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arishaYeah, so feel free to anticipate a lot more posts about Enchanted. I mean, gosh, it has been a good SEVEN YEARS since I had a brand new animated Disney musical to obsess over!! xD (I should really say eight years ... is Emperor's New Groove a musical? lulz, it's about as much a musical as Enchanted is animated. xD;; )
Even I didn't realize until recently that there is such a huge gap between, if you will, the first wave of Disney princesses and the second wave of Disney princesses. The first wave is Snow White (1937), Cinderella (1950) and Aurora (1959). A good thirty years later we have almost an entirely new group of animators working at Disney animation and then comes Ariel (1989), Belle (1991), and Jasmine (1992). Those are the six main princesses in the Disney Princess merchandising line, and for the purposes of this entry, let's just pretend that those are the only six Disney princesses. Uh, plus Giselle. :X
While watching Enchanted, I didn't really think much about which princesses she was based on or what parts of previous princesses she would be representing to everyone who sees the movie. But the review of the movie that was published in our local paper (although it's from CanWest, which I think means that it might be published across the country?) kind of got me thinking about that, and now I dunno, I'm kind of ... confused? A little? Also maybe a little annoyed at how this movie is being interpreted. (I mean ignoring the fact that all the reviewers are totally ignoring Edward and praising Giselle. EDWARD IS FANTASTIC WHAT ARE YOU FIGURATIVELY BLIND?!?!?!)
I probably shouldn't give this one particular review as much credit as I'm about to, considering it not only includes a line that implies Walt did animation on Snow White and Cinderella (as I understand it, he stopped animating when Mickey started gaining popularity and he was able to start hiring some employees to do the drawing for him), but also says that the movie is playing in just one theatre in Victoria (a lie that would have easily been turned into truth had someone taken five minutes to double-check). Well, anyway. :P Here's how it starts:
Disney breaks new ground as princess thinks
At one point in the new movie Enchanted, the beautiful Giselle utters words no good Disney princess has ever heard before: "I'm thinking."
It's but a brief moment, but within that one small second of screen time, the axes of the traditional Disney universe turn upside down as a silk-covered fairy tale character suddenly experiences a moment of Cartesian understanding: Giselle thinks, therefore, she is.
It's a profound transformation of the typical, bubble-headed bimbo-in-a-tiara motif the Mouse House has traded on since Walt first drew the lines for Snow White and Cinderella, and it's what keeps Enchanted firing on all comic cylinders for the duration because we're given a front-row seat to the metamorphosis.
(haha, I feel I should insert, like, a disclaimer or something in here just in case you guys are worried that reading this stuff makes me all upset or something. xD Don't worry, guys, I'm totally used to it. I have probably read more (academic!) articles that insult Disney princesses and heroines than all of you combined. xDDDD; )
Okay, so maybe the author of this article is correct and Giselle is the first Disney princess to hear or say the words "I'm thinking." But here is a quick selection of similar things that our main six Disney princesses have heard or said (or, uh, sung, as the case may be):
Ariel: "I'm ready to know what the people know / Ask 'em my questions and get some answers"
Gaston: "It's not right for a woman to read. Soon she starts getting ideas ... and thinking."
Belle: "Gaston, you are positively primeval."
Gaston: "Why thank you, Belle."
(Gaston was actually the animated Disney character I thought of when Giselle said "I'm thinking," but because of a later line: "Lefou, I'm afraid I've been thinking." "A dangerous pastime--" "I know.")
(I also thought of Gaston during a different part of Enchanted, but I shan't spoil the movie for you all by mentioning it. :X )
OH AND ALSO EVERYTHING ELSE BELLE EVER SAYS :P
Jasmine: "I'm a fast learner."
