Tangled

March 9, 2010 3:55 PM

Disney restyles "Rapunzel" to appeal to boys. Disney is wringing the pink out of its princess movies. After the less-than-fairy-tale results for its most recent animated release, "The Princess and the Frog," executives at the Burbank studio believe they know why the acclaimed movie came up short at the box office. Brace yourself: Boys didn't want to see a movie with "princess" in the title. Dear Disney: Boys Aren't Stupid, but renaming "Rapunzel" is.
posted by crossoverman (118 comments total)

...the studio retools its next animated feature to lose the girly taint.

I hope they get lousy results from this, overreact, and name their next movie "The Girly Taint".
posted by gurple at 3:58 PM on March 9, 2010 [29 favorites]

Wow, I just heard my stock price fall. Nice trick.
posted by strixus at 4:10 PM on March 9, 2010 [1 favorite]

It would not surprise me to find an adult feature with that name already gurple...
posted by SirOmega at 4:11 PM on March 9, 2010 [1 favorite]

Dawn C. Chmielewski and Claudia Eller, let me introduce you to the word taint as used colloquially.

taint: The area between the nutsack and asshole that prevent a man from shitting on his nuts.
posted by bigmusic at 4:14 PM on March 9, 2010 [1 favorite]

Little boys would sooner watch a movie about a senior citizen than they'd see a movie about a girl. It's human nature.
posted by mccarty.tim at 4:16 PM on March 9, 2010 [2 favorites]

Little boys would sooner watch a movie about a senior citizen than they'd see a movie about a girl. It's human nature.

Yes, no boy has ever watched or wanted to watch: Snow White, Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, Sleeping Beauty, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Pocahontas, Mulan or Lilo & Sitch.

*headdesk*
posted by crossoverman at 4:20 PM on March 9, 2010 [16 favorites]

As bad as Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland is, it might be an interesting film from a feminist perspective. I can't recall a Disney film that didn't rely on a male character to drive forward the protag's story; here, Alice is almost completely autonomous.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 4:22 PM on March 9, 2010 [2 favorites]

I realize that my snark could have been misinterpreted.

Little boys would sooner watch a movie about a senior citizen than they'd see a movie about a girl.

Was meant to be heavily hamburgered.
posted by mccarty.tim at 4:25 PM on March 9, 2010 [1 favorite]

I thought Disney bought Marvel to appeal to boys...
posted by brandman at 4:27 PM on March 9, 2010 [1 favorite]

Dawn C. Chmielewski and Claudia Eller, let me introduce you to the word taint as used colloquially.

Just because the Apatow demographic has hit rock bottom doesn't mean everyone in modern society automatically thinks of "The area between the nutsack and asshole that prevent a man from shitting on his nuts" upon hearing the word 'taint'.

The English language is full of heteronyms. It could be the same with 'head' or 'pot' or 'grass' or 'breast' but most people stop twittering about these around grade 5.
posted by jimmythefish at 4:28 PM on March 9, 2010 [10 favorites]

I miss Pippi.
posted by squasha at 4:29 PM on March 9, 2010 [11 favorites]

Just because the Apatow demographic has hit rock bottom doesn't mean everyone in modern society automatically thinks of "The area between the nutsack and asshole that prevent a man from shitting on his nuts" upon hearing the word 'taint'.


jimmythefish, meet the real world, the real world, meet jimmythefish
posted by nathancaswell at 4:30 PM on March 9, 2010 [6 favorites]

believe they know why the acclaimed movie came up short at the box office.

Just as a wild guess, maybe it wasn't a very good movie?
posted by Malor at 4:32 PM on March 9, 2010 [4 favorites]

My prepubescent self would find a Rapunzel movie more appealing if it were renamed 'The Transformers' and instead of princesses in it, it had robots that transformed from machines into humanoids and shot missiles at each other.
posted by jimmythefish at 4:32 PM on March 9, 2010 [15 favorites]

I thought frog cooties kept the crowds of kids away from the last Disney flick...
posted by Alexandra Kitty at 4:32 PM on March 9, 2010

heteronyms

*snicker*
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 4:33 PM on March 9, 2010 [8 favorites]

Taint nothin' but a g thing.

G in this case standing for "girl"
posted by Joey Michaels at 4:36 PM on March 9, 2010

Which real world is this? Cause it seems like there is an awful lot of those things mooching about.
posted by edgeways at 4:39 PM on March 9, 2010

Y'know, if I were adapting Rapunzel, a story whose premise dictates that the title character has extremely limited choices available to her and no mobility, it wouldn't seem to me to be the nuttiest of ideas to put a major focus on the character with freedom of action.

They may have renamed it to attract more boys. They may be talking up the appeal to boys thing as part of their marketing. There may be any number of problematic aspects to presenting girls with yet another story of a young woman in need of rescue.

But if you're stretching Rapunzel to 90 minutes, emphasis on the prince makes some obvious story sense.

Just as a wild guess, maybe it wasn't a very good movie?

I submit that "The Princess and the Frog" was a very good movie. I enjoyed it throughout.
posted by Zed at 4:39 PM on March 9, 2010 [2 favorites]

mccarty.tim : I realize that my snark could have been misinterpreted.

No, really, you said it right (at least in spirit) the first time. Disney needs to pick which gender it wants to alienate, and run with it.


crossoverman : Yes, no boy has ever watched or wanted to watch: Snow White, Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, Sleeping Beauty, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Pocahontas, Mulan or Lilo & Sitch.

In this case, your handle proves entirely relevant.
Snow white = evil witch and dwarves. Alice in Wonderland, just f'd up (in a good way) beyond gender classification. Sleeping beauty... I think you stretch it on that one, but again, evil witch. Little mermaid, Sebastian (and evil witch). Beauty and the beast - Duh, "Beast". Pocohontas, cowboys/conquerors and indians. Mulan... I consider beyond credibility that any boy (or even most girls, for that matter) would voluntarily watch twice. Lilo & sitch, I as an adult don't even know what genders they have, but they seem sufficiently "small monster" like for a safe pass.


jimmythefish : Just because the Apatow demographic has hit rock bottom doesn't mean everyone in modern society automatically thinks of "The area between the nutsack and asshole that prevent a man from shitting on his nuts" upon hearing the word 'taint'.

Don't even know what "Apatow demographic" refers to, but I'll admit I thought exactly what bigmusic defined it as.
posted by pla at 4:40 PM on March 9, 2010

The English language is full of heteronyms. It could be the same with 'head' or 'pot' or 'grass' or 'breast' but most people stop twittering about these around grade 5.

a) Your four examples are commonly-used words. 'Taint' is not a particularly commonly used word except in its usage as a synonym for grundle.
b) You don't seem to know what a heteronym is. I didn't, either, but now I do. Thanks, Internet!
posted by gurple at 4:40 PM on March 9, 2010 [1 favorite]

Just as a wild guess, maybe it wasn't a very good movie?

