Exploring the evolving representation of protagonist female princesses in Disney
I will be analysing the films Enchanted (2007) and Cinderella (1950).
Research Plan:
Cinderella 1950 Trailer Notes:
The carriage runs out of the castle with Cinderella, a flashback in time shows her transformation.
Her graceful hand movements are relative of female royalty characters e.g. the queen, a princess.
We see her past life as a maid, though she seems in a day-dream like state thinking of something else. Some may assume we were seeing her dream of meeting the prince.
A dissolve shot between her opening a door in ragged clothes and dancing with prince charming in her white dress is used to connote that she is still the same person either way, as her bodily postures link up in both shots.
Everything turning nice, pumpkin to carriage etc.
Cinderella first seen in a white sparkly dress, spins round gracefully with diegetic sound ‘It’s like a dream’
‘A wonderful dream come true’
Driving past houses in her carriage waving out the window – queen like.
E.L.S of huge white castle.
Long shot of red carpet and Cinderella at the end.
Mid shot of Cinderella, her dress sparkling, wearing earrings, a black necklace, facial expression shows utter confusion and amazement, situated in front of the sky’s where the stars resemble the sparkles on her dress.
Prince charming bows down to someone, we then see him walk through two women and take Cinderella’s hand from behind.
The non-diegetic music slows down towards the next 3 shots.
3 fades are then shown of them two looking into each other’s eyes.
Music then plays again at normal speed in sync with the next shot.
They are then seen to be dancing with each other through different locations.
Cinderella runs away, prince charming reaches out for her as she turns around ‘how will I find you’.
Enchanted 2007 Trailer Notes:
Begins with a nostalgic look of past Disney films, The Lion King, Toy Story, Tarzan and Aladdin. All men.
Text – ‘There has never been anything… Like Enchanted.’
Shows a shot of birds flying towards a house in the woods.
A heroic prince gallops over a fallen tree on a white horse, whilst diegetic sound of him laughing happily is played, without a care in the world.
A princess is shown running along in a white dress whilst birds place a tiara on her head, this startles her and she then thanks them.
Wicked Witch pushes her down a portal to the ‘a world as strange and as terrifying… as ours.’ Non-diegetic voice of god narration.
The prince and his ‘noble’ squirrel go down there to help her.
Comes out of a drain in times square new york.
Seen walking through a busy crowd looking for someone’s help, everyone is in black she is in a white dress, divides them.
A dwarf comes out from under her dress as she walks into him, whilst wiping his fringe down he states ‘watch it will ya’, the princess looks surprised and replies happily as if she knows him ‘romey’
‘no-ones been very nice to me..’
- ‘Yeah well, welcome to New York’
‘Thank you’.
She doesn’t understand sarcasm, not apparent in her ‘world’.
‘Heroic’ prince comes to save her.
Tries to use animals to clean the house, a rat falls down the toilet, she can’t perform these tasks.
Shows comedy – ‘magic mirror tell me where she is’ – talking to a TV.
Prince stabs a bus as he thinks it is a ‘beast’ and is trying to save people. Owner comes out of the bus – ‘NOBODY STABS MY BUS’, prince runs away. = Funny.
‘You crazy tight wearing…’ Shows emasculation.
‘one ordinary man will have to get them back home, before time runs out’ all down to a normal man not the ‘heroic prince’.
Jumps off a bridge to try and sing a song to her, lands in front of cyclists – causes a crash.
Similarities and Differences Between Enchanted's and Cinderella's Trailer:
Similarities:
White dress.
Prince and Princess.
Prince is seeking the princess.
Happiness.
Castles.
Heroic music in both.
Dream land in cartoon.
Relation of time again in both films, midnight.
Princess seeking the prince in Cinderella.
Differences:
Enchanted is more problematic, an adventure.
Prince role in Enchanted is shown to be someone ‘stupid’.
Princess is ‘not one of the brightest bulbs in the pack’, very clumsy.
Focus more on the men in the film rather than the princess – Enchanted.
(Past films, just shows men and a shocked princess).
Part animated part real life film.
Princess has to work hard in new york in enchanted, Cinderella has all her dreams given to her.
Princess in enchanted is seeking a man, not necessarily the ‘prince’.
Comedy is used in ‘Enchanted’ to manipulate the spectator’s emotions, happy, sad, funny, excited etc.
