Walt Disney's first full-length full-length sound-animated feature, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, was groundbreaking in everything but the portrayal of a young girl on screen. . Yet:the image of the princess was inspired by on-screen heroines Mary Pickford – innocent teenage girls who were popular in the 1910s. On the other hand, the visual appearance of Snow White was worked on by the cartoonist Grim Natwick – the creator of the most piquant cartoon heroine of the time, Betty Boop. His first sketches were even rejected by Disney precisely because they were too sexy in Northern Rescue Season 2 .
SummarySubmissive and hardworking:Snow White, Cinderella, AuroraYoung rebels:Ariel, Belle, Jasmin, Pocahontas, MulanNext generation princesses:Tiana, Rapunzel, Merida, Moana, Anna and ElsaRaya and the latest trends:Disney at the crossroadsThe artist softened this version, removed her full lips and dressed in a peasant dress and clogs. Thus was born the canonical image of an innocent girl in trouble, humbly accepting her fate. The main virtues of Snow White are naivety, humility and hard work. She cooks and cleans for the gnome men and at the age of 14 dreams only of love singing her signature song Someday My Prince Will come. The fairy-tale convention of “Snow White” also completely ignores the age of consent:in the happy ending, the prince kisses the sleeping 14-year-old princess.
The next heroine of the classic period was Cinderella, who appeared in the 1950 cartoon of the same name. Just like her predecessor, Cinderella was distinguished by hard work and a exceptional sweetness, but unlike Snow White, she was already ready to fight for her happiness. The evil stepmother and mischievous stepsisters with all their might prevented her from meeting the prince, but the girl defeated them not only with the help of the fairy godmother and magical assistants in the form of all living creatures, but also with his determination to pursue his dream despite the circumstances.
Follows in 1959 The Sleeping Beauty, visually different from the pastoral Snow White and Cinderella. Artists John Hench and Ivind Earl were inspired by paintings by Northern Renaissance masters, who filled the cartoon with Gothic motifs. Disney has once again created a work that is innovative in form, but quite traditional in content. Princess Aurora inherited the main characteristics of her predecessor Snow White – naivety, humility and the willingness to fall in love with the prince as soon as he appears in the frame. Unless this time, the heroine finally gets rid of the mop and other attributes of a good housewife.
According to the plot of Perrault's tale, fairies give the newborn princess six virtues, among them intelligence, but the creators of the cartoon reduced the number of witches and Aurora only got beauty and a beautiful voice. The princess sings a single song while dancing with the prince, then falls asleep after being pricked with a spindle. Perhaps she cannot even be called the main heroine of the film, this gap is filled by other female characters. Thus, the main battle for Aurora's life is between the good fairies Flora, Fauna and Maryweza and the insidious witch Maleficent. The men are assigned background roles:the prince enters the fight under the tireless control of good witches, and the king drinks wine at the most crucial moment and wakes up when his daughter is in trouble.
It took Disney thirty years to come back with a new story about the princess – in 1989 the Little Mermaid came out. Ariel looked truly revolutionary compared to its predecessors. She no longer dreamed of marriage, but of another life outside the maritime palace of her father Triton. In that light, falling in love with Prince Eric felt like a logical continuation of his teenage rebellion against his father's ban on people's worlds. Moreover, she herself took the initiative, won the heart of her beloved and twice saved him from mortal danger in Vagabond Season 2 .
The Little Mermaid was the last Disney Princess cartoon to feature a woman as the antagonist. Cinderella and Snow White were oppressed by their evil stepmothers, Aurora became a victim of Maleficent's curse, Ariel made a dishonest deal with the sea witch Ursula. All the classic Disney cartoon villains symbolized the male fear of female emancipation:they possessed power and strength as opposed to sweet princesses seeking marriage, and, of course, in the finale, traditional femininity triumphed. .
In The Little Mermaid, this plot was modernized – Ariel herself entered the fray with the prince. The studio has therefore taken a step towards strong princesses who can defend themselves. Soon to create the image of the heroine in "Beauty and the Beast" for the first time in the studio's history, a woman was invited - screenwriter Linda Wolverton, who made Belle look like the loving Katharine Hepburn of freedom from Little Women. She loved reading more than anything, and instead of meeting her lover, she dreamed of adventure. Belle first saved her father from the Beast, then the Beast itself from certain death. The image of a troubled princess ultimately remained in the past, moreover, all the following princesses were not typical white beauties – the eastern girl Jasmine fearlessly opposed marriage to the mighty Jafar, the Indian woman Pocahontas became the first princess to refuse marriage to her people, and Chinese woman Mulan defied centuries-old customs, proving that a woman can be a true warrior and savior of an entire state.
