Disney Democracy

Hasn't the Disney Princess thing always been about democracy?  True Love, ballroom dancing and tassels and sequins for all?  Well, except the Bad Guys, because hey, if you want a story, somebody's got to be a bad guy and they can't get those things or what would the be point ... although come to think of it that sociopathic prince in Frozen gets all of them, moreorless... eh?  

Wanna hear a secret?  Drama and democracy aren't compatible.  And the jury's out on whether Hans is either a Prince Charming or a proper antagonist.  

Disney must surely have selected the princess fairy tales as the most compatible with the Horatio Alger rags to riches "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps" - an archetype often expressed in coming of age stories.  All Disney Princesses must be abuse survivors - they usually survive domestic slavery, though occasionally coma (Sleeping Beauty, Snow White) or being sold into slavery to somebody with no particular agenda (Belle).  The horror of their backgrounds is exceeded only by the horror of their eligible princes - two necrophiliacs, a Monumental Sulk, a Foot Fetishist - the list goes on - and for these features one must hold the selected source material responsible.  Fairy tales are famously terrifying - and famously moralising, functioning as a how-to guide to survival and thriving in the middle ages (and earlier).

They are also so very old - Cinderella goes back over 2000 years at least - embodying numerous variations of the coming of age story  and adapting across cultures while retaining their archetypes: the poor girl rescued by marriage to a rich man, the neglected child who grows up to be belle of the ball.  Not so American, but totally archetypal, and socially controlling of women.  Kindness and intelligence are often as important in fairy tales as beauty because these girls are locked into patriarchal power structures, which are dependent on the moral as well as practical qualities that women bring to unpaid work; the span of the film encompasses a princess's whole butterfly-lifespan of freedom, and in those patriarchal structures lie first their hell and then their happiness.  And most importantly, the bridge from one of those to the other is a Glittery Dress. It's a vital merchandising part of the Disney machine.  And fair enough, because glittery dresses are fun and pretty and what small child doesn't want one?

In the case of Frozen, the demand for the glittery dresses (Elsa's snow one, of course) has been so intense that Disney has come under fire for its inadequate stock of dolls and costumes.  Apparently the market for these has been double that of merchandising for Tangled.  

Holy crap, what have Disney done so right?  Is it the plunky music?  Judging by the success of many shouty ballad singers on talent shows, Let It Go really should be a sure fire hit, and indeed you probably don't know a child who hasn't heard it.  Is it the fact that there are as many main male characters as female?  Disney has been trying to extend its Princess Appeal to the small boy demographic, and my three nephews certainly watched bug eyed and muttery with interpretation throughout, and then told me it wasn't a "girly" film.  Or is it the demise of the Prince?

Poorly parented, the Frozen heroines grow up neglected and isolated, one by fear of her own abilities (which she has been taught are solely destructive by her muggle parents), and the other by the withdrawal of her terrified sister and early death of their parents.  So far, so Disney.  But then Elsa pops out of her Howard Hughes room and forbids her sister to marry "a man you just met", even though he is a Prince.  Previously, remember, a Disney Princess marries a man she just met when she was unconscious. In the case of Snow White, he wasn't even picky about her waking up.  Bossy sisters, eh?

After Elsa's social anxiety and annoyance with her affection-demanding sister result in a huge Winter Incident, she flees, pursued by Anna the redheaded optimist goes after her and meets an ice harvester, to whom she decides only to give a sledge and some innocuously Disney kissing at the end of the film.  Because the Prince has turned out to be a Complete and Utter Git.  Is it the death of patriarchy in Disneyland?  Is the Prince too undemocratic, does even a humble worker deserve a princess?  Are men not entitled to own women any more?

These Big Questions have led various commentators to suggest that, along with Elsa's refusal to end up with a man at all, in spite of having to rule a kingdom (sic) by herself, this is a feminist realignment of Disney Princesses.  For my money, possibly the strongest realignment of values is the fact that the antagonist/villain is actually young, attractive and male.  This is modern morality with some punch; "don't trust the boy who looks too good to be true", as opposed to "don't trust the old woman who is plainly an evil sorceress".  It suggests a girl should be jolly careful about whom she shags (rather than recognising wickedness in the parental figures on whom she depends) and that posh isn't necessarily trustworthy.

Kristoff is not the first democratic parti, however; Rapunzel in Tangled - for my money a better film, with infinitely better music, more charm and a sweeter relationship at its heart - is rescued by a thief, who changes his ways and whom she subsequently marries.  Much of the fan fiction for Tangled deals with her managing the transition from prisoner to princess, as well as Flynn/Eugene becoming less of a narcissistic criminal and more of a prince (or adult).

