#Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs age regression

[eflen-n-reegee]

Caregiver Snow White Headcanons (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs)

She’s not “superstitious” in the traditional sense, but she’s very big on wishes. Birthday candles, shooting stars, dandelions - any opportunity she gets, she encourages you to make a wish.

She is very easily amused by your antics, and loves to indulge your silliness.

With that said, she does insist you clean up after yourself and mind your manners

She often takes you walking in the woods, and helps you find funny faces in the trees.

As long as you’re with her, animals will come up and let you pet them.

She always encourages you to look on the bright side.

She bakes you plenty of tasty treats.

She loves picking wildflowers and will teach you to make flower crowns.

She completely understands that silly things can sometimes be very frightening, and helps you find ways to cope with your fears.

She does her best to ensure you’re always smiling, because a smile can make even the hardest situations a little easier.

[littleprinceofequestria]

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

[bai-xue]

RISE OF THE DISNEYFACE: an illustrated essay

Alright so there’s something that has been irking me about current CGI Disney movies - specifically female character design - and I finally put my finger on it.

Current Disney heroines are suffering from a disease that I, for lack of a better term, call ‘Disneyface.’ Original, I know.

Commencing rant essay beneath the cut.

Anyway, to pinpoint the issues I have with Disney’s current female character design, I traced features of heroines from both traditionally animated Disney movies (Princess and the Frog and back) and current CGI Disney movies (Tangled and onward). For the sake of consistency, I limited myself to heroines that were post-pubescent and (bar one) human. I also limited myself just to Disney-produced films, excluding Disney-Pixar films.

For clarity I traced only four features: 1) facial outline; 2) eye shape - including that which is covered by eyelids; 3) nose bridge; and 4) curve of their smile. I’m not going into hairline, nostril shape, lip shape, brow-line, etc, simply because I do not have that kind of time nor patience. I’m pretty much just focusing on the base models here.

Please note: this is in no way a statement on the overall merit of any particular Disney movie. There are some CGI Disney movies that are excellent, and there are some traditional Disney movies that are ‘meh’ at best.

ANYWAY.

Here are the traced ‘traditional’ heroines. If you want, see if you can identify them based on those traced features alone (please excuse the inevitable Uncanny Valley).

Even if you couldn’t tell who was who, it’s pretty clear that there are major differences, right? We have round faces, square faces, diamond faces, pointy noses, snub noses, even a bent nose bridge. There’s also pretty much every size and shape of eyeball. Their smiles are everything from a gentle curve to a v-shape, both wide and small.

Here are the heroines!

Meanwhile, let’s do the same with our modern CGI Disney heroines. Again, see if you can differentiate them.

If you could, damn, you’ve got a good eye, because these heroines have a whole lot in common: oval or soft diamond faces, gentle nose bridges, gigantic round eyes, and wide, gently curved smiles.

Yes, even Moana.[1]

Even Judy is suffering from Disneyface, and she’s a rabbit.

Anyway, you might be saying, “Karen, that’s not fair! Those traditionally animated films are from a span of 60+ years[2] while all the CGI films are from the span of 14 years at best!”[3]

Well, let’s have a look here. If we round up to 15 years (for my non-math-brain’s sake) between Tangled and Moana with the above span of base model variety, what are the base model varieties within other Disney eras, and how much variety occurred within 15 years?[4]

Well, let’s start with the Silver Age, from which I’ve drawn three samples. Between Cinderella and 101 Dalmatians, there is a ~13 year overlap.[5] Within those thirteen years, we get these three post-pubescent human heroines:

Admittedly, there’s not too much variety here. All our heroines have diamond faces, small-to-medium eyes, and delicately pointed noses. Anita’s mouth, however, has a distinctive v-shape, and her eyes are rounder than Cinderella’s or Aurora’s, likely reflecting the more ‘hands off’ approach that Uncle Walt took due to his failing health during the animating process.