Yeah, but that usually doesn't matter wrt Disney, neh?

JtF: amusing observation there, gonna have to ambivalently flag it nonetheless
posted by edgeways at 4:41 PM on March 9, 2010

Take your big curls and squeeze them down, Rotumba... what's the name of the chick with the long hair?

I see Peter Wolf accurately predicted Disney's concerns.
posted by fairytale of los angeles at 4:47 PM on March 9, 2010 [2 favorites]

Wait, there are people who disliked Mulan?
Mayhaps taste should be objective..
posted by KingoftheWhales at 4:48 PM on March 9, 2010 [1 favorite]

From the article:

"Up," grossed more than $700 million worldwide... "The Princess and the Frog" generated considerably less -- $222 million in global ticket sales to date.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't "$222 million in ticket sales" a fair bit of money? Even with production and marketing costs, that's still a healthy profit by most normal peoples' standards.
posted by spoobnooble at 4:48 PM on March 9, 2010 [2 favorites]

gurple: "'Taint' is not a particularly commonly used word"

Common enough that my mind didn't immediately go to the gutter. And that's saying a lot!

While Urban Dictionary's first definition does indeed proclaim it to be of masculine usage, further definitions confirm my initial belief that it is relatively genderless.
posted by graventy at 4:49 PM on March 9, 2010

"Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your breasts."

Box office gold, I promise.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 4:49 PM on March 9, 2010 [1 favorite]

Show me a boy who didn't like The Princess Bride.

I suspect that Disney has saturated the market for movies based on its favorite formula. After the first half-dozen, there's not much point to watching any more of them.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 4:51 PM on March 9, 2010 [4 favorites]

a) Your four examples are commonly-used words. 'Taint' is not a particularly commonly used word except in its usage as a synonym for grundle.

Seriously? Maybe I'm traveling in ridiculously sophisticated linguistic circles, but the word "taint" in its traditional meaning (i.e. not the gross slang one) is very commonly used.
posted by The World Famous at 4:51 PM on March 9, 2010 [7 favorites]

it is pretty annoying that Disney's movies, targetted at <10 year olds, focus so consistently on their characters' love lives. Like the article implied, maybe romance is the boring factor.
posted by mail at 4:52 PM on March 9, 2010 [5 favorites]

I'd love to come down hard on this being a stupid Disney move, but I have a seven year old boy. I had to drag him into the theater to see "Princess and the Frog", simply because of the word princess. I told him it had magic, I told him it had voodoo, I pointed out the singing alligator, he was so set against it we almost had to split up the family and take him home.

It's largely my fault for going along with the whole Disney Princess juggernaut of commercialism with my 4 yr old daughter, so that he associates the word with the frilly, pink things that she likes. Disney could be shooting itself in the foot by so overpromoting it's Princess and Tinkerbell lines that boys no longer see Disney products as something they'll like too.
posted by saffry at 4:55 PM on March 9, 2010 [3 favorites]

"Up," grossed more than $700 million worldwide... "The Princess and the Frog" generated considerably less -- $222 million in global ticket sales to date.

I'll bet that's largely because Up, like WALL*E, was marketed heavily to adults of both genders.

Even via Netflix, I'm not gonna rent one more bullshit patronizing princess movie with American-Idolish smarmy pop songs. Talking dogs, on the other [SQUIRREL!] hand, are cinematic gold.
posted by FelliniBlank at 4:59 PM on March 9, 2010 [9 favorites]

Seriously? Maybe I'm traveling in ridiculously sophisticated linguistic circles, but the word "taint" in its traditional meaning (i.e. not the gross slang one) is very commonly used.

I've found that my own usage of the word "taint" in its traditional meaning has dropped off a cliff since the 'gross slang one' became super popular... last 3-4 years, maybe?

Which is to say, I now actively avoid using the word so as not to bring to mind the other definition.

This may or may not be a good thing from a linguistic perspective, but it's certainly something that an LA Times writer should consider doing, too, judging by where this thread has gone.
posted by gurple at 5:01 PM on March 9, 2010

Disney could be shooting itself in the foot by so overpromoting it's Princess and Tinkerbell lines that boys no longer see Disney products as something they'll like too.

So your're saying that Disney's market for young boys may have been tainted by an overemphasis on "girly" content. Hmmm...
*Thoughtfully rolls cigar between fingers and puts in mouth*
posted by Babblesort at 5:02 PM on March 9, 2010 [1 favorite]

"Tangled" is a far better name than "Rapunzel". It suggests a much bigger, more winding story than the fairy tale.
posted by Kraftmatic Adjustable Cheese at 5:09 PM on March 9, 2010 [2 favorites]

Show me a boy who didn't like The Princess Bride.

The boy at the start of The Princess Bride.
posted by Kraftmatic Adjustable Cheese at 5:11 PM on March 9, 2010 [60 favorites]

You know, this discussion puts that song I used to like, "Tainted Love", in an entirely new context.
posted by happyroach at 5:11 PM on March 9, 2010 [1 favorite]

Sleeping beauty... I think you stretch it on that one, but again, evil witch.

But, really, Sleeping Beauty - apart from being a Disney film - is a fairytale that most kids read or have read to them at some point in their childhood. Same with Rapunzel. The idea that these stories are only made for one gender is ridiculous.

Obviously this is purely a money-making decision, because it stuns me to think that these stories have to be changed just to suit the audience Disney thinks they should be marketing their films to.

Besides, I think the biggest difference between - for example - Mulan and the Princess and the Frog is that one was marketed as an action film ("Everybody was kung-fu fighting!") and one as a romance. Disney could easily market a film called Rapunzel as an action adventure with a girl in the lead, but have chosen to inset a male protagonist and change the title. Kinda sad.
posted by crossoverman at 5:12 PM on March 9, 2010 [2 favorites]

Princess.
posted by crossoverman at 5:13 PM on March 9, 2010

You know what movie my kids are really digging right now? The Fantastic Mr. Fox.

You know what movie my daughter loves and my son hates? It changes by the day, same thing the other way around.

The problem likely isn't that kids care about the title of the movie, it is that the parents do. Consider how many parents care strongly about gender roles; do you think those parents will bring their boys to a movie with "Princess" in the title? Unlikely.

So it is these parents they're trying to appeal to. The kids judge the movie on the movie, not the name, and the only think that makes a boy say "eww" to "do you want to see The Princess And The Frog?" is learning that they're supposed to saw "eww" from somewhere. I mean, after all, it also has a frog in it, and boys dig frogs, right?

disclosure: i have a son who enjoys baseball and painting his nails, and a girl who enjoys princess dresses and digging up worms
posted by davejay at 5:14 PM on March 9, 2010 [3 favorites]

The irony is that Princess and the Frog isn't even a traditional princess movie. Quite the opposite. As saffry alludes to, Disney's insistence on marketing the Princess brand probably ended up hurting it to some degree.
posted by HostBryan at 5:16 PM on March 9, 2010

I don't really have anything to add except that companies beanplate their earnings all the time don't they? Somebody's just trying not to get fired.

