it. Once she’s left on the mountain she sits there moping for maybe ten seconds, then gets off her butt and goes right back into battle, knowing she’s even more likely to be killed, because now people know her secret. She concocts a plan to get her band of soldiers into the palace, and then she saves the emperor’s life, and bests Shan Yu in a duel. With a fan. And then she stands in front of the emperor of China, still refusing to beg for her life or apologize for who she is. God, forget the ten. She gets a twelve.
I am entirely inclined to agree with this, and if I ever have a daughter this will be the Disney movie that I will force her to watch until she has it memorized. Not only does Mulan kick butt and take names, but she does so for really good reasons. She’s not just rebelling because she doesn’t like make-up and kimono, and she’s not just running off on her family because she met a nice guy; she’s risking her own life to save her father’s. That’s so much cooler than doing what she wants for a boy or because she’s trying to leave the abusive parents she’s been hanging around with for the past couple years or because she needs to get her dream job. Not only is she saving her father, but she’s saving her country. And she succeeds at doing so to practically excessive levels: she brings massive honor home to her parents by making a name for herself and getting blessed by the emperor, and she pretty much single-handedly beats the Huns back to Mongolia. And she mostly does it by being creative and quick-thinking and resourceful, rather than being physically strong or fast or agile. Plus, this one also has a good lesson on the value of hard work: there is a realistic portrayal of her being less physically developed than all the men in the army camp, and her managing to get by anyway through working twice as hard as any of them.
Quest for Camelot (Kayley): 8 This is one of the less-remembered Disney movies, but I’m a sucker for anything Arthurian. Kayley gains a point for wanting to be a knight, but she loses a point for all the whining and moping. She gains back three points for all the generally awesome things she does with Garrett—fighting the rock monster, pursuing the sword, saving Arthur—and an additional point for not falling in love at first sight, but getting to know Garrett first. It wasn’t the best Disney movie ever, but it was funny and sweet and entertaining, and I would have had a giant crush on Garrett if he would have gotten a frickin hair cut. Kayley gets an 8.
To tell the truth, I had almost completely forgotten about this movie as well until I read this, and then it all came rushing back to me. Well, at least the one moment…
“’Garrett, what are you doing?!’
‘I’m driving!’”
Best moment ever. Other than that, a pretty decent film, and a pretty decent semi-princess. For all that she is technically British, Kayley is probably the most all-American of all the Disney girls: she’s spunky and independent but wants to live up to her father and her country, a dreamer with a practical streak, and an independent woman that fights for what she believes in but still wants a man. And I agree that in the beginning she is very Luke Skywalker: if she wants to be a knight like her father, she should just go out and be one, not sit around and whine about how she’s not being appreciated for who she is. She loses points in my book for being too much of a whiny teenager, because she’s clearly rebelling for the sake of it, and doesn’t really have much in the way of motivation outside of “I don’t like dresses!” Well, that’s great and all, but it’s not really a deep and feeling source of initial motivation. But then she goes on to save her country and her boyfriend, so she wins some of that back. Oh, and speaking of her boyfriend, how exactly is Garrett supposed to get a haircut? He’s a blind hermit that scorns all human interaction! It’s probably wisest of him just to let it grow rather than risk scalping himself or accidentally turning himself into Sid Vicious or something. Although there is the fact that he loses that one fight with Sir Rubber specifically because his hair is too long...
The Princess and the Frog (Tiana): 10 I love Tiana to pieces, because she’s just awesome on a lot of levels, but she also shows it’s possible to be the hero without swinging a sword or even fighting. Other than a few brief skirmishes, her battles are all internal, not external, and it’s done beautifully. Tiana gets two points for having massive amounts of self respect and determination to pursue her dream. She gets another point for getting to know Naveen before falling for him, and yet another point for recognizes her failings and working to change them, while still keeping the essence of who she is. This is something I wish we’d see more of in stories in general, not just Disney. And, yep, I can’t resist giving her the final point for not just accepting Dr. Facilier’s easy solution, but recognizing that she has to earn this for herself. Tiana definitely earns a ten.
I don’t even know if I have anything to add to this one—Cates is exactly right. Tiana has win. No question.
Tangled (Rapunzel): 5 I already posted my feelings about Tangled, and Rapunzel, but I’ll try to break it down a little more. Rapunzel gets a point for trying to stand up for herself, but loses a point for beating up on Finn, who hadn’t done anything to deserve it. It is not okay for the guy to get hit just because he’s the guy and it’s a girl doing the hitting. She then loses a point for inconsistency of character—first she’s strong, spunky, and intelligent, and then she’s weeping and screaming and running around. It was supposed to be funny, but it was just bizarre. She gets a point for being willing to sacrifice herself for Finn at the end, but it’s a grudging point, and only given because she’s not as bad as Cinderella or Aurora. Honestly though, even when she saves the day she’s an idiot—I loved how she conveniently forgot she possessed a skill she’d been using her entire life until they were literally seconds from dying. Ugh. Five, but a shaky five. More like a four and a half.
Although I generally do agree that Rapunzel is not the most appealing Disney character ever and by modern standards is practically backwards, I am also not inclined to judge her as harshly as Cates. Maybe she does take a while to do the math about using her glowing hair to get her and Finn (Eugene?) out of the cave, but the situation is panicked, complex, and it’s not like they’re sitting around going “Gosh, if only one of us could make a random body part start glowing spontaneously so that we could have enough light to see where to move those rocks away from the cave entrance, but sadly neither of us has that so we’ll just have to give up and drown…” The jump from the realization that they can’t move the rocks away to the realization that they can with a little help from her very bizarre magical powers isn’t quite that obvious. Plus, she may be a bit inconsistent in terms of characterization, but she goes through a lot of major life changes. It makes sense that she’s more confident (and apparently much more willing to engage in wanton acts of violence) when she’s inside her tower that she knows well than when she’s out in the world, and that she would be somewhat conflicted about what to do. And she may be a bit excessively talented, but at least there was a whole song where she explained that she was only excessively talented because she had nothing better to do with herself all day than sit around and accumulate talents. However, I do agree that she loses major props for beating up on Finn so much. What on earth does he see in her?
-Cates
-Bug
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