Princess Charming

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Princess Charming

Methodology

I started thinking about an appropriate topic for my Field Report months ago. I considered the world of Punk culture in Chicago. Then I decided I knew too much already about this so I considered perhaps skateboard culture. At least this way I could learn something that I wasn't familiar with firsthand. But still, I have had a significant amount of exposure to skateboarding so I kept searching. I considered the already approved topics and looked specifically at folklore in fairy tales. I have been a fan of Disney movies since I was little, and other than considering which princess I wished to be like most, I never gave them a second thought. Once I began to think about them, I came up with some conclusions that make my view of Disney, and of fairy tales in general, less than magical.

I concluded that my premise would be that indeed fairy tales are rich with folklore considering their timelessness, oral tradition, and mythical stories full of common themes. However, these motifs go beyond merely romance, adventure, and evil. Included in this list should be the unrealistic standards for female beauty, female dependence on males for identity, female submission, and the idea that women need to be somehow saved by a heroic man.

This research is not intended to prove that fairy tales are themselves evil or dissuade readers from ever watching another Disney re-make. It will instead hopefully encourage viewers to watch with a more critical eye, and in recognizing both the positive and negative folkloric characteristics of the films, change the concept of a fairy tale as a little girl's dream, to what it really is; a fictitious story intended for the entertainment and amusement of children.

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...e how filmmaking and its characters have evolved over time and what kind of progress we are making.

Overall though, I enjoyed looking at these two movies from another, more critical, perspective. There are a lot of hidden connotations that I wasn't previously aware of. Once I started taking notice, they became ubiquitous. I look forward to the day when a woman holds the door for a man, an aggressive and confident woman is not made out to be the villain, and a man awaits his princess charming.

Works Cited:

Campbell, Joseph. 1961. "Departure," Chapter 1 in Hero with a Thousand Faces, first published 1949, 49-95. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

Cinderella. Walt Disney, 1950.

Green, Philip. Cracks in Hollywood ideology and Gender in Hollywood. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1998.

Sleeping Beauty. Walt Disney, 1959.

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