Taint. Taint taint taint.
posted by bam at 5:16 PM on March 9, 2010 [1 favorite]

It's largely my fault for going along with the whole Disney Princess juggernaut of commercialism with my 4 yr old daughter, so that he associates the word with the frilly, pink things that she likes.

Exactly. Not that it is your fault, that is, but that your son has learned to be princess-averse. It isn't built-in.
posted by davejay at 5:16 PM on March 9, 2010

The Princess and the Frog was a vein attempt to capture the 90s Disney. Artistically it was boring, blah, not innovative at all. Even though it was apparently hand drawn, the sheen had all the soul of computer perfection. Disney, correctly, dropped its traditional animation department and went for Pixar. Why they went back is beyond me.

I will note, that I had to babysit a a group of 5 year old boys. I have absolutely nothing in common with 5 year olds and I don't exactly have a family oriented movie collection. "Le Ballon rouge" was not warmly taken. So I scrambled and found that the Awards DVD of The Princess and the Frog had leaked. I sort half heartedly asked if they'd be interested and to my surprised they made an emphatic plea to watch it.

Perhaps the older set actively stayed away from it, but kindergarten's didn't seem to care.
posted by geoff. at 5:19 PM on March 9, 2010

The idea that these stories are only made for one gender is ridiculous.

In the original Snow White story, the huntsman sent to dispatch the little princess was instructed to bring the girl's lungs and liver back to the evil mother as proof the deed had been done. And so she could eat them.
posted by Camofrog at 5:21 PM on March 9, 2010 [2 favorites]

...the studio retools its next animated feature to lose the girly taint.

What's wrong with girly taints? Mine is delightful.
posted by The Light Fantastic at 5:23 PM on March 9, 2010

Disney could easily market a film called Rapunzel as an action adventure with a girl in the lead, but have chosen to inset a male protagonist and change the title. Kinda sad.

Insert a male protagonist? The protagonist of "Rapunzel" has always been a male. Rapunzel herself is imprisoned and rescued by the guy. She's a passive character and always had been. How is the "Rapunzel" story that you indicate is a staple of children's bedtime reading supposed to be an action adventure with a female lead unless Disney completely changes the story?
posted by mpbx at 5:31 PM on March 9, 2010 [5 favorites]

"Taint" wasn't tainted by Apatow, it was tainted by Mr Show.
posted by DU at 5:36 PM on March 9, 2010

Disney, correctly, dropped its traditional animation department and went for Pixar. Why they went back is beyond me.

"Ironically, it was two of the biggest names in computer animation—Pixar cofounders John Lasseter and Ed Catmull, who have overseen Disney Animation since 2006, when Disney bought their company for $7.4 billion—who were behind the decision to return to the hand-drawn technique, and to rehire filmmakers who use it."
posted by Iridic at 5:38 PM on March 9, 2010 [2 favorites]

Disney could easily market a film called Rapunzel as an action adventure with a girl in the lead, but have chosen to inset a male protagonist and change the title. Kinda sad.

Except that wouldn't be Rapunzel, not really, cause Rapunzel is kind of a shitty story. It's very dramatically limp, has nearly zero action, and is very, very short.

Man, there was such good chatter form animator circles when The Princess And The Frog started to be wispered about, they where going to be period styles! more abstract line work! Work in American folk characters! Apparently there had to be a lot more compromises then anyone expected, and the studio didn't throw it's support behind it.
posted by The Whelk at 5:41 PM on March 9, 2010

I like the hand-drawn style. As impressive as Pixar's work is, I think there's something to be said for traditional animation. It has soul and emotion.

The difference isn't as pronounced in feature films; Pixar's work is really great in its own way, but if you look at TV cartoons, a lot of it is terrible, cheap CG. It's kind of sad.
posted by mpbx at 5:42 PM on March 9, 2010

Frankly I'd be more happy if Disney dropped the songs from their movies or hired halfway decent songwriters. They grind the movies down to a halt and don't really keep up the adventure aspect (which, it should be pointed out, both boys and girls like.)
posted by The Whelk at 5:46 PM on March 9, 2010 [2 favorites]

I think they should give it a hip-hop soundtrack and call it RapUnzel!
posted by jonmc at 5:48 PM on March 9, 2010 [5 favorites]

DON'T GIVE THEM IDEAS
posted by The Whelk at 5:53 PM on March 9, 2010 [3 favorites]

(I still think a Central-Europe Art Nouveau story would be awesome, and you could have all the castles and dukes and dragons you want, but I'm also reminded that we only got The Little Mermaid after the studio was nearly broke after two decades of terrible movies)
posted by The Whelk at 5:55 PM on March 9, 2010

I'm a bit uncomfortable with the idea that Disney is a "boys club". For a corporation as large as theirs, they go out of their way to be friendly to women and other minorities, when they could simply do things as usual. I mentioned a recent example above of how things have changed from when I was a kid. Obviously, Pixar could do more about writing protagonists who are not really non-white males (or voiced by them), but Disney as a cultural force for mainstream America is actually surprisingly inclusive, as far as it goes. Their ABC channel alone has at least three prime-time shows with major characters who are successful gays, lesbians, women, Latino- and African-Americans, where their sexuality, gender and ethnicity are much less of an issue than success within their character profiles.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 6:03 PM on March 9, 2010 [2 favorites]

"The Girly Taint" My new stripper name.
posted by govtdrone at 6:04 PM on March 9, 2010

I don't think it's a "boys club" per say, I just think the Dinsey-made movies have been ....so....boring....for over a decade.

Lilo and Stich however, how is that not more famous. It's fresh, fun, gorgeous to look at and genuinely funny while also including all those warmfuzzy Disney-Family-Togetherness moments. I can see them silently disowning The Emperor's New Groove cause it doesn't look or feel like a Disney movie (despite it being hilarious) but Lilo And Stich? That's gold right there.
posted by The Whelk at 6:09 PM on March 9, 2010 [6 favorites]

(mostly boring to look at. The occasional flourish aside, they've been so flat. Ugh. Again, Lilo And Stitch get a pass on this cause of the watercolor backgrounds.)
posted by The Whelk at 6:12 PM on March 9, 2010 [1 favorite]

I think davejay has it absolutely correct. We don't have kids, but we have two nephews and three nieces, and after about age 4 it was apparent that part of what the kids liked was based on a reaction to what the other gender liked. One nephew liked feather boas and ribbons at age 3 but spurned them at age 5 because his female cousin (same age) was now into the princessy stuff.
posted by desjardins at 6:20 PM on March 9, 2010

It's largely my fault for going along with the whole Disney Princess juggernaut of commercialism with my 4 yr old daughter, so that he associates the word with the frilly, pink things that she likes.

