Well, yet another faketroversy (i.e., a fake controversy) has arisen. People are apparently outraged - outraged! - that different artists had slightly different views of character design.
One can find details, along with explanatory pictures, here and here.
I do not much claim to be either a connoisseur of either Disney Princess products, sexualized children’s cartoon characters, or overly-picky parenting. I did not much like the movie, but it was OK for an afternoon flick. I do, however, note several things.
(1) This is an extremely slight change.
(2) The 3D version of Merida was highly stylized, and extremely rounded in ways which would look out place next to anything else, because the movie she was in used an extremely rounded, “solid” aesthetic which I suppose was customized to work with 3D.
(3) Aside from having some sparkly clothes, the “new” Merida more or less captures the “old” Merida in terms of character.
(4) I’m sorry, but “sexualized”? Really? In the canon movie, Merida is supposed to be of age to get married and start her own merry band of feuding Scotsboys. And she’s supposed to be attractive enough that wedding her isn’t exactly considered a fate worse than death among her suitors. The actual image is about as non-sexualized as a female human between puberty and menopause can get.
(5) Who in the name of Satan’s Sweaty Jockstrap thought this was important enough to complain about?
The new one is more off the shoulder, and so, yes, a bit sexier than the old one. They could have added the sparklies w/o the off the shoulder look. That being said, I’m not concerned one way or the other.
You’re wrong. As the father of a seven year old girl who already has friends who talk bad about the “chubby girl” and who has already worried about her “big belly” (she’s about to grow and so is naturally putting on a little weight - and it’s a very little weight, she’s 10th percentile in weight) and who is still into the Disney Princesses, this shit matters. Why make the change? As you said in the OP, she easily could have been made more “sparkly” without the wardrobe and (especially) body changes. Disney fucked up on this one.
Complaints I’ve seen include the off-the-shoulder dress, the visible cleavage, the removal of the bow and quiver, the curvier figure, and the hair that looks artfully luxuriant instead of a big curly mop.
I personally don’t care about Disney’s marketing choices for its incredibly-profitable Princess line, but I did see Brave and to me, the “new Merida” really doesn’t look like the same person as the movie character. She could easily be Merida’s older and more sophisticated cousin, but she’s not Merida.
Losing the bow and wearing a less practical clothing style also seem somewhat antithetical to Merida’s character. An off-the-shoulder dress that limits your arm movements and feels less secure? I can just imagine how the Merida of the movie would have reacted to that.
AFAICT, a lot of parents of girls liked Merida largely because of her preference for the practical over the alluring. She’s active, interested in physical achievement, impatient of inconvenience and restriction, and not yet interested in boys at all. I can see how turning her into just another Disney Princess pin-up girl would piss some people off.
But not sexually mature enough to want to get married, or to be romantically interested in boys at all. Her betrothal ceremony in the movie is portrayed as a rigidly conventional imposition of a traditional and very limited gender-bound role on a girl who doesn’t want it and isn’t ready for the compensations it provides in terms of romantic fulfillment.
According to your own link, the director of the movie, for one. I can sort of see why she might have an opinion on the matter.
Eh, as far as I was thinking about the people complaining: if you’re worried about role models for your daughters, perhaps you should look beyond the Disney princesses in the first place. If you’re going to buy into that commercialized, highly-marketed crap, then, well, deal with it. There are other female role models out there.
I usually roll my eyes at those who are outraged, OUTRAGED about everything, but I can kind of see their point here. The curly mop and the hardier, more rugged style was part of Merida’s charm, I think (never saw the movie, my daughter is 14 and was never into Disney anyway).
But I am guessing it was those things about Merida that set her apart from the other princesses and the moms are just using their voices to be counted and say, we like her the other way, if you like our dollars, fix it. I guess I can see that.
Seems exceedingly minor to me but then I wasn’t going to buy a Merida lunchbox or makeup set or whatever they slap these princesses on anyway. So I guess that, as dumb as it sounds to me, those with some stake in the matter might as well have their little freak-out and change Disney’s mind.
