The new Princesses being excluded from the lineup

[Disney Duster]

Around the time Moana came out, they said they were going to stop adding princesses! They can't keep doing it! They'll have too many to keep track of! The only plan I can see them having is to add princesses until they have all ethnicites in?

I think it should just be Snow White, Cinderella, Aurora, Ariel, Belle, Jasmine, Tiana, and Rapunzel. Pocahontas, Mulan, and Moana I am iffy on because they are not actual princesses, but I might allow them, along with perhaps Elsa and Anna. Anyone else, no. Otherwise you'd have over 13 freaking characters. You could barely fit them all on merchandise.

[Atlantica]

Seems like at the moment, if you are a human female lead then you are in the Princess line ?!

I do think though, as long as they can inspire and let men, women, boys, girls to 'Dream Big, Princess' .... then why not ?? Whether it be Elena or Rapunzel or Snow White, I don't think it really matters. It only gets fuzzy when Disney themselves make things official or unnofical.

Personally of the last batch of ladies, I found Judy Hopps the most inspiring

[disneyprincess11]

One of my best friends just sent me this. For the first time, Anna and Elsa are with the Princesses. Guess they are getting ready for WIR 2

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DJEdoMjXUAAye8H.jpg:large

BTW: You can read the scene here by me: http://oh-that-disney-princess-emily.tu ... to-line-as

Could I use the link as a reference to my blog entry for the film?

Oh my god, yes! Knock yourself out!

[Sotiris]

^Yet Pocahontas and Mulan aren't included in that collection. Classic Disney.

[JeanGreyForever]

Moana isn't on there which is odd since Elsa and Anna are. Unless these are older toys.

[Sotiris]

So, is Moana a Disney Princess or not? Make up your mind already, Disney!


Source: https://news.disneylandparis.com/en/201 ... tep-story/


Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AI2gg1ruXfE


Source: https://radiodisneyclub.fr/princesses-e ... and-paris/


Source: http://www.harryshaw.co.uk/disney/princ ... s-festival

[Disney Duster]

Three white characters get great new clipart and yet Moana doesn't get a new pose...? Unless someone here can confirm her pose is new. On the upside I love the Cinderella art!!!

[PatrickvD]

Cinderella's face transplant looks to be complete. She looks absolutely nothing like herself.

[Disney's Divinity]

She looks like Anastasia.

I like that they included Smee.

[Sotiris]

Interesting article.

How Women Modernized The Disney Princess
https://www.buzzfeed.com/arianelange/ho ... y-princess

[Disney's Divinity]

"The women involved in the film, our producer and some [others], were … pushing, ‘Let’s not have her be a wasp-thin woman. Let’s have her be a more realistic body shape and feel like she’s not going to be blown over by a strong wind,’” Musker said of Moana in the same July interview with BuzzFeed.

Funny that the women who've worked on these films all these years have probably thought this, but weren't in the roles that could control character design or make the ultimate decisions on the designs.

One woman among the exodus, Lorna Cook, explained that Bluth had been one of the few people at Disney at that time who actively promoted women.

That doesn't surprise me. The female characters in his films are so much more diverse, powerful, and frankly there are just more of them that are central or have significant roles. Sure, there are probably some issues you could find in his films, too (like Rock-a-Doodle, f.e.), but he seemed better in that regard than Disney. I'm just imagining the main cast of The Land Before Time under Disney--there wouldn't be two female characters in the main group, most likely just one who wouldn't be defined as much else besides "the girl," and Littlefoot's mother would be more passive like Bambi's mother, I imagine, if Littlefoot wouldn't have instead had a father as his main parental figure altogether). I can't even imagine a Disney film with a female character like the protagonist of The Secret of NIMH, even now.

But early on during production of The Little Mermaid in 1987, Disney took a tiny step toward gender balance — one that paid immense dividends at the box office. Chapman was hired to work on the film fresh out of art school, initially as a story trainee. She recalled being dismissively told by the man who hired her that she was getting the job “because you’re a woman”; later, she became a leader in Disney’s story department, head of story on the blockbuster The Lion King, and eventually, the writer and director of Brave.

