Someday My Prince Will Finally Get His Act Together and Become a Suitable Love Interest

[matril]

So there's been plenty of discussion about the evolution of the Disney Princess - from vapidly optimistic, passive damsels in distress to proactive, multi-dimensional characters (although the merchandising just lumps them all together as pretty girls in pretty dresses {who never acknowledge each others' existence even though they're portrayed as standing right next to each other}) but I thought it might be even more telling to examine the men they're supposed to fall in love with.


Let's start with the prince in Snow White. It's pretty appropriate that he has no name other than "the prince," because he's about as bland and personality-less as a piece of paper. They at least have the decency to introduce him to Snow White before he comes galloping up to kiss an apparently dead corpse, but their only meeting involves him singing to her about his undying love, and her running away in terror. Sure, she's just shy and probably hasn't met a man her age in her entire life, cloistered and abused as she is, but it's just a little weird. He's her true love because he's a handsome prince and she's the princess who needs to be rescued. No other qualifications necessary. ;)

Then we have Cinderella, which is much of the same. Cinderella has the added dimension of a sense of humor, mild-mannered though it is, but her prince is just another bland, handsome fellow who falls for the pretty princess at first sight. His determination to find the one who fits the shoe reveals that he's perhaps a little too obsessive for his own good - he knew her a few hours, for goodness sake! - but I suppose that means it's a good match for the over-the-top romantic inclinations of Cinderella?

Sleeping Beauty. In design, animation and music, this film far outstrips the first two fairy-tale films, but its protagonists are just a small notch above Snow and Cinderella and their respective princes. (If you want fun, interesting characters, you're more likely to find them in the three fairies, especially Merriweather.) Prince Phillip - he has an actual name! - is kind of fun, and actually plays a bigger role than the princess since he's busy escaping from Malificent's den and slaying dragons while Aurora snoozes. I like how he bribes his horse with goodies to convince him to help seek out the mysterious ethereal voice of Briar Rose, and his casual refusal to marry a princess in favor of the "peasant girl," against his father's blustering, is a fun scene. "Stop living in the past! This is the 14th Century!" Still, at the end of it all he's just a handsome prince who meets, and therefore falls in love with, a beautiful princess.

Skip ahead several decades to The Little Mermaid. Eric is clearly representative of our more modern sensibilities, a down-to-earth kind of guy who owns a slobbering dog and wears a regular old shirt and pants most of the time. He does meet and immediately fall in love with Ariel, but it's interesting that they actually subvert that trope by a contrivance that prevents him from knowing who Ariel really is - forcing him to actually get to know her (okay, over only three days, but it's better than five minutes!) and actively choose her instead of the mysterious dream girl. It becomes irrelevant when they turn out to be the same, but hey, it's progress. Too bad that means Eric has far more character development than the title character, who pretty much just loves Eric from first sight and does every idiotic thing you could imagine to try to be with him. And then needs to be rescued by him. Sheesh.

Beauty and the Beast. My all-time-favorite. I always loved the fairy-tale, but Disney's version does something really special. For the first time, love at first sight is simply not an option. Belle has to change her perspective and see what's underneath the fangs and fur. The thing is, the Beast has to change as well. They decided to give him a rather petulant, spoiled-child personality, which could have gone badly if it evolved the wrong way. But I think they handled it with a deft touch. Belle will absolutely not put up with being treated badly. When the Beast throws a fit for her wandering into the West Wing, she goes ahead and leaves. She's no ennabler. ;) The only reason she comes back is because she has too much decency to leave him to die after he saves her life. And then they both begin to change - slowly, bit by bit. She says thank you, he says you're welcome. He becomes more aware and considerate of her needs and wants; she gives him a second chance. Belle isn't perfect. She's kind of snobby about the "poor provincial town" she's stuck in, and her stubbornness leads to a lot of volatile confrontations. But when it's really important, she does the right thing. It's nice to see her character grow up a little as well as the Beast's. As he becomes more worthy of her love, she becomes more ready to give it to him, and to receive his love in return. The movie is also notable for setting up a rival to the Beast, an over-the-top foil in the form of Gaston. The Beast is hideous but good-hearted deep down inside; Gaston is handsome (er, relatively speaking) but monstrous at his heart. Watching him shift from an arrogant but fairly harmless idiot to a scheming scoundrel to a raging murderer is a striking contrast to the Beast's upward transformation.

