Caroline Siede sees Disney princesses as (imperfect) feminist role models:
Yet it’s women who are the titular characters in these three films. The leading ladies get the memorable songs, the iconic costumes, and the emotional journeys, while their male love interests are generic — often unnamed — supporting characters. The princes may do the physical rescuing, but they are very much presented as “prizes” for our heroines to win (albeit through conventional means of being beautiful and suffering silently). While contemporary blockbusters struggle to populate their worlds with more than one token woman, these early Disney films offer a wide range of female characters. Snow White’s Evil Queen, Cinderella’s Stepmother, and Sleeping Beauty’s Maleficent remain three of Hollywood’s most memorable female villains. And long before Frozen celebrated female friendships, Cinderella and Aurora relied on female fairies for help, guidance, and encouragement. These films troublingly imply that only beautiful women can be heroes, but it’s still a fairly progressive step to depict women as romantic leads, villains, and supporting characters all in one film.
Today we celebrate The Hunger Games, Lucy, and Divergent for proving that female-driven films can be blockbusters. But we’ve known that since 1939 when Snow White’s $6.5 million international gross made it the most successful sound film of all time. (It was quickly displaced by another female-driven blockbuster, Gone With The Wind.) Perhaps that’s why — after enduring a period of critical and commercial failure in the 1970s and 1980s — Disney once again returned to the princess genre to revitalize itself.
The Little Mermaid kicked off the Disney Renaissance and launched a whole new breed of more overtly feminist princesses. Ariel is feisty, adventurous, and defiant. She’s more recognizably flawed than the princesses who came before her and more adamant about achieving her dreams on her own terms. But as Disney’s first return to the princess genre in three decades, the film is very much a transitional one. While Ariel’s personality is more realistic, her narrative still follows the underdeveloped love-at-first-sight arc from the classic era. But with a bonafide hit under its belt, Disney pushed its feminist storytelling even further during the 1990s.
Belle is defined by her intelligence and love of reading. Princess Jasmine — the only supporting character in the entire princess line — openly declares she’s not a prize to be won. Mulan disguises herself as a man and saves China from invasion. Tiana goes from waitress to business owner thanks to her own determination. Merida and Rapunzel reject the limiting lifestyles their parents try to force on them. Like Snow White, these female-driven films found massive success at the box office, and like Frozen they actively subvert expectations of Disney princess storytelling.
And while Moana deserves ample praise for centering on a woman of color, Disney has actually done a fairly good — if delayed — job diversifying its princess line. So far the company has turned a Middle Eastern princess, a Native American chief’s daughter, a Chinese warrior, and a black business-owner into four of the most recognizable characters in pop culture with remarkably little fanfare. Meanwhile, we’ve yet to have a single superhero movie centered on a character of color.