No wonder Chapman was not liked in Lasseter's domineering bro atmosphere. She refused to lie down and die among hostile male authority figures.

On The Little Mermaid, she was the only woman out of seven credited storyboard artists. As the newest person in the room, Chapman was assigned to sketch out a section of the “Part of Your World” reprise with Ariel watching Prince Eric on the beach; the artist drew a wave crashing behind the smitten teen, which is now perhaps the most iconic shot in the movie.

Wow! That's so amazing to know she was responsible for that! I already knew she had been involved with TLM because of the Brave drama (reading about all the work she'd done prior at the time), but I didn't realize how much impact she actually had. Her and Ashman both had great influence on TLM even though M&C were the directors--something that would never happen these days, where Lasseter has, or, rather, had (fingers crossed that we can put a fork in him), the final say on absolutely every little detail and every film feels like the same cake only with slightly different icing on top.

I've talked before about how I'm glad Walt didn't make TLM in his day despite it being considered along with so many other projects, but the portrayal of the protagonist is another reason to be glad (among other things, like Ashman/Menken's soundtrack and Ursula/Sebastian). King Triton would likely be very similar to a Walt version of the Sea King, but even there, very likely there wouldn't have been the subplot about his hatred of humanity to provide a nice depth/conflict.

Chapman drew storyboards for the scene in which Belle bandages the Beast and challenges his cruelty; the Beast falls silent after she angrily tells him, “You should learn to control your temper!” When Chapman presented the boards depicting this confrontation, the 10 men who were also on the story team heartily approved.

That is really the point on which the story/romance in B&tB turns and it defines Belle's character (and is the main thing that disproves the whole Stockholm syndrome nonsense that's often lobbed at the film). Another significant part of another of Disney's greatest films owed to Chapman. So glad you posted this, Sotiris; I'm glad I've learned about these things. And great thanks to Ariane Lange for writing this article and putting so much work/research/outreach into making it accurate.

“Every single line of [Belle’s] dialogue was a battle,” Woolverton told Entertainment Weekly in May 2016. As opposed to Cinderella, who cheerfully accepts her fate as a servant to her harsh stepmother, Belle shouts in her captor’s face. “You have to understand that the whole idea of the heroine-victim was baked into the cake,” Woolverton said. “I’d been through the women’s movement in the ’60s and ’70s and I definitely couldn’t buy that this smart, attractive young girl, Belle, would be sitting around and waiting for her prince to come. That she was someone who suffers in silence and only wants a pure rose? That she takes all this abuse but is still good at heart? I had a hard time with that.”

I'm not surprised at all, but at least they fought to make Belle as realistic as possible and it shows in the finished product. *Adding on after I finished writing something below made me think of it: I'd say one important way they did that in the film is the way Belle completely rejects the Wardrobe's attempts to calm her down and assuage her fear/anger over her loss of freedom with pretty dresses, lol. Especially the way O'Hara delivers the dialogue with a tone of "Seriously?? I've just become a monster's property and you think some new outfits will make me feel better, wtf?????"

Sue Nichols, who worked in visual development on Beauty and the Beast, wrote in an email to BuzzFeed News that it was her idea to give Belle a female confidante, who eventually took the form of Mrs. Potts; she explained that the young woman needed female support to “eventually feel safe enough to fall in love” with the Beast.

I'm glad this happened (and not just for Lansbury's role in the film). With it being pointed out that way, I can definitely recognize that this is Mrs. Potts' purpose in the story considering one of the main things she does is help to temper Beast, sides with Belle, attempts to comfort Belle in her room, etc. She also fills a missing maternal role for Belle (band-aiding Disney's dead mother trope). The Wardrobe also provides this role of female camaraderie to a degree early in the film, particularly when you see her and Mrs. Potts talking to Belle while Beast spies on her with the mirror.

“Belle is a feminist,” Woolverton declared to the Los Angeles Times, quite boldly for 1992. She explained that she “wanted a woman of the ’90s.” Belle is a voracious reader who longs for more than her “provincial life.” The villain, Gaston, is a churlish misogynist who pursues Belle romantically over her objections. It’s still a love story, yes, but Belle was a step in the proud spinster direction. And it was women who pushed her there.

