Due to my post about villains in Disney Princesses some may feel I don’t like those movies, but I do. I just would like them better without the villains or with toned down villains. Another thing that I would like better about those films is if they had more females characters in them.
Linguists Carmen Fought and Karen Eisenhauer had conducted a study into the ratio of female to male speakers in 11 Disney Princess Films from “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” to “Brave” plus the film “Frozen,” making for a total of 12 films. What they found was that in only three out of the 12 did female characters have more spoken words than the male characters leaving the male characters in 9 of the films with more spoken words. These percentages varied from “Brave” with 74.4% female spoken words to Aladdin with only 10.6% female spoken words. The other two films with more female spoken words than male spoken words are Sleeping Beauty (67.9%) and Cinderella (57.0%).
Now, this is strange for stories most of which have females as their center. What makes it even stranger is that the reverse is not the case. According to https://pudding.cool/2017/03/film-dialogue/ out of 31 high performing Disney films, from “The Jungle Book” (1967) to 2016, only 6 out of 31 had more than 50% of words spoken by female characters with the rest having female character speaking less than male characters.
It’s been reported that Frozen head of animation Lino DiSalvo stated "Historically speaking, animating female characters are really, really difficult, because they have to go through these range of emotions, but you have to keep them pretty." This statement generated a lot of criticism with the result that a Disney spokesperson later told Time that DiSalvo's quote was widely misinterpreted, saying that he was "describing some technical aspects of CG animation and not making a general comment on animating females versus males or other characters." Ok, let’s go with that, so his statement was not a reason to have fewer animated female characters.
Let’s look at some films that had a low percentage of female characters' spoken words and see what could have been done differently. The “Little Mermaid” and “Frozen” were both inspired by Hans Christen Andersen’s stories - “The Little Mermaid” and “The Snow Queen.” In the first story there were the mermaid’s sisters as in the film, but in Andersen’s story they played larger, more important roles and are the ones who tried to save the Little Mermaid. Some of the sisters could have replaced the male friends of Ariel. The ones who actually save the Little Mermaid in the source story were the “Daughters of the Air.” And the Little Mermaid had a Grandmother, who played an important role in the original story.
Gerda, the character in the Snow Queen who Anna parallels in Frozen, meets many female characters on her journey to the Snow Queen’s palace. These are the Magician Flower Woman, A Princess and Prince, The Little Robber Girl (who I feel would have been a great character in the film), the Lapp woman and then the Finn Woman all who help her. Anna could have met similar female characters.
Aladdin has the lowest percentage of female spoken words (10.6%), almost all spoken by Jasmine. In that film the Genie speaks the most, followed by Aladdin, followed by Jafar with Jasmine coming up fourth. There is no reason I can see that the Genie could not be female, afterall a female genie was the main character in a popular TV show, I Dream of Jeannie. Also, Jasmine could have been shown having female friends.
In the film Mulan, Mushu, the sidekick, speaks 50% more words than the title character Mulan. I see no reason why Mushu the dragon could not be female, afterall the dragon Sisu in “Raya and the Last Dragon” is female.
Of the three main cursed objects in Beauty and The Beast, Cogsworth speaks the most words, Lumiere next and Mrs. Potts third with about ⅓ the words Cogsworth speaks. Female objects, such as the Featherduster, could have been given more words and Chip could have been a girl. Then there are the three bimbettes who speak very little in the film. I would have liked them to have a bigger role, possibly with one of them realizing what a jerk Gaston is and going against him.
Disney Princess films could be divided into three eras - The Classics Era, Snow White to Sleeping Beauty; the Renaissance Era, The Little Mermaid to Mulan and the New-Age Era, The Princess and the Frog to Frozen. The Classic Era has on average the highest percentage of female character words (58%) and the Renaissance Era the lowest percentage of female character words (23%), with the New-Age Era in between (50%). The Princess and the Frog, at 39% can be seen as the beginning of the increase in the percentage of Female character words spoken, however it still falls short of parity. In addition to Tiana, the film has Tiana’s mother Eudora, Charlotte La Boulf and Mama Odie as well as the young Tiana and Charlotte. Imdb lists 18 persons in their Top Cast for this film, but only six are female. I feel that in a film set in an area with about equal females and males they could have come up with more female characters.
Pocahontas is the only Official Disney Princess based on a known historical person, but Disney wasn’t too careful with the historical accuracy of her story, mainly in that Pocahontas was eleven years old when she met John Smith and historians have some doubts whether she actually saved him. Given that lack of historical accuracy I see no reason why they couldn’t write the story with women being among the members of the exposition to land in Virginia and have these women be an important part of the story.
Two of the Princess films, “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” at 49.3% and “Tangled” at 49.5% are close to parity. All together the 12 films have 23,717 words spoken by female characters and 36,319 words spoken by male characters with a ratio 65.3% female to male words.
