Friday 29 November 2019

Princess vs General

This article is a more elaborated version of a Twitter thread, which you can find here: https://twitter.com/Sarochi1/status/1125803662922665984

When people are insulting you, there is nothing so good for them as not to say a word—just to look at them and think. Miss Minchin turns pale with rage when I do it. Miss Amelia looks frightened, and so do the girls. When you will not fly into a passion people know you are stronger than they are, because you are strong enough to hold in your rage, and they are not, and they say stupid things they wish they had n't said afterward. There 's nothing so strong as rage, except what makes you hold it in—that 's stronger. 
-A Little Princess (1905), Frances Hodgson Burnett

To start with I would like to make it absolutely certain that I do not dislike the characters that I will be talking somewhat negatively about (and I will repeat that several times). I think it's great that there are women in modern movies that aren't traditionally considered female roles. My problem is the narrow praise that gets heaped upon only a narrow subsection of current "subversive" roles while tearing down previous efforts. Especially since I think many of these new character types still feel like they are in their infancy written by writers who don't yet know how to properly handle them. Culturally this has the negatives of a) women being built up by tearing down others and b) female characters that are being hailed as positive influences actually not being all that positive, just something new the critics didn't grow up with. Hollywood especially is a bit trapped in the "girls can do stuff too!" phase, while a lot of us are well aware of that fact and waiting for them to catch up with stories that go beyond basic focus-tested pandering.

A Tweet that gained some traction summarized the sentiment as "My generation had princesses to look up to.Our daughters have generals."

Princess vs General
How glorification of the female general
archetype might not be all it's cracked up to be


Sara Crewe; or, What Happened at
Miss Minchin's
(1888)

More female military ranks in fiction is fine. By itself that simply means there's more balance in what roles male and female characters can occupy and as such that's a good thing. Where the sentiment loses me is in the value judgment that princess characters are inherently inferior to high-ranking military characters. The military characters apparently being better suited as role models for young girls. As a Disney Princess enthusiast and defender, I take umbrage with that idea and feel that it is deeply rooted in how princesses are judged memetically rather than based on context (which ironically could be construed as a misogynistic reaction). As such the princesses tend to be judged harshly based on misconceptions and outright falsehoods rather than what is actually presented in the movies (a classic example is the 'common knowledge' that Beauty and the Beast (1991) is really about Stockholm Syndrome, when that description would fit Cogsworth more than Belle). Likewise these new military characters supposedly being awesome, empowering and good role models run the risk of also being more a memetic judgement rather than based on context, which could horribly date them when the next wave of progressive characters hit and previous ones are reevaluated. People who judge history harshly would probably do well to remember that future generations will do the same to us, because what is actually beneath the woman with a military rank as currently presented?


Black Panther (2018)

Monarchy Bad, Military Industrial Complex Good

A standard response to why Disney Princesses are supposedly bad is because they support the concept of monarchy, which in the eyes of many is apparently an inherently evil institution. However I can't help but wonder how much of that is a genuine sentiment and not a post hoc rationalization just to hate some more on Disney Princesses. Maybe it's not Disney Princesses that are bad because the monarchy is bad, but monarchies are bad because Disney Princesses are supposed to be bad. After all in the Western world monarchies are hardly the authoritarian oppressive regimes of yesteryear anymore. If anything the system is unfair to those born into the nowadays largely ceremonial role (1).
However princesses being supplanted by military leaders is where that train of though becomes especially odd. Suppose that we accept that princesses are bad because promoting monarchies is bad. What then are female generals promoting when we live in a world that is suffering heavily under rampant militarism? In the Western world monarchies have no bite, but reckless military intervention causing disaster is still our daily reality and shows no sign of stopping. Isn't it then more pernicious to have characters that serve as pro-military propaganda rather than to have characters that are largely relegated to symbolic fairy tale constructs anyway and have been for decades, if not centuries?

Looking at the Marvel Cinematic Universe movie Black Panther (2018), Okoye, general of the Dora Milaje is certainly a cool character, but her morality is also largely overruled by whoever sits on the throne she has pledged loyalty to. Unlike Shuri who, in line with the princess archetype, gets to rebel against injustice as she sees it, Okoye's character is defined by duty to a post she might personally disagree with and requires T'Challa being revealed to still be king for her to switch sides based on a technicality. Meanwhile the struggle between the possible kings of Wakanda explores the morality of Erik Killmonger's destructive goal and T'Challa's efforts in course correcting his father's historic mistakes. This is because monarchy in modern fiction isn't about adoration of the concept of monarchy, but about the morality of a person wielding great power. Which is why the shift from stories about royalty so effortlessly shifted into stories about superheroes (which is especially true for Black Panther since the king of Wakanda also takes on the mantle of the Black Panther). With great power comes great responsibility after all. General Okoye meanwhile is restricted in her ability to be moral.

