We talk about this a lot in my Disney classes, but so often, it's the female characters who are the focus of at best discussion, at worst criticism in Disney films. (With the exception of Pixar. Because Pixar has this weird obsession with male leads. And just when we think they're making progress with films like Brave and Toy Story 4, which feature Merida and Bo Peep & Jessie, we get Onward. Don't even get me started on Onward. I am...not impressed by the trailer.)
And while the heroines (and, to some extent, the villains) of Disney Princess movies aren't necessarily fully-fleshed out characters, they're at least better than the Disney Princes. After all, Snow White's prince doesn't even have a name (I refuse to believe it's "Florian"), and Cinderella's love interest is known simply as "Prince Charming". It's not until we get to Sleeping Beauty that the prince even has a name and actual dialogue.
This is, of course, something that's changing in more recent films. Speaking of the 2015 live-action Cinderella, screenwriter Chris Weitz says,
"Prince Charming is something of a cypher in the animated (1950) version and the Grimm and Perrault talks. I felt that whereas it was acceptable and even useful to have him be essentially symbolic in earlier versions (it was just enough that he was rich and important and handsome), an audience today demands a bit more in terms of identification."
Kristoff isn't technically a prince (yet) -- I'm hoping for a Frozen III where Kristoff and Anna get married and Elsa brings Honeymarren as her date -- but the ideas are the same: it's not enough that he's Anna's True Love, we have to know more about him to understand why Anna loves him. (Frankly, his relationship with Sven is enough for me: he's goofy and good with animals.)
And, as Kristen Bell points out to Jimmy Fallon, it's equally important to know why he loves her and to see him loving her. It's not something we get enough of, and can go a long way in changing the narrative that leads to Toxic Masculinity.
When it comes to watching Disney movies, I find it very hard to take off my academic cap and just enjoy the movie. I'm constantly analyzing and looking for little details. While I sometimes wish I could just enjoy them like I do other movies, I actually really enjoy it -- especially when I see some progress and development in the Disney Princess brand.
One of the biggest criticisms lobbed against Disney films is their whitewashing of history -- it started, perhaps, with Song of the South, and didn't really get better with Pocahontas or The Princess and the Frog. Critics point out that relations between two tension-charged groups -- the Native Americans and the English settlers in the former, and whites and blacks in the latter -- were not as simple or positive as they're portrayed in the animated films; defenders retort that that they're children's films and, as such, can't possibly address the complexities of racial dynamics in 90 minutes nor should they.
Both sides are right: Disney isn't creating a documentary or a historical film; they're producing a fairy-tale film. (Whether Pocahontas -- a real historical figure -- has a fairy-tale story and whether Disney should have set a film in 1920s Louisiana are entirely different questions.) And the defenders are right, too: even if Disney had a moral obligation to accurately represent history, it'd be almost impossible to do in a 90-minute film.
So the question then becomes -- and I love discussing it with my students -- what should Disney do? How can they not sidestep sensitive issues but still do them justice?
And this is where Frozen II comes in: the basic gist of the plot (and I think this is mostly apparent from the trailer), there's a conflict between the Arendellians and the native people in the film, the Northundra (who, I think, are modeled after the Sami tribe, the native people of Norway/Scandinavia). The story of the conflict is initially filtered through Elsa and Anna's father, who doesn't know what happened because he was outside the forest and knocked unconscious. But the elemental spirits of the forest basically keep people in and "lock" out the outside world.
But here's the significant part: the arc of the film is basically Elsa uncovering the truth of what happened, of why the spirits were angered. And the reason, as Elsa learns, is that Elsa's grandfather betrayed the Northundra, building the dam under the guise of peace and unity, but really doing it to gauge the strength and size of the Northundra tribe. His reason? He was pissed off that they were independent and wanted them to swear allegiance to him. The moment he kills the Northundra leader is the moment the spirits "revolt" for lack of a better term, and there's a more complicated, but beautiful, resolution to the story, one which ends with a message of true peace and unity.