Maybe it was way different and I just don’t realize it but I don’t remember all this commotion about Mulan not running around with a sword or sporting a hacked-off bob.
Disney has not “pulled” Merida. According to your own links, all they have done is removed the curvier, more glamorous redesign images from the Disney Princess website section for Merida and replaced them with images from (or at least in the style of) the actual movie.
From what I gather from various friends with young daughters, the problem is that Disney princesses loom so overwhelmingly, inescapably large in entertainment and popular culture, via advertising, merchandising, and just general cultural saturation.
No matter how progressive and supportive you are about female empowerment, you can’t really lock your daughter in a closet for all of her elementary-school years in order to spare her the constant social pressures to conform to traditional gender roles. Little girls are almost inevitably going to get a fair bit of eye-and-ear time with Disney princesses, and many parents liked the way that Brave and Merida broadened that category to include a character who was much less sexualized and less male-focused than the typical princess.
It’s a lower-volume reaction, but yes, there are persistent complaints about, for example, Disney marketing showing Mulan only in her ceremonial pink hanfu even though the Mulan of the movie disliked both the garment and the limited gender-bound choices it symbolized.
I don’t have daughters to worry about being influenced, and I haven’t even seen the movie. But I always find it a little disappointing when something that’s a bit off the beaten path gets tossed into the “let’s make it look like everything else” machine.
Sure, this is all true. But when every single one of your daughter’s playmates are Disney Princesses’ nuts, that can be a huge issue that they don’t really understand. They want to bond with their friends, enjoy the socially accepted idea of pretty icons, feast on something plentiful because that shit is everywhere, and be able to take the steps to being a “big girl” that their favorite characters do. If they are sexualized, the girls only begin to grok as they grow older. It definitely can be a problem, especially on how it translates later.
The free market in action. People liked the original character design in the movie and didn’t like the new glammed-up version. So they told Disney and Disney listened to their customers.
If you like the sparkly version so much, maybe you should start a campaign to keep her.
I have a daughter and I don’t consider exposing her to something outside of the Disney canon as “locking her up in a closet.” Why not give her other books to read or movies to watch so she has a choice outside of Disney? You know, expand her horizons. I think it’s fairly limiting if all you think is out there are Disney characters. Brave was a movie, that movie still exists as is. The image that Disney is going to use is the one that is going to maximize their profits when they slap it on cheap merchandise. If they think sexualizing their character will make them money, they will do that. If they think the image of a strong female will sell, they’ll market that. If my kid enjoys Disney characters, that’s fine, but I don’t expect Disney to empower my child, they just want to profit from her. It’s up to me to help my child to choose positive role models, not Disney to provide them.
Of course parents do give their daughters other books and movies, even (or perhaps especially) the ones who have been complaining about the Merida makeover. Nobody is claiming that there’s nothing “out there” except Disney characters.
Once again, the issue here is not that there doesn’t exist any “choice outside of Disney”, but rather that Disney has massively more cultural saturation and influence than the other choices do. Little girls are almost certainly going to be much more exposed to Disney princesses than to any non-mainstream or niche children’s entertainment.
Correct. Which is why a number of people who want the character to keep the image of a non-sexualized strong female are going to the trouble of letting Disney know what they want. In other words, they are attempting to influence Disney’s marketing strategy by being vocal about their consumer preferences.
Why exactly do you have a problem with that?
Sure. So what’s wrong with using some consumer pressure to nudge Disney in the direction of providing what you consider positive role models?
Is Disney’s marketing strategy some sort of sacred natural order that it’s impious for ordinary consumers to meddle with? Why are you exhorting parents to just shut up and leave Disney alone if they don’t like its marketing decisions? What’s wrong with consumers peacefully and politely encouraging Disney to change its marketing decisions?
The extent to which some people seem to feel it’s somehow unseemly or unsporting for consumers to join forces to criticize a business’s policies never fails to baffle me. It’s as though you think consumers are supposed to be nothing but wallets with free will, who may choose to purchase or refrain from purchasing but must do so in silence.