This is something I remember becoming more apparent to me for the first time because of the live-action re-make actually and thinking about how the film's characters/story stand amid the assault on women's rights in reality right now. It was always there, that's just how I became more aware of it.

Rees, one of the two women among the 16 story artists credited on Aladdin, portrayed the conflicting father-daughter impulses visually in a garden scene where the sultan places a dove back into a cage full of birds, and then Jasmine impulsively opens the cage and watches the flock fly off into the wider world. “I had the idea, Maybe we could just show that she wants freedom,” Rees told BuzzFeed News. For all its faults, Aladdin depicts a woman who wants to be self-determining and — like the Genie — “free.”

This is the defining character moment for Jasmine, imo. So neat that it was there because of one of the very few female employees working on the film. And that's why having women writing women does make a difference. Not that a woman can't write sexist/regressive characters or plots, but more often than not they do bring something dynamic to the female characters that likely would be missed otherwise.

It would be interesting to note what ways women working at Disney have affected the portrayal of male characters as well. Triton, Aladdin, Genie, and the Beast show so many more emotions than most of Walt's male characters. Same with Hercules, Quasimodo, Fa Zhou, Shang, Tarzan, Jim Hawkins, John Silver, etc.

There was also only one woman on a team of 17 that animated the main character, but the unglamorous and yet essential Pocahontas cleanup crew — which takes rough drawings and turns them into animation — was overwhelmingly female. As Emily Jiuliano, a key assistant in cleanup on the film, explained, “We would preserve the best of [the animators’] artwork and make it better.” Cleanup catches a lot of errors. In particular, Jiuliano remembered fixing a scene in which Pocahontas would breathe in, and her ample chest would rise, and then — instead of descending — would just keep rising. The cleanup crew made sure her breasts stayed firmly attached.

This made me laugh so hard.

Coats had struggled to find female story artists for the film; after Lorna Cook left the production, the remaining story artists were all men. “I spent a lot of time in rooms with a lot of men who were talking about how women think and dress and how their bodies are shaped,” she told BuzzFeed News. It pointedly struck her during one scene: In the final film, the army first learns that Mulan is a woman offscreen as she’s treated by a doctor; the audience does not witness the moment her naked body gives her away. In a male artist’s earlier sketches, “she was revealed to be a woman in front of the entire [unit] — it just felt so violating,” Coats said. In 1998, she told Newsweek that the earlier version showed a superior officer ripping off Mulan’s clothes in public. “All these men couldn’t see that this was a violation for women,” she said at the time. Because of Coats, the warrior’s unmasking is mostly private in the final version of the film.

I can't even imagine the scene that way. That sounds kind of graphic for Disney (I know they wouldn't show anything, but still), it sounds like the part where Chi-Fu drags her out of the tent except even more dramatic. Somehow I don't think that would've worked as well, too OTT. I've always liked the way she is revealed because she saved Shang's life and became injured.

Speaking of "violation," on an entirely different note (off-the-wall), did anyone else ever find the moment in the B&tB finale where the featherduster is being attacked by Lefou slightly disturbing?

Ultimately, The Princess and the Frog grossed $267 million worldwide; Disney considered it a box office disappointment. With the studio afraid of another middling earner, Tangled amped up the role of its male lead, Flynn, and changed the project’s name from Rapunzel so that boys wouldn’t be repelled by an overly girly movie.
...
Flynn’s voiceover bookends the film, although he is clearly not the protagonist. “This temporary hijacking of a princess’s tale by her square-jawed love interest seems like a crude commercial calculation,” New York Times critic A.O. Scott noted. “[A] sign to the anxious boys in the audience that things aren’t going to be too girly.”

I'm glad this article made a point of mentioning this. It was disgusting then and will be remembered even worse over time. And that was in 2010--twenty years on from The Little Mermaid. Just pathetic. (But look at the hellpit the world is in at 2017...! Nothing really every changes, does it? Or at least only in miniscule increments.)

But in 2012’s Brave, the Disney princess finally ditched the prince. Conceived and executed by Chapman, the film’s protagonist Merida rejects an arranged marriage, much like several of her Disney predecessors. However, her happy ending is not in finding another prospective spouse that her parents ultimately come to accept, as Jasmine and Mulan did; instead, she reconciles with her mother and rejects all suitors.

