the disney dialectic (or) are you part of this world? what can we learn about romantic love from the disney movies? many guys i know blame disney for creating images of "happily ever after" and relationship/marital bliss just because everyone says that. but these guys never stop to really think about what they are saying. they don't stop to examine whether or not this "saying" is actually factually grounded and not just heresay. is it right to blame disney? are we ourselves to blame for not living up to the cartoons that undoubtedly are solely responsible for our female counterparts' ridiculous ideas and expectations for true love? let us see shall we? off to never never land. or under the sea. or whatever.



in the beginning, there were three disney movies that set every little girl's heart a flutter: snow white and the seven dwarfs, cinderella, and sleeping beauty. i tend to think of these three as the "kiss me, kiss me now" trilogy. in each story, the beautiful heroine suffers through a devastating fate (always at the hands of an older woman) and can only be saved by "true love's first kiss." the men in these stories are faceless and anonymous. they just ride pretty horses and come crashing in at the end to save the girl. do you even remember the faces or names of any of the princes? i doubt it. but yet the princes fight and search and hack and slash and do everything in their power to kiss a girl they hardly even know. does this even sound reasonable? actually, guys try to do this at clubs all the time, i've seen them (no names, no names) but i'm guessing these guys aren't quite in the saving business. moving on...



the main emotional support the pretty little female thing receives is from the little critters (i'm calling mice, dwarves, and faeries "critters" for sake of convenience) that surround her and encourage her. based on all of this, little girls everywhere expected to suffer through some adversity, buoyed along by chatty friends and family, and then get swept off their feet by a prince charming. thus began the fall of romantic man, because it made little girls think that men should be doing the sweeping, while conveniently forgetting the notion that it's women who should always be doing the cleaning. yeah, there’s more to these stories than just love alright? there’s lots of dirt too. "hi cinderella, nice stain on your smock." somehow girls lost sight of that.



note that in this trilogy, none of the critters doubt, even once, if the prince is the right one for their cherished prize. in fact, the critters are just dying to send her happily on her way, with no idea what the prince is really like. they think that as long as he looks right on paper, off you go to be a princess! this sort of mentality is not healthy, as you girls now know in our modern day world of frogs posing as princes. use your friends' judgements, don't think of your friends as annoying squeaky critters, even when they are just that.



after those three movies, there is, for some reason, a serious gap in-between disney's creation of animated love stories. the time spanning the end of sleeping beauty and the beginning of little mermaid was a dozen movies and thirty years. check the list, i ain't lying. what was disney doing all this time? they were sitting back watching their "there is a prince charming for each one of you lassies" ideal screw men over. continually, for like thirty decades. then they said, "we are low on cash, why not make some more movies and showcase more ways to screw guys over, then we will be rich again." and so that's what they did. with now nineties twists.



little mermaid follows the same basic formula as the "kiss me trilogy": girl with problems, prince serves as solution, evil older woman stands between her and happiness, helpful critters. but the biggest change here is that ariel is not in danger of dying or sleeping -- indeed, she is quite lively and spunky throughout the movie. she is also, clearly, not a helpless girl just waiting for her prince charming to rescue her. she actually turns the tables on tradition and rescues him. stunning. and furthermore, even after the rescue mission, she is very proactive in her pursuit of her prince. little girls of the soon to be spiced up nineties learn from the little mermaid that it's okay to go chase after the guy you want. attribute this progress to the feminist movement that flowered during disney's downtime. go go feminism.



it is also important to note that ariel's barrier to true love is the loss of her voice. none of the other heroines from the prevoius films had anything taken away from them, they were just battling an evil queen-stepmother-aunt. evil ursula takes away only one thing from ariel, and gives her a chance to win -- once again, empowering the damsel in distress. but ursula is sneaky, she does not take away ariel's bodacious body (because that would just be asking too much) but her voice, daring ariel to seduce a man with everything but her ability to speak and thus, her brain. little girls learn here that despite their abilty to remain awake (unlike ms white, ms beauty), the more they keep silent, the more chances that he'll think i'm mysterious and that he'll like me. so now they dress in ugly ass tube tops and show off their bodies and try to hooch a guy while sounding vapid and empty. that ursula, she did you girls wrong. but yet you continue to attire yourselves according to her fashion sense? why why?