Jasmine: "Did you think I was stupid? That I wouldn't figure it out?" (lulz I'm going to continue this entry without mentioning the article I found that completely undermines this line as an argument in favour of Jasmine's smarts xD; )
Aladdin also says that Jasmine is smart, but I kind of hate that scene because right after he's all OH YAH AND DID I MENTION SHE'S TOTALLY HOT TOO. :P
Aaaaaaand I am failing at coming up with similar "thinking" lines for the first three princesses. This could be because I'm more familiar with the three more recent movies, or it could be that there are no similar lines to be found in the earlier three. (I sort of suspect it would be easier to find a similar line from Cinderella than from the other two, since she's not quite as boy-crazy as either Snow White or Aurora. ;) ) But in five minutes I have come up with these lines that I think show that the Disney princesses, the ones from the 1990s at least, are not completely braindead. I would never argue that they are perfect role models for your little girls, but I do think that referring to them as "bubble-headed bimbos-in-tiaras" is stretching it.
But if you'll allow me to shift the topic a bit?
In Enchanted, Giselle spends a couple days with Robert, a divorce lawyer who has given her the idea that maybe she should get to know a guy before she marries him. Edward has finally found her and is eager to whisk her back to animated Andalasia so that they can marry at once. He is so into this idea that he attempts a reprise of the love song that they sang earlier (his second attempt, hahaha xD; ), and it's when he realizes she's not joining in that she tells him, "I'm thinking."
To me, the point of the "I'm thinking" scene, when looking at this movie against previous Disney movies, wasn't so much "Oh wow this is the first time a Disney princess has used her brain" as much as "Oh wow this is the first time a Disney princess has considered the possibility that marrying the first guy you fall in love-at-first-sight with might not be the best thing to do." (If only I were allowing myself to talk about Pocahontas II in this entry!! xD; ) To me, that's the point where Enchanted most strongly deviates from the traditions of the Disney princess movies before it. (You could argue that Belle had none of that love-at-first-sight business, but I still think she fits what I'm saying because once she was in love with the guy that was it.)
I mean, I guess it's interesting to me because if you follow the article's interpretation of "I'm thinking," then maybe that means that Giselle is based on the first three princesses, and ignores the existence of the last three. But I think my interpretation of it includes all six of them, and probably most of the animated Disney heroines you can think of.
A scene that I thought was similar to the "I'm thinking" scene is the scene in which Giselle gets angry at Robert because he won't stop saying "No" (for which I was glad, because gosh I was getting mad at him too!! >_<; ). It's another scene that shows Giselle changing because of something she learned since leaving Andalasia, and I like it well enough but I'm kind of confused by it, moreso than by the "I'm thinking" scene. I mean, yes, Snow White, Cinderella and Aurora are like Giselle -- they're unhappy, not angry. But Ariel gets angry, Belle gets angry, and if you were to say to me that Jasmine never gets angry, I would reply with an lol, that girl is angry all the time! xD So ... I guess this part of Giselle is based only on the earlier three princesses? As is her singing to call animals to her? (Well, I don't think any of the princesses have quite that exact talent, but the three earlier princesses still come closer to it than the later three do!) The wild animal groupies constantly following her around? The whole step-mother business? The old woman, the apple, the sewing, the cleaning ...
So wait. Does Giselle have any qualities from the princesses of the 1990s? Well, Enchanted deals with true love's kiss and so does The Little Mermaid and, in a bit of a reversal of roles, so does Beauty and the Beast, but the kiss in Enchanted is obviously more Snow White or Sleeping Beauty than it is either of those. The way Giselle moves is very reminiscent of the way all of the princesses move at the Disney theme parks (omg you guys remind me to post the (academic!) paragraph I found that talks about how Disney park princesses are women acting like men acting like women, it is the best thing ever xD ), but ignoring that, I think her movements are closer to those of the first three princesses than the latter three (although I'm sure you could find similar movements in the latter three films as well). I am trying to think of what Giselle inherited from the later princesses and all I am coming up with is Ariel's colouring and wedding dress and ... Alan Menken. Although Alan Menken almost doesn't count because I just watched an interview in which he outright said that "True Love's Kiss" and "Happy Working Song" were inspired by the older princess movies.
