fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #4005 ]

[ SECRET POST #4005 ]

⌈ Secret Post #4005 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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[Rhys Ifans and Richard Armitage in Berlin Station]

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 07 secrets from Secret Submission Post #573.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

definitely oversaturation. that, and not everything is a goddamn disney princess. there is definitely a trope to disney princesses and just because someone is female doesn't mean they're part of that trope.

why isn't Mulder the disney princess anyway?

DA

Ah yes, I figured it had something to do with Disney princesses being too "girly."

NAYRT but you are really, really reaching

that's actually just not what they said at all

just because someone is female doesn't mean they're part of that trope

OK, maybe I'm reaching, but I am curious about what trope they're talking about then.

No, they're talking about the Disney Princess trope, you're correct there.

But, like. All the sentence that you're quoting says is that not all female characters are part of that trope. Not all female characters fit the trope definition of being a Disney Princess. That doesn't mean that Disney Princesses are too girly. That's where I think you're overreaching.

All they're saying is that the fact that Dana Scully is female does not, in itself, make her a Disney Princess, and that her character doesn't really line up with that particular trope.

You're still not describing or explaining the trope.

Are you asking me to tell you what a disney princess is?

In terms of gender, yes. Since that's how AIRT framed it. And since being "girly" apparently has nothing to do with it.

OK, first of all, I want to reiterate that all AYRT said is that the set of "female characters" is not the same as the set of "Disney princesses". That's surely not a controversial claim. They didn't say that being a Disney princess was bad; they didn't say anything about girliness; they certainly didn't say that being a Disney princess was bad because Disney princesses are too girly. They said none of those things. Their post said that Agent Scully wasn't a Disney Princess, and that's really just about all it said.

Second, in terms of what a Disney princess is, and why Agent Scully might not be one: I think that Disney Princesses as a trope are generally defined by, first of all, having a lot of narrative weight - a lot of specialness - and usually they're remarkable in terms personality and charisma and charm and force of will and determination and spunkiness and moxy and all of those things. Second, they are aesthetically relatively glam, and sparkly, and clean. They're heroines in stories that are mostly descended from fairy stories, and that has a lot of implications for how they're portrayed and how they act.

And I don't think that Agent Scully falls into any of those categories. X-Files, as a show, is generally dark and grimey. Aesthetically, Scully, like the show she's in, is not generally glamorous or sparkly. And while she's quite determined and charismatic, it's in a much grimmer and less joyful sense than would be usual for Disney Princesses, as is appropriate for someone who is coming from a paranoid horror story. It's just really not a fit. Scully, as depicted in the show, is not a Disney Princess - even though she's a female character who's beautiful and determined. That doesn't mean that Scully is bad, and it doesn't mean that disney princesses are bad. It just means that they're different character tropes.

That's not to say that you can't juxtapose Scully with the Disney Princess trope. I can see some interesting ways to do that. Equally, I can understand why AYRT might be tired of people juxtaposing things with Disney Princesses.

OK, well anyway, I thought it was a cute post by GA, and I don't get OP or AIRT's rather virulent distaste for "goddamn Disney princesses."

Oversaturation.

You don't understand how anyone could possibly tire of a multi billion dollar company and their heavily promoted line of characters used to sell millions of dollars worth of merchandise? Like OK, you might not agree that Disney princesses are annoying, but...you honestly can't even imagine how others might feel differently?

Wow.

DA

If Mulan is a Disney princess, then I think someone like Scully can be one too.

And I think a lot of those fairy tales have dark or even horror elements to them, however Disney-fied they may have been. Cinderella is made a servant in her own home. Baby Aurora is cursed with death because her parents pissed off an evil fairy, even if the good fairies were able to mitigate the curse. The Queen wants Snow White dead (and her heart as proof) because she's fairer. Facilier has demons and wants to kill for a fortune. And there's also plenty of kidnapping, false imprisonments, threats, and actual deaths.

Mulan and Scully have similar characteristics but are portrayed differently, would be my answer there. There's nothing - in principle - stopping Scully from being portrayed like a Disney Princess in a different story. But she's not.

And, yes, in principle, those stories are full of dark or horror elements - but they have been disneyfied, and the Disney Princess versions of the characters come from the Disney versions of the story, in which those elements are not displayed or are certainly not given their full weight and horror and intensity. There's a difference between the way that a Disney movie portrays those things, and the way that a horror film portrays those things. So, again, we can certainly imagine what a horror-movie version of a Disney Princess would look like, or make them goth-y, or make them action heroes, or whatever you like - but it's still a re-imagining, a recontextualization, a change from the original.

and, again, none of this is to say that any of those genres is inherently better than any other

ayrt

Okay, I think I get your point. It just felt like you were saying that someone with her characteristics couldn't be a Disney princess and that Disney princess stories were far removed from horror, rather than saying that the story-telling approaches are just different.

I do agree that neither genre is inherently better than the other

This is a good explanation...but it's weird that you even had to explain it in the first place. There's a lot of weirdness under this secret, tbh, mostly from people who seem to have a chip on their shoulder about anything even remotely critical of Disney princesses.

It's both a trope and a marketing brand created by Disney Consumer Products to sell stuff to girls in much of the same marketing space as Barbie and Bratz. The brand consists of eleven characters who are heavily used as stock characters in Disney tie-in products and get heavy marketing promotion. Generally speaking, they're all human, female, and with the exception of Pocahontas, have a signature dress. All of them except for Merida were created by a version of Disney Animation Studios. Most of them are fairy tale princesses and the "lead" character of the film they appear in.

Officially Princess: Snow White, Cinderella, Aurora, Ariel, Belle, Jasmine, Pocahontas, Mulan, Tiana, Rapunzel, and Merida.

Not Princesses: Maid Marian (anthro), Lilo and Nami (too young and not a title character), Captain Amelia (anthro), and Eilonwy (unprofitable), and no dalmations, cats, cars, fish, or cartoon-style characters such as Minnie Mouse.

Some of us joke about live-action characters being Disney Princesses(tm) because the Disney Princess(tm) brand is set of characters selected to sell shit to young girls by pandering to gender stereotypes. Also, there's a bit of black humor to be found in Disney becoming one of the megacorporations of an 80s cyberpunk dystopian future.

New anon here: Of course being "girly" has nothing to do with it! If you look at the existing Disney Princesses, Mulan and Merida aren't girly at all. And, more subjectively, Belle, Tiana, Pocahontas and Moana aren't what I'd consider to be especially girly, either. So that's a pretty weird reach!

Generally, the traits they all have in common are kindness, a love of adventure/freedom, and determination to achieve their dreams. People might object to an association with them for the same reason anyone decides to hate anything marketed towards children: they see it as childish, and their ~mature show for adults only~ is too good for that.

DA

I love GA but the joke would've been ten times better if it'd been a pic of Disney princess Fox Mulder.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ SECRET POST #4005 ]

Re: What's wrong with Disney princesses?

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I'm not sure I agree with you.

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