I thought "frilly, pink things" were the whole point of filling kid's movies with princesses. Seriously, what else about princesses do we want in our kids' entertainment? There are only a few unique movie plots you can write about "political arranged marriages are bad", and then you're just left with a half dozen variations on "yay, hereditary monarchy!"

Not that I blame Disney too much. If I wanted to make billions of dollars writing stories for kids, I'd put princesses in half of them too.
posted by roystgnr at 6:22 PM on March 9, 2010 [1 favorite]

They should Rasta-fy her by 10 percent or so.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 6:22 PM on March 9, 2010 [6 favorites]

There are only a few unique movie plots you can write about "political arranged marriages are bad", and then you're just left with a half dozen variations on "yay, hereditary monarchy!"

Sure, if you ignore all of the really compelling real-life princess stories, like Princess Diana, Princess Grace, Princess Toadstool, and others.
posted by The World Famous at 6:26 PM on March 9, 2010 [5 favorites]

The Princess and the Frog will always be almost indescribably special to me because it was the first movie I took my daughter (3 yrs old) to see.

We both loved it, and so did the audience (all parents with small kids at an early afternoon show): they clapped at the end. Tiana is anything but a helpless princess, and I felt like the songs -- being gospel, jazz/dixie, and zydeco based rather than power pop ballads -- were a hell of a lot better than the normal Disney fare.

$222 million is nothing to sneeze at, but, sadly, it seems like studios use a different standard when evaluating movies with women and minorities as leads.
posted by lord_wolf at 6:31 PM on March 9, 2010 [3 favorites]

I love St Trinians as a boy. And that was all about girls.

I have three sons, two of the age to watch movies. They could care less about the gender of the protagonist. They are just not into kissing in movies or stories. That is all.

I am 46 and write movies for a living. I also am not that into kissing in movies. I think you get one big kiss in a movie, and that better not be all the movie is about.
posted by unSane at 6:32 PM on March 9, 2010

Sadly, they didn't try to do Rapunzel's Revenge instead; it's a cute and fun (and dark, in a non-gory way) story. Some romance, but it's not the most important bit, and she rescues her own damn self, thankyouverymuch.

And though it will never happen or be fucked up if it does, The Blue Sword would be the best kids' animated movie ever. Main lead is a girl, but she has a kickass sword and ends up fights like nobody's business, and there's evil wizards and demon armies and all kinds of non-gender-limited awesomeness, set in the desert w/ a alternate-English-empire-with-magic type history.

Instead of, you know, yet another take on a tired European tale of pale hapless girls waiting for someone to rescue them so that they can be pale and hapless in more luxurious settings.

And Princess and the Frog was severely under-marketed (were there any McDonald's toys? Tie-ins, besides toystore ones? Didn't see hardly any myself). And in my corner of the woods, I truly think your average suburban white parents felt more discomforted by princesses' race, not her gender, because none of the little white girls I knew were that into it, and they will watch that crappy CGI Barbie Fairie Mermaids on Ice straight-to-video shit. I mean, it certainly wasn't any lamer than Cinderella in terms of plot, and had much better characterization. But the heroine spent most of her time as a frog, for one, and aspiring to own a famous restaurant (as opposed to say, being a famous chef, or being a monarch, or rescuing people) maybe wasn't enough of a dream to fire little girls' imaginations.

Little girls love..and crave...heroines who do more than look pretty. They are just almost never given any. But they need something to aspire to/pretend to be, so they settle for the glitter and the power of being a princess, who presumably can at least boss other people around.
posted by emjaybee at 6:43 PM on March 9, 2010 [7 favorites]

Funny thing is, the story is traditionally called "The Frog Prince," and Disney changed the name of it - presumably, to appeal to girls.

I think Disney may just be getting a little too hung up on movie titles, and perhaps should spend more time on other things.
posted by jabberjaw at 6:45 PM on March 9, 2010 [2 favorites]

They could always do The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty.

It wouldn't be entirely out of line with their recent track record, and might make up for their snitty failure to release the original animaed Sleeping Beauty for nearly 20 years while they waited for the Anne Rice taint to wear off.
posted by localroger at 6:53 PM on March 9, 2010 [1 favorite]

By the way, Disney are the Undisputed Kings of Marketing. I both hate them and love them. They know exactly who they are. There was a period a few years ago where they drove down the Disney currency with a bunch of crappy straight-to-video titles but I think those days are over. They have ruthlessly cut away every non-core asset from the mothership (Miramax, Touchstone (pretty much)). If ever there was a company aware of its USP, it's Disney. They can be incredibly hard to deal with because the Disney ethos trumps everything. If you're not in their groove, you're dead. If they had a monopoly, it would be bad. But they're Disney, and they aren't. They're just Disney.
posted by unSane at 7:05 PM on March 9, 2010 [1 favorite]

Stupid name aside, if that picture on the article really is a still from the film, I at least have to give Disney credit for coming up with a new kind of look for animated film.
posted by Anything at 7:09 PM on March 9, 2010

I think Disney may just be getting a little too hung up on movie titles, and perhaps should spend more time on other things.

They've already moved on to giving the corpse of the Prince of Persia franchise a Cleveland Steamer in a movie theater near you.
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 7:11 PM on March 9, 2010

Wait, the reason Princess and the Frog tanked is because boys don't like movies about princesses, and NOT because conservative whites don't like movies about black people?
posted by emelenjr at 7:29 PM on March 9, 2010 [7 favorites]

And Princess and the Frog was severely under-marketed

Oh boy was it. I kept hearing it was deliberate, but that could be middle-management bitterness.

There are only a few unique movie plots you can write about "political arranged marriages are bad", and then you're just left with a half dozen variations on "yay, hereditary monarchy!"

Some of us have been thinking about this for a while, and I for one think a really awesome Prince(ess?) and Pauper-style could be told, with the message of helping others, banding together, and not putting all your worth in your caste or possessions. Bringing in a socialist/anti-consumerist message under the blanket of Family Values would be so, so delicious.
posted by The Whelk at 7:35 PM on March 9, 2010 [2 favorites]

Getting back to the original issue, ALL of Disney's films are large departures from the original fairy tales - which in turn were often themselves adaptations of much older folk tales.

In this case, Disney is engineering a marketable film, to make a proft; they are crafting their product to conform to what they perceive their customer base wants to consume, prejudices and all.

They've done this successfully for decades, and turned Disney into a multi-billion dollar corporation. Why would this process suddenly surprise anyone?