And so I am coming to the conclusion here that Giselle was almost exclusively based off of the princess characters created in the thirties and fifties. Which is fair, because I guess they're closer to the original idea of a fairy tale princess than the princesses from the nineties are, and that's the kind of character Giselle needed to be for the movie to work and be what it is. And I'm fine with that just like that. But what BOTHERS me is that this is going to produce a lot of reviews like the above, in which the reviewer is all "look how much smarter Giselle is than the other princesses!," completely ignoring that the first princess was created fifty-five years before the last, completely ignoring the differences in characterization that such a large timeframe created or allowed, completely ignoring how Giselle is pretty well nothing like Ariel or Belle or Jasmine. Thinking of it like that, through the words of these reviews, it's so weird to me. It's like Disney had these old-fashioned princesses, rejected them and created the newer ones while attempting to be a bit more feminist, then forgot about the new ones and went back to the old ones, tweaked them and then said "Look! We're working on creating feminist characters! We swear!! We're starting over again if you want!!"
Haha okay and so now I want to say that maybe Giselle is supposed to represent this transition between the princesses of the thirties and fifties and the princesses of the nineties -- like she's supposed to represent the changing characterizations --, but oh man I think that might be taking this whole thing way too seriously. xD
IN CONCLUSION: Shang is gay.
I SWEAR HE IS, YOU GUYS D:
(I'm making myself wait until I'm finished with this semester's schoolwork before I start work on what should be an absolutely huge and ridiculous entry about my equally ridiculous theories on gender in Mulan. BE A MAN AND READ IT! xD )
And almost completely unrelated to Enchanted but that it involves Alan Menken, I listened to my new copy of the Music Behind the Magic box set today. ^_^ (Yes, I had a previous copy. I lent it to a supposed friend eight years ago and never got it back, and it has since gone out of print so yay for paying double the original price. THIS NEW COPY NEVER GETS LENT TO ANYONE EVAR. >:( ) It is basically the soundtracks of The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin, but it includes demo versions and songs that never made it into the movies and oh gosh it's such a fangirl thing to own but so good, so good. <3 I can only listen to it so often, though ... for whatever combination of reasons they make me kind of bittersweetly sad. :( But oh gosh right now I am so in love with "Silence is Golden," I can't believe I never paid it any attention before. And the reprise of "Arabian Nights," maybe I'm totally stupid but I never realized the version used at the end of King of Thieves is like the exact one from this set. xD; <333
Augh okay please no one make fun of me for this entry, as of late I have gotten more than enough of that at work. ^^;
Even I didn't realize until recently that there is such a huge gap between, if you will, the first wave of Disney princesses and the second wave of Disney princesses. The first wave is Snow White (1937), Cinderella (1950) and Aurora (1959). A good thirty years later we have almost an entirely new group of animators working at Disney animation and then comes Ariel (1989), Belle (1991), and Jasmine (1992). Those are the six main princesses in the Disney Princess merchandising line, and for the purposes of this entry, let's just pretend that those are the only six Disney princesses. Uh, plus Giselle. :X
While watching Enchanted, I didn't really think much about which princesses she was based on or what parts of previous princesses she would be representing to everyone who sees the movie. But the review of the movie that was published in our local paper (although it's from CanWest, which I think means that it might be published across the country?) kind of got me thinking about that, and now I dunno, I'm kind of ... confused? A little? Also maybe a little annoyed at how this movie is being interpreted. (I mean ignoring the fact that all the reviewers are totally ignoring Edward and praising Giselle. EDWARD IS FANTASTIC WHAT ARE YOU FIGURATIVELY BLIND?!?!?!)
I probably shouldn't give this one particular review as much credit as I'm about to, considering it not only includes a line that implies Walt did animation on Snow White and Cinderella (as I understand it, he stopped animating when Mickey started gaining popularity and he was able to start hiring some employees to do the drawing for him), but also says that the movie is playing in just one theatre in Victoria (a lie that would have easily been turned into truth had someone taken five minutes to double-check). Well, anyway. :P Here's how it starts:
Disney breaks new ground as princess thinks
At one point in the new movie Enchanted, the beautiful Giselle utters words no good Disney princess has ever heard before: "I'm thinking."
It's but a brief moment, but within that one small second of screen time, the axes of the traditional Disney universe turn upside down as a silk-covered fairy tale character suddenly experiences a moment of Cartesian understanding: Giselle thinks, therefore, she is.
