.jpg)
Continuing from last week is my study on the evolution of the Disney princesses, examining how they developed from one-dimensional fluff into dynamic characters, and detailing how far Disney still needs to go.
It almost physically pains me to say anything against “Beauty and the Beast,” but I have to be honest. Belle is my childhood favorite and in many ways a superb heroine; an intelligent bookworm who doesn’t care what others think of her, she longs for adventure and shows enough discretion not to give in to the first man showing interest.
However, I have to say that the Beast isn’t a great romantic decision. How long is Belle in that castle, anyway? I hope that it’s a while, because if she falls in love with him just because he manages to rein in that frightening and violent temper for a few days, she’s headed for future trouble. Perhaps she’s just in it for that library, which is fair enough.
In all seriousness, once again the plot revolves around and obtains its fulfillment from a romantic relationship. Until the Beast finds and receives true love he will stay in his monster form. Belle’s main purpose, therefore, is to break the Beast’s curse, and her doing so culminates the plot and brings the story to an end.
My assertions don’t sound entirely fair to Belle. She’s the main character of the story and receives significant development even before the Beast is in the picture. She wants an adventure and her experiences with the Beast provide that.
While that’s an improvement on the Golden Era films, as stated above the fact remains that the driving action of “Beauty and the Beast” is of a young woman meeting a man (to use the term loosely), falling in love, and becoming a princess. Such traditional tropes saturate the movie; for example, Belle’s favorite story involves a heroine meeting Prince Charming, despite the fact that “she won’t discover that it’s him till chapter three.” With such stories within stories, there’s no denying the film’s prevalent theme.
Now we have to swap genders for 1992’s “Aladdin.” I realize that I’m hurting my argument here; my main complaint is that the zenith of the stories for Disney’s heroines is their obtaining of royal husbands. In this case, “Aladdin” shows that Disney may have been stuck in a formulaic rut of woman-finds-man, and with this film they swapped things around.
Except that makes it even worse. At least in “The Little Mermaid” and “Beauty and the Beast,” the heroines were the main figures and had greater depth to their characters. Aladdin gets it this time (which does make him stand out amongst Disney’s earlier underdeveloped male leads), so now really the only point of Jasmine is for him to find a girl and achieve his dream to live in the palace (or at least move off the streets).
I’m glossing over Jasmine’s role in the film. There’s certainly more to her than there is to Prince Eric or perhaps even the Beast. She detests being caged behind palace walls, demands to be in charge of her own future, romantic or otherwise, and even joins in, where she can, in the fight against Jafar (a first for a Disney princess).
At the end of the day, however, this is Aladdin’s story, and Jasmine’s main function plot-wise is to help him realize his dreams. Still, in “Aladdin” we can see the continuing upward trend towards Disney breaking free from outdated conventions.
Next time we’ll take a look at when things really started to change.
Related Articles:
“Thor” A Mighty Addition to the Marvel Lineup
*(This image by sylvar is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.)
