Disney reaches a huge, young audience that is internalising ideals of white supremacy and sexualisation, writes Bidisha in The Guardian. Read on:
Elsa from Frozen has been chilling in her ice closet for a long time: the hit Disney musical was released in the UK in 2013. Since then, like passive-aggressive Christmas carollers who won’t go away, fans have taunted her with the loaded words, “Do you want to build a snowman? … Come out the door,” while she stalks through her fortress of solitude like Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard, or US first lady Melania Trump.
Elsa may soon be building a snowman without shame or secrecy: the film’s director and writer, Jennifer Lee, is considering bringing the ice regent’s homosexuality out to thaw in a Disney dawn of acceptance and financial profit in the Frozen sequel.
This seems in step with its audience’s views. According to a YouGov poll of people happy enough to answer a YouGov poll on Disney princesses, 49% of British fans would be “comfortable” with a gay Disney princess, and even more would be comfortable with one who was overweight, a feminist, more than 40 years old, non-white and even a parent. Great! I’m nearly all those things. I say we play those excellent odds, bundle them together and introduce a full roster of non-white, middle-aged, body-positive separatist feminist single mother lesbian queens. You know: the way Wonder Woman’s Amazon island should have been. We can call it Disney: The Collective.
When it comes to desired characteristics of Disney princesses, the usual things come up in YouGov’s poll: independence, confidence, intelligence, ambition and bravery. Nobody wants a protagonist who is a needy, dim, mousy coward with no life goals. But the top quality? Kindness. You’re joking. Disney princes should be kinder – like that manipulative hostage-taker and groomer the Beast, or the prince in Sleeping Beauty who sexually assaults a drugged-by-magic princess. These are the Disney douchebags who need a kindness makeover, or a prison sentence.
This poll, while seeming to probe the wokeness of the Mouseketeers, is just another Miss World beauty pageant for assessing and ranking women. Who is the nicest, the fairest, the sweetest in the land? Which girl-woman, tiny-waisted fantasy figure, exotic or not, occupies the impossible sweet spot of nice face, true heart, great hair, good humour, fine mind, high spirits, brave soul and strong resolve?
No woman, real or cartoon, can match up to that. What I want to know about Disney is this: how does it treat the women and people of colour in its own company? How much does it pay us? How does it treat its cleaners and support staff, its new mothers and the young women who want to work in the industry? What are its pitch meetings like: 10 rich, loud-talking men around a table, inventing poor “diverse” heroines? Is it time for Disney to hear a #MeToo song?
In the YouGov poll, Moana, Mulan and Merida from Brave (a lovely and strange matriarchal story based on Celtic myth) won in the best role model category. But of all the princesses, only Moana escapes being presented as lithe, nubile, big-eyed and sexually alluring to straight adult men (in a cartoon for little children!). And of the many producers, directors and writers of these three films with their great role models, 90% are white and male. So, in Disneyland head office, you and your team of bros feminist-wash or brown-wash a film, the global audience feels a lovely glow – and all the profits seem to flow to white men.
In life as in fairytales, the truth comes out in the end. The kicker is when YouGov asks people to rank their favourite Disney princesses. Out of 14, the top six chosen are white. Of the non-white women, Tiana from The Princess and the Frog is rock bottom and Pocahontas second from bottom. Jasmine, Moana and Mulan cluster behind Merida, Rapunzel (fun girl, great hair, hostage), Cinderella (domestic slave goes to party, meets a foot fetishist, marries up), Ariel (gets a boyfriend, loses her athletic ability and her literal voice) and Belle (trafficked by her father, sold to a dog). The winner? Snow White, the ultimate masochist. Finds her bliss cleaning seven men’s toilet.
