I’ve long been aware of a significant gap in my Disney filmography; I’ve never seen many of the “Disney Princess” films: Beauty and the Beast, Little Mermaid, Pocahontas, Princess and the Frog, or Tangled. Kiddo was astonished at this fact and immediately put the Little Mermaid on to watch this morning.
I’d seen Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and Cinderella when I was young — along with other Disney kids’ movies like Dumbo, Pinocchio, and Bambi, but I had long outgrown that style of animated feature by the time Little Mermaid came out (1989). I did, however, see Aladdin in theatres with a group of friends when it came out in 1992 but Jasmine was not exactly a stand-out character for that film, so I didn’t consider it terribly “princessy.”
When Kiddo was in the target age group for Disney Princesses (which became its own product line around 1999-2000, thanks to Andy Mooney and Disney’s marketing arm) she showed no interest — I even brought them home from the public library to watch but she’d watch and re-watch the Bill Nye and other science and nature videos instead.
Somewhere along the line, I had bought Mulan — it had come out not long before she was born, so it was still easy to find in stores (not locked away in the Disney Vault) — and tried watching it with her but she showed little interest. According to Disney marketing, Mulan doesn’t count as a princess, anyway.
Eventually, she watched most of them with her cousins and even owns a few of them, but I never caught up and didn’t feel I needed to. I was actually thankful that my daughter wasn’t obsessed with the princess dolls, costumes, and other paraphernalia wrapped in pink and lavender packaging. I was content that I knew the words to the Zaboomafoo theme but not “Under the Sea.” I’m not even going to get into the whole gender-separation of the toy line.
However, now that we are past that “again, again!” age, we can start filling in the Disney princess gaps — but I am going to try and fill her in on my favourite teen movies and “chick flicks” in return.
While writing this post, we watched the Little Mermaid, so now I have seen it…. one down, several more to go…
Photo Credits: Princess Gathering CC-BY Jennie Park on Flickr and Disney DVD Collection CC-BY-NC Barb Watson on Flickr.
