The Princess Blog

There are many modern feminist adaptations of classic Shakespeare plays . One such movie is Rosaline , a comedic retelling of Romeo and Juliet  from the perspective of Juliet's jilted cousin from 2022. In 2018, Ophelia , a more serious take on Hamlet,  unveiled the perspective of Hamlet's ill-fated lover. Now, the concept of rewriting Shakespeare is taking over the Eastern world with the anime movie, Scarlet . This film is a creative and original feminist take on Hamlet , in which the titular character is gender-bent into a vengeful princess who traipses through the underworld in search of her wicked uncle. After witnessing her father's execution, Princess Scarlet is poisoned before she has the opportunity to enact her revenge. She wakes up in the underworld, where she undergoes a transformation into a warrior princess  and searches tirelessly for the undead spirits of her father and uncle. She encounters Hijiri, a paramedic from the modern world, who helps her see beyond...

In an age of endless  reboots  and  anti-princess culture ,  Hazbin Hotel  is one of the few original animated princess shows still running in Western media. It gets a pass for its irreverent humor and mature storytelling, in which Princess Charlie Morningstar's innocent nature provides a stark contrast to the demons and vengeful angels surrounding her. The second season of the show came to a close today, and I enjoyed it more than the first one, thanks to a more cohesive plot structure that analyzed the nuances between Heaven and Hell and the gray areas between good and evil. The backstories revealed for characters like Sir Pentious and Alastor are built into the main plot instead of feeling like the isolated vignettes from the first season. One element that particularly stood out to me for Season 2 is how Charlie's good deeds are twisted by Vox, who represents the corporate media. A large portion of the first few episodes is devoted to Charlie's desire to shar...

There is a certain visual style associated with girly media containing soft pastel color palettes, floral motifs, and lots of sparkles. Although this style hasn't been lost to us entirely, and is still prevalent in magical girl anime  it's never looked quite the same as it did in the late '80s and early '90s when it was first introduced. Maybe this is just nostalgia speaking, but the  soft, tranquil environments  of older cartoons never feel as relaxing as imagery from back then. The sharpness of HD resolution and modern CGI gets in the way of the fuzzy, dream-like feel of older cartoons. Even the wobbly, unrefined animation of older shows added to the charm in a way that we can't get today with crisp CGI models . Pictured above is Lady Lovely Locks , a cartoon series from 1987 that encapsulates the look and feel of feminine nostalgia. Though it had short episodes with a simplistic story, the visuals of this series and others like it inspired a generation of girly g...

Based on an Italian folktale called "Fanta-Ghiro the Beautiful,"   Fantaghirò,  or Cave of the Golden Rose  in the egregiously titled English version, is an iconic and beloved European franchise of movies and animation  from the '90s that perfectly embodies the shift from femininity to feminism that took place that decade. The series, which is practically unheard of outside of Europe, is essentially a Western version of Mulan  without the ambiguity of the main character's royal status . It follows a traditional "chosen hero's journey" archetype, with the twist being that the chosen hero is a woman born to a king who was desperately seeking a male heir. Fantaghriro disguises herself as a man to fight for her kingdom , falls in love with an enemy king, and ends the centuries-long war between their two kingdoms. Although elements of these films are hokey and don't always make sense, they take place in a high fantasy setting that provides many fairy t...

I was on the fence about reviewing the new Snow White  remake for a while, but since this is The Princess Blog, it's only fair . (See what I did there?) This movie has been the source of endless controversy over the past five years or so. Some of it was unfounded, particularly when it involved racist comments toward the lead actress , but some of it is justified. When the movie was first announced, I shared my thoughts about how the story of "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" has already been retold countless times by other studios in a way that modernized it with respect toward the original fairy tale and didn't step on Walt Disney's legacy. Creating a blatant copy of the first feature-length animated movie of all time  and taking away the one thing that made it special—the animation—is an insult to the animation medium as an art form. My stance on this has not changed, so here are my thoughts on this sham of a film. Ever since the backlash to Rachel Zegler...

A few days ago, Disney released the full soundtrack  of their controversial Snow White  movie that comes out this week. Among the multitude of new songs that have been added to the butchering of this classic film is one performed by Andrew Burnap called "Princess Problems."  This song has not been promoted nearly as much as the new "feminist" anthem, "Waiting on a Wish," and for good reason. With all the negativity surrounding this movie, anyone who sees the title of this song would have instant fodder to take it out of context and apply it to Disney directly, and they wouldn't be too far off. Disney does  have princess problems, but not the ones described in the song. A couple of weeks ago, Disney announced that they were ceasing production of their upcoming Tiana series , which had been in development hell for the past five years, upsetting many fans and even the voice actress for Tiana herself . The cause of this cancellation was their decision t...