The role of drama, according to both Aristotle and modern Hollywood, is to catch the audience up in an impossible, unattainable world, where their betters live out to the fullest extent mankind's deepest fears and horrors, shock them by reversals, and allow them, by living out these feelings without danger, to walk out relaxed and revived.  Fan fiction is perhaps a measure of how successfully these films achieve this.  The tighter and more satisfactory the structure, the more inescapably believable the closure, the less the fan fictioneers have to work with.  The reversal in Frozen is stunning.  Anna turns away from her own salvation and thereby saves her own life, her sister's life, and the problem of Elsa's powers.  But it doesn't involve either of the male leads, or destroy the antagonist (compare this to Rapunzel's hair reversal, which kills and saves Flynn and destroys Gothel while never compromising her opposition to violence) and leaves a lot of unanswered questions.  Hans is still alive.  Kristoff is still an ice-harvester.  Both women are still single.

There is a huge amount of fan fiction for Frozen.  I think it's because the structure of the film leaves so many loose ends.  Fan fiction is like a chandelier, reflecting back a thousand different possibilities. Elsa has imprisoned Hans behind an ice door in her dressing room; Hans has been cast off by his country and become a vagabond; Hans has gone to another country and staged a coup there; Hans has had a sami remove a piece of the mirror from his eye and heart and become a different person.  Sometimes Anna is dating Kristoff, sometimes Hans, sometimes Elsa as her sister, sometimes Elsa in an alternative universe where they aren't related, sometimes in a version of Arendelle where they aren't related.  Anybody could be with anybody, even though it is a badge of honour for fanfic to keep their characters as "canon" - faithful to those in the film - as possible.

There's an inherent appeal to both Elsa and Hans, whose characters don't fit.  Handsome princes aren't supposed to be wicked; beautiful princesses aren't supposed to be so anxious they can barely leave their room or so powerful that they can change the world.  Hans at least knows what he wants; Elsa only knows what she can do.  She is near to a tragic character; flawed by her inability to control her magic, she seems only to want not to do harm, and this, like her voluntary isolation, perhaps speaks to girls and women, not as a function of feminism, but as a fact of their existence.  Elsa is essentially a terrified mess, and this is familiar territory to women frightened of their bodies, their destinies, their ability to control their lives.  She is silenced by her unfeminine power, by the fear of rejection that that power brings; again a horribly familiar experience for girls who are expected to sit quietly and not to shout out or be bossy.  She also functions largely as antagonist; she nearly destroys a country, she denies her responsibility as a ruler and hurts her land, and her reversal is a function of Anna's, not her own.  

The vast variation of relationships alone is indicative of some lack of fixedness in the Frozen universe; there are very few Tangled fics which deal with relationships or major character changes in the same way.  Rapunzel does not generally date the Captain of the Guard, or Mother Gothel, or either of the Stabbingtons.  Her character is strikingly intelligent and clear minded and determined.  Rapunzel appeals more straightforwardly to feminists, but her character is maybe less expressive of the attempts women make to deal with their own power, because she deals with it so well.  She has been warned about men and if anybody tries to hurt her she does not scruple to whack them unconscious with a frying pan.  Anna is violent towards both her potential suitors, but always in a depressingly passive aggressive, "accidental" and in Kristoff's case also unfair manner.  She knows nothing and shows no intelligent caution that might help her learn.

However, both Anna and Elsa end up happily anti-snobbery, welcoming men into their lives who have shown moral qualities - loyalty, kindness, friendship, tolerance, self-sacrifice - rather than those who have status, breeding or power, or place too high a value on these things.  Maybe a tiny step towards democracy, even though no story can be democratic - because what about Elsa, the nearly wicked queen and Hans the traitor prince?  The film leaves them unsolved, free to roam the wilds of FanFicLand and the upper echelons of 1820s society, with even rumours of an echt Disney sequel ... so thankfully democracy isn't safe for Disneyland yet.

Going Loco Incognito and Other Tales of Madness

There is much to be said for madness; my own belief is that most people are pretty heavily quirky and that this can tip over quickly and easily into very difficult behaviour should circumstances facilitate this.  And also that difficulty  is the key characteristic of madness.  You can be as mad as you like, if your behaviour inconveniences nobody else - hence the vast superiority of being immensely rich and powerful if you wander over the borders.  If you are poor, woe is your lot, for society does not easily tolerate annoyance from the poor, because society can't avoid it.  Proximity is everything.

With this in mind, I have been watching Ruby Wax and Jon Richardson this week on C4 Goes Mad and I am interested by Ms Wax's selection of people who are high achievers - these seemed the people most unlikely to be sacked if they disclosed their mental instability.  While they have economic value and have competently disguised their frailty to date, they would seem to me to have every good chance of surviving mental illness and indeed retaining their jobs.  It was a charming watch, but it didn't seem to actually examine what it claimed - it examined the people who can dodge the consequences of their condition, not those who are defined by it.