Deus Ex (2000)
In the action role-playing game Deus Ex (2000) the dynamic of loyal soldiers having restrictions on their morality is called out during JC Denton's escape from the compound of his former employers after he discovered that the anti-terror organization is actually just a front for the global conspiracy spreading a deadly virus in a plot to tighten their power over the world's governments, and the terrorists while employing imperfect methods actually have a justifiable and noble goal. When encountering quartermaster Sam Carter (a former general, ironically) JC urges him to defect UNATCO along with him. Carter refuses arguing the only way the organization will survive is for the good people to say, to which Denton responds with

"What good's an honest soldier if he can be ordered to behave like a terrorist?"
- JC Denton, Deus Ex (2000)

With Leia Organa in the Star Wars franchise the shift from Princess Leia to General Leia hardly changed anything at all about her position (except if you buy into adoration of the monarchy being inferior to adoration of the military, I suppose). Given Carrie Fisher's age and reduction in prominence in the new trilogy it is hardly surprising, but nevertheless funny how her 'promotion' from princess to general seemingly causes her to be less active in solving conflicts. Meanwhile the new trilogy centers itself on a girl who due to being born with her great powers takes up the mantle as successor to Luke Skywalker (himself technically a prince).

Fa Mulan from Disney's Mulan (1998) avoids many of these pitfalls by virtue of the soldier aspect of her character arc not actually being a glorification of her rank or the military, but simply a stepping stone into figuring out who she really is. Throughout the movie Mulan is shown to be terrible at meeting imposed expectations as they are presented, both as a future bride and as a soldier. It is only when she applies her own cunning and creativity to a situation that she meets success. After all, she defeated Shan-Yu and the Hun army not by being the best soldier, but by explicitly ignoring orders, and the very act of being a soldier as a woman is a rebellious act in her society. Elizabeth Lim's Reflection (2018) at one point plays with the idea of Mulan being made a general in the Emperor's army, but nevertheless reinforces that Mulan's true self lies outside of the restrictions imposed by either being the perfect wife or the perfect tool for the Emperor.

The worth of the female general as a character archetype runs the risk of being less focused on the character's individual actualization, and more based on how well she performs in service of the person pulling her strings. The princess rebelling against her conditions vs the general simply being the best tool under her imposed conditions. Adoration of a defunct ruling system it was only loosely connected to in the first place vs adoration of a system currently wrecking the world. It seems like an odd thing to celebrate as an inherent improvement.

A Little Princess
(1917 illustration by Ethel Franklin Betts)

A Little Princess

A Little Princess (1905) by Frances Hodgson Burnett tells the story of Sara Crewe, daughter of the wealthy Captain Crewe. The girl is sent to a boarding school in England where she is given special treatment due to her father's status (even though she is heavily disliked by the jealous headmistress Miss Minchin). Despite her privilege, Sara is nevertheless kind, generous, smart, helps those in need, does not speak ill of those she dislikes and stands up to those who do wrong. She holds herself to that standard by pretending to be a princess, and believes every woman has the right to be a princess no matter their circumstances (which is a point very much missed by movie adaptations who retitle their version THE Little Princess).
"It 's true," she said. "Sometimes I do pretend I am a princess.
I pretend I am a princess, so that I can try and behave like one."- Sara Crewe

Unfortunately the story takes a dark turn when Sara's father dies (of brain fever after having lost a lot of money, because that was a thing in literature back then) and she loses all of her wealth, of which she is informed during her birthday party no less. Having no other family or guardian to turn to, Sara is forced to work for Miss Minchin as retribution for the cost of Sara's lavish lifestyle which now won't be reimbursed. She is routinely starved, abused, is given very poor clothing and has to live in a small uncomfortable attic. The true test of her character then becomes whether or not she can maintain her kind nature even through her unhappy circumstances, which of course she does.
"Whatever comes," she said, "cannot alter one thing. If I am a princess in rags and tatters, I can be a princess inside. It would be easy to be a princess if I were dressed in cloth of gold, but it is a great deal more of a triumph to be one all the time when no one knows it.- Sara Crewe

She continues to help those around her and although no longer having any status to back her up, she nevertheless retains her strong personality and refuses to bow down to people who are unkind to her. Which gives us passages like these where Miss Minchin is continuously on the receiving end of blows to her ego because Sara refuses to be cowed down by an abusive bully.
"What are you laughing at, you bold, impudent child?" Miss Minchin exclaimed.
It took Sara a few seconds to control herself sufficiently to remember that she was a princess. Her cheeks were red and smarting from the blows she had received.
"I was thinking," she answered.
"Beg my pardon immediately," said Miss Minchin.
Sara hesitated a second before she replied.
"I will beg your pardon for laughing, if it was rude," she said then; "but I won't beg your pardon for thinking."