It's no secret that modern anime tends to be derivative. Almost every new animated show from the East tells the story of a character reincarnated  into another world or a younger version of themselves. However, another trope, specifically among anime about royalty, has dominated the airwaves. Nearly every would-be anime princess in recent years begins her story with a broken engagement to a prince. This was the catalyst of everything from 2023's I'm Giving the Disgraced Noble Lady I Rescued a Crash Course in Naughtiness  to last year's 7th Time Loop: The Villainess Enjoys a Carefree Life Married to Her Worst Enemy and The Do-Over Damsel Conquers the Dragon Emperor . This season, a brand new show entitled I Want to Escape from Princess Lessons  follows in their footsteps. The series begins with a noble lady named Leticia forced into an arranged marriage with Prince Clarke. To prepare her for her future as a princess, her parents send her to the castle for private finish...

A Spark of Storms  by Susannah Welch is a gender-bent retelling of "Aladdin."  This is far from a new concept for me, so the obvious Disney influence on the cover was what first attracted me to this book. The Disney version of Aladdin  is very different from the original fairy tale. The author uses that story as inspiration and makes it her own in a clever way while building a female-empowered fantasy world that gives a strong start to her Heart of the Queendom series. Though the feminist messaging of this book is a little overstated, it aligns perfectly with the archetype of Princess Jasmine feeling trapped by her culture  and its treatment of women. In this case, it's a prince named Jaemin who feels trapped in a world where only female heirs can ascend the throne. Alanna is a street rat who uses her charms to manipulate those around her for her own survival. Her life takes a surprising turn when she is rescued by a mysterious pink-haired woman. Geeni, her rescuer...

Two new Broadway musicals featured Cinderella as a leading lady this year, and neither of them lasted for even four months on the Great White Way.  The first was Bad Cinderella , adapted from Andrew Lloyd Webber's short-lived Cinderella musical on the West End. The other was the Britney Spears jukebox musical, Once Upon a One More Time , which sounded like a bad idea from its inception. Both shows suffered from poor ticket sales, backstage drama, and criticism over the long-running trend of modernizing old fairy tales . Yet, the problem is not with the character of Cinderella herself , who has been a long-standing icon of fortune, romance, and glamour, but rather with the media's obsession of correcting popular stories to fit a standardized feminist narrative. After all, the most famous Cinderella musical, Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella , has enjoyed great success for many decades with numerous adaptations and revivals, one of which is allegedly still on the way . Be...

While princesses return to their storybook roots  and Hollywood goes on strike , one highly anticipated movie that encapsulates the face of pop culture today is hitting theaters: Barbie . One of the many things that sets this live-action adaptation of a previously animated property and toy line  apart from Disney's endless onslaught of live-action remakes is that this film is an original story that only uses the familiarity of its brand as a selling point. It isn't entirely original since similar concepts were used in Disney's 2007  Enchanted  and the 2000 made-for-TV movie,  Life-Size  that Tyra Banks as a living doll, but this is the first time that Barbie has ever been portrayed in the real world. Her many animated films and series, which are directed toward younger audiences, feature her living in a fantasy version of Malibu with her sisters or reenacting classic fairy tales, ballets, and other popular stories. This movie depicts Barbie learning about...

When I wrote my series of fairy tale origin posts , one major story that I skipped was "Sleeping Beauty."  It wasn't because I didn't care for this story as much as the others, but instead that it had a less complex narrative of changing with the times . In fact, this fairy tale is so simple that no matter how many updates modern adaptations incorporate, it is rarely altered so drastically from its roots to the point of being unrecognizable,  except in the case of a ridiculous 2016 horror movie called The Curse of Sleeping Beauty . Of all the movies I argued against depicting the theme of "Be pretty, girls, and things might work out,"   Sleeping Beauty  is the biggest outlier. It is probably for this reason that it is the only Disney Princess movie that did not get a direct live-action remake , but instead a creative reimagining with Maleficent , which focused on the more active villain than the mostly passive princess. Determining how much Sleeping Beauty h...

Just when I thought I'd put this discussion to rest, a New York Times article  went viral a couple days ago that did a profile on Sean Bailey , the main in charge of Disney's long-running slate of live-action remakes . According to the author of the article, Brooks Barnes , Bailey's remakes are "crucial to [Disney] remaining relevant" because the animated classics they cover "showcase ideas from another era" such as "Be pretty, girls, and things might work out."  Really? That's all you got out of these inspirational works of art?  Are we doing this again ? It looks like we're doing this again .  Let's start with the next upcoming live-action remake,  Snow White , starring  Rachel Zegler . Some might argue that this movie is  a good example  of one that needs an update because so much of the story is focused on the protagonist's physical appearance. Is that really what saved her in the end? Nope. Not at all. In fact, the queen...

For this year's National Princess Week , I am reopening a new discussion on an old topic. If you haven't read my "Damsel in Distress" Stigma post  from when I started this blog five years ago, I recommend starting there. ( Has it really been five years? ) Since then, it seems like the decline of femininity in mainstream media has gotten increasingly worse. Every new princess is either a Mary Sue warrior princess clone or a "corrected" version of a relatable flawed character from our childhood. Once upon a time, the damsels in distress were the characters we rooted for onscreen, but now they are us, the regular flawed human audience who need to be rescued from poor storytelling. Let's start with the most anticipated upcoming movie, Disney's remake of The Little Mermaid . The original 1989 animated film is my favorite movie of all time, and Ariel will always be my favorite princess. She is a vivacious and energetic redhead who rescues her own prince...