Disney reaches a huge, young audience that is absorbing and internalising white supremacy, the tyranny of femininity, female isolation (few of the princesses have prominent female friends), ageism against women (so many Disney villains are older women), the class system (if in doubt, marry rich), bullshit romantic myths and US cultural dominance. Disney is the western patriarchal capitalist industrialist complex in cartoon form and its female characters are overwhelmingly beautiful, feminine, sexualised, nubile, Aryan, thin, young and adorable, like snack items modelled out of refined sugar. When its fans aren’t carefully answering poll questions to make themselves look open-minded and just list their favourites, they reveal that they like their princesses just like their Starbucks coffees: hot, skinny and white.
Elsa from Frozen has been chilling in her ice closet for a long time: the hit Disney musical was released in the UK in 2013. Since then, like passive-aggressive Christmas carollers who won’t go away, fans have taunted her with the loaded words, “Do you want to build a snowman? … Come out the door,” while she stalks through her fortress of solitude like Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard, or US first lady Melania Trump.
Elsa may soon be building a snowman without shame or secrecy: the film’s director and writer, Jennifer Lee, is considering bringing the ice regent’s homosexuality out to thaw in a Disney dawn of acceptance and financial profit in the Frozen sequel.
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| ‘The YouGov poll, while seeming to probe the wokeness of the Mouseketeers, is just another Miss World beauty pageant for assessing and ranking women.’ Elsa in Frozen. Photograph: Allstar/Disney/Sportsphoto Ltd/Allstar |
When it comes to desired characteristics of Disney princesses, the usual things come up in YouGov’s poll: independence, confidence, intelligence, ambition and bravery. Nobody wants a protagonist who is a needy, dim, mousy coward with no life goals. But the top quality? Kindness. You’re joking. Disney princes should be kinder – like that manipulative hostage-taker and groomer the Beast, or the prince in Sleeping Beauty who sexually assaults a drugged-by-magic princess. These are the Disney douchebags who need a kindness makeover, or a prison sentence.
This poll, while seeming to probe the wokeness of the Mouseketeers, is just another Miss World beauty pageant for assessing and ranking women. Who is the nicest, the fairest, the sweetest in the land? Which girl-woman, tiny-waisted fantasy figure, exotic or not, occupies the impossible sweet spot of nice face, true heart, great hair, good humour, fine mind, high spirits, brave soul and strong resolve?
Snow White … voted Britain’s most popular
princess in YouGov poll.
princess in YouGov poll.
In the YouGov poll, Moana, Mulan and Merida from Brave (a lovely and strange matriarchal story based on Celtic myth) won in the best role model category. But of all the princesses, only Moana escapes being presented as lithe, nubile, big-eyed and sexually alluring to straight adult men (in a cartoon for little children!). And of the many producers, directors and writers of these three films with their great role models, 90% are white and male. So, in Disneyland head office, you and your team of bros feminist-wash or brown-wash a film, the global audience feels a lovely glow – and all the profits seem to flow to white men.
In life as in fairytales, the truth comes out in the end. The kicker is when YouGov asks people to rank their favourite Disney princesses. Out of 14, the top six chosen are white. Of the non-white women, Tiana from The Princess and the Frog is rock bottom and Pocahontas second from bottom. Jasmine, Moana and Mulan cluster behind Merida, Rapunzel (fun girl, great hair, hostage), Cinderella (domestic slave goes to party, meets a foot fetishist, marries up), Ariel (gets a boyfriend, loses her athletic ability and her literal voice) and Belle (trafficked by her father, sold to a dog). The winner? Snow White, the ultimate masochist. Finds her bliss cleaning seven men’s toilet.
Disney reaches a huge, young audience that is absorbing and internalising white supremacy, the tyranny of femininity, female isolation (few of the princesses have prominent female friends), ageism against women (so many Disney villains are older women), the class system (if in doubt, marry rich), bullshit romantic myths and US cultural dominance. Disney is the western patriarchal capitalist industrialist complex in cartoon form and its female characters are overwhelmingly beautiful, feminine, sexualised, nubile, Aryan, thin, young and adorable, like snack items modelled out of refined sugar. When its fans aren’t carefully answering poll questions to make themselves look open-minded and just list their favourites, they reveal that they like their princesses just like their Starbucks coffees: hot, skinny and white.
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