While I'm not a fan of Brave, I will say the best scene in the film is when she shoots all the suitors' arrows and then wins herself for herself and how Elinor afterwards can only think of how Merida humiliated the men trying to essentially purchase her instead of how Elinor had humiliated her daughter by putting her up for auction. Yes, I know, that was the times, but Chapman deliberately wanted us to see it in a modern light.

And unlike almost every other major princess before her, Merida’s closest parental relationship is with her mother; her father is largely comic relief. “I wanted a mother-daughter story,” Chapman said. “Because [for] both Ariel and Belle, there was no mother in the stories. They were dead.”

Like the impossible waistline comment, this is something else I'm sure women who've worked at Disney have always thought in their heads throughout the years of being on multiple projects with dead or absent mothers.

Chapman prepared the way for Jennifer Lee, the writer-director of Frozen, who became the second woman to direct an animated Disney movie. Her 2013 film about the relationship between two sisters was a global box office sensation.

And, too, it's interesting that both of them created films featuring female relationships (mother-daughter, sisters) which had never really been touched on at Disney.

And Elsa and Anna’s love — which outshines any romantic subplot — helped drive it to blockbuster status, despite the fact that Disney at first downplayed the female characters in marketing materials.

Glad they mentioned this, just like the Tangled nonsense.

And yet, Clements still had the impulse to define Moana against past Disney heroines. “We saw this as a hero’s journey, a coming-of-age story, in a different tradition than the princess stories,” he told Time. It's not only cliché but, at this point, reductive. In 2013, Kristen Bell said Anna, her clumsy character in Frozen, was “the anti-princess princess.” She went on to describe Anna as “the girl who talks too fast and speaks before she thinks, and who is not graceful but is really adventurous and eternally optimistic.” Female characters have been so thoroughly pigeonholed that klutziness has been equated with subversion.

What has actually changed over time is not that each princess has rejected everything that constrained the princesses who came before her, but rather that, starting with Ariel, the princesses all seem more human, in part because there were greater numbers of real women creating them. Ariel, Belle, Jasmine, Pocahontas, Mulan, Tiana, Rapunzel, Merida, Anna, Elsa, and Moana are each distinct; there is no anti-princess because there is no one way to be a princess, and there hasn’t been for nearly 30 years. Each imperfect character gained a deeper humanity because of women’s work behind the scenes.

This is something people have mentioned here on the forums. I love the way she acknowledged and dismissed it.

I had another thought while reading that wasn't related to any specific quote, but I thought it was neat to track the change in the depiction of women through Musker & Clements' films:

Ariel/Ariel's sisters/Ursula -> The sisters play no role and aren't even distinguishable from one another (Ariel only has significant relationships with male characters). Ariel's dream gets hi-jacked to a great degree by her desire for Eric. Ursula and Ariel are a fairly black and white dichotomy--enormously overweight versus impossibly thin, a desire for power versus a desire for romance, non-white and old versus white and young, etc. Ariel doesn't defeat the villain despite the conflict revolving around her, although she attacks her twice. Ariel is treated as a commodity--literally--more than most princesses. Sells her voice (and soul), then gets bargained over between Ursula and Triton, then traded off to Eric at the end (I put it that way because she's only "allowed" via Triton changing his mind to do this). Ariel's is pretty powerless throughout the film. She has to turn to a female pariah--whose powers are coded as dark/evil unlike Triton's--to do anything for herself.

Jasmine -> The only female character in the film, entirely powerless. Ultimately romance becomes central for the character after rejecting the need to be married off early in the film. Also talked about as a commodity by the Sultan, Jafar, occasionally others. Although I will say that the explicit way both she and Ariel are talked about as property does put a spotlight on the wrongness of the fact that they are treated that way. Doesn't defeat the villain (but that's not as bad as with Ariel since Jasmine isn't the protagonist of her film).

