September 26, 2017: Ten Books That Feature Characters ____________: (Examples: Ten books that feature black main characters, characters who hold interesting jobs, characters who have a mental illness, characters that are adopted, characters that play sports, etc, etc. Can’t wait to see what you all come up with!)
I’m going off topic this week. I just couldn’t think of anything to go with this week’s character topic. So I’m going to rant instead, and I’m going to rant about Disney. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge Disney fangirl. I love Disney movies. My favorite is The Little Mermaid, and I collect Ariel everything.
Still… there are a few things I’ve always wondered about, or things that just bother me, or that don’t add up.
Top 5 Disney Rants
- Jasmine, Princess Privilege Much? – Ok, so seriously, Jasmine is the only child of the Sultan and presumably will be ruler some day, or married to the next ruler and at least be very influential. Yet she doesn’t know the first thing about the rule of law in their nation. You might expect that the plight of the poor would be kept from her, but really she should have been taught about crime and punishment or money and all that by the time she’s a teenager. Plus, it always bothered me that we are supposed to feel sorry for the poor, bored, pampered princess when it’s clearly shown that there are children starving in Agrabah.
- Yzma, Everything About Yzma – What fevered nightmare did Yzma come out of? Seriously, the animators who came up with her were deranged. Let’s forget for a moment that we are supposed to be enlightened enough now that we don’t believe that evil people are ugly. (Remember in 1991 when Beauty and the Beast broke this mold wide open? Well The Emperor’s New Groove came out nine years later in 2000.) Yzma is one of Disney’s most cringe inducing characters ever. We watched it again the other night, and I can’t believe she ever made it on screen. I am totally creepified by her.
- What do Mermaids eat? – Are we really suppose to believe that all merfolk are vegetarians? And yes, yes, I know that this argument has been made before. In fact, it’s probably the number one thing people bring up about the little mermaid (beside the fact that Ariel could have written Eric a letter explaining her temporary muteness.) Pretty much the ocean food chain is that big things eat smaller things. Yet King Triton puts down humans as “those fish-eaters.” As signature-reads.com puts it, “However, in the real world, nearly all sea life feeds on … other sea life. So what’s on the menu in Triton’s kingdom? Perhaps lots of slime and plankton, or other things too horrifying to imagine.”
- Why did they make a Hunchback of Notre Dame kids movie? – I have read the Hunchback of Notre Dame and at no time while reading it did I ever think, “They should make a kids movie out of this.” In fact, I refuse to watch the movie. Seriously they made a kids movie out of a book where everyone dies horrifically and there is no justice what-so-ever. Sorry, Disney no happy endings here. In fact, that might even be the point.
- The Prince doesn’t remember the color of Cinderella’s hair? – I’m not the first to point this out, but it seems odd that his man servant had to try the glass slipper on every maiden in the kingdom. Could he have a least told him, “She has strawberry blonde hair.”? I mean come on.
So that’s my list. Do you have any Disney rants? Please share them in the comments and leave me a link to your Top Ten Tues post.