Why is this so important? Well, aside from the fact that Elsa and Anna's grandfather is basically a symbol of some ye olden days Fragile Toxic Masculinity, he represents that colonial, imperialist mindset of "white is right" and that native people should swear fealty to him simply because of the crown he wears. In the film, the Northundra are portrayed relatively flat, but they're kind people who seem intent on harmony and peace. (I'm thinking of Pocahontas, where each group views the other as "savage," and equally at fault, when, in reality, the English settlers bear the majority of the blame and fault.) While there's a bit of a problem in locating that mindset in just one character -- in Pocahontas, it's Ratcliffe; once he's gone, all the English settlers are totally fine with everything; here, it's the grandfather who seems to be the sole prejudiced one -- what's important is that Elsa and Anna's grandfather is portrayed as wrong, and his beliefs are firmly and clearly denounced by both Elsa and Anna. Both sisters understand why their grandfather's actions were unforgivable and also understand what they need to do make things right and restore balance. And, in this case, that means appeasing the Elemental spirits and making reparations by destroying the dam.
Is it a perfect depiction of complex inter-racial relations? Of course not. It is, after all, an animated film with a target demographic of preschoolers and elementary schoolers. And there are lots of unanswered questions, but...
Does it attempt to handle complex issues better than its predecessors did? Yes, I would say so. And, what's more important, is that I think it lays the groundwork for important future discussions. I think it opens the door to have early conversations about imperialism and colonialism and how some people, even people we thought were good and right, did some truly bad things. From there? There are so many places to go.
This afternoon, my husband I were fortunate enough to have a Double-Feature Date Afternoon. We saw Knives Out first -- which was a fantastic WhoDunIt and just an overall delightful romp -- and then saw Frozen 2.
Disclaimer: I haven't read any reviews and managed to stay largely spoiler-free. I had read some "first reactions" -- those Twitter responses about people's early responses to the film which are largely vague and non-specific and which don't give away any specific details -- and that was all I knew. Most of them were positive -- I feel like there was one lukewarm response which basically said it "was good, but not as good as the first," (important to note that it was written by a man) -- which reassured me. Disney sequels are, after all, usually things that go straight-to-video and aren't very good. (The only sequels I can think of are The Rescuers Down Under -- because The Rescuers were. my. jam. -- and Ralph Breaks the Internet...somebody correct me if I'm wrong.) I knew that the film was darker, had supposedly matured with its audience, and that a good deal of people believed it was unnecessary.
I have thoughts. Lots of thoughts.
But here's the gist of them: Frozen II is not the movie I thought it was going to be, and that's okay, because it turned out to be the Disney Princess Movie I needed. And, more importantly, I think it's the Disney Princess Movie that I needed to see as a young girl, that the brand needs, and that little girls (and boys) need.
Spoilery thoughts below.
She is not just the OG Disney Princess -- she's the OG Disney Character.
Without her, there would probably not be a "Disney." There (probably) would not be a billion-dollar multi-media conglomerate. We (probably) wouldn't be watching cartoons as adults. We might not even have theme parks, of which Disney ones represent the Gold Star. And who else knows what the trickle-down-effect would be.
Because back in 1937, pretty much everyone expected an 80-minute feature-length animated film to flop. Which is extra problematic considering Disney sunk everything he had into this film -- I think the estimated budget eventually ballooned up to $1.5 million (in the middle of the Great Depression, remember). Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was known as Disney's Folly.
But maybe it was precisely that historical context -- the Depression -- that made people flock to the theater. For escape, for nostalgia, for air conditioning -- whatever it was, people loved it. If I'm remembering correctly, I believe the film made $80 million during its first year: at a time when an adult movie ticket cost a quarter and a child movie ticket a nickel.
And thus, Disney was saved and an empire was born.
But remember: She was born in 1937. I'm not saying that excuses everything, but face it: things were a helluva lot different then.
And it's not all bad: sure, she's only 14 and marries a man she basically just met, but at least that man didn't stumble across the seemingly-dead-body of an 8 year old girl in the middle of a forest and attempt to buy her from some dwarves. (Which is what happens in the original story by the Grimm Brothers.) Unlike her successors, her eyes are proportionate and normal-sized. Also unlike her successors, she's got a healthy body type with a realistic waist and some actual curves. And, when she stumbles upon the dwarf's cottage, she doesn't ask for a hand-out: she uses the skills she has (yes, they are limited and domestic) to compensate for a roof over her head.
