Disney Duster wrote:You mentioned things like mysogyny and lack of education, which is the real funny thing, because you may be showing examples of that yourself.
Okay...I did this before because I was really bored, and mainly because I wanted to get a few things off my chest. Let me clear up some issues that have been raised. I don't hate Autsitic people, I don't hate women, and I don't hate Disney. All of this is meant as a joke. Really, I think that you get a bit wound up when it comes to these sort of posts; it's like Scaps' fake interview with Walt in the afterlife, which turned into one big argument over a piece of kooky satire. This thread is not here to belittle the "classics", the princesses themselves, or Walt, or anybody on this forum. I am belittling current Disney practices. Mainly, it's at Disney Consumer Products and their disgusting treatment of the Disney Princesses. They may be getting lots of merchandise, more than ever before, but I feel they are being misrepresented, and how Disney ultimately are shooting themselves in the foot because of their own dirty practices.
Of all the genres of fantasy, the fairytale genre has always fascinated me the most; I'd take Grimm and Andersen over Tolkein any day. Equally, I've always loved Disney's fairy tales, from
Cinderella and
Sleeping Beauty to
The Little Mermaid and
Beauty and the Beast. Probably my joint top 3 -
Pinocchio, Alice in Wonderland and
Peter Pan - can be considered fairy tales to some varying degree, and I really liked and was excited for
The Princess and the Frog and
Enchanted as well (though with the latter, it was admittedly also over the whole concept of live-action and animation existing in the same film; though not a combo film in the same way as
Who Framed Roger Rabbit or even
Mary Poppins, mixing the two mediums always has gripped me).
I think that all the characters in those film are wonderful, the heroines included. They certainly are all charming. Of the popular Disney animated films, the "princess" movies tend to get the most critical/academic bashing, for not being true to their roots, for warping childrens' minds etc, and I have disagreed with some of what has been said. But what I don't like is that the current marketing division are turning the characters into vehicles for toys, sort of fairytale Barbie dolls. I know, I could just ignore all the merchandise, but it's hard to escape, and a lot of it really disturbs me. "Disney Princess" has become a brand, and makes their sources of inspiration, made as sincere pieces of art, seem like tie-in products. Merchandise featuring the princesses themselves doesn't bother me (they are amongst the silver screen's most engaging characters), but the whole product line is warping their image. Let's use a cover from a series of Disney books over in the UK as an example (and for the record, they're not just a series of Princess books; there are other stories in that series too):
First of all, the use of the brand sticker. The fact that Disney slaps the word "Disney" over all their products like a brand name is bad enough. The fact that they slap "Disney Princess" as a brand label is depressing. Enough with that now. Onto the actual gal in question
In this image, Belle looks like a brainless glamour puss, as in basically all of the other Disney Princess stuff. In the film, Belle isn't exactly interested in doing her hair and make-up. She is (despite her lovely figure and pretty features) rather plain, more interested in books, and squirms at the prospect of becoming Gaston's trophy wife. True, she does eventually marry a prince in classic "Someday My Prince Will Come" style, but she proves herself as a positive role model, as one could argue of the original Beauty in the fairy tale. In the Disney Princess merchandise, she seems more interested in having tea parties and sparkly jewel sessions with Cinderella and Ariel. All of them now seem like Stepford Wives, who don't seem to object to the idea of becoming mens' toys. Not as good role models (and I can see all of the princesses in their original movies as role models to some degree or another).
The current princess merchandise focuses so much on grouping the characters together as one group and not allowing people to see the films as different entities that I can't see how anyone wouldn't want to complain; the styles of each film are so different, and jumbling clip art of the characters up together against sterile stock backgrounds of sugar castles and pink meadows is hardly a testament to any of the artists who worked on those films, and to Walt (surely, you, his champion, would not forget this?). Also worth complaining about is that a lot of the stuff (and most certainly the most recent stuff) is so tacky, that I can't see how anyone over the age of 12, male or female, gay or straight, would want to endorse it. Cinderella's original gown, for example, is lovely. But she and her co-royals look awful when they're dolled up to look "more appealing to the 5 year old girl demographic."
This makes the princesses look like they've had a run-in with King Midas, and
this image...well, let's just say that despite all those gems, it doesn't rock. How is that appealing to adults? It's a shocker to me that parents would buy stuff with images of princesses in deformed dresses for any child, be they boy or girl.
Fairy tales are universal, and the Disney Princess merchandise never focuses on that, which practically makes it redundant. In its current state, the Princess line does nothing to help this. How are boys supposed to like princess stuff these days when it's so eschewed to girls? And what about the male characters? Where is the Beast, for example, on the cover of a book retelling what happened to him? Heck, how much Jasmine merchandise actually features Aladdin, and do kids realise that she's just a supporting character in somebody else's movie? I even have to wonder how many girls and boys have seen these movies anyway.
The fact that
The Princess and the Frog didn't attract enough boys isn't surprising. Tiana dolls flew off shelves, but tat like
Alvin and the Chipmunks II did better than that film at the box-office. And now we've got WDAS in crisis again, and
Rapunzel being renamed to a not-so-good
Tangled, and a diabolical marketing campaign for said movie. If we're gonna complain about that, then I'd love to first point the finger at Disney Consumer Products and their ridiculously greedy ways. To ignore the fact that what they are doing is so awful to the image of the original films, a selection of cinema's greats, is in my opinion a testament to one's stupidity and the ability to just want more-more-more now-now-now, a true problem in today's society.
And as for other things said:
1. The misogynist joke derives from an episode of
Glee, to be precise the Madonna tribute episode. Will (the Glee club organiser) tells the male members how mean they've been to the girls, and how they've been misogynists; Brittany (one of the cheerleaders) mistakes a misogynist for being someone who rubs people's backs. If anything, condemn the creators of that show over my comical use of the word.
2. The obsessed fan girl is supposed to be a parody of the more-more-more-yes-yes-now-now culture, who don't care about quality, or artistic consequences, or anything, really. The character started off as a gender neutral fool. Over time the crazy fan became a girl (mainly as I wanted to parody
Twilight fandom somehow), but there were times when she switched over to becoming an equally dim male (including one where she became a mad fundamentalist preacher who used a picture of Zac Efron to "make lesbians appreciate male beauty again"...that was a case of me wanting to condemn certain stupid fundamentalists for what I consider to be equally unholy and fanatical behaviour). Part of the inspiration also comes from various members of all sorts of forums and boards, whose bad features include awful spelling, bad punctuation, poorly constructed arguments and an overwhelming obsession with the "yes, yes, now, now" culture.
In the case you mentioned, I was parodying the very idea of the stupid "New Hollywood does Disney" list, as it looked like it was made by a fifteen year old girl who was a bit too obsessed with the likes of
Twilight and the Disney Channel. I was pretending to be the twenty two year-old brother who is moaning at his younger sister for coming up with such daft and artistically dangerous ideas (unless the idea of Justin Bieber playing Pinocchio
really floats somebody's boat
).
3. Don't even allude to the idea of me being uneducated. Case closed.
almost as good as twilight merchandise (i even have a twilight bank card!!!! 
i for one love it, disney princess stuff is for everyone, not just little girls. 
urgh, i wish evil vampires wud get them evil liers. 
), all the dolls (even ballerina baby snow white!) but best of all, my very own ariel costume. i put on the purple clamshell bra, the red wig and a soooo sexy apple green slip-in mermaid tail, i lobsterlove it!!!! then, i get my best friend to push me wearing my ariel costume in a wheelchair around town. 