Tom,
Linguists Carmen Fought and Karen Eisenhauer had conducted a study into the ratio of female to male speakers in 11 Disney Princess Films from “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” to “Brave” plus the film “Frozen,” making for a total of 12 films. What they found was that in only three out of the 12 did female characters have more spoken words than the male characters leaving the male characters in 9 of the films with more spoken words. These percentages varied from “Brave” with 74.4% female spoken words to Aladdin with only 10.6% female spoken words. The other two films with more female spoken words than male spoken words are Sleeping Beauty (67.9%) and Cinderella (57.0%).
Now, this is strange for stories most of which have females as their center. What makes it even stranger is that the reverse is not the case. According to https://pudding.cool/2017/03/film-dialogue/ out of 31 high performing Disney films, from “The Jungle Book” (1967) to 2016, only 6 out of 31 had more than 50% of words spoken by female characters with the rest having female character speaking less than male characters.
It’s been reported that Frozen head of animation Lino DiSalvo stated "Historically speaking, animating female characters are really, really difficult, because they have to go through these range of emotions, but you have to keep them pretty." This statement generated a lot of criticism with the result that a Disney spokesperson later told Time that DiSalvo's quote was widely misinterpreted, saying that he was "describing some technical aspects of CG animation and not making a general comment on animating females versus males or other characters." Ok, let’s go with that, so his statement was not a reason to have fewer animated female characters.
Let’s look at some films that had a low percentage of female characters' spoken words and see what could have been done differently. The “Little Mermaid” and “Frozen” were both inspired by Hans Christen Andersen’s stories - “The Little Mermaid” and “The Snow Queen.” In the first story there were the mermaid’s sisters as in the film, but in Andersen’s story they played larger, more important roles and are the ones who tried to save the Little Mermaid. Some of the sisters could have replaced the male friends of Ariel. The ones who actually save the Little Mermaid in the source story were the “Daughters of the Air.” And the Little Mermaid had a Grandmother, who played an important role in the original story.
Gerda, the character in the Snow Queen who Anna parallels in Frozen, meets many female characters on her journey to the Snow Queen’s palace. These are the Magician Flower Woman, A Princess and Prince, The Little Robber Girl (who I feel would have been a great character in the film), the Lapp woman and then the Finn Woman all who help her. Anna could have met similar female characters.
Aladdin has the lowest percentage of female spoken words (10.6%), almost all spoken by Jasmine. In that film the Genie speaks the most, followed by Aladdin, followed by Jafar with Jasmine coming up fourth. There is no reason I can see that the Genie could not be female, afterall a female genie was the main character in a popular TV show, I Dream of Jeannie. Also, Jasmine could have been shown having female friends.
In the film Mulan, Mushu, the sidekick, speaks 50% more words than the title character Mulan. I see no reason why Mushu the dragon could not be female, afterall the dragon Sisu in “Raya and the Last Dragon” is female.
Of the three main cursed objects in Beauty and The Beast, Cogsworth speaks the most words, Lumiere next and Mrs. Potts third with about ⅓ the words Cogsworth speaks. Female objects, such as the Featherduster, could have been given more words and Chip could have been a girl. Then there are the three bimbettes who speak very little in the film. I would have liked them to have a bigger role, possibly with one of them realizing what a jerk Gaston is and going against him.
Disney Princess films could be divided into three eras - The Classics Era, Snow White to Sleeping Beauty; the Renaissance Era, The Little Mermaid to Mulan and the New-Age Era, The Princess and the Frog to Frozen. The Classic Era has on average the highest percentage of female character words (58%) and the Renaissance Era the lowest percentage of female character words (23%), with the New-Age Era in between (50%). The Princess and the Frog, at 39% can be seen as the beginning of the increase in the percentage of Female character words spoken, however it still falls short of parity. In addition to Tiana, the film has Tiana’s mother Eudora, Charlotte La Boulf and Mama Odie as well as the young Tiana and Charlotte. Imdb lists 18 persons in their Top Cast for this film, but only six are female. I feel that in a film set in an area with about equal females and males they could have come up with more female characters.
Pocahontas is the only Official Disney Princess based on a known historical person, but Disney wasn’t too careful with the historical accuracy of her story, mainly in that Pocahontas was eleven years old when she met John Smith and historians have some doubts whether she actually saved him. Given that lack of historical accuracy I see no reason why they couldn’t write the story with women being among the members of the exposition to land in Virginia and have these women be an important part of the story.
Two of the Princess films, “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” at 49.3% and “Tangled” at 49.5% are close to parity. All together the 12 films have 23,717 words spoken by female characters and 36,319 words spoken by male characters with a ratio 65.3% female to male words.
Tom,