Unfortunately, after the success of the Beast's character development, the prince characterizations began to take an alarming turn. It was still all right in Aladdin, where the male is the protagonist (making Jasmine unfortunately rather passive, aside from an all-too-brief escape from the restrictions of the palace and a few rants about not being "a prize to be won"). He's a basically good guy who needs a healthy does of self-esteem, and the princess is there to assure him that, shockingly, she loves him even though he's not a prince. So - handsome, nice guy, not-prince falls in love with beautiful princess, learns to love himself too.

I'm going so skip over most of the movies in the 90's because I don't think they really fit the fairy-tale template I'm examining here (and besides, some of them are really rather dreadful. Not Mulan. I love Mulan. But there's nary a princess or prince to be seen until....)

The Princess and the Frog. Whatever the opinions to the contrary, I was generally pleased with Disney's return to traditional fairy tales. I liked the modern twists on the Frog Prince story. And the heroine is a nicely developed character, an active self-starting woman who's come a long way from Snow White. The prince? Well, he's better than the bland nameless fellows who've romanced princesses in the past. No love at first sight here. They both have to change and learn to love each other. The trouble is, the story basically borrows its romance from about a thousand romantic comedies. Guy and girl meet, clash. Girl is independent and has no patience for superficial romantic overtures; guy is a womanizer who thinks she's a chore. They're forced to spend time together; guy realizes she's so awesome he's ready to drop the womanizing act and settle down. She fixed him! She falls for him because now he's changed; no, really, he has!

Sigh. Women, you cannot fix a childish, selfish, shallow man. Nor should you be expected to. You might argue that he chooses to fix himself once he meets the right girl, but that's a dangerous line to walk. Too many women cling to unhealthy, co-dependent relationships, hoping for that day when their guy finally gets his act together, because he loves her, right? That'll make him change, right? No, it won't.

I think the thing that saved the Princess and the Frog for me was the post-wedding epilogue. Naveen has in fact changed, ready to work with his own two hands and help Tiana achieve her dream. But that's a story with a happy ending. Life isn't always so tidy. A guy can't change his lifestyle just by meeting the right girl, even if he genuinely wants to. Change is hard. It's possible, yes, but hardly a light-switch action.

The thing is, we have a great fondness for rogues in our culture. Everyone likes Han Solo over Luke Skywalker, Batman over Superman. (Except me. But apparently I'm a weirdo?) So we have the love interest in the Rapunzel movie (Why oh why couldn't they just call it Rapunzel??), a roguish thief who must reform himself in order to win Rapunzel's heart. Don't get me wrong. I liked the movie, and I liked Flynn, especially when he reveals that much of his identity is just borrowed from someone else and shows the vulnerability beneath his bravado. But I wonder - is it too much to ask that a guy be unabashedly good, while still being multi-dimensional and changing over the course of the movie? Does good have to be equivalent to bland? Are we stuck with only two choices - women swooning over the generic handsome prince, or rolling their eyes affectionately over the man-babies they tolerate/love? It makes both genders look pretty bad, and I'm sure we can strike a better place somewhere in the middle. More Beauty and the Beast, please. :)

Comments

[sonetka.livejournal.com]

Why oh why couldn't they just call it Rapunzel??

Actually, they were going to until The Princess and the Frog underperformed at the box office -- I loved it myself, but apparently they did some research which showed that boys weren't going to the movie in large enough numbers to suit them, so they renamed Rapunzel to Tangled and began cutting the trailers so that there was a lot more Flynn in them. When I first heard about the change I thought it sounded incredibly lame, but God help us, it seems to have worked, because Tangled apparently did a lot better with boys.

Fashions in princes definitely seem to change -- I think the trouble is that the princes, especially the early ones, have so little comparative screen time so that their characters have to be painted fairly unambiguously (oddly, I remember almost nothing about the prince from Cinderella -- I do remember that his father was mad for grandchildren, though, and I'm sure the prince was feeling a bit of "OK, just get off my back already, I'll find her!"). When they start getting more screen time, well, going from good to good can be dreadfully hard to make interesting. Even Luke Skywalker has to go from innately good but a little callow and whiny ("But I was going to Toshi Station to pick up some power converters!) to, well, much more overtly good and less callow and whiny, mostly due to finally stepping into his rightful role as fighter/leader for the rebellion. Stepping into your real role is something that happens to the modern princes too, I think -- for example, when Naveen arrives in N.O. he isn't really thrilled with the party lifestyle anymore (especially since his parents have cut him off!) He's an obviously bright guy who's in bad need of a real occupation and it seems like his being a prince has gotten in the way of that, if anything. It's as if he's trying to play the role of the Playboy Prince but as it's not his real bent, he's getting sick of it. Finding a role to step into which suits him makes him better, but I don't think it's a total 180 degree character turnaround.