Oh, wait, did you really thing art had anything to do with this?
posted by thermonuclear.jive.turkey at 8:37 PM on March 9, 2010

"Girly taint" is redundant; taint is female unless otherwise specified, by virtue of the old joke from whence it came. Er, the way I heard it. Long before I should have.
posted by rahnefan at 8:59 PM on March 9, 2010 [1 favorite]

For the record, I think that Mulan is a fantastic movie.
posted by kylej at 9:06 PM on March 9, 2010

At my kids' elementary school costume day (Halloween), they had all the kids stand against the wall, then had all the Star Wars kids stand forward, then the ghosts, witches, etc. When they called for the Princesses, about 90% of the girls stepped forward.

Yes, Disney saw some gold with the Princess thing and in typical Hollywood fashion, they've overmarketed it to an extreme. So they take The Frog Prince, change it to Princess so they can have yet another princess to add to the marketing line, then don't even supply the required kingdom and castle (metaphorical kingdoms and castles don't count when it comes to young kids), and then wonder why this new Princess doesn't have the same following.

I wonder if the author is right about Rapunzel's script being a similarly underthought decision and overreaction to their previous bad decisions.

He has one thing right--my boys both love to watch iCarly.
posted by eye of newt at 9:13 PM on March 9, 2010

I think they should give it a hip-hop soundtrack and call it RapUnzel!

What if they gave it a Frank Zappa soundtrack and called it RDNZL?
posted by Strange Interlude at 9:20 PM on March 9, 2010 [1 favorite]

I think they should give it a hip-hop soundtrack and call it RapUnzel!

What if they gave it a Frank Zappa soundtrack and called it RDNZL?

I vote bring back Dolores Van Cartier/Sister Mary Clarence and call it Sister Act III: RaNUNzel.
posted by sallybrown at 9:45 PM on March 9, 2010

Oy. The Rapunzel development hell is the stuff of legend at this point. Who else remembers when this was a Shrek copycat project called "Rapunzel Unbraided"? Yes, the concept of this film is old enough to have been dreamed up to compete with Shrek. Let that sink in for a second.
posted by little light-giver at 10:13 PM on March 9, 2010 [1 favorite]

When I watched Sleeping Beauty as an adult, my take on it was that the good fairies were the protagonists: conflict, crisis, resolution happened to them.
posted by brujita at 10:14 PM on March 9, 2010

I was hoping they would rename it HipHopUnzel.

Yeah I know stinky ol' jonmc made with a similarly themed joke already, but I work nights so that gag was rightfully mine! No one reads all the comments anyway these days.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 10:56 PM on March 9, 2010

From Wikipedia:

When the kingdom’s most wanted (and most charming) bandit is forced to make a deal with the golden-haired, tower-bound teen, the unlikely duo sets off on a hilarious, hair-raising escapade complete with a super-cop horse, an over-protective chameleon, and a gruff gang of pub thugs. The handsome prince Flynn Ryder has sailed through life by looking good, talking fast and being lucky – but when he picks a mysterious and secluded tower as his hideout, it looks like his luck may have run out.

Flynn is knocked out, tied up and taken hostage by the beautiful and feisty Rapunzel, whose 70 feet of magical, golden hair, which she can use like powerful tentacles, isn’t even the strangest thing about her. Locked-away and lonely, Rapunzel sees this smooth-talking bandit as her ticket out of the tower. One comical kidnapping and a bit of blackmail later, Flynn and his curious captor are off on one of the most tangled tales ever told.

Super-cop horse!
posted by luftmensch at 12:20 AM on March 10, 2010 [3 favorites]

70 feet of magical, golden hair, which she can use like powerful tentacles, isn’t even the strangest thing about her

I do so hope that the strangest thing about her is a second mouth in the middle of her stomach, full of pointy teeth, that talks with the voice of Robin Williams.

That's why they don't let me write movies.
posted by Grangousier at 1:03 AM on March 10, 2010 [6 favorites]

Disney, I still love you for Lilo & Stitch.
But please stop trying so hard.

Also, more scifi.
posted by HFSH at 1:16 AM on March 10, 2010 [1 favorite]

luftmensch: "Rapunzel, whose 70 feet of magical, golden hair, which she can use like powerful tentacles, isn’t even the strangest thing about her. "

Ok, Disney tentacle hentai fan art in 3, 2, 1...
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 3:13 AM on March 10, 2010

As someone who (along with every other child I knew) lost her mind for every animated Disney movie released between The Little Mermaid and Mulan, the suggestions in this thread that Disney give up 1) traditional animation, 2) music, and 3) romance are beyond appalling. I hope they never, ever, ever, ever do that. The sky should give up blue first.

I really hope Disney isn't harping on the alleged failure of this film as an excuse to stop producing traditional animation/musicals/romances starring minorities/women. Because that's about what I expected, and that's what it looks like to me.
posted by two or three cars parked under the stars at 3:37 AM on March 10, 2010

Barbie as Rapunzel. Maybe Disney is shaking up the story, to avoid simply making a clone of this.
posted by thermonuclear.jive.turkey at 4:45 AM on March 10, 2010

As someone who (along with every other child I knew) lost her mind for every animated Disney movie released between The Little Mermaid and Mulan, the suggestions in this thread that Disney give up 1) traditional animation, 2) music, and 3) romance are beyond appalling. I hope they never, ever, ever, ever do that. The sky should give up blue first.

Times change... my grandmother still thinks wistfully of the days where major movies were full of song and dance. People are comforted by what the grew up with, but it's unrealistic to freeze cultural tastes.

The success of Pixar-esque storytelling and the failure of its traditional Disney counterpart over the last 15+ years is nothing more than an evolution in the cultural tastes and interests of children.

Any film studio that wants to keep making movies needs to keep an eye on the bottom line, just like a restaurant does, and therefore needs to ensure enough patrons are actually enjoying what they are making (or serving).
posted by modernnomad at 5:54 AM on March 10, 2010

There are any number of Brothers Grimm tales that involve men as the protagonists, and sure, most of them end with the dude marrying a princess as a prize, but up to that point, many of the stories just focus on the guy doing a thing.

The Valiant Little Tailor (you know, the guy who killed seven in one stroke!)
The Two Brothers
The King's Son Who Feared Nothing

come to mind as a few examples.

Why not just make one of those into a movie if you want a classic story primarily about some boys?
posted by zizzle at 6:42 AM on March 10, 2010

The success of Pixar-esque storytelling and the failure of its traditional Disney counterpart over the last 15+ years is nothing more than an evolution in the cultural tastes and interests of children.

Michael Eisner was the chief executive officer of The Walt Disney Company from 1984 until 2005.

Many long-term fans of Disney had, and still have, a deep animosity towards Michael Eisner and the way he ran the development of animation. He did attempt to shut down the traditional animation division, closing facilities and laying off people, his detractors asserting he was more concerned about cost than quality.