Next, we have the Disney Renaissance, from which I’ve drawn the majority of my samples. The Disney Renaissance has a ~12 year overlap.[6]

Here we have an explosion of stylistic variety, which in part is the source of the ‘Renaissance’ label. Along with it comes a wide variety of base models for our heroines: round faces, angular faces, all shapes and sizes of noses and eyes. The mouths range from medium sized to large, most with gentle curves, though Megara’s also has a distinctive v-shape.

“Okay, Karen,” you may be saying, “that’s all fine and good, but what about the post-Renaissance?”[7] The post-Renaissance focused mostly on male characters and animal characters as human heroines moved into the background, but we do have Kida and Tiana, two WoC heroines who have very different features.

If you really want to stretch the definition of heroine, you could also include Nani from Lilo & Stitch (again, we’re not including Lilo as she’s pre-pubescent and thus designed very differently from a post-pubescent character).

Again, we have a wide variety of face shapes from a span of ~13 years.[8] Kida and Tiana both have diamond-shaped faces, while Nani has a round face. Both Tiana and Nani have snubbed noses, while Kida has one of the more unique nose shapes of Disney’s heroines. Tiana’s smile is a gentle curve, but Kida and Nani both have smiles that have nearly no curve. Their eyes are all unique, from Nani’s almond eyes to Tiana’s round eyes to Kida’s almost square eyes.

So what’s the deal here, Disney?

With an overall span of ~15 years – a wider span than any of the traditionally animated films of their unique eras – the Disney Revival has shown considerably less variation, even among its WoC characters.

I have to refer here to @lindsayetumbls, who somewhat touched upon this general trend in her excellent video essay The Rise of the Eyebrow. Disney found a formula that sells and went with it. And man, does it sell. You can’t go to the corner store without tripping over something with Elsa’s face slapped on it.

Essentially, Disney has decided that profitable models – including animation models – are more valuable than artistic originality.

“That’s natural!” you might be saying. “They’re a company! They’re going to go with what they know will attract crowds.”

Except that the Disney Renaissance, the period in which we see the most variety in our heroine’s base models, was also an incredibly profitable period. People still watch those movies, still buy massive amounts of Disney Renaissance merch, and still lose their minds when they meet Princess Jasmine in Disney World. Those movies are lasting, and will last, and will continue to make Disney heaps and heaps of cash.

I’m not an expert in the animation industry, but all this basically makes me think it comes down to artistic laziness in terms of female design. They have a female model that sells, and they are too lazy to further explore heroine design as they embark on their experimentation with CGI. There are convincing arguments about Disney’s stories becoming more progressive in regards to their heroines, but their actual design of those female characters is regressing as the studio chooses to pour their energy into special effects over female representation.

Anyway, tl;dr and yet again quoting Lindsay:

Wow it’s annotated!

[1] Again, I’ve heard Moana is excellent (haven’t had a chance to see it yet), and kudos to Disney for branching out ethnically. She has other features that set her apart (nostril shape, brow thickness, lip shape) but her base model is still suffering from a malignant case of Disneyface.

[2] Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs went into production in 1934 and premièred in 1937; Princess and the Frog went into development in 2006 and came out in 2009, giving an overlap of ~75 years and proving how bad I am at mathematical estimates.

[3] Tangled went into production in 2002 and came out in 2010; Moana went into production in 2011 and came out in 2016, giving an overlap of ~14 years from Tangled to Moana.

[4] Aka the Disney Revival, which is all CGI except for Princess and the Frog, but more on that in note 7.

[5] Cinderella began production in 1948 and was released in 1950; 101 Dalmatians began production in ~1959 and came out in 1961.

[6] The Little Mermaid began production in 1987 and was released in 1989; Tarzan began production in 1995 and was released in 1999.

[7] I’m lumping Princess and the Frog into the post-Renaissance because I can; also it’s kind of an anomaly in more than one way in terms of production etc etc and more a remnant of the post-Renaissance’s nostalgia than an actual product of the Revival.

[8] Atlantis went into production in 1996 and came out in 2001; Princess and the Frog started production in 2006 and was released in 2009.