BRAVE NEW GIRLS

What Disney Princess movies say about gender, culture, and romance

What would the holidays be without a new Disney feature cartoon? With Frozen, the studio is in full "Disney Princess" mode—the line of femme-centric fairy tale movies designed to market Mattel dolls, outfits and accessories to little girls. (Especially now, as the holiday buying season ramps up.) A marketing ploy made all the more obvious when the movie is animated via CGI, and all the characters already look like plastic dolls, with their smooth, unlined skin and dimensional shading.

Let's take a moment to consider the history of the brand. At least since the revisionist '70s, we've all been yammering on about the evolution, or lack thereof, of Disney's fairy tale cartoon heroines, but I think it's interesting to see how they've reflected their times.

  Snow White was sort of a neutered '30s chorus girl (Betty Boop, without sex), with her bobbed hair and baby-doll voice, pining for her prince to come. Cinderella was the obedient drudge, ca. 1950, sublimating her own desires. A decade later, Sleeping Beauty could let her hair down, but she was still the poster girl for passivity; her most dynamic action was to fall asleep for 100 years.

But since the resurgence of fairy tale princess movies that began in 1989 with Ariel in The Little Mermaid, Disney heroines have become more resourceful, spunky (and, oh please, don't make me write "pro-active"), in taking charge of their lives. And more ethnically diverse—grudgingly—if you count Chinese warrior princess Mulan, and Jasmine, from Aladdin, although it took 72 years for the first black Disney cartoon heroine, Tiana, from The Princess and the Frog in 2009.

Very loosely inspired by Danish storyteller Hans Christian Andersen's classic tale, The Snow Queen (although it has only the vaguest nodding acquaintance with the source material), Frozen is one of the whitest of all Disney Princess movies. Not only is it set in a Scandinavian island kingdom perched on a fjord and full of Nordic blondes, but there's the whole snow thing—a princess with uncontrollable magical powers whose touch turns everything to ice.

After Princess Elsa accidentally freezes the kingdom in perpetual winter, she flees up into the mountains and magicks herself a crystal ice palace. The rest of the movie follows her sister, Princess Anna, on a trek across the snowy mountains to find her sister and save the realm. Her unlikely guide is humble woodworker and ice delivery man, Kristoff, while she leaves the kingdom under the protection of neighbor Prince Hans.

For those of you keeping score at home, that's two Disney princesses, one handsome prince, and one roguish commoner.

Which brings us to another topic: the evolution of the Disney cartoon hero. Seriously, does anyone even remember the bland, boring, cookie-cutter "Prince Charmings" of those earlier films? The first one to distinguish himself from the pack was Beauty's splendid Beast in 1991, and even he morphed back into a (yawn) prince at the end.

But finally, the folks at Disney are starting to perceive that their new breed of heroine deserves better, maybe a male counterpart with, you know, a personality.

Frog Prince Naveen was a charming wastrel with a line of corny, yet good-natured patter; unfortunately, he spent most of the movie as a green amphibian.

Flynn Rider in Disney's 2010 Rapunzel movie, Tangled, wasn't even a prince, but a thief and a rogue, on the lam from the palace guard. Sure, the rascal hero is as old a cliché as the bland prince, and if wisecracking Flynn were a live-action hero, he'd be pretty obnoxious, but as a new Disney hero, he had his points. And in the landmark Brave in 2012, there was no romantic hero at all; bow-and-arrow sharpshooter Princess Merida was too busy finding herself.

The excess of heroes in Frozen might suggest a regressive step back to the old days, except for the surprisingly clever, even subversive way the love stories play out. And it's interesting to watch the Disney tale-spinners create more evenly-matched romantic figures, characters who grow and endure trials together, and end up together because they deserve each other, not just because they're the only prince and/or princess in the movie.

But wouldn't it be refreshing if a Disney heroine wasn't a princess at all, but an ordinary girl? Now that would be brave.

KISS of LIFE

If you love fairy tales, in all their infinite variety, don't miss Blancanieves, Pablo Berger's flavorful retelling of Snow White with a decidedly Spanish twist. That it's a silent film (no spoken dialogue, but a vivid musical soundtrack), shot in luminous black-and-white, only adds to its distinction. By making the story so uniquely his own, Berger proves just how universal the enduring and endlessly adaptable fairy tale format can be.

