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otnesse · 6 years

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Might as well post this regarding Linda Woolverton based on something that she said a little while back.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-linda-woolverton-alice-through-the-looking-glass-20160523-snap-story.html

In particular, something she said in the article really irritated me, which is the following in regards to the so-called Disney Princess culture:

"'I grew up in that princess culture,' Woolverton said. 'I remember feeling very incensed that the men would retire to the library and talk about interesting things and the women and girls were supposed to be over here baking and sewing. We weren't supposed to be thinkers or philosophers.'"

Okay, first of all, Woolverton, I'm pretty sure that is NOT the Princess culture (in fact, technically, the Disney Princess culture didn't even EXIST at the time she's referring to, as the only three movies that existed of Disney Princesses were Snow White, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty. The Little Mermaid had yet to exist, let alone Beauty and the Beast and others, heck, the idea of an interconnected franchise regarding those characters like Disney Princess was not even an idea yet.). In fact, I don't recall it EVER being implied in the movies that women were not supposed to be thinkers or philosophers at all. Far from it, Cinderella at least was actually shown to have studied history if her naming one of the mice after Emperor Octavian, or more accurately, his nickname of Gus, is of any indication. So don't conflate your experiences with the princess culture.

Which brings me up to my next point: Don't imply that what you described was even widespread enough to be a culture, or that women during that time weren't allowed to be thinkers or philosophers, or even allowed to enter libraries. Sure, maybe YOU have personal experience regarding that bit, but that doesn't mean it was even remotely widespread enough to qualify as a culture, since it's unlikely that most common Americans at the time, heck, most common Californians even, had that experience you did (or various people in the world, for that matter). Actually since it was mentioned earlier in that article that during her childhood she learned to tie knots on the family's 45-foot boat and often went sailing there, she's actually closer to one of the more wealthy citizens of America at that time, meaning that DEFINITELY wasn't a common occurrence among mainstream America (for example, my parents weren't exactly slouches in terms of income or being well-off when they were children, with my dad being the son of a traveling businessman and being raised in Edina, Minnesota, and my mom being the daughter of a traveling Baseball announcer who settled down while still young at Massachusetts. However, not even THEY could afford during that time a 45-foot boat to travel the Atlantic coast or even one of the lakes of Minnesota.), or even the world for that matter. At most, this was just something your own family had as a social rule.

And here's the final point on the matter (and I learned of this yesterday): From what I gather, it was common among the upper class at the time that, around the time of dinner, the men retreat to the library in order to talk about stuff like baseball and other topics, while the women often separated to take care of dinner prep. It had more to do with a social rule among the elites, one that wasn't even embraced by all (not that my Dad's family was anywhere near the upper class, but he had a similar story: During dinner parties, the kids were often separated from the adults when they had conversations, mostly because the subject matter was simply not stuff the kids would have had the emotional maturity to deal with). Even assuming she had an actual legitimate grievance towards it, there was technically never anything stopping her from, say, actually entering the library. Sure, it's unorthodox, and not quite approved of by her class, but it's not like she'll get punished AFAIK by her parents like she would for, say, breaking curfew or refusing to clean up a mess, or that she'd get arrested for that.

I don't mind strong females by any stretch (heck, my #1 DP, Ariel, is plenty strong. And I'm also a fan of Misty from Pokémon and Samus from Metroid, both of whom were very strong females), but Linda Woolverton's attempts at strong females I do not approve of at all, especially not when she is trying to push the radical feminist agenda (and let's face it, her view of feminism and what she tried by her own admission to push onto children IS radical, from bashing the concept of marriage to such an extent in BATB that she effectively implied in the film that it was a woman's worst nightmare and that any woman who even remotely supported marriage in any way was some brainless bimbo who only falls for the town hunk, to basically bashing men by depicting them as either villains, incompetent, or doofuses like she did in BATB and Maleficent. Heck, even speaking as someone who actually has respect for the Beast, I have to admit she definitely had him poorly handled, especially in the ending where he was unable to do ANYTHING to save himself or even his servants when they were attacked, something that he was at least perfectly capable of in his old ways, unless Belle was physically present, as if Belle just castrated him.). And quite frankly, I thought you ruined Beauty and the Beast with your insistence of using that to push the feminist agenda, like Paul Verhoeven did with his pushing an anti-War agenda in Starship Troopers. Belle didn't come across as having true beauty within, and if anything those triplet sisters came far closer to that mark (to say little about their outer beauty). And there was literally nothing in common with the original tale (either version) save for the bit about Beast being cursed and her father encountering him. I'm sorry, but even the Disney version of The Little Mermaid was a lot more faithful to the source material than BATB is, and that's the one that got complained about being ruined by Disney for a changed ending (a changed ending's nothing to literally most of the entire plot being rewritten to such an extent that it came across as an in-name-only adaptation, the latter of which was BATB's problem.). Yes, several Disney films before then had significant rewrites as well, some even going as far as to be in-name-only adaptations but most of that was either due to time constraints (such as Snow White cutting out the poisoned comb bit) or otherwise trying to tone down the material due to the source material otherwise being too inappropriate for the age bracket to do a direct adaptation (eg, The Jungle Book). BATB was the first film to literally rewrite the whole film from the story it adapted from for the sake of pushing a socio-political agenda onto the masses, onto children even. And I wouldn't call that a good thing. To add insult to injury, you arguably insulted the original authors of the tale, Villeneuve and Beaumont, by having the story effectively imply that Belle was not only the only one of the village who was literate, but that she was an outcast for that reason especially due to her being female. Quite frankly, the only reason that jerk is working at Disney is thanks to Jeffrey Katzenberg insisting on a feminist twist to the story after critics complained that Ariel was "cloyingly sexist" just for the fact that she even wanted to go for Eric at all (completely ignoring, of course, that Ariel had already shown badass credentials in the very opening scene where she managed to encounter a shark and beat it, not to mention was explicitly shown to have an interest in humanity to such an extent that she already WANTED to become human long before even being aware of Prince Eric's existence, let alone meeting him face to face, or the fact that she, you know, saved Eric at least twice, and Eric returning the favor himself about that same amount.). I'd even go so far as to argue that, thanks to Katzenberg and this decision, that was the start of Disney shedding its wholesome family values reputation in favor of pushing leftist agendas that is currently plaguing the company right now.

#anti-LindaWoolverton; LindaWoolverton

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