It's a profound transformation of the typical, bubble-headed bimbo-in-a-tiara motif the Mouse House has traded on since Walt first drew the lines for Snow White and Cinderella, and it's what keeps Enchanted firing on all comic cylinders for the duration because we're given a front-row seat to the metamorphosis.
(haha, I feel I should insert, like, a disclaimer or something in here just in case you guys are worried that reading this stuff makes me all upset or something. xD Don't worry, guys, I'm totally used to it. I have probably read more (academic!) articles that insult Disney princesses and heroines than all of you combined. xDDDD; )
Okay, so maybe the author of this article is correct and Giselle is the first Disney princess to hear or say the words "I'm thinking." But here is a quick selection of similar things that our main six Disney princesses have heard or said (or, uh, sung, as the case may be):
Ariel: "I'm ready to know what the people know / Ask 'em my questions and get some answers"
Gaston: "It's not right for a woman to read. Soon she starts getting ideas ... and thinking."
Belle: "Gaston, you are positively primeval."
Gaston: "Why thank you, Belle."
(Gaston was actually the animated Disney character I thought of when Giselle said "I'm thinking," but because of a later line: "Lefou, I'm afraid I've been thinking." "A dangerous pastime--" "I know.")
(I also thought of Gaston during a different part of Enchanted, but I shan't spoil the movie for you all by mentioning it. :X )
OH AND ALSO EVERYTHING ELSE BELLE EVER SAYS :P
Jasmine: "I'm a fast learner."
Jasmine: "Did you think I was stupid? That I wouldn't figure it out?" (lulz I'm going to continue this entry without mentioning the article I found that completely undermines this line as an argument in favour of Jasmine's smarts xD; )
Aladdin also says that Jasmine is smart, but I kind of hate that scene because right after he's all OH YAH AND DID I MENTION SHE'S TOTALLY HOT TOO. :P
Aaaaaaand I am failing at coming up with similar "thinking" lines for the first three princesses. This could be because I'm more familiar with the three more recent movies, or it could be that there are no similar lines to be found in the earlier three. (I sort of suspect it would be easier to find a similar line from Cinderella than from the other two, since she's not quite as boy-crazy as either Snow White or Aurora. ;) ) But in five minutes I have come up with these lines that I think show that the Disney princesses, the ones from the 1990s at least, are not completely braindead. I would never argue that they are perfect role models for your little girls, but I do think that referring to them as "bubble-headed bimbos-in-tiaras" is stretching it.
But if you'll allow me to shift the topic a bit?
In Enchanted, Giselle spends a couple days with Robert, a divorce lawyer who has given her the idea that maybe she should get to know a guy before she marries him. Edward has finally found her and is eager to whisk her back to animated Andalasia so that they can marry at once. He is so into this idea that he attempts a reprise of the love song that they sang earlier (his second attempt, hahaha xD; ), and it's when he realizes she's not joining in that she tells him, "I'm thinking."
To me, the point of the "I'm thinking" scene, when looking at this movie against previous Disney movies, wasn't so much "Oh wow this is the first time a Disney princess has used her brain" as much as "Oh wow this is the first time a Disney princess has considered the possibility that marrying the first guy you fall in love-at-first-sight with might not be the best thing to do." (If only I were allowing myself to talk about Pocahontas II in this entry!! xD; ) To me, that's the point where Enchanted most strongly deviates from the traditions of the Disney princess movies before it. (You could argue that Belle had none of that love-at-first-sight business, but I still think she fits what I'm saying because once she was in love with the guy that was it.)
I mean, I guess it's interesting to me because if you follow the article's interpretation of "I'm thinking," then maybe that means that Giselle is based on the first three princesses, and ignores the existence of the last three. But I think my interpretation of it includes all six of them, and probably most of the animated Disney heroines you can think of.