Snow White was the "It" girl of the moment last year with two separate Hollywood productions vying to bestow the kiss of life on the old tale. But Mirror Mirror and Snow White and the Huntsman failed (the one being too giddy, the other trying to graft on too much epic fantasy action) by attempting to recreate some kind of familiar, if nebulous, fairy tale realm.

Berger shows how to do it correctly by setting his version of the tale in a very specific era and culture—Seville, Spain, ca, 1920. It's a heady milieu rife with flamenco music, bullfighting, and women's emancipation.

The story begins with the heroine's parents. Her father is a famous matador, Antonio Villalta  (the elegant Daniel Giménez Cacho); her mother, Carmen (Inma Questa), is a beautiful flamenco dancer. On the day Antonio suffers a paralyzing accident in the ring, Carmen goes into labor early and dies giving birth to their daughter, called Carmencita.

Antonio can't bear to look at the baby, who is whisked off by her grandmother (Angela Molina) to be raised. Meanwhile, the scheming nurse, Encarna (Maribel Verdu), worms her way into the household of wealthy but now helpless Antonio, and drags him into marriage.

Years later, on Carmencita's Communion day, her loving abuela dies, and the young girl (the winsome, vivacious Sofia Oria) is sent to live in her father's household.

Here, filmmaker Berger borrows a page from Cinderella as her stepmother, Encarna, shuts up Carmencita in the cellar, cuts her hair, and puts her to work as the household drudge. Her only friend is a chicken—until the day she accidentally wanders into her father's room. Smitten with the girl who now reminds him so much of her mother, Antonio rouses himself out of his emotional doldrums; he reads her fairy tales and teaches the eager girl the art of bullfighting.

Of course, Encarna finds a way to permanently squelch their growing bond, and the now young adult Carmencita (Macarena Garcia) finds herself cast out into the world. She's revived from an attempted drowning by a troupe of dwarves with a traveling torero act; they stage mini bullfights with horned calves.

She can't remember who she is (they call her Blancanieves, i.e.: Snow White), but she joins the act when she proves she knows her way around the ring. (Animal lover alert: no bulls are killed in this movie; it's all about the artistry of the cape.)

Soon, the young lady matadora is the toast of Seville—famous enough to once again attract the notice of the jealous and powerful Encarna.

Verdu is great nasty fun as Encarna, swanning around in her chic clothes with matched pair of greyhounds, seeking advice from her mirror image in a reflecting pond. As Blancanieves, both little Oria and fresh, poised Garcia are spirited and appealing, but never sticky-sweet. This girl isn't sitting around, waiting for her prince to come; she's, er, grabbing life by the horns!

Berger has an eye for striking images (time passes as a full moon dissolves into the Communion wafer on the tip of Carmencita's tongue), and an ear for evocative music—his score includes flamenco guitar, propulsive hand-clapping, and the occasional haunting strains of a Theremin.

And these are definitely not your Uncle Walt's dwarfs, from the cheerfully cross-dressing Josefa (Alberto Martinez) and pompous, embittered Jesusin (Emilio Gavira), to soulful Juanin (Jinson Añazco)—who is far more substantial than any typical storybook prince.

Berger's ending will be controversial. It seemed to me to occur about five minutes short of actually resolving the story that Berger sets up with such an inventive flourish. (Although it does work as a sly, cautionary warning to artists to never, ever sign a contract for life with a diabolical agent, as Blancanieves does here.) But at least the open-ended finale adds another layer of intrigue to a truly enchanting film.

SNOW DAYS

When the going gets tough, the tough turn to — fairy tales?

Our pop culture is suddenly besotted with fairy tales. Sure, they've always been around, and always will be, as long as Disney keeps popping out new, updated, special collector's edition DVDs of its greatest hits.

But right this nanosecond, the genre is surging in popularity. The fairy tale mash-up Once Upon A Time is one of the biggest hits of the current TV season. Next week, we'll see the first of not one, but two Dueling Snow White movies due out this spring, Mirror, Mirror. The second, Snow White and the Huntsman  is due out June 1.

Why fairy tales? Why now? For one thing, they are morality tales (like Aesop's Fables, Greek mythology, and most religions) that evolved out of the collective subconscious centuries ago and deal in potent, timeless themes—love, hate, envy, oppression, betrayal, revenge.  With so much of our chaotic world and even our own lives beyond our control, we return to these comforting allegories of good vs. evil.

(Yes, I know, the original folk tales as set down by Perrault or transcribed by the Grimms are anything but comforting, but that's another blog.)