So if you say that the traditional Disney animated films in the last 15+ years are "failures" this might be more of a function of Michael Eisner's approach to traditional animated filmmaking, than changing tastes of people.
posted by thermonuclear.jive.turkey at 6:43 AM on March 10, 2010

I haven't read the urbandictionary entry on taint, but in my world, growing up (long LONG before Mr. Show or Judd Apatow), taint was ubiquitous as far as gender but generally was reserved for boys. Really mostly locker-room boys, as per the line:

"T'aint quite your balls, t'aint quite your [butthole][asshole][pucker][etc.]"

Also, for more reference, the Taint is where a man makes homemade Fumunda Cheese. As in
"Would you like some fumunda cheese?"
"What's that?"
"Cheese FUMUNDA my balls!"

(At this point sometimes you smear you finger down their face...I never saw this done w/ actual erm...."cheese" on the fingers, more of a skeeving out trick similar to the "sneeze" with water on your fingers trick.)
posted by TomMelee at 6:47 AM on March 10, 2010

Also, more scifi.

I fully support this idea.
posted by The Whelk at 6:54 AM on March 10, 2010

Also, more scifi.

I fully support this idea.


Yeah, well they're remaking "TRON." Saw a preview when we went to see "Alice."
posted by cass at 7:11 AM on March 10, 2010

Sequel! Sequel! Not Remake!
posted by The Whelk at 7:12 AM on March 10, 2010 [2 favorites]

So can we talk about the new Alice and how Burton has become the living embodiment of "Phoning it in" for a while now?
posted by The Whelk at 7:13 AM on March 10, 2010 [2 favorites]

Yes, no boy has ever watched or wanted to watch: Snow White, Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, Sleeping Beauty, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Pocahontas, Mulan or Lilo & Sitch.

*headdesk*
posted by crossoverman at 7:20 PM on March 9

As I pointed out before in a related thread, Disney animated films with a female lead character, produced in the same time frame, consistently do significantly worse at the box office than films with male leads. Not one has broken the $400M mark:

f - Little Mermaid (1989) - $211 million
f - Beauty and the Beast (1991) - $337 million
m - Aladdin (1992) -$504 million
m - Lion King (1994) - $783 million
f - Pocahontas (1995) - $346 million
f - Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996) - $325 million
m - Hercules (1997) - $252 million
f - Mulan (1998) - $304 million
m - Tarzan (1999) - $448 million
f - Lilo and Stitch (2002) - $273 million


Notably, all Pixar films to date have had male leads.

In my opinion, the problem is twofold. First, Hollywood is a global business that extend to the audiovisual medium the global literary tradition which for centuries has placed males at the center of its stories. As progressive as we might like to think we are in the West, there is a thread on the front page about how in China girl babies are aborted or killed. There are 1.5billion potential filmgoers in China. I'm guessing that brazen girl who bucks authority to save the day is not going to play as well there as it does here.

The second, more important problem is that Disney inexplicably still wants to make Princess movies. This isn't merry ole England and it isn't 1955. How about making films that are relevant to girls? Because those films will also be relevant to boys.
posted by Pastabagel at 7:33 AM on March 10, 2010 [2 favorites]

my grandmother still thinks wistfully of the days where major movies were full of song and dance.

So do I, and I'm 20. So do an increasing number of people, I think. I don't want to get my hopes up about the Return of the Musical, because for a long time Hollywood would throw people like me a bone and we'd get something like Moulin Rouge or Chicago, practically piss ourselves with excitement - and then nothing would come of it. But really, the modern contempt for the musical is ridiculous. It's not objectively sillier than any number of genres that everybody accepts. And it's such a potent emotional form. People around my age and older still mostly spit on it, and maybe always will, but I hold out hope for the slightly younger generation. They have the High School Musical films and Glee on television, and in theatres, things like Mamma Mia!, Hairspray and Dreamgirls (as well as Enchanted, which was essentially a live action Disney animated musical romance), all quite successful. There are also plans for Wicked, Spring Awakening and In the Heights movies; these are Broadway shows with a young, devoted following. It makes me think that oh god, it could really happen. We could really be getting the musical back.

Not that this is a prediction, more of an ohpleaseohpleaseohplease. But I'm just saying, don't count this stuff out. Music is an elemental pleasure, people will enjoy it if it doesn't make them feel too lame.

And don't count these animated musicals out, either. When The Little Mermaid came out in 1989 it was huge, signalling the renaissance of a form that Disney had essentially abandoned since the days of Sleeping Beauty. Maybe they should have just waited longer this time. (Though they did wait; the reason I disagree that these types of movies have failed in the last 15 years is that they haven't had the chance: until now, Disney hadn't made one since the success of Mulan, in 1998.)

Pixar movies are great and everything, but I attribute their recent dominance in large part to the fact that adults enjoy them so much. Which is nothing to sneeze at, but when people suggest that we strip away music, romance and traditional art from Disney movies, I don't think it has anything to do with what children like. Because kids still delight in music, and the under-10s (or mostly the girls, probably) are much more interested in love stories than perhaps people realise. They've also grown up with gorgeous CGI, so it's not really amazing to them. I don't believe children have outgrown this stuff, and I don't believe The Princess and the Frog was as disappointing box-office-wise as Disney would have us think. The reason I'm suspicious is that it's just so much easier for them to make that case, so nobody complains when, instead of coming up with a compelling female characterisation, they demote Rapunzel in her own movie in favor of Some Guy, just to chase after the little boys whose attention is apparently so much more precious.
posted by two or three cars parked under the stars at 7:42 AM on March 10, 2010 [1 favorite]

the modern contempt for the musical is ridiculous.

Look, I love musicals, but so many of them are unspeakably bad. It's a *hard* form to get right cause it edges so close to so many perilous tanks of self-indulgent and rank camp. Catchy, tuneful, yet still relevant to the story songwriting is hard and most of the modern musicals have been revamps of old songs or jukebox musicals cause again, it's easier to pick something everybody allready loves - Mamma Mia was the biggest musical in a loooong time and that makes me sad.
posted by The Whelk at 7:55 AM on March 10, 2010 [2 favorites]

Then again, if you get a room I'll tell you a lot of Tarentino's movies could be musicals without singing, long set-pieces set to relevant songs, often way longer then most directors would do? That's a musical.
posted by The Whelk at 7:56 AM on March 10, 2010

And some of that Antipathy seems misplaces as two of the heavyweights of the under-40 market, Joss Whedon and Seth MacFarlane, have had big musical-number heavy shows with an obvious love of the format.