Enchanted seems to spoof, Cinderella and past Disney films including the idea of the princess and prince.
Highlights more of a male adventure rather than princess finding her prince – enchanted
Enchanted 2007 Film Notes:
Cinderella 1950 Film Notes:
Narrative Research:
Barthes´ Codes
Roland Barthes describes a text as "a galaxy of signifiers, not a structure of signifiers; it has no beginning; it is reversible; we gain access to it by several entrances, none of which can be authoritatively declared to be the main one; the codes it mobilizes extend as far as the eye can read, they are indeterminable...the systems of meaning can take over this absolutely plural text, but their number is never closed, based as it is on the infinity of language..." (S/Z - 1974 translation)
What he is basically saying is that a text is like a tangled ball of threads which needs unravelling so we can separate out the colours. Once we start to unravel a text, we encounter an absolute plurality of potential meanings. We can start by looking at a narrative in one way, from one viewpoint, bringing to bear one set of previous experience, and create one meaning for that text. You can continue by unravelling the narrative from a different angle, by pulling a different thread if you like, and create an entirely different meaning. And so on. An infinite number of times. If you wanted to.
Barthes wanted to - he was a semiotics professor in the 1950s and 1960s that got paid to spend all day unravelling little bits of texts and then writing about the process of doing so. All you need to know, again, very basically, is that texts may be ´open´ (ie unravelled in a lot of different ways) or ´closed´ (there is only one obvious thread to pull on).
Barthes also decided that the threads that you pull on to try and unravel meaning are called narrative codes and that they could be categorised in the following five ways:
•Action/proiarectic code & enigma code (i.e. Answers & questions)
•Symbols & Signs
•Points of Cultural Reference
•Simple description/reproduction
Narrative Structures
There are many ways of breaking down narrative structure. You may hear a movie described as a "classic Hollywood narrative", meaning it has three acts. News stories have their own structure. A lot of work has been done by literary theorists to develop ways of deconstructing a narrative.
•Tvzetan Todorov - suggests narrative is simply equilibrium, disequilibrium, new equilibrium
•Claude Levi-Strauss - constant creation of conflict/opposition propels narrative. Narrative can only end on a resolution of conflict. Opposition can be visual (light/darkness, movement/stillness) or conceptual (love/hate, control/panic), and to do with soundtrack. Binary oppositions.
Propp's Character Theory:
Vladimir Propp - characters and actions (31 functions of character types)
Propp's Character theory
Vladimir Propp developed a character theory for studying media texts and productions, which indicates that there were 7 broad character types in the 100 tales he analysed, which could be applied to other media:
1.The villain (struggles against the hero)
2.The donor (prepares the hero or gives the hero some magical object)
3.The (magical) helper (helps the hero in the quest)
4.The princess (person the hero marries, often sought for during the narrative)
5.Her father (usually dies during or before the film/book)
6.The dispatcher (character who makes the lack known and sends the hero off)
7.The hero or victim/seeker hero, reacts to the donor, weds the princess
Vladimir Propp, a Russian critic, active in the 1920’s, published his Morphology of the Folk Tale in 1928. While the Soviet cinema was producing excellent films, Propp was essentially interested in the narrative of folk tales. He noticed Folk tales were similar in many areas. They were about the same basic struggles and they appeared to have stock characters. He identified a theory about characters and actions as narrative functions. Characters, according to Propp, have a narrative function; they provide a structure for the text.
It avoids treating characters as if they are individuals and reminds us they are merely constructs. Some characters are indeed there just to progress the narrative.
Research based on “Media Studies” by Stuart Price (Longman)
Dreamworks Princesses:
Questionnaire:
Production:
In my production I am going to create a Magazine front cover, based on the evolution of the disney princess. It will feature pictures I have taken in either a cartoon fashion or silhouette, whereby the princess is 'larger' than the stereotypical disney princesses. I will also produce a contents page and article based on the front page (the evolution of the disney princess).
