princesses and dragons of questions

I, like many of you, grew up watching Disney films. When I think back to the movies that were my favorites -- Aladdin and Hercules, for instance -- I remember idealizing aspects of Jasmine and Megara's characters. How they refused (at least in the beginning) to go along with the rules and get married off or fall for "Prince Charming"... they, at least for a short time, retained their own voices and beliefs. But then Jasmine falls for Aladdin, is imprisoned by Jafar, and uses her sexuality to seduce/trick the sorcerer at one point. She winds up marrying in the end after all. It's her choice, true, but the way there is still rough. Megara is essentially killed off, becoming little more than a romantic tool/body Hades uses against Hercules. After Hercules rescues her, her autonomy disappears -- she is "side piece," the girl he won at the end of a long battle. I hate reducing her in that way, but... it's kind of true.

In a way, it's difficult to untangle how I felt about Disney princesses. I liked the ones who talked back and didn't need a guy, but in the end, they always seemed to comply and get with a guy. Being a girl who also enjoyed Star Wars and video games and comics growing up, I always longed for "stronger" female protagonists who didn't have to give up who they were just to keep a man's story going along. I think I saw glimpses of this in Jasmine and Megara, but that hope was in the end, unfulfilled. Where were the women who could join in the fight and pick up a sword and slay their metaphorical dragons without the busy bodying of the men in their lives? And still pursue romance -- if that's what they wanted? 

I'm glad Disney has started to shift in recent years with their female characters. Stories are no longer just about a man and a woman, or a man and the woman who just so happens to be present in HIS story -- but dynamic relationships between, say, a woman and her daughter (Brave) or two sister (Frozen). There are still problems, but as one writer points out, Disney *seems* to be trying... but whether they're trying enough remains to be seen, I think.

When Christensen quoted the writing of one of her students, "'True death equals a generation living by rules and attitudes they never questioned and producing more children who do the same,'" chills went through me (178). What we watch and hear in stories, whether told via oral tradition, book, photograph, or film (and now social media and music) sets the tone of the stories we carry in ourselves and pass along to future generations. Are we about keeping the status quo going, or are we about disrupting the narrative and taking it apart so we can create a better story, a better world?