So, yes. I'm defending her. And not just because she was my favorite when I was very little. (We also didn't have a lot of options pre-1989):
(My dad would kill me if he saw this photo. Also, remember when Disney characters just wandered the parks?)
ANYWAY. All of this is to say that, as the OG Character, she holds a special place in the realm of Movies-You-Just-Don't-Remake. How could you remake The Wizard of Oz without Judy Garland? Or Gone With The Wind without Clark Gable or Vivien Leigh? Or Breakfast at Tiffany's without Audrey Hepburn?
I thought, for the longest time, that Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was off-limits. Of course her story has been retold -- I actually even enjoyed Snow White and the Huntsman, mainly due to Charlize Theron's Wicked Queen, and Gregory's Maguire's Italian take with Lucrezia Borgia as the villainess -- and Disney went so far as make Snow the heroine of its fairy-tale-version-of-Lost, Once Upon A Time.
But now it seems like the iconic 1937 film has been added to the list of Disney's Remake Machine, having just found a director in Marc Webb. (Yes, the film was announced in 2016, but films are announced all the time--it doesn't necessarily mean it's going to get made. We've been waiting on that Wicked film for years now.)
Things That Make Me Cautiously Optimistic:
Marc Webb was a director/producer on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend which, largely thanks to Rachel Bloom, did exceptional things with its portrayal of mental illness, female friendships, and romantic relationships.
Pasek and Paul have been brought on to write new songs for the film -- and if "Speechless" is any indication, this bodes extremely well.
Things That Might Be Tricky:
Adriana Caselotti -- Disney's original voice actress -- had an incredibly high voice. And while it may have worked in the 1930s, it's one of the things my students comment on the most when asked about things they disliked about the film. (A quibble, I know, but her voice is iconic.)
There's not a whole lot of story there, and the source material isn't exactly great by 2019 standards. Most adaptations maintain the element of female jealousy and conflict -- based on appearance/beauty -- and I would love to see Disney change and update this for 2019.
I'd also hope that this Snow White will have a spine and won't be quite so passive. While Disney's 2015 version of Cinderella was a beautiful film, and did update some elements of the story, Ella was still "as meek and as mild as a mouse" for most of the film.
Finally, while there aren't even whispers of a rumor about the plot, several of the articles I read mention that Disney is also considering a "spin-off" featuring Snow White's "sister," Rose Red. Which....
...is not entirely true. I mean, yes. I used to think this as a kid because "Snow White and Rose Red" was one of my favorite stories. But...just because they have the same name doesn't mean they're the same character. So...yeah. Not sisters.
Hopefully, this is just lazy reporting and not actual information coming from Disney. Because that would not bode well.
If there was one living Disney legend I could have lunch with, it would be Dame Julie Andrews.
But if I could have lunch with two Disney legends, it would be Dame Julie Andrews and Alan Menken. I have no musical talent whatsoever, but even I can recognize that Alan Menken is in a class of his own.
I've been listening to the Aladdin soundtrack on repeat, especially the score. (I don't know if it counts as "classical" music, but I find the instrumental music helps me concentrate when I'm writing or course planning.) And the more I listen to "Speechless," the more I find myself humming it as I'm unloading the dishwasher or singing fragments when I'm replying to emails.
Take a listen below:
Yes, it obviously has a different sound than the other music -- but it's not like the music from the original animated film is completely coherent. As Mari Ness explains for Tor, Aladdin's production history was interrupted by Howard Ashman's death. Jeffrey Katzenburg didn't like the initial script that Musker and Clements produced so they brought in Tim Rice (who would later work with Elton John on the soundtrack for The Lion King). Of the main songs on the soundtrack "A Whole New World" and "One Jump Ahead" are written by Rice and Menken, and "Prince Ali" and "Friend Like Me" are Menken and Ashman's collaborations.