Sara Crewe leans so close to the archetype of the Disney Princess that it astounds me Disney never tried to make their own version (although there have been several other adaptations, the most prominent recent one from 1995 starring Liesel Matthews and Vanessa Lee Chester). Even over thirty years before Snow White had her introduction, Sara Crewe already embodied the ideals of a princess far removed from the concept of adoration for the monarchy. True, Marie Antoinette is a personal idol to Sara, but always as inspiration on how to act both from a position of privilege or as downtrodden. Disney Princesses, even early ones such as Snow White and Cinderella, also embody the same quality of largess under duress. When not careful that can certainly turn into the much more unfortunate messaging of "take abuse with a smile" (the Cinderella (2015) live-action remake struggles with trying to answer why exactly she even stays with her abusive step-family and is rather clumsy about it), but by itself the strength to be kind under hard circumstances should not be mistaken for a character flaw whereas punching your way out of bad situations is always the supposedly "stronger" alternative. Sara's victories where she shows Miss Minchin for the petty and sad woman she really is wouldn't be nearly as satisfying without Sara's strong character.


Captain Marvel (2019)

Captain Marvel vs Rapunzel

Since both of them have blonde hair that occasionally glows, I at one point pictured Rapunzel in the Captain Marvel suit. Turns out I was not the only person who made that connection so I went to the Google machine to check on other people making fanart. Some of the content however seemed more based around the idea that Rapunzel was the tired old boring princess while Captain Marvel is the new exciting hotness (mirrored by some forget Disney Princesses headlines on Twitter). And that annoys me just a bit too much.

Now please do not mistake what follows as me hating Captain Marvel or Brie Larson, as seems to be the style around certain parts of the Internet that for some reason survive on daily videos on how awful both are. I have on multiple times called out people who have made hating on the movie their entire online presence. I like the movie (although the sound design left a lot to be desired and it ruined several crucial scenes) and I have no personal problems with Brie Larson. What I will be doing is take shots at how "inspiring" she supposedly is.

Captain Marvel was heavily marketed around Carol Danvers being the inspiration for the Avengers Initiative seen in chronologically later films (which the movie itself confirms, both by showing Nick Fury starting the project after having met her, and titling it after Carol's callsign), "Everything begins with (a) her(o)" being a prominent tagline. However the actual character seems to be a fairly standard power fantasy who is deemed inspirational because she punches harder than the other Marvel heroes. When learning that she has been brainwashed and aided genocide and spending half a movie indiscriminately murdering people who are only trying to survive, Carol Danvers seems more bothered that the Kree had the audacity of lying to her. Her turn to the good side comes at no personal cost since her powers make her unstoppable and her bond with the villains was never that strong to begin with, and everyone is suddenly okay with her switching sides even though she murdered their friends. Being on the good side feels less like something Carol works towards based on her conduct and more like something she is owed because she's the protagonist.
Meanwhile in the same universe we have Bucky Barnes who was brainwashed into becoming a HYDRA assassin. His response in Civil War to Captain America protecting his life is a regretful "I don't know if I'm worth all this, Steve" and his character is further defined by his self-loathing because he could still be made to commit atrocities.  Captain America himself, while no slouch in the ass-kicking department, is consistently characterized as being inspiring because he's just a skinny guy from Brooklyn who will do the right thing regardless of what it costs him (which in that regard actually makes Thanos his ideal shadow). His title of "captain" is almost ironic considering this military man spends more time loudly questioning and disobeying unjust orders than following them.
There's a montage of all the times in Carol's life when she stood back up after being knocked down, which is good but ultimately rather pointless to her character since she uses the memory to unlock powers that ensure she'll never be knocked down again. For Captain America his recurring "I can do this all day" scenes occur both before and after he gained his superpowers. For Carol adversity comes off as more of a hurdle that she has conquered and now doesn't have to deal with anymore.