However, Disney's Renaissance cartoons also had a downside. In 2016, American linguists Carmen Fult and Karen Eisenhower analyzed the dialogues of all cartoons about princesses and came to the conclusion that in the 90s the heroines spoke much less than in Snow White, Cinderella and Beauty. to Sleeping Wood, where the gender balance and female responses were 50-70%. Thus, in "Cinderella", the prince only spoke six sentences, including the word "Wait". In the 90s, the studio went down the road of increasing characters, like in Broadway musicals, and many of them were created by men by default. In The Little Mermaid, male voices got 68% screen time, 71% in Beauty and the Beast, 90% in Aladdin, 76% in Pocahontas, and 77% Mulan. Indeed, Ariel had three magical male assistants (the creators of the new film adaptation neutralized the gender imbalance – the Seagull will be voiced by singer Aquafina), and the only notable women in Pocahontas' story were her friend, which pronounces a few sentences, and the willow which speaks.
An underrated cartoon from The Princess and the Frog Studios has simultaneously become the latest film created using hand-drawn animation and a proving ground for the plot. The main character, Tiana, is the first black princess in Disney history. She strives to open her own restaurant and start a business, her title track is dedicated to achieving this goal, not meeting her beloved. Fate always brings him to Prince Naveen – an impoverished spendthrift and tramp, turned into a frog due to his frivolity. Cartoon directors Ron Clements and John Musker (together they also made The Little Mermaid and Aladdin) spent a lot of time developing this couple's relationship and bringing the love story to a comedic level. The thing is, Tiana and Naveen fell in love with each other when they were both frogs, only about to get rid of witchcraft. Perhaps the postmodern irony was not appreciated by the viewer, perhaps
Two years later, the cartoon "Rapunzel:A Tangled Story" (Happy Season 3 ) was released, ushering in the era of 3D princesses. The studio returned to the plot of the classic tale of rescuing a beautiful girl trapped in a tower while waiting for a delivery man. The story has been significantly rewritten, Rapunzel's hair is endowed with magical powers, and the girl herself is a fighting character. After Rapunzel, the heroines of the following 3D cartoons looked much more like superheroines than ancient charming princesses:Moana (Moana, 2016) ruled the ocean, Merida (Brave, 2012) drew a bow no worse than Legolas or Hawkeye from The Avengers, and Elsa from Frozenshe ruled the snow and ice. Braveheart and Frozen were co-directed by women for the first time – Brenda Chapman and Jennifer Lee, respectively.
Stories about princesses of the classic period of the 30s-50s mainly showed the enmity and competition of two women with each other. The cartoons, all without exception shot by male directors, drew in a complementary way figures of wise, charming, strong fathers, for whom the heroines often risked their lives (Mulan, Pocahontas, Belle). But they almost completely ruled out relationships with friends, sisters and mothers (in Sleeping Beauty, Aurora's fairly lively mother appeared for several minutes at the beginning and end, while her father was a active supporting character, even animal friends, oddly enough, always turned out to be male). Brenda Chapman in "Brave" (original title Brave) first told the story of a mother and a daughter (princess and queen), eliminating the romantic line entirely. Jennifer Lee in “The Snow Queen” highlighted the true love of two sisters Elsa and Anna – the characters very vaguely resembled the Snow Queen and Gerda from Hans Christian Andersen's tale. Elsa, originally conceived as an antagonist, has become a positive heroine. Thus, the eternally warring archetypes of the Wicked Witch and the Good Princess have finally come to terms, for the first time in 80 years of Disney fairy tale existence.
Princesses Elsa and Anna, despite the incredible success of the Frozen dilogy, tens of millions at the box office and two Oscars, were not included in the official list of Disney princesses . Technically, they ended up becoming queens, but, most likely, the reason for their absence from the list lies elsewhere:over the past two decades, the studio has been rethinking the very concept of princesses and trying to respond clearly to criticism and to take public demand into account. Thus, fans of "Frozen" started the hashtag #giveelsaafriend, which eloquently indicated that Disney had already succeeded in attracting an older audience.
As a result, it seems that the studio simply chose a different strategy – the princesses moved closer to comic book heroines, alongside the female characters of the Star Wars franchise, they save the world and settle political conflicts. She is the heroine who became Princess Raya of the studio's latest animated multicultural blockbuster – “Raya and the Last Dragon”… The entire main cast of Raya characters are voiced by Asian actresses led by Aquafina and Jama Chan . Like Mad Max, Raya travels the post-apocalyptic wasteland in search of the last dragon capable of restoring peace to the fictional country of Kumandra. The three main heroines of the cartoon are women:the dragon Sisu and the warrior-princesses at war Raya and Namari, they are the ones who will have to solve the centuries-old clash between the human tribes and unite five states. Snow White as War of the Asterisks Season 3 could never have imagined such adventures.