For another thing, these familiar tales we already know are in the public domain, meaning they can be endlessly tweaked, trifled with and revised to suit modern sensibilities.

Take the "It" girl of the moment, Snow White. We all remember the Disney version from 1937 (above), with her piping little soprano voice; a wet-eyed domestic dishrag, she plays mother to the dwarfs, while her song of yearning, "Some Day My Prince Will Come," launched a thousand feminist tracts decades later.

In one of the many plotlines in the tangled briar patch that is the Once Upon A Time scenario, Snow White (Ginnifer Goodwin, right), banished to the forest, becomes a highway robber to survive. Which guarantees that she and her Prince Charming-to-be (Josh Dallas) will "meet cute" when she holds him up in the woods. This is meant to be a more (ahem) proactive Snow, infused with a dose of modern pluck.

(Although, in the show's parallel story, where fairy tale characters are cursed to live in a modern New England town, "Storybrook," not knowing who they are, under the thumb of the Evil Queen/Mayor  (Lana Parrilla), Snow White reverts again to good girl Mary Margaret, a schoolteacher trying to stifle her attraction to her prince, now an amnesia victim with a wife.  I enjoy this series, off and on, especially the flashbacks, but the writers depend way too much on cutesy Disney character names (Grumpy, Jiminy Cricket) in their steaming melange of fairy tale backstory.)

Similarly, in Mirror, Mirror, the story gets a grrl-power twist when Snow White (Lily Collins, below), banished to the forest, becomes the leader of the seven dwarfs, who are a gang of roistering thieves. It also stars Julia Roberts as the Evil Queen, and it's directed by Tarsem Singh, who can be a brilliant visionary (The Fall), or incredibly cheesy (Immortals). From the preview trailer, Mirror, Mirror might be both, but overall, the tone looks regrettably campy.

Snow White and the Huntsman features Kristen Stewart—in armor, yet—in a darker revisionist take on the tale. This time, the huntsman (Chris Hemsworth) sent to assassinate Snow White instead mentors her in warrior-training so she can defeat the Evil Queen (Charlize Theron). Rookie director Rupert Sanders is a completely unknown quantity (at least to me), but the visuals in the trailer look stunning.

I'm not sure if turning a goody-goody into a warrior is the best possible use of evolution.  (My ideal of a kick-ass modern heroine is still Lisbeth Salander, who outsmarts her vile opponents  with ferocious cunning and nerve.) Still, female role models have to change with the times or lose their currency, and any fairy tale heroine who does more than sit passively by her spindle, waiting for her hero, is a step in the right direction.




At least fairy tale remixes are more interesting than the cult of zombies and vampires that have monopolized pop culture for the last few years—seriously, don't we get enough of those in the GOP debates?

PARADES AND PRINCESSES

The last time I was in a parade, I won a trophy. I was seven years old, and I won for "Most Original Costume" in the Hawaiian Days Parade in Hermosa Beach, CA. (Actually, my mom should have won the award; she sewed the floral muu-muu I wore, and a matching miniature one for my Shirley Temple doll that I carried in the parade. All I had to do was show up.)

I didn't win any trophies in the downtown Holiday Parade last Saturday, but still, I had the most fun a person can have squashed into the back seat of a vintage Mercedes going one mile-per-hour. My esteemed editor, Greg Archer, invited me and Art Boy to ride in the official Good Times car with him, the aforementioned Merc, recently purchased by GT's Webmaster Jeff, who also drove. Greg sat up on top, perched on the edge of the sun roof, and our intrepid one-man camera crew, Flax Glor, basically trotted alongside, setting up his tripod and shooting, guerrilla-style.

Here's what I love about Santa Cruz: the sheer variety of participants in this hands-on, hometown parade. We had everyone from the little mermaids in this Save Our Shores float to the Santa Cruz Derby Girls, from Cub Scout troupes to the sexy Salsa Rueda dancers, to the KUSP "Geek Speak" brain trust cheerfully broadcasting live from their open truck in the rain, under a plastic tarp. And of course, my personal favorite, the Santa Cruz Public Library Book Truck Drill Team (their book trucks festively painted red for the occasion).