All of this is to say -- there's a pastiche element to the soundtrack already, so adding "Speechless" to the mix doesn't really bother me. Perhaps that's because it was written by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul who worked on two of my favorite soundtracks at the moment, Dear Evan Hansen and The Greatest Showman. And they're Disney aficionados, which endears them to me even more. Look at them, they're adorable!
I appreciate that they pointed out that Jasmine needed her own song -- it's always struck me as odd that, despite it being Aladdin's movie (technically), Jasmine is one of the official Disney princesses. To be fair, when they created the brand in 2000, they played fast and loose with the definition since Tinkerbell was originally included (before they realized that the Fairies could be a profitable brand on their own) and characters like Pocahontas and Mulan are included, despite not technically being princesses.
And yes, the song is a powerful feminist anthem, especially considering that, in the film, it comes directly after Jafar's line that "princesses should be seen and not heard."
But more than that -- it's intricately connected to the original animated film in such a smart, subtle way that you could almost miss it if you were dazzled by the visuals of the film. (I did. And I loved that scene where the characters around Jasmine disappear into poofs of smoke as she dismisses each of them. I think critics were divided over it, but I thought it was a visually cool effect.) It was only after I started listening to the song divorced from the visuals that the connections started to click together.
"Here comes a wave meant to wash my away / A tide that is taking me under / Swallowing sand, left with nothing to say / My voice drowned out in the thunder..."
The line to "swallowing sand" struck me -- and it seemed more than just a throwaway reference to the Arabian setting. To me, it seemed like a callback to the scene in the original film where Jafar traps Jasmine in the giant hourglass, literally silencing her.
It's a scene that increasingly bothers me the more I teach the film. It's weirdly sexual for a kid's film and is rivaled only by, perhaps, Frollo's "Hellfire" song in Hunchback. Plus Slave Jasmine makes me think of Slave Leia in her gold bikini, but without any of the subsequent empowerment Leia gets.
“We were really inspired by a line in the original movie where Jafar very misogynistically says, ‘You’re speechless, I see. A fine quality in a wife'...In the world that we live in, so many people need to reclaim their voice — or claim it for the first time — and be outspoken about who they are and what they believe in. It was a really exciting opportunity to put that message into the voice of Jasmine.”
Which...I love. I love that they found inspiration in a line from the film -- one of the more misogynistic parts of the film, TBH -- and flipped it on its head and turned it into an empowering anthem.
And there's another part of the song that I think is also a direct callback to the original film. In the song, Jasmine sings,
"Try to lock me in this cage / I won't just lay me down and die / I will take these broken wings / And watch me burn across the sky..."
I can't be sure, of course, because Pasek and Paul don't address it specifically with The LA Times (which isn't to say that they don't address it somewhere else; I haven't found it yet, if they have) -- but it reminded me of the scene in the animated film where Jasmine is in the courtyard with Rajah. The Sultan's just come pestering her about marrying a prince before her 16th birthday (UGH) and Jasmine is lamenting her lack of freedom and her desire to get out of the palace. (Although this exact scene isn't in the remake, the premise is consistent, and may be alluded to when Jasmine sings "written in stone / every rule, every word / centuries old and unbending.") Frustrated, Jasmine sets the birds, who were previously locked in the cage, free:
It's a nice moment in the animated film -- foreshadowing Jasmine's escape from the palace -- but given that she ultimately ends up back in the palace, it rings a little hollow. (And heavy-handed with the symbolism, but that's definitely an adult perspective.) I like that this scene wasn't kept in the remake, but I love that Pasek and Paul alluded to it. It shows a familiarity with the original film and pays homage to it by acknowledging that there were memorable moments in the original film that don't hold up in 2019.
It's smart and it's subtle and it works. And it makes a kick-ass anthem.
The first images from Pixar's latest film, Onward, dropped today via People:
📷: People: Tom Holland (left) and Chris Pratt's (right) characters
📷: Julia Louis-Dreyfus (left) and Tom Holland's (right) characters
Okay.
I admit, I knew nothing about this film. So I did a little digging.
