The Trouble With: Disney

The trouble with Disney is that it’s received too much criticism about being bad for women — and I’ve been a vocal critic myself.

Lately, I’ve been rewatching some of the movies.  I still love them.  The Little Mermaid.  Pocahontas.  Aladdin.  Cinderella.  I grew up on these films.  I watched them dozens of times.  I knew every word to every song. 

And yeah, they probably gave me a little bit of a complex about waiting for a white knight to come save me from the boredom of suburbia or buy me a fateful drink at a bar or in some other way make my life more interesting and romantic than I’d managed to make it myself.

But when I rewatch these films, what I’m deeply struck by is what great role models these leading ladies are.  How good it would be if was more like them.  How impressive, how smart, how curious, how defiant, how driven, how compassionate they are.

Ariel the creative dreamer who imagines, pursues and obtains that which everyone around her tells her is impossible.  Pocahontas the intuitive visionary who’s open heartedness brings nations together.  (Yes, I know that’s not how Pocahontas’s story went in reality, but who’s turned on Disney’s Pocahontas thinking they’d be watching a historical film?  I like to think of Pocahontas as an imagining of the way things could have gone if everyone respected the “feminine” — and each other — more.)

There’s Cinderella, who perseveres through terribly painful circumstances, refuses to believe in her limitations and breaks her glass (slipper?) ceiling.  There’s savvy, skeptical Jasmine, who is her father’s protector, not the other way around.

These women care about their communities.  They question authority figures.  They take serious risks to pursue what they want.  They are adventurous.  They stay true to themselves against enormous pressures.  They’re kind to all living things.  They see the world magically, in their own ways, in more enlightened ways, and they bring this enlightenment to others.

And let’s not forget the villains and the fairy godmothers.  Ursula is such a strong, clever, powerful character.  A wonderful character.  A complex character.  What makes a villain work as a villain is power, and in a way, Disney’s choice to feature woman-type villains in many films, particularly early films, is unconventional.  It inherently assigns a forceful feminine power.  

Of course, “the witch,” the “evil stepmother” are common-enough tropes, and I’ve been tired of them before and thought they did a disservice to the idea of women.  But there’s another side to that, which I think American pop culture is currently getting better at embracing: The Bitch.  The Bad Bitch. People are afraid of power in the oppressed, and when they see it, they villainize it.  And I think women are beginning to embrace that villainy and therefore take away the ability of the dominants to undermine them by insinuating female power is amoral or dysfunctional.

As for fairy godmothers.  What wonderful characters.  They almost seem like a remnant of pagan sisterhoods.  These elderly fairies and the willow tree in Pocahontas — these characters form matriarchal systems of care and knowledge transmission, wisdom and protection.  It’s quite beautiful.

As I’ve rewatched these films and come to appreciate what bad daddies these Disney women are, I’ve wondered why I never really realized it before.  Why was the conversation all about the princes, true love’s kiss, the romance story?  Disney creators have built some of the most robust female movie characters of the modern era and given them goddamn pages of lines.  Why are we just talking about getting married?

Maybe because that’s still the natural place a conversation about girls or women goes.  If you find a lover or get married, that must be the most important thing.  Your life is clearly complete.  What else does anyone need to know about you?  If there’s a romance in a movie starring women, that must be what the movie is about.  Not about personal growth or overcoming obstacles or community.  But about a kiss.

Don’t forget that Disney-Pocahontas does not go home with John Smith.  She stays with her kinspeople and watches him sail away, because she feels it’s her right path.