Hell, Glee is practically a variety show at times. There's still a lot of love for the format, but no one is stepping up to big retro kind of MUSICAL! cause sooo many attempts to make that work have been clunky, atonal bombs.
posted by The Whelk at 7:59 AM on March 10, 2010 [1 favorite]

Pastabagel, that's a plausible explanation, and I do totally believe that more people are willing to see a Boy Movie than a Girl Movie. But I also don't think Disney can now just throw up their hands. Especially because those profits also seem more or less in line with a) how good those movies actually were combined with b) how good people were feeling about Disney at the time based on the quality of the preceding movie. The only one that surprises me is Tarzan, which, with Lilo and Stitch, I never even think about as belonging to the same category as it wasn't a musical.
posted by two or three cars parked under the stars at 8:10 AM on March 10, 2010 [1 favorite]

It's true that lots of musicals are bad, but so are lots of action movies, sci fi, fantasy and superhero movies, biopics, slacker comedies, family dramas, etc. Yet those are not reflexively dismissed by such a huge part of the audience in the same way. Their absurdities are accepted or overlooked, whereas, even when looking back to the golden age of movie musicals, people are kind of like, what were those old-timers thinking, don't they know people don't burst out singing in real life? People act like the rubbishness of the musical is self-evident. I don't think the average musical is that much more unbearable than the average whatever else, I just think people find its conventions that much more off-putting. That might be changing.

I too find the success of Mamma Mia compared to other musicals tragic and gross, and that's not where musicals should go. But I think keeping things familiar could help people come around eventually. One of my favourite moments in a theatre was well into Dreamgirls, when, after a ton of songs taking place in studios, on stages and in front of pianos, a character burst into song in the middle of a regular scene. You'd have thought Beyonce had reached down and slapped a good fifth of the audience in the face, people were going what the fuck? Is this a musical? But how is the experience any different, really? And everybody seemed to enjoy the rest of the movie.

The form is getting more critical respect, and more of an audience, and hopefully that's enough support to get us our new masterpiece.
posted by two or three cars parked under the stars at 8:36 AM on March 10, 2010

Do men want to see "My Best Friend's Wedding" or "The Wedding Planner"? I wish they'd have renamed those movies, so I could trick him into seeing those.
posted by anniecat at 9:02 AM on March 10, 2010

Good lord, what's with that guy's chin hair? Weird.
posted by anniecat at 9:05 AM on March 10, 2010

f - Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996) - $325 million

Pastabagel, how was this female?
posted by anniecat at 9:07 AM on March 10, 2010

The chin hair is the Errol Flynn thing. He didn't have chin hair in all his movies but he did in some. I'm just amused that they're trying to make the model character in "Rapunzel" or "Tangled" or whatever it is after Errol Flynn, partly because few people under the age of 60 is going to know who Errol Flynn is. Here's a recent piece about Mr. Errol "Scandalous" Flynn.
posted by blucevalo at 10:32 AM on March 10, 2010

they're trying to make the model the character in "Rapunzel" or "Tangled"
posted by blucevalo at 10:34 AM on March 10, 2010

But really, the modern contempt for the musical is ridiculous.

The modern contempt for lyric opera is ridiculous, and the "musical" is generally a ridiculous and contemptable modern mockery of opera.

Of course, that opinion could be based largely on the fact that I like opera and I don't like musicals.
posted by The World Famous at 10:39 AM on March 10, 2010

There's still a lot of love for the format, but no one is stepping up to big retro kind of MUSICAL! cause sooo many attempts to make that work have been clunky, atonal bombs.

Autotuner: The Musical!
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 11:16 AM on March 10, 2010

I've been toying with the idea of making a light operetta (SHUT UP) where one of the characters is mute and the other is obsessed with Esperanto set during the last days of the English Empire in a remote Kingdom in the Indian Ocean.
posted by The Whelk at 11:29 AM on March 10, 2010

He didn't have chin hair in all his movies, but he did in some.

To goatee or not goatee? (Note, though, that Basil Rathbone and Henry Daniell both commit themselves fully to their own chin hair.)
posted by Iridic at 11:31 AM on March 10, 2010

Pastabagel,

So, you posted some data. Data is good. But you didn't inflation-adjust those figures. That's not good. You also dropped the Emperor's New Groove, which was a big pain in the butt to readd :) (You also dropped Fantasia 2000, but that was a limited release, not part of the normal machinery, and I'm going to leave it out.) Here's inflation adjusted versions (as per http://www.westegg.com/inflation/) of your numbers, sorted by gender and year, with ENG added:

Title			Gender	Year	Inflation$	Change
little mermaid			f	1989	360.45	
beauty and the beast		f	1991	524.18		1.454237758
pocahontas			f	1995	482.37		0.920237323
hunchback of notre dame		f	1996	439.9		0.911955553
mulan				f	1998	398.22		0.905251193
lilo and stitch			f	2002	323.69		0.812842148
alladin				m	1992	761.1	
lion king			m	1994	1118.9		1.470109053
hercules			m	1997	353.39		0.315836983
tarzan				m	1999	571.43		1.616995388
emperor's new groove		m	2000	208.47		0.364821588

Looking at the female lead films, you see smaller absolute values, and a remarkably steady decline, in line with your theory. But the "male movie" numbers are pretty jumpy, with both Hercules and especially the Emperor's New Groove totally bombing. And we only have five, which is hardly a statistically significant sample. Does the data in fact support your assertion that female leads destroyed Disney animation?

Lets take a different view, this time simply year over year data:

Lets look at the per year data:

Title				Gender	Year	Inflation$	Change
little mermaid			f	1989	360.45	
beauty and the beast		f	1991	524.18		1.454237758
alladin				m	1992	761.1		1.451982144
lion king			m	1994	1118.9		1.470109053
pocahontas			f	1995	482.37		0.431110913
hunchback of notre dame		f	1996	439.9		0.911955553
hercules			m	1997	353.39		0.803341669
mulan				f	1998	398.22		1.126857013
tarzan				m	1999	571.43		1.434960575
emperor's new groove		m	2000	208.47		0.364821588
lilo and stitch			f	2001	323.69		1.552693433

OK. Now a different story seems to be told:

Disney makes an increasingly large amount of money from 89 to 94, with only Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast released in back to back years. The latter years were indeed male leads, but the curve was pretty much set.

Pocahontas broke the streak. But what's interesting is that, following Lion King, traditional animation was put on a yearly treadmill -- we see movies in 95, 96, 97, 98, and 99. Movies take (at least) two years to make, so either the department doubled in size, or had to do more with less. Now here's where things get interesting: If you look at revenues generated by the traditional animation department from 89 to 02, scaled biyearly and adjusted for inflation, the data becomes much cleaner:

Title				Gender	Biyear	Inflation$	Change
little mermaid			f	1989	360.45	
beauty and the beast / aladdin	f+m	1991	1285.28		3.565765016
lion king			m	1993	1118.9		0.870549608
pocahontas / hunchback		f	1995	922.27		0.824264903
hercules / mulan		f+m	1997	751.61		0.814956575
tarzan / emperor's new groove	m	1999	779.9		1.037639201
lilo and stitch			f	2001	323.69		0.41504039

(As a note, I highly recommend actually looking at the inflation adjusted dollars on a line graph. This is a *very* steady decline.)