The film is set to come out in March of 2020 and is written and directed by Dan Scanlon who, while working on other Pixar films, most notably wrote Monsters University. (Meh.) Here's the plot summary from Wikipedia -- so take it for what it's worth:
"The film is set in a suburban fantasy world where humans do not exist, instead populated with elves, trolls, and sprites, where unicorns are as common as rodents. Two teenage elf brothers, Barley and Ian, embark on a quest to discover if there is still magic in the world in order to spend one day with their father, who died when they were too young to remember him.'
Apparently, the story is "inspired by Scanlon's father's death when Scanlon and his brother were younger, and their relationship" which kinda makes me feel bad for what I'm about to say.
But even though there's an emotional center to the story; even though Chris Pratt and Tom Holland are adorable and are sure to have good chemistry; even though.
There's that little voice in the back of my head that thought, "Really Pixar? Really?"
Because leaving aside the fact that the plot sounds an awful lot like Zootopia -- it just feels like Pixar is falling back on their typical formula. And I don't mean the "What If X Had Feelings" one (although it is hilarious):
It's the buddy film -- two guys on an emotional journey where they each help other learn something that changes them--usually with the tough macho guy learning to be emotional and, well, less macho. A little vague but it's Buzz & Woody, it's Mike & Sully, it's Marlin & Dory (who's female, yes, but let's not unpack that rn), it's Mr. Incredible & Syndrome, it's Lightning & Mader, it's Remy & Linguini, it's Carl & Russell, it's Miguel and Hector. It's more of the same.
So, yeah. Even though this story is based on Scanlon's life and we can't fault him for that -- someone at Pixar heard this pitch, read this script and thought "Yep. That's on brand." To be fair, the film was announced back in 2017, at the D23 Expo, when the now-disgraced-COO John Lasseter was in charge. So it's easy enough to lay the blame at his feet and be done with it. After all, Lasseter was at Disney since the early 1980s (ish), and he helped found Pixar and was integral in having Disney shift to computer animation.
But that's almost too easy, isn't it? This is, I'm sure, indicative of a larger gender-based issue in Hollywood: despite fiction and storytelling being coded as female, making money is decidedly coded male, with women comprising only 8% of Hollywood directors.
Of those 17, some do have a female character of some significance -- it's debatable whether the role is large enough to be considered a co-protagonist: Princess Atta in A Bug's Life, Dory in Finding Nemo (it's really the story of Marlin and Nemo), maybe ElastiGirl in The Incredibles (again, it's really the story of Mr. Incredible and Syndrome), maybe Eve in Wall-E, and maybe ElastiGirl in The Incredibles 2 -- because even though it's about her getting to be the one to save the world, it's still about how Mr. Incredible deals with it.
That leaves 3 -- THREE -- films that are anchored around female characters: Brave was the first (with Merida and her mother Elinor), Inside Out was next in 2015 (Joy and Sadness), and Finding Dory in 2016.
So, yeah. I'm sure this story is deeply personal to Scanlon, and I certainly don't begrudge him that. Let him tell his story. But that doesn't mean I wasn't disappointed to see another male-buddy story from Pixar, with Julia Louis-Dreyfus mentioned as just "the mom."
Let's hear some other stories, Pixar. Disney, for all their faults, at least puts female characters at the forefront of their animated stories -- Zootopia needed both Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde to make it work (and even changed the story to make Judy the heart of the story) and Wreck-It Ralph is anchored by the friendship between Ralph and Vanellope. (On a side note, it was really weird to skim the Wikipedia page and see all the animated films Disney now owns after their merger with 20th Century Fox...like Bob's Burger's The Movie...)
On the way home from the lake the other day, my husband and I were talking about Aladdin (yes, again). And one of the things we were focusing on was the criticism that Disney didn't do enough with the live-action version.
