There are spoilers in here, but I guess if you’re already reading a post on Disney, you’ve seen the movies too…
And yes, the © of the pics belongs to Disney. In case someone was wondering…
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Just recently Disney came up in a conversation about plots and movies and that got me thinking…
It’s interesting how Disney heroes and heroines have changed over the decades. If you look at Snow White, there isn’t much of a conversation going on between the Damsel and the Prince. Damsel runs away from evil step-mom, hides out with seven little men, gets found out, eats apple, everybody thinks she’s dead, Prince comes along, kiss, The End.
There’s a bit more conversation between Cinderella and her Prince but it’s left to the audience to guess since they’re waltzing away and talking in the gardens. You can’t imagine any shenanigans there, though Cinderella does flee from said Prince in a could-be-a-kiss situation. As for Sleeping Beauty, they actually meet on their own, with the help of a few woodland familiars, and they dance Once upon a Dream and then just stand at that tree gazing at the castle. You can imagine the conversation:
Aurora: How beautiful!
Prince Phillip: Oh, yes, quite, but not very practical.
Aurora: Practical?
Prince Phillip: No battlements. And the moat, there’s hardly a fish in it. One well-set fire and the whole place’ll go up in smoke.
Aurora (stopped listening after ‘battlements’; sighs): It is beautiful though…
Prince Phillip (realises what he just said): Father was probably right, come to think of it…
Aurora: About what?
Prince Phillip: King Stephen is not… that is not the safest place to rule a kingdom. What was he thinking?
And so on and so forth. Actually the end of that conversation could very well be a fight, the Damsel taking patriotic side with the King – she doesn’t know he’s her dad too – and the Prince making it worse by being honest…possibly why Disney didn’t bother to have them start talking in the first place.
Then there’s the long haul through the ‘70s and the ‘80s , where it’s more about coming of age stories, à la Arthur and Oliver Twist, but then the late ‘80s, early ‘90s, another Princess: Ariel. This time the girl sees the boy and is smitten, Daddy ain’t too impressed, wicked witch is hap-py (‘body language’). Girl gets a try to impress boy but can’t talk, poor thing, but at least they go out and see his kingdom and get a nice frog-concert and all in all there’s definitely some quality time there, which justifies some daring on the Prince’s part.
Beauty and the Beast is far more modern: slightly awkward girl moves to new stuffy provincial town (luckily no one knew about Edward and Bella back then… dear God, imagine…), can’t really see eye to eye with anyone except her books, but has the good luck of serious prettiness, which puts crazy suitor on her trail who’s so full of himself you’re just waiting for that hairy chest to burst. So the motivation is: escape, adventure, something different for crying out loud. And thus helped by crazy daddy, girl ends up in a monster place, with a monster master and talking dishes who are cheeky but sweet, and the monster is actually quite nice after all. Lots of quality time, great lighting, great music, great dancing, everyone’s happy.
Then the inevitable Big Choice is made and the monster turns out to be a gentleman only for the mad-hat suitor to turn up and spoil the show. A bit of fighting and some nasty stabbing (blood! *gasp*) and you can understand the girl’s I love you, coz compared to the mad-cap provincials the monster’s quite a catch. Inevitable happy ending with very pretty prince.
On we go to Aladdin: now here’s a guy girls like to crush on: all dash and daring, wants to get on in the world because he knows his worth and he’s not bad looking either. He’s had a few scraps with the police, but he’s got a heart of gold. Then we have the Princess: serious pressure to finally get married only it’s not Mother nagging but Father getting worried, but Papa is cute and exasperated by drop-dead-gorgeous daughter, and so is entirely made out of soft spots. Naturally has a treacherous adviser who has smoldering plans re world domination. 
While planning to take on power with help of dashing diamond-in-the-rough, Princess decides enough’s enough, I want the real life, only to get a bit too much of said real life. She’s promptly saved by our dashing daring hottie-hero who gets a large helping of love-at-first-sight. So boy is all eyes for girl, girl has some genteel hots for boy, but psychotic royal adviser spoils it all. The rest is an adventure for both, what with the blue brassband of entertainment where it’s all about fake identities and getting the girl, until the final showdown where the Princess has a chance to go full-out Mata Hari and would have succeeded if the hero hadn’t messed it all up by falling for the act too (that ‘pussycat’ is still hilarious). In the end, you’re pretty sure guy and girl know who the other one is, there’s been a lot of fighting and forgiving, so no great worries there.
I’ll leave out The Lion King because the whole movie is about giant cats, a few hyenas, very many wildebeests, a bird, a warthog and some small hulla-dancing animal.
Now to Hercules. Never mind how they mangled the plot (Hera as mother to Hercules? P-lease!) but we’ve got a real Hero as the hero and we’ve got one sassy girl who knows what it means to have a broken heart. 
And she’s got some lip on her that girl, (‘Do you have a name to go with those rippling pectorals’ – Disney definitely sexed that one up). In any case, it’s about the big stuff: honour, loyalty, love and betrayal and forgiveness, next to a nastily fun Hades whose hair I’d like to borrow. By the end of it, you know Herc and Meg know how bad it can get with either, and whatever choices have been made, you can’t say they don’t know what they’re getting.
Then Pixar derailed Disney for a while, and Shrek just shredded the whole fairytale concept, but we still have a hero and a heroine, and all the problems ex-suitors and in-laws, best friends, their wives (and fire-burping kids) not to mention one’s own. Shrek takes the whole deal and runs with it, it’d take too long for that now.
Next on the list is The Princess and the Frog, and again, we have a hero who’s a bit of a twit, but a charming and good-looking one, though he knows that a bit too well (‘Kissing would be niiiiice’). And we have a no-nonsense girl who has A PLAN, only to have tall, dark and handsome frog-leap right through it. 
They have the whole Bayou to help them get to know each other, never mind the tongue twisters and jazzing alligators. By the end of it, the Prince learnt a few lessons and the Princess softened a bit and made some space for a life in her PLAN. By the time they have the ring on their finger, you know they know each other’s strengths and weaknesses, and you can actually see making that restaurant work the way it should. A couple as a team, that’s a first.
Onwards to Tangled, I mean Rapunzel: girl locked up in a tower but that won’t keep her from using a frying pan. Our hero is dashing and debonair, again a bit too full of himself, but with a heart of gold. 
I’m just realizing most later Disney heroes are a bit too full of themselves, but actually nice chaps at heart. In any case, they have a whole kingdom’s worth of time to get to know each other’s strengths and weaknesses, by the end of which it’s actually believable when the wedding bells ring and there are white doves everywhere. A lot of team-work is needed – just to get out of that tower in the first place, not to mention blondie’s Momma issues and the boy’s dalliance with the police – so the ‘couple as team’ concept has probably come to stay.
And finally Frozen. That Elk. What’s with those two? Talk about bromance, only it’s an elk-mance or something. Anyway, so there’s two sisters, older sis has dangerous powers, little sis just wants love. Tragedy strikes, and the usual royal complications take place, and finally little sis gets into some kind of adventure after kinda-sorta falling for you-know-who… 
and I’ll stop there because some people maybe haven’t seen it yet, and that’s enough spoilers for now. Anyway, Frozen is another gear change in the hero-heroine meta-narrative (yes, I said it) that Disney employs, which makes me really curious about the next feature film they’re going to make. A whole new world altogether.
So yeah… Disney’s changing, in baby steps, yes, but still. Let’s see where they’ll go next.
© 2014 threegoodwords