Now, I wasn't at Disney at the time, though I highly encourage anyone who was to actually pipe up. But here's what's indisputable:

1) Little Mermaid represented The Return of Disney Animation.
2) Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin, showed that the Little Mermaid wasn't a fluke. Biyearly, they represented a 356% increase in revenue!
3) Disney shipped no movie in 1993.
4) Lion King was huge! But it was only 87% the size of the previous combo. If only there had been a movie in 1993!
5) Disney Animation was put on a yearly release schedule.
6) Instead of 87%, Disney's biyearly dropped 82%. Then 81%. Yes, the double-male combo of Tarzan and ENG reversed what was a really consistent drop. But this just means the crater wasn't getting any bigger.

Now, there are many things that very likely did contribute to the decline, but the two major factors probably were:

1) Increased consumer tastes for 3D animation over 2D animation -- culminating in Disney's merge with Pixar in 2006
2) Decreased quality of Disney films, due to the doubling of the Animation department's workload

In other words, 2D animation was arguably being strip mined at the moment it met its greatest competitor.

Now, do you see a strong gender effect in here? I don't, particularly. Sure, Tarzan and ENG halted the decline. But ENG made the least of any movie of that entire era, and Tarzan, as a reboot of a 20th century property, has to be considered a special case (basically, the Tarzan brand had its own strength, above and beyond gender). Really, I just see 2D animation wasting away irrespective of gender.

Disney did try its own hand at 3D. Dinosaur did OK, coming out the same year as ENG and more than doubling its take ($430M inflation adjusted). Treasure Island (a male-lead movie) did not, coming out in 2002 and pulling $129M inflation adjusted.

Ultimately, whatever the source of the decline was, the response was to abandon big budget animation entirely. This made some sense. With the end of the 90's came with the explosion of DVDs. According to CEA data, 1998 saw 1M DVD players sold, 1999 saw 4M DVD players sold, and 2000 saw 8.4M DVD players sold. So, if I may speculate, it's probably that the marketing and merchandising engines within Disney saw the opportunity to recycle old content -- why push an unknown property, when it's a Whole New World for Aladdin?

So ultimately Disney abandoned the entire game, splitting their time between distributing movies from Pixar and releasing foreign-drawn direct to DVD sequels. You can see the result here. Made more money that way. And money, not gender politics, is what drives decision making at large corps.

(Side note: I'm being generous by accepting Hunchback of Notre Dame is a female lead movie. It's about the HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME, a guy!)
posted by effugas at 1:41 PM on March 10, 2010 [14 favorites]

This all being said, there probably is data that shows differential movie attendance by gender, based not only on the plot of a movie, but on its name. After all, the latter is a summary of the former! Gender issues certainly do play a role in what movies people, and children, choose to watch.

What I object to is using gender to explain the collapse of Disney big-budget animation, when the numbers provided just don't support that.
posted by effugas at 2:15 PM on March 10, 2010

That is some beautiful data.

It seems ill-advised to comment on anything that's (partly) about anything I wrote until the thread has had a chance to settle out, lest it seem like unseemly sucking up or defensiveness, depending, so I just want to sign on to a few points you've all made.

1. Rapunzel isn't much of a story anyway, and it already has a prince in it. And that's the one with the poked-out eyes, which I understand isn't going to make it into a Disney movie no matter what, despite the fact that it would make a pretty butt-kicking musical number. ("One Eye Goes And Then The Other" is the tentative title of the song. There will be dancing.)

If they hadn't made the dippy comments about how inclusive they're being while simultaneously applying an obviously different standard to boy-centered stories and girl-centered stories, I probably wouldn't have bothered. Also: "Flynn Rider." Speee-yack. I knew a girl when I was very young who always named any imaginary woman "Ruby Purpleside." I consider this equally sophisticated.

2. It isn't as much about the title; I could have done a better job of headlining the post. I concur that the "Tangled" title, even though I still think it sounds kind of ... dumb, is not really the problem.

3. I am super-grateful to the thread in general for understanding the distinction between "it is a real thing that boys often don't want to go to Disney princess movies" and "it is a real thing that boys are innately and irreparably uninterested in stories about girls and IT IS IN THEIR DNA," because I have heard some of that.

4. "Girly taint" did not escape my notice, either. Although honestly, it's equally gross, in different ways, no matter which way you choose to take the phrase.
posted by Linda_Holmes at 3:45 PM on March 10, 2010 [1 favorite]

"No one reads all the comments anyway these days."

Sure we do!

Time to read the rest now...
posted by Kevin Street at 3:49 PM on March 10, 2010

The World Famous : The modern contempt for lyric opera is ridiculous, and the "musical" is generally a ridiculous and contemptable modern mockery of opera.

As someone who loathes both, let me throw my hat in here... Musicals (whether Opera or Abba) amount to nothing more than a cute trick. "Hey, people like plays/movies, and hey, they like music too. What if... The cast sang all their lines?"

I absolutely love music, of a wide variety of musical genres. But making everyone sing their lines just so you can have both at the same time... Just no. You couldn't look around for a bigger shoehorn if your tried. From Disney to Verdi to Wagner to Webber, they all merely set mythology to music. Some damned fine music on occasion, but story-wise about as engaging as "See Spot; See Spot run".
posted by pla at 8:04 PM on March 10, 2010

I absolutely love music, of a wide variety of musical genres. But making everyone sing their lines just so you can have both at the same time... Just no.

This is a really wild misunderstanding of what the music and lyrics in musicals hopes to accomplish. It's not some willful idea of "two great tastes that taste great together"; it's a narrative device.

While there are certainly sung through musicals, most often they are balanced out with dialogue. The songs then accomplish different things. They might investigate character or move plot or reinforce a theme. The song might act as a kind of interior monologue or play the subtext of two characters' relationship to each other without making it explicit. A novel makes it easy to get inside a character's head; on stage, the songs in musicals can act this way.

From Disney to Verdi to Wagner to Webber, they all merely set mythology to music. Some damned fine music on occasion, but story-wise about as engaging as "See Spot; See Spot run".

Well, I'm certainly not knowledgeable enough to defend Verdi or Wagner in this context, but to lump ALL opera and ALL musicals into the "See Spot Run" category is just ridiculously ignorant.

Not all musicals are "mythology set to music". Stephen Sondheim's Assassins or Into the Woods or Sweeney Todd or Sunday in the Park with George are all dense, complicated texts. Chicago is a smart critique of fame and notoriety. Jason Robert Brown's The Last Five Years is a beautiful two-handed character and relationship study. William Finn's A New Brain is a fascinating study of terminal illness and near death experiences. The list goes on and on.

I guess you might not like people singing a story - does that discount all ballads for you? - but don't be reductive about an entire medium of storytelling that has a rich history and continues to this day. Beyond the death knells ignorant critics continue to ring.
posted by crossoverman at 1:18 AM on March 11, 2010 [2 favorites]