A scene that I thought was similar to the "I'm thinking" scene is the scene in which Giselle gets angry at Robert because he won't stop saying "No" (for which I was glad, because gosh I was getting mad at him too!! >_<; ). It's another scene that shows Giselle changing because of something she learned since leaving Andalasia, and I like it well enough but I'm kind of confused by it, moreso than by the "I'm thinking" scene. I mean, yes, Snow White, Cinderella and Aurora are like Giselle -- they're unhappy, not angry. But Ariel gets angry, Belle gets angry, and if you were to say to me that Jasmine never gets angry, I would reply with an lol, that girl is angry all the time! xD So ... I guess this part of Giselle is based only on the earlier three princesses? As is her singing to call animals to her? (Well, I don't think any of the princesses have quite that exact talent, but the three earlier princesses still come closer to it than the later three do!) The wild animal groupies constantly following her around? The whole step-mother business? The old woman, the apple, the sewing, the cleaning ...
So wait. Does Giselle have any qualities from the princesses of the 1990s? Well, Enchanted deals with true love's kiss and so does The Little Mermaid and, in a bit of a reversal of roles, so does Beauty and the Beast, but the kiss in Enchanted is obviously more Snow White or Sleeping Beauty than it is either of those. The way Giselle moves is very reminiscent of the way all of the princesses move at the Disney theme parks (omg you guys remind me to post the (academic!) paragraph I found that talks about how Disney park princesses are women acting like men acting like women, it is the best thing ever xD ), but ignoring that, I think her movements are closer to those of the first three princesses than the latter three (although I'm sure you could find similar movements in the latter three films as well). I am trying to think of what Giselle inherited from the later princesses and all I am coming up with is Ariel's colouring and wedding dress and ... Alan Menken. Although Alan Menken almost doesn't count because I just watched an interview in which he outright said that "True Love's Kiss" and "Happy Working Song" were inspired by the older princess movies.
And so I am coming to the conclusion here that Giselle was almost exclusively based off of the princess characters created in the thirties and fifties. Which is fair, because I guess they're closer to the original idea of a fairy tale princess than the princesses from the nineties are, and that's the kind of character Giselle needed to be for the movie to work and be what it is. And I'm fine with that just like that. But what BOTHERS me is that this is going to produce a lot of reviews like the above, in which the reviewer is all "look how much smarter Giselle is than the other princesses!," completely ignoring that the first princess was created fifty-five years before the last, completely ignoring the differences in characterization that such a large timeframe created or allowed, completely ignoring how Giselle is pretty well nothing like Ariel or Belle or Jasmine. Thinking of it like that, through the words of these reviews, it's so weird to me. It's like Disney had these old-fashioned princesses, rejected them and created the newer ones while attempting to be a bit more feminist, then forgot about the new ones and went back to the old ones, tweaked them and then said "Look! We're working on creating feminist characters! We swear!! We're starting over again if you want!!"
Haha okay and so now I want to say that maybe Giselle is supposed to represent this transition between the princesses of the thirties and fifties and the princesses of the nineties -- like she's supposed to represent the changing characterizations --, but oh man I think that might be taking this whole thing way too seriously. xD
IN CONCLUSION: Shang is gay.
I SWEAR HE IS, YOU GUYS D:
(I'm making myself wait until I'm finished with this semester's schoolwork before I start work on what should be an absolutely huge and ridiculous entry about my equally ridiculous theories on gender in Mulan. BE A MAN AND READ IT! xD )
And almost completely unrelated to Enchanted but that it involves Alan Menken, I listened to my new copy of the Music Behind the Magic box set today. ^_^ (Yes, I had a previous copy. I lent it to a supposed friend eight years ago and never got it back, and it has since gone out of print so yay for paying double the original price. THIS NEW COPY NEVER GETS LENT TO ANYONE EVAR. >:( ) It is basically the soundtracks of The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin, but it includes demo versions and songs that never made it into the movies and oh gosh it's such a fangirl thing to own but so good, so good. <3 I can only listen to it so often, though ... for whatever combination of reasons they make me kind of bittersweetly sad. :( But oh gosh right now I am so in love with "Silence is Golden," I can't believe I never paid it any attention before. And the reprise of "Arabian Nights," maybe I'm totally stupid but I never realized the version used at the end of King of Thieves is like the exact one from this set. xD; <333
Augh okay please no one make fun of me for this entry, as of late I have gotten more than enough of that at work. ^^;