General Disney Princess Discussion

http://news.yahoo.com/disney-launching-latin-inspired-sofia-first-spinoff-050019657.html

Already added the info to the Sofia the First page.

So much for their claims of "Sofia is totally the first Latina princess, guize!"

On the other hand, I'm glad for this new princess. And I say this as a Latino myself. Hopefully she'll get her own movie soon.

God that Toy Clerk. I want to time travel to the time and place he said that (Germany, was it?) so I could punch him. Good luck your Parents arent tolerant of bullshit.

Wait, what happened?

As I'm watching the Academy Awards, I still wish Beauty And The Beast won the Best Picture all those years ago. :) It would have brought an end to that annoying stereotype.

Academy will always be Academy.

It's because they're dumb.

Interestingly, judging from recent toy commercials, it seems Anna and Elsa have joined the LEGO Disney Princess franchise before even actually joining the official 'main' lineup.

Happy National Princess Week!

What's it about, anything princessy?

I think so. It's in the name, after all.

Frozen is the New Black!

edited 25th Apr '15 8:30:02 AM by Sijo

So, guess which movie I watched for the last night of National Princess Week? ;)

Princess Vaporeon?

The Princess Bride.

I'm not making that a thing.

That's actually next on my Netflix list after Coming to America.

Re: Frozen is the New Black Video.

Making a Disney Women's Prison movie. And *not* having Megara or Esmeralda.

You had one job, video. You had one job.

All right, here's my answer. Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust.

Esmerelda = best Disney gal.

She was badass, sexy, and made a fool of perhaps the most despicable Disney Villain ever right in his face in front of half of Paris.

I just watched Hunchback yesterday too, and it's still incredible. Stands out as Disney's darkest IMO, today's Disney ain't got the balls to do it.

While I agree that Hunchback is the darkest movie tonally that Disney has ever done, I still think Pinocchio is the darkest movie by Disney.

But Esmeralda, Kida and Captian Amelia all the way as the kickass Disney women. (I do like Megera too, but she's more sass than kickass)

Kida still got shafted for the princess line but she is totally a Disney Princess btw.

Recently I remembered something my friends in high school were discussing. They were talking about the unusual pattern in that a lot of the Disney Princesses, especially the ones from the '90s, only have fathers and not mothers.

It's a pattern you find ONLY in the 1990s. Snow White had neither mother nor father. Aurora had both parents. Mulan had both parents (though there is a stronger emphasis on her relationship to her father). Tiana had both parents. Rapunzel had both parents. Merida had both parents. And Elsa and Anna lost both parents the same day. The only princess outside of the 1990s who had her father longer than her mother is Cinderella. And with all of them, they are raised by either a bad (Snow White, Cinderella, Rapunzel) or good (Aurora, Tiana, Merida) mother figure.

Tiana's dad was actually dead most of the movie.

It's arguably somewhat more applicable if you just speak of "Disney lead characters" instead of specifically "Disney princesses". Then you could add Pinocchio (never had a mother in the first place), Bambi (mother gets killed), Prince Charming (absent/dead mother), Taran (father figure in Dallben, no corresponding female guardian), Olivia Flaversham (dead mother), Max (absent/dead mother who's never even mentioned), Jane (absent/dead mother), Aladdin (father appears in the sequel, mother is explicitly dead) and Chicken Little (dead mother).

Of course, you'd have to account for a couple of characters like Dumbo, Simba, Tiana and Jim Hawkins who don't have or lose a father/father figure, but do have a present mother.

I think the perception that "the mother is always dead/irrelevant" is helped by the fact that modern fiction in general has way more plots centered on the role of the father than the mother (and this is not exclusive to Disney, by the way), and a lot more characters with "daddy issues". Even in movies where the father is absent or dies, this tends to be a bigger deal for the main character than in corresponding stories where the mother happens to be absent. Note, for example, all the importance that Mufasa's death has on Simba; the way Jim Hawkins angsts over his father walking out on him and needs a substitute father figure in order to move on; or the way Tiana continues to be inspired by her dead father, and is in part motivated by wanting to honour his dream. There are considerably fewer stories where the mother's death specifically has this kind of impact — in Disney terms, the only example I can kind of think of is Bambi's mom.

I am actually currently writing an article about the topic and the truth is, that it is somewhat even. Only counting characters we actually see on screen at one point, Disney killed off exactly as many fathers as mothers, and there are roughly as many movies in which either the mother or a mother figure plays the more important part as movies in which the father is more important (though the 1990s slightly tips the scale in the direction of the father's). In most movies neither of them play an important role because most protagonists are either adults or full-fledged orphans.