Megara/Hera & Alcmene/The Muses/The Fates/various background female characters -> Again treated as property. Doesn't defeat the villain, but is heroic (sacrificing her life for Hercules, which returns Hercules' power so he can save Olympus). Is defined by her relationships with men (the first one that landed her as Hades' property, then Hercules). Hera is a nonentity. The Muses and the Fates mostly fall back on common tropes, but that many female characters even in secondary/tertiary was still something unusual for Disney.

Amelia/Sarah Hawkins -> Benevolent and capable female authority figures. Amelia is active and heroic with her own interests (space-sailing), although still tied to a romantic interest in the end. There's no indication of what she's doing at the end, while Jim has become a cadet (I believe that's what he is in that uniform at the end?).

Tiana/Charlotte/Odie/Tiana's mother -> Tiana and Charlotte is the first prominent female friendship they've depicted (and one of the only ones in Disney's animated canon). Odie is a benevolent female authority. Tiana defeats the villain. Tiana's mother still pressures romance, but doesn't attempt to stifle/strip power away from Tiana like Triton and the Sultan.

Moana/Tala/Te Ka/Moana's mother ~ Another female relationship (grandmother-granddaughter), which is also the defining relationship in the movie, with Tala reappearing at the climactic "dark night of the soul" moment of Moana's hero arc. Moana works to become a benevolent female authority herself. "Defeats" the "villain." Te Ka/Te Fiti presents a female character that's more complex than what she appears to be; also the most powerful character in the film. Moana has power over the ocean, making her a true shadow of Ariel who is mostly powerless compared to her father who has the power of the ocean.

[Disney Duster]

On The Little Mermaid, she was the only woman out of seven credited storyboard artists. As the newest person in the room, Chapman was assigned to sketch out a section of the “Part of Your World” reprise with Ariel watching Prince Eric on the beach; the artist drew a wave crashing behind the smitten teen, which is now perhaps the most iconic shot in the movie.

Wow! That's so amazing to know she was responsible for that!

The very most iconic scene in the movie, we now know was created by her! Amazing!

Chapman drew storyboards for the scene in which Belle bandages the Beast and challenges his cruelty; the Beast falls silent after she angrily tells him, “You should learn to control your temper!” When Chapman presented the boards depicting this confrontation, the 10 men who were also on the story team heartily approved.

That is really the point on which the story/romance in B&tB turns and it defines Belle's character (and is the main thing that disproves the whole Stockholm syndrome nonsense that's often lobbed at the film). Another significant part of another of Disney's greatest films owed to Chapman.

It is the most important turning point in the romance and story, indeed. And all this time we thought Linda Woolverton did it! So I guess she didn't?

“Every single line of [Belle’s] dialogue was a battle,” Woolverton told Entertainment Weekly in May 2016. As opposed to Cinderella, who cheerfully accepts her fate as a servant to her harsh stepmother...

Being cheerful despite your situation isn't cheerfully accepting your fate, especially when she's sad about it and sighs and wishes and dreams of a better life, and even more especially when you have faith your fate will change. Belle was cheerful even when she was a prisoner so according to her she would be cheerfully accepting fer fate.

Speaking of "violation," on an entirely different note (off-the-wall), did anyone else ever find the moment in the B&tB finale where the featherduster is being attacked by Lefou slightly disturbing?

If others don't speak up, I can tell you I've heard at least a few people say so here before.

Ultimately, The Princess and the Frog grossed $267 million worldwide; Disney considered it a box office disappointment. With the studio afraid of another middling earner, Tangled amped up the role of its male lead, Flynn, and changed the project’s name from Rapunzel so that boys wouldn’t be repelled by an overly girly movie.
...
Flynn’s voiceover bookends the film, although he is clearly not the protagonist. “This temporary hijacking of a princess’s tale by her square-jawed love interest seems like a crude commercial calculation,” New York Times critic A.O. Scott noted. “[A] sign to the anxious boys in the audience that things aren’t going to be too girly.”

I'm glad this article made a point of mentioning this. It was disgusting then and will be remembered even worse over time.

I never realized that Flynn himself was used to butch up the picture for boys. I don't know how we went from Greek and Roman men being considered masculine to cry and have romance with each other to hatred and disgust of that and all things feminine to finally being open about men being emotional, romantic with each other, and feminine but still at the same time in a world where men and all of society are supposed to think such things along with femininity are bad.