Unfortunately, when you're actually in the parade, you don't get to see much of the other groups, floats and marchers. What we mostly saw from inside the parade car was the crowd outside, lining Pacific Avenue. ("Throw candy!" one little girl yelled eagerly, no doubt mistaking us for a Mardi Gras parade.) And while perfecting my Queen Elizabeth wave, here's what I learned about crowds: if you smile at someone and wave, guess what? They wave back! I'm sure that about 90% of the onlookers (and 100% of the kids) along the parade route had no idea who we were, tucked away in the back seat of the car, but they waved back, nonetheless.

You too can experience our insiders' view of the Holiday Parade in this You Tube video Jeff shot on his phone while driving. (Don't try this at home, kids.) Those are the lovely hoopsters Heather and Mary marching along in front, priming the crowd with their hooping skills. Greg and Flax are also assembling a short film to be posted on GTV before you know it. Check it out if you missed the parade, or if you were one of the bystanders waving at the camera, hoping for your 15 minutes (okay, seconds) of fame.

And speaking of seasonal films, what would the holidays be without a new Disney feature cartoon? In Tangled, an entertaining riff on the Rapunzel tale, the studio is in full "Disney Princess" mode—you know, the line of femme-centric fairy tale movies designed to market Mattel dolls, outfits, and accessories to little girls. A marketing ploy made all the more obvious when the movie is animated via CGI (as Tangled is), and all the characters already look like plastic dolls, with their smooth, unlined skin and dimensional shading.

Since Tangled is a milestone—Disney's 50th cartoon feature—let's take a moment to consider the history of the brand. At least since the revisionist '70s, we've all been yammering on about the evolution of Disney's cartoon heroines, but I think it's interesting to see how they've reflected their times. Snow White was sort of a neutered '30s chorus girl (Betty Boop, without sex), with her bobbed hair and baby-doll voice, pining for her prince to come. Cinderella was the obedient '50s drudge, sublimating her own desires, and Sleeping Beauty was the poster girl for passivity; her most dynamic action was to fall asleep for 100 years.

But since the resurgence of fairy tale princess movies that began in 1989 with Ariel in The Little Mermaid, Disney heroines have become more resourceful, spunky, and (oh please, don't make me write "pro-active," but you know what mean) in taking charge of their own lives. (And more ethnically diverse—grudgingly—if you count Mulan and Jasmine from Aladdin, although it took 72 years for Disney to introduce its first black cartoon heroine, Tiana from last year's The Princess and the Frog.)

But now let's take a look at the evolution of the Disney cartoon hero. Seriously, does anyone even remember the bland, boring, cookie-cutter "Prince Charmings" of those earlier films? The first one to distinguish himself from the pack was the magnificent Beast, in 1991, and even he morphed back into a (yawn) prince at the end. But finally, finally, the folks at Disney are starting to perceive that this new breed of plucky heroines deserve better, maybe a male counterpart with, you know, a personality. This sea change first became apparent last year with Frog Prince Naveen, a charming wastrel with a line of corny, yet good-natured patter; unfortunately, he spent most of the movie disguised as a frog.

Which brings us to hero Flynn Rider in Tangled. For the first time in "Disney princess" history, he's not even a prince, but a thief and a rogue (notice how he looks a little like Jake Gyllenhaal) who hides out in Rapunzel's tower while on the lam from the palace guard. Sure, the rascal hero is as old a cliché as the bland prince, and if wisecracking Flynn were a live-action hero, he'd be pretty obnoxious (although good-hearted enough to redeem himself). But as a new kind of Disney hero, fit for a princess, he has his points. Flynn's cheeky narration frames Rapunzel's story, but never overwhelms it; her character is equal to his in grit and chutzpah. And it's interesting to watch as the Disney tale-spinners labor to create more evenly-matched romantic figures, characters who grow and endure trials together, and end up together because they deserve each other, not just because they're the only prince and/or princess in the movie.

Looking for something a little more grown-up at the movies this weekend (or just want to practice your Italian)? Don't forget the Dante Alighieri Society's monthly Italian Neo-Realism series, presented at the VAPA Art History Forum Room 1001 at Cabrillo this Sunday. This month's classic is La Strada, by the great Federico Fellini, a filmmaker more often associated with lush spectacle than gritty realism. But Fellini does Neo-Realism his way in this 1954 allegorical fable, one of the most acclaimed and heartbreaking of his early films. It's set in a circus, where brutish strongman Anthony Quinn buys winsome, simple-minded waif Giuletta Masina to work in his act. But complications arise in the person of clown/trapeze artist Richard Basehart. Presented in Italian with English subtitles. Showtime is 7 pm, Sunday only, and it's free!