The other night I finished a long day of work, came home, and decided to spend my evening watching The Swan Princess, and it was a fantastic decision.
I’ve loved this movie for a long time, so it had me smiling from the opening music notes and I enjoyed the cartoon from start to finish. But as someone trained to think critically about the media I’m consuming and pick apart stories, particularly fantasy stories aimed at kids, I had a lot of thoughts about this movie.
In thinking about the stories we tell little girls, the matter of agency is regularly brought up. We’ve presented a princess as a potential role-model, and we have ask ourselves “Is this princess a passive object in this story, or is she a protagonist in her own right? Who drives the action? What message are we sending to kids with this movie?”
Well… there’s good news and there’s bad news
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