And yet, Clements still had the impulse to define Moana against past Disney heroines. “We saw this as a hero’s journey, a coming-of-age story, in a different tradition than the princess stories,” he told Time. It's not only cliché but, at this point, reductive. In 2013, Kristen Bell said Anna, her clumsy character in Frozen, was “the anti-princess princess.” She went on to describe Anna as “the girl who talks too fast and speaks before she thinks, and who is not graceful but is really adventurous and eternally optimistic.” Female characters have been so thoroughly pigeonholed that klutziness has been equated with subversion.

What has actually changed over time is not that each princess has rejected everything that constrained the princesses who came before her, but rather that, starting with Ariel, the princesses all seem more human, in part because there were greater numbers of real women creating them. Ariel, Belle, Jasmine, Pocahontas, Mulan, Tiana, Rapunzel, Merida, Anna, Elsa, and Moana are each distinct; there is no anti-princess because there is no one way to be a princess, and there hasn’t been for nearly 30 years. Each imperfect character gained a deeper humanity because of women’s work behind the scenes.

This is something people have mentioned here on the forums. I love the way she acknowledged and dismissed it.

What specifically are you talking about?

[Sotiris]

I'm glad you enjoyed the article, Disney's Divinity. I was worried it was too long for people to bother reading. I agree with most of your observations and comments. You might also like reading this new article about women's influence on Walt's films.

The World War II-Era Women Who Broke Up The Disney Boys’ Club
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/th ... 0e917c35c6

Her and Ashman both had great influence on TLM even though M&C were the directors--something that would never happen these days, where Lasseter has, or, rather, had (fingers crossed that we can put a fork in him), the final say on absolutely every little detail and every film feels like the same cake only with slightly different icing on top.

That's exactly how I feel about WDAS films under Lasseter.

[blackcauldron85]

I'm glad you enjoyed the article, Disney's Divinity. I was worried it was too long for people to bother reading. I agree with most of your observations and comments. You might also like reading this new article about women's influence on Walt's films.

The World War II-Era Women Who Broke Up The Disney Boys’ Club
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/th ... 0e917c35c6

I emailed both articles to myself to read this weekend-- you always find interesting Disney history, Sotiris--thank you!!

[Disney's Divinity]

I'm glad you enjoyed the article, Disney's Divinity. I was worried it was too long for people to bother reading. I agree with most of your observations and comments. You might also like reading this new article about women's influence on Walt's films.

The World War II-Era Women Who Broke Up The Disney Boys’ Club
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/th ... 0e917c35c6

Jane Baer’s story is so fantastic and bittersweet at the same time (the former because she worked so hard, the latter because she had to work so much harder than a man would have to have a career).

[Sotiris]

Moana is included in the new promo for the Dream Big, Princess campaign titled Voices of the Princesses. She also got an individual promo titled Voices of the Princesses: Moana

[Sotiris]

Moana is included in the new anthem for the Disney Princess franchise titled Live Your Story while Elena of Avalor is included in the new trailer for the Dream Big, Princess campaign titled Dear Future Us. She even got an individual promo titled Dear Future Us: Elena.




Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/BgzAwGQBgad ... princesses


Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/Bhoh_GKhwjE ... princesses


This brand is a mess. I'm calling this phenomenon Schrödinger's princess!

[DisneyFan09]

Moana is included in the new anthem for the Disney Princess franchise Live Your Story while Elena of Avalor is included in the new trailer for the Dream Big, Princess campaign titled Dear Future Us.

This brand is a mess. I'm calling this phenomenon Schrödinger's princess!

Word. It's pretty remarkable, indeed. But at least Moana's inclusion is justifiable, after all. We could all be relieved that neither Anna nor Elsa were included

[PatrickvD]

I never took this line seriously. At some point they were doing these ridiculous induction ceremonies. Then Anna and Elsa happened and they didn’t include them because aftozen was such a merchandise monster in and of itself.

And now it’s just a mess.

[Warm Regards]

A new "Dream Big, Princess" ad featuring Moana came out today.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PfPVoKYqXk[/youtube]

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PfPVoKYqXk