Flynn is much more standard-issue Rogue With A Heart Of Gold, but again, like Naveen, he's trying to fit himself into an old role rather than write his own, new role. He started out in a bad situation and decided to imitate/become someone he looked up to, a bit like a young writer starting out by imitating the style and plot types of their own favourite writer. It works for a while, but eventually even your favourite writer's style is going to cramp you, because it isn't yours and you can't say everything you need to while disguised as someone else. Similarly for Flynn/Eugene -- undoubtedly he's a naturally adventurous, high-spirited guy, but you could say that by the time the movie starts, the role of Flynn, Daredevil Thief is starting to wear on him a little and he's happy to find the way out of it and into a new role as, well, himself.

I hope you had a good fourth! Ours was lovely. And I can't believe I just wrote so much about the psychology of two animated characters :).

[matril.livejournal.com]

We had a great fourth too - spent most of it playing board games, which is just about exactly how I like to spend vacation days. ;)

And I can't believe I just wrote so much about the psychology of two animated characters :) Heh. There's a reason one of my most-visited websites is called Overthinkingit.com - what else is an English major to do?

I agree that a character has to start at a lower point for there to be any interesting progression, but the thing is, they do it with the female protagonists (when it's done well, of course) while still making them decent, sympathetic characters. Tiana has to learn that being a workaholic isn't going to result in true happiness; Rapunzel has a kind of leaving-childhood-behind maturation (not to mention altering everything she's ever believed about her "mother," but that's kind of more of an epiphany moment than a gradual progression). I guess what I'm saying is, there are so many directions they could take with character development, and I'm tired of the same "shallow guy stops being shallow" trope playing out over and over again.

I'd heard of the Rapunzel title change to pull in more boy viewers, and it doesn't surprise me. It just....depresses me. I don't know if we'll ever get past the whole idea that girls can watch stories about boys, but boys can't go near that cootie-infested girly stuff. Sigh.

[shehap.livejournal.com]

a down-to-earth kind of guy who owns a slobbering dog and wears a regular old shirt and pants most of the time.
I just re-watched the Little Mermaid two or three times, and I still can't find even ONE time when he isn't wearing pants.

[firehearts132.livejournal.com]

I agree with a lot of this. Beauty and the Beast has always been my most favorite Disney movie, and I've always liked Belle/Beast more than the other relationships. It really frustrates me when people accuse Belle of having Stolkhome syndrome, or being some kind of enabler. It's not true, because whenever the beast acted up she did not tolerate it. She didn't start falling in love with him until he decided to change his ways.

And I definitely agree that you can't change or fix a person. As the saying goes, you can show the horse water but you can't make it drink it. In other words, the only way a person can change their ways is if they are actually motivated to do so. If a person is abusive, love won't magically make them a good person.

I'm also glad that you have noticed how male characters, just like female characters, have been pretty stereotypical without much complexity. We should get rid of the stereotypes, and make both genders more complex like Belle and the Beast. For example, there should be both male and female hero/heroines, and there should be both male and female villains.

[matril.livejournal.com]

Thanks for commenting! I love Beauty and the Beast and its messages - that love can't be based merely on physical attraction, that relationships require work and patience and time - but I can see people twisting its themes into something far more dysfunctional. And in the real world, it results in people clinging to incredibly unhealthy relationships. Stockholm Syndrome barely scratches the surface of all the dysfunctionalities that result.

[firehearts132.livejournal.com]

Well, I guess my point is that Belle didn't try changing the Beast like people in co-dependent relationships often do. But yes, I guess if you just pay attention the fact that Belle was a prisoner at first(though she held no romantic feelings for him at that time) then their relationship looks pretty unhealthy.

[matril.livejournal.com]

I don't see anything unhealthy in Beauty and the Beast (except for Gaston's creepy obsessive behavior) but I sure see people misinterpreting it as an excuse to enable abusers, thinking that their monstrous boyfriend is just a handsome prince in the guise of a beast. Sigh.

[firehearts132.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, I definitely agree that Gaston was creepy and obsessive. His feelings for Belle remind me of this song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSI-Wk00rVw And speaking of the word monstrous, what makes angry about that interpretation of Beauty and the Beast is that I sometimes get the feeling that people go harder on the Beast because his monstrous form makes him more intimidating than Gaston, who's a human.

[vytresna.livejournal.com]

My favorite twist on the "changed through love" bit is a story where it would have ended very, very badly for the woman who tried to fix her man, if the male lead weren't actually in deep cover the whole time. It doesn't really work when romance is the central focus, but romantic leads need the "luck of Mrs. Edwards" a lot more than they need the no-I-totally-changed-his-basic-nature plot.