Guest Essay: Dana Shaffer on how Brave fails at feminism.

Friend and colleague Dana Shaffer wrote this terrific piece back when Brave first arrived in theaters.  Since I had already had my say on the film, I thought it best to wait until the film arrived on DVD/Blu Ray, which it does today.  Long-story short, this whole piece elaborates on ideas that I merely acknowledged in my review.  So do enjoy.

Does Brave give us the Disney princess we’ve all been waiting for? 

The film recycles a familiar tale, with a few misguided twists

By Dana Shaffer

Brave is the story of Merida, a bow-and-arrow wielding princess, with attitude, gobs of personality and more interest in pursuing her own ambitions than marriage. It sounds like a dream come true for many who have longed for a princess story with more of a plot arc than meeting a man and falling in love.

But let me give you a quick synopsis of the film (complete with spoilers, be warned):

It is the story of a vibrant and sassy redheaded teenage princess who doesn't quite fit in. She has an unusual hobby that her particularly strict parent does not approve of. During a nasty fight one day, the very strict parent destroys the daughter’s most beloved possession in a fit of rage. The parent instantly feels regret, but the damage is done. The rebellious redhead runs away. The girl seeks help from a witch, who gives her a spell that will change her destiny. But unless she fulfills a mission within a few days, the spell will turn very, very bad. After a series of inconsequential “fish out of water” scenes, the daughter must face the consequences of the spell, and her parent’s life is put in danger. The princess is rescued from peril, and in the end, the parent decides to let the daughter win the initial argument and have her way.

So that’s a bare bones plot synopsis of Brave. But perhaps it sounded familiar to you. Read it again, but this time think a little less moors of Scotland and a little more “Under the Sea.” Yep. Brave, whether it knows it or not, borrows heavily from the structure of The Little Mermaid. Of course there are some vast differences between the narratives. And perhaps in a world that recycles fairy tales and fables over and over, it’s not a big deal. But it lends some interesting ways to compare the two princesses.

Having your cake and eating it too: Discussing the somewhat troubling finale of Disney's Wreck It Ralph.

Spoiler warning... this whole essay is discussing end-of-film events of Disney's Wreck It Ralph.  Like in the first sentence, so beware!!!
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When is a Princess Story not a Princess Story?  That's the question that's haunted both of Disney's major animated efforts this year.  While Brave has gotten raves elsewhere (not here) for focusing on a young woman who doesn't want to get married, the film is at its core a loose variation on The Little Mermaid save for the fact that said princess doesn't want a man quite yet.  But despite marketing efforts that focus exclusively on Ralph (John C. Reilly), Wreck It Ralph is actually a two-pronged narrative, telling what amounts to a buddy film in which both Ralph and Vanellope (Sarah Silverman) have their respective goals and desires.  The would-be glitch in the racing game Sugar Rush merely wants to race and be accepted for what she is, while Ralph merely wants a better life and for those in his game to understand that he's just playing a role, that he's not actually a villain.  The film's duel goals come to a head at the third act, when Ralph is informed by King Candy that if Vanellope races and wins, the compound effects will be the destruction of the game, the homelessness of its inhabitants, and the death of Vanellope, since as a glitch she would be left behind as the game cabinet is unplugged.  It's a stunningly powerful story turn, the idea that Ralph realizes that he must do something horrible (wreck Vanellope's race car and renounce her goals) in order to be 'the good guy'.  It's heroism in the Jack Bauer mold rather than the clear-cut heroism of, for example, Mr. Incredible.  But the film reverses itself almost as quickly, exposing said story turn as a fabricated lie and setting up Sugar Rush's ruler as a scheming villain who has brainwashed the citizens and denied Vanellope's true nature.  And what is Vanellope's true nature?  Why she's a princess of course!

Untapped goldmine: Disney Princesses 'to the rescue'.

There is a spot near the beginning of Peggy Orenstein's Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture that details the origins of the Disney Princess brand that originated around 2000.  Long-story short, the compromise for allowing all of the various Disney princess characters to appear on the same merchandise was that they not actually interact with each other in any way.  You may not realize it, but you've never actually seen a Disney Princess t-shirt or storybook with Jasmine and Belle playing tennis together or Aurora and Cinderella picking out party gowns.  They are always staring either at us or off into the distance, but never at each other.  I bring this up because in the midst of all the 'who should be in Expendables 3' or 'who should be in that female Expendables spin-off', I realized that Disney was in fact practicing a remarkable bit of restraint when it came to financially mining their properties.  Imagine: Jasmine, Belle, Mulan, Cinderella, Aurora, Pocahontas, Snow White, Ariel, Tiana, Rapunzel all in one spectacular adventure to do some kind of derring-do and/or saving the proverbial day.  Of course since most of their arch villains are suffering from a slight case of death, the already-established antagonists would be pretty limited (although Jafar and Dr. Facilier would be the easiest to resurrect since they both perished via magic).  But putting aside the whole 'art' argument, can you imagine how such a film wouldn't gross hundreds of millions of dollars in theaters?  Can you imagine how many untold millions of DVDs or Blu-Rays such a thing would sell? Say what you will about the alleged greed of the Walt Disney studios, but it says something that they haven't leaped at such a seemingly obvious opportunity to rake in untold amounts of money.

Scott Mendelson