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Today we come to the last of Disney’s Princesses, at least those who exist so far. With “Tangled” our lead is yet again a princess, but as in the previous movie it’s ancillary.
Like many other Disney heroines before her Rapunzel just wants to experience new things in the world, though she has the greatest justification for her desires. Her goal develops along the way; once she learns the truth of her past she wants to reunite with her parents, and not because they’re royalty.
Rapunzel wasn’t a little girl who grew up hating her circumstances and wishing that secretly, she was a princess and her true family would soon come to whisk her away. Rapunzel wanted to get out of her tower, experience life, and see the mysterious lanterns that had at once stymied and somehow always called out to her. Upon regaining her full memories Rapunzel just wants to meet her mom and dad.
Like with Mulan and Tiana before her, the apogee of Rapunzel’s story has nothing to do with a man. The moment the movie really builds up to, the scene which really got my heart pounding, is not when the last of Rapunzel’s magic saves Flynn, but when she is finally reunited with her parents.
If we must show princess movies to our children, these are the ones we should employ. Tiana and Rapunzel are princesses, yes, but neither that status nor their relationship with men defines them or climaxes their stories. One might make an argument wondering why the romantic relationships are necessary at all, and that’s valid, but as long as it’s handled with the deftness seen in “Tangled,” well, who doesn’t love a love story?
Disney still needs to stop with the princesses. At least removing that royal crown is now the only improvement it needs to make, as its recent heroines manage dynamism with their titles and romantic relationships coming as incidentals, instead of the main rewards.
A counter-argument might be that all of these fantasy films are about princess because the fairy tales from which they draw their inspiration almost always feature princesses. In talking with a dear friend of mine on the subject, she pointed out that in many of these fairy tales (her point of reference is The Brothers Grimm, popular source material for Disney) happy endings involving characters becoming royalty weren’t about romance or power. They were about living somewhere safe and warm where one never had to worry about the next meal.
When Walt Disney came along, he updated those stories to fit modern sensibilities; he lightened their dark and sometimes gruesome edges and made the focus romance instead. If Disney Animation redefined the fairy tale once to suit the needs and desires of the then-current generation, why shouldn’t the studio do so again? I know they must be afraid to part with their namesake’s winning formula, but to truly honor his legacy they ought to do as he did and tell stories suited to contemporary ideology.
As the main modern purveyor of the fairy tale, Disney, not The Brothers Grimm or Hans Christian Andersen, now defines how we view the genre. That means it’s the company’s responsibility to do what its founder did nearly 75 years ago and update the fairy tale. The first step? Get rid of the princesses.
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*(This image by kevindooley is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.)