the other dramatic shift in the little mermaid was the way it finally allows us to see the male character. he has a decent personality, a cute dog, a romantic side, an aural rendition of his true love. we are finally given the male's perspective on this where is my love scenario. we know that the guy is longing for the girl just as much as she is longing for him. this sounds pretty good right? girls like to see that right? but then what happens? eric chooses the wrong girl! the prince is stupid enough to choose the wrong girl based on her voice, and he doesn't even follow his feelings through for ariel because he's convinced that the one with the voice is the one he must marry. he does not follow his heart, but his brain. this reinforces the new disney paradigm, "boys are dumb". even the dog knows ariel is the one true love. dogs may be man's best friend but it's a toss up as to which one is smarter. this is what disney is telling the new generation of little girls. this is why girls like dogs, because in lieu of a smart man, they'll take a smart dog. am i right?



with the outstanding success of the the little mermaid, disney decides to produce seven straight movies about love. a sort of golden age for disney love animation if you will. but as you will soon see, it is not a golden age but rather, the indestructible nail in the coffin for man and his potential relationship with woman.



after establishing that men are dumb asses with the little mermaid, what does disney do next? they tell girls that not only are guys stupid, but they're ugly too -- not to mention objects of ridicule. evidence: animated movies thirty (beauty and the beast) and thirty four (hunchback of notre dame). in a way, this is a good thing. it gives ugly guys a chance everywhere, disney is subtly saying that the girls who can fall in love with the ugly guys are really better than the rest of the superficial bitches out there. go disney! it is no coincidence that michael eisner and jeffrey katzenberg, not exactly handsome men, were in charge of disney at this time. i could even argue that the physical statures of eisner and katzenberg were comparable to the shape and dimensions of the beast and the hunchback respectively, but i won't go there. if anything, i applaud their ingenuity. if i made movies for an impressionable female audience, i would for damn sure make films that contained messages promoting myself as a superior object of affection. still, no matter how you swing it, the message of these two films is that men are ugly.



the message doesn't get any better with disney's other movies. some sample messages promoted by the other golden age disney films. aladdin, men are poor and beneath your station in life, you deserve better. pocahontas, men are ignorant, bigoted and have ethnic fetish. mulan, girls, you can do anything a guy can do and you can do it better. tarzan, men are essentially uncultured animals. the lion king, um, i dunno. the point here is, disney is not only presenting girls with a fantastic, impossible to duplicate, love story (the kiss me trilogy), but then they say, "the only way you can be happy is to dumb down your expectations and accept a man with flaws". hum, wait, why is this bad again? i don't know. it just is okay? i think i've just contradicted myself. but i object to "love equals accepting flaws" and this is exactly the thing disney is promoting with its later movies. boo.



another important thing that disney has pounded into the heads of our potential female loves is that guys better come good and heavy with that first kiss or they probably aren't worth it. everything in most of these disney movie true loves is centered around the magic of that first kiss. and we all know how importantly women weigh first kisses now, it's no coincidence. fellas, if you're a bad kisser, go brush up your technique and your mouth and maybe then you'll have a chance. otherwise, see you later, not even direct to video type of later.



so, what choices are we left with here? guys can either choose to be the faceless anonymous prince that has to fight to rescue the girl (totally unrealistic), or we can be stupid, ugly, ignorant, poor and have to grovel for the love of one (un)lucky lass. which will it be? either way, it seems like a lot of effort on the guys part doesn't it? i certainly don't have the stamina for sword swinging or groveling, do you? i say relax, kick back, watch something wholesome for your romantic life, like striptease. don't let disney get you down. guys, lock up access to these disney movies, keep them away from females under the age of eighty. then the world will be a better place for men. don't you agree?



let us end on this aesopian note. take another classic disney love story, lady and the tramp. everyone loves this movie, it's pure romance pared down to its humble roots. what lesson can we learn from this timeless tale? men and women are both dogs. deal with it. the end. and happily ever after.