First draft of the magazine front cover:
First draft of the contents page:
First draft of the article cover:
First draft of the article page:
Article draft:
The image of a princess is one that has been around for over 50 years. The idea of a slender woman, white and fair skin with light tinted hair and twinkling blue eyes- the perfection of beauty. An image which in fact may have never had any form of hope to change until one special princess did just that. Princess Billie has evolved the stereotypical princess image into one of even more beauty. One that would never have even crossed the mind of any individual. It is so simple that any one could do it! All you have to do is just simply be yourself. Now this may sound silly at first, but as Billie has said “Natural beauty is the most beautiful of all, no-one needs to worry how they look, we’re all different for a reason and that reason is enough to allow anyone’s dream of becoming a real princess come true.” No woman needs a man to fend for her, we are all capable of fending for ourselves, individuality is the key to a sucessful lifestyle “I find that fending for myself keeps me active enough to not be putting on too much weight and maintaining my size 10 figure” said Princess Billie in our interview with her. Bilie can ride horseback, climb trees, sword fight and pierce an apple with an arrow from over 50 metres away. Now who said we can’t all fend for ourselves? And what the heck is all this “true loves first kiss” malarkey? Not every woman needs a man in order to function, and I’m sure as hell that their only dream isn’t getting that over enthusiastic kiss as their glorified token of gratitude. She is as down to Earth as any women ever needs to be, she doesn’t flaunt her fame or divide herself from others in grouped situations, walking down the street you wouldn’t even know that at home she has animals helping her with her chores and keeping her company. With the chores done, Billie has enough time to do what ever takes her fancy. “Somedays I like to just sit around and eat, then other days I’ll be out and about walking miles on end breathing the fresh air as I go”. Many activities that Billie tends to fulfill on a day to day basis ensures that she is feeling her best at all times and at one with the world. Many of you may be wondering if she’s a natural beauty everyday, and indeed when entering the interview room she breezed in with effortless beauty, rosy red cheeks and glistening blue eyes. Billie says how “I love to wear make-up as it makes me feel better about myself but it is vital that I embrace who I am and feel confident in my own skin.” Her Fairy Godmother has taught her alot about being down to Earth and grounded and has helped her to fit in with the rest of society. Billie said how “I couldn’t have done any of this without my Fairy Godmother, she has made me who I am today and I can only thank her with all my heart for that”. From such an early age Billie aways knew that she wanted to be a Princess, it was only a matter of when. One day Billie was out buying apples from an elderly woman when she was stopped by a lady in all white and warned not to eat the apples as they were poisoned. It later turned out that this lady was her Fairy Godmother and ever since has made Billie who she is today. Her beliefs about femininity have stemmed from all the past Disney films she has seen since her childhood, she is against the idea that the Princess is just a house keeper “it is just absurd to even think that to become a Princess you have to have been a housekeeper for your evil mother once in your life.” Billie believes that the stereotypical Princess image that has been previously created by Disney is one that has needed to be changed for a long time, author Amy M. Davies, in her recent book ‘Good Girls and Wicked Witches’ wrote how ‘Disney films have been perhaps the single most powerful force in determining expectations about feminine behaviour’. Depicting the idea that children are drip-fed these stereotypes and believe that to become a princess they need to be a skinny size 6 so we at Trend asked Billie how she felt about this matter and she replied “I mean come on, we’re living in the 21st Century, we’re not all a size 6 without being 'Photo shopped' down to the bone, and dismissing that cheerful cheesecake every friday night! I for one love to eat cake, I just love it”. Billie has an IQ of 98 leaving her an average lady, no whizz kid and certainly not a dumb princess that is seen to be constantly falling off of trees or billboard posters, - not naming any names here, Giselle. - “I’m not always wearing dresses- on my lazy days I tend to just relax in a pair of joggers and a baggy top, I’m no different from everyone else you come across these days”. Billie says how “if you step on the scales and see that you’ve put on a few pounds, there is no need to lock yourself down to the treadmill and run till your vision is impaired becoming a slave to that circling band of rubber”. Portraying yourself for someone that you already are is the easiest form of beauty, although don’t get me wrong you can still work yourself up to the top! Billie finds that if you dont put on too much make-up so that your natural beauty can still shine through then you can look fresh and feel great! “Don’t go out and buy any of those cheap make-up products out on then market, you only get what you pay for, spending those extra few pounds on yourself really makes the difference!” As you can see Billie feels strongly that it’s more about how you feel rather about how you look, to be a princess you really have to believe in yourself as she told us in the interview “Everyone is a princess, all you need to do is believe
in yourself and you can be whoever you want to be.” With such wise words from a beautiful princess, it is no wonder she is how she is today, so don’t feel like you cannot be a princess! The princess image is changing, and so should you be. (1104 words)