This is something I struggle with with retellings in general. But I suppose that's the thing, isn't it? Disney isn't really "re-telling" the story -- at least not in the sense that Gail Carson Levine was retelling "Cinderella" withElla Enchanted or Susannah Grant and Andy Tennant did with Ever After (these two are generally highly regarded when it comes to retelling a classic fairy tale. There are, of course, numerous others, but these are two of my personal favorites.). What Disney is doing is re-making their beloved animated films and occasionally updating them. The closet they've come to retelling is Maleficent, since there's really not much there in the original animated film and Maleficent is, arguably, the most dynamic part of that film. (For the record, I hate the way Linda Woolverton & Co. transformed the Good Fairies, as Merrywether is my icon.)
BUT ANYWAY.
The point is, I think expecting Disney to radically change the fundamental story is setting yourself up for disappointment. This was never going to be Jasmine's story, because the story is, after all, called "Aladdin."
That being said, I do think there are opportunities to do something new and different, without fundamentally changing the narrative of the story.
Case in point: The Little Mermaid live-action film. Y'all know how much I LOVE this film and don't care what the prevailing academic argument about this is a horrible story for feminists because she gives up her voice yada yada yada. Production for the film is rumored to begin sometime in 2020, probably because Lin-Manuel Miranda is a very busy man. BUT. He is on-board:
And leaving aside all of LiLo's pleas to be cast as Ariel (NO, DISNEY. JUST NO -- which, to be honest, I don't think would every happen, as Disney is probably well aware of LiLo's career after she jumped the good ship Disney Channel Child Star) -- I think Disney could be radical and different with this film, simply by diversifying the cast.
Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Mermaid" holds a unique position in fairy-tale-lore, since it is, to the best of my knowledge, an original story written by Andersen in 1837. (Unlike, say, "Cinderella," which has an analogue in most cultures around the world.) So, yes. While Andersen's authorship firmly locates the tale in the European (re: white) tradition, it's also about mermaids. So we're not bound by any "scientific" rules here or anything, since, you know, mermaids aren't real. (Whatever some people might think.)
Zendaya has long been the rumored favorite for the role, although nothing has been confirmed. I've seen a lot of clamor for Lea Michele to play the part, especially after her performance at the Hollywood Bowl recently:
You're welcome.
And I've always been a fan, but girl should be busy with rehearsals for Wicked, because if she isn't cast as Elphaba in that remake, then I want nothing to do with it.
As should Dove Cameron who, despite the 10-year-age-gap between her and Michele is one of my picks to play Galinda -- which is still relevant, because my husband thought Dove Cameron would make a good choice for Ariel as well.
BUT. After watching The Greatest Showman -- because I aged out of Disney Channel before her show Shake It Up aired -- I'm a fan. And totally support this casting choice.
We decided LMM would make a great Grimsby -- we could age him down from the fuddy-duddy butler he is in the animated film to more of best-friend-advisor -- and we know he can rock that period-piece-ponytail:
For King Triton -- we'd cast The Rock. We first thought of Jason Momoa, but that's a little on-the-nose given that he was just Aquaman. But the more we thought about it, the more we were on board, because (1) he is the model for fatherhood we need these days -- and with three daughters, he could easily channel that into the role since Ariel has 6 sisters; and (2) Triton was always weirdly buff for a dude with a white beard, and Disney could save on their CGI budget by casting The Rock. Edit: After some thought, I might be okay with Terry Crews as King Triton. Can he sing? Broadway Triton sings, I think...
We agreed that Tituss Burgess should have a role somewhere -- casting him as Sebastian is also a little on-the-nose since he originated the role on Broadway, but I'd like to see him as Ursula. This is the potentially most subversive -- and thus the potentially most important -- role for Disney to cast. While Ursula was voiced -- iconically! -- by Pat Carroll in the animated film, the character was famously modeled on the drag queen Divine and that legacy should not be underplayed. Casting a gay man or a draq queen or a trans actor would be an incredible move by Disney -- Harvey Fierstein recently played Ursula at The Hollywood Bowl -- although I can see them going with a bigger name for the star power. I think Lady Gaga is the rumored favorite, but Rebel Wilson also slayed at the Hollywood Bowl. Maybe NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour team would be happy if Billy Porter was cast in this role?
As for Eric...IDK. So long as it's not Henry Cavill, I think I'm okay.