It seems like what makes Captain Marvel inspiring is thus actually very shallow. She's powerful and her supersuit is full body. That's about it. That's not necessarily a problem and there's plenty of other male heroes whose morality seems be centered entirely on them, but it seems rather odd and hypocritical that one of the figures that's touted as progressive and inspiring has more in common with unstoppable 80's action heroes who today get called out for promoting toxic masculinity for precisely the reasons that make Captain Marvel admirable.

Tangled (2010)
Now let's take a look at Rapunzel from Disney's Tangled (2010). Rapunzel was kidnapped as a child and grew up locked away in a tower with her abusive kidnapper pretending to be her loving mother, who fed her anxiety and fear about the outside world. Nevertheless her dream of one day seeing the mysterious floating lights lighting up the night sky on her birthday up close (that unbeknownst to her are meant to guide her home) causes enough of an impetus for her to escape her tower and in he process learn that her kindly mother was actually the danger she was supposed to fear all along. So like Hunchback of Notre Dame, the core message of the movie is that some abusers will pretend to be your only supporters. Regardless of the fairy tale setting, that is insight many people need.
Rapunzel is also hardly a passive participant in her own movie. Despite her significant fear and anxiety about the outside world, she is the one actively planning her own escape (although originally planning for it to be temporary) while forcing the kingdom's greatest thief to be her guide. Practically every bad situation they find themselves in is the result of Flynn Rider's past catching up to him while he needs her help to get by.

See the idea that Disney Princesses only sing all day while waiting for their prince to save them is an odd cultural construct not actually present in the films (2). Rather the princess movies tend to be about girls and women trying to find their place in the world because their assigned roles are too restrictive. The prince "rescuing" them, rather than the woman in the tower being a reward for the brave knight, tends to be reframed as a cooperative effort because the characters are people and people occasionally need outside help. The Disney Princess, especially the modern variety, are more rounded people than the morally-questionable asskickers we are supposed to see as inspiring (and Frozen's criticism of Disney's earlier princess movies ends up subverting cliches that were already being subverted more effectively decades earlier, while itself actually falling trap to a bunch of them). The cultural messaging angle ends up being very odd: TOXIC MASCULINITY! But also women are only valuable if they are good at punching people.

This is exactly why I think many of the supposed good and subversive modern female role models are actually going to be judged very badly by history by the same types of people who side-eye the princess archetype right now. The one thing that isn't subverted are the insane standards that women are expected to meet, because only a select number of culturally-approved female characters meet them. The answer to this probably lies in a more balanced approach that accepts ALL kinds of character types without Regina Georging whatever lies within the very restrictive currently accepted norm. Burying historical achievements does a disservice to the people who fought for them. Remember, you might not think early Disney Princesses are especially empowering, but what about the fact that Disney Studios' Ink & Paint Department was entirely made up of women at a time when women were barely able to get jobs at all? Snow White as a character might not be the most progressive compared to our modern sensibilities, but EVERY FRAME of those early movies was touched by pioneer women. It does them a massive disservice to ignore that.

The Reluctant Dragon (1941)
Ink & Paint

Conclusion

The takeaway to all this should be one thing: like what you like or don't what you don't, but stop tearing down old female characters to build up new female characters in the name of social progress. Not only are you doing a disservice to the uphill battle those generations had to go through for that recognition, you also lose the high ground for future generations who will judge our generation just as harshly as we do previous ones. Furthermore you are limiting the range of available female roles and implicitly telling fans who are inspired by those kinds of characters that they are wrong for being so. Snow White is no less valuable as a woman because she's kind and occasionally frightened, Captain Marvel is not inherently a stronger character just because she punches harder, and the dialog surrounding it is very stifling.


Notes 

1) My bias here is that I personally I still see the value in having a permanent representative of the people overseeing a temporary elected government, and the symbolic aspect of a royal family promotes societal cohesion similar to religion without having to invoke the supernatural. I thus can see why constitutional monarchies where the monarch's bite is limited are still a valuable thing and not inherently bad. Just imagine the deterring effects it would have on egomaniacs such as Donald Trump if the US Presidency did not enjoy the acclaim of the position as the highest office (and which culturally still enjoys a certain unfortunate 'appointed by God' quality), but one that needs to account to a higher one.
2) Although Tangled is a Disney musical and as such songs are an intrinsic part of the movie, ironically the stereotype of the singing princess is given a very dark twist. Rapunzel was kidnapped because her hair has healing properties that are activated by a song, which Mother Gothel uses to stay young forever. In story-relevant instances of Rapunzel singing thus tends to be a form of abuse rather than whimsy.