Cue Jon Richardson's programme on OCD, which was perhaps more realistic, with less of an agenda.  It showed the cost of mental illness - and a form of mental illness, unlike depression, for which there seems remarkably little treatment available - to people in terms of their ability to work, and worse, their relationships with others.  The guilt and sadness of having a child to whom a condition has been passed down was shown very clearly, and it was far clearer that these were people unable to control their condition.

What intrigued me most was that both conditions seemed to have a strong relationship with anxiety, though the illnesses that manifested were quite different in their symptoms.  I hope to see more exploration of the questions of how anxiety can be dealt with on a social level - it was salutary to see JR working out his own salvation in terms of needing to live with people, even if they annoy him, and I would be interested to see other pro-social solutions. Although he clearly is quirky rather than ill, this, and the compounded success of employment for those who can maintain it, seem to indicate some de-medicalization and re-socialization of the treatment of mental illness is long overdue.

So I look forward to the World's Maddest Interview tonight.   

a surprising conclusion

When the commentators at Wimbledon burble about how it is THE BEST grand slam I have always assumed that this is because they are English and they like to think so.  But now I am beginning to think it maybe is.

Firstly, it is lovely and green.  Roland Garros is okay looking but it is like looking at an oompah loompah/jumblie design day out.  Very orange courts, very navy uniforms, and some dangerously funky coloured outfits.  Wimbledon - soothing on the eye, with players in crisp white clothes that look like a persil advert and are uniformly easy to see.

Our ballboys and ballgirls - dressed in Ralph Lauren - are also the best.  Very seldom, if ever, do they trundle out onto court in mid-play.  See their fitness, dedication, and accuracy.  They are a credit to us.  If we cannot produce a player, look what brilliant factotums we can train.

There is also the fact that for two weeks of the year only, we watch tennis.  Passionately, as though we know about it, as though we love it with the same passion as football, suddenly, like love, we are in again.  Sometimes you look at other tournaments and the non-attendance on the show courts is woeful. Nobody expects the outside courts to be heaving with spectators during the early stages, but not to fill centre and number 1 courts seems amazing.  And it fills my hard mad heart with pity for the players.  It is wretched to be a gladiator without an audience.  They may save you, or condemn you, hiss or whistle or shout for the opponent, but without them, what a sad thing sport is.

And tennis commentators are also the flower of the profession.  Do they whinge and gloom like the ex-pros on the footie?  No, they are intellectually spry and witty, with a lively variety of accents and intelligent commentary, and they know amazing amounts of stuff.  In football it seems a law that if anyone knows anything, it must be solemnly repeated by all the commentators before it has been finished with.  It is like cows have been given suits and the power of speech.  Contrast with the cut and thrust of commentary on the tennis.  Although I still don't entirely understand how John McEnroe has come to have such a shining, dedicated hope that Andy Murray to win Wimbledon, I want the world to know how much I appreciate it.

Lastly there is our loony aspiration to win ANYTHING SPORTING AT ALL EVER.  It is in such full, desperate flower at Wimbledon.  For a week we shriek and wring our hands and agonise.  And then our Only Hope is knocked out, and there is our cheery insouciant acceptance of foreign substitutes - our fondness for Federer and Nadal, as though they are English on the inside.  As if, once you have won Wimbledon a few times, really we own you now, and actually, you really are secretly English, and just in denial.

So it is the best, not because of the prize money, but because it is taken so seriously and done so well.  Because even if English Tennis cannot produce the best players, it has strangely managed to produce an excellent - maybe the best - of the tournaments.  So maybe we should be glad, because really we are winning the tennis every year.

X Factor Bingo!

1. Take a piece of paper or card and divide it up into 9 squares (3 x 3. Like noughts and crosses.)

2. Choose nine of the following Judges' Comments:

"You could have a hit single with that."

"I just love you."

"You rocked it out."

"You are the heart and soul of the X Factor"

"Everybody loves you."

"You're so great to work with."

"Vote for Katie."

"You made it your own."

"This is where the competition gets interesting."

"You just became a popstar."

"You are the perfect package."

"I don't know what to say."

"That blew me away."

"You are what this competition is about."

"...to all those people who say competitions like this don't produce stars..."

"You are what the public want."

"... a little bit pitchy..."

"...you've had some bad press..."

"... you look uncomfortable..."

"... that was a risk..."

"... there were some tuning issues ..."

"... you've had some bad mentoring ..."

"... that was the wrong song for you ..."

"I think you've captured the theme really well."

"You are back in the competition."

"You need something a bit more contemporary."

"Don't listen to Simon."

3. Write each of your choices into each of your nine squares.

4. Watch, agog, to see which of your choices comes up, then cross it off.

5. First one to a line gets the Inside Soap magazine - first one to a full house gets the entire Quality Street Supply and control of the remote for the night.

Another two hours well spent. XOXO

GUILTY

Katie Waissel stands accused.

She is accused of being egotistical and self-promoting. Yes, yes, she is guilty, cries the chorus of self-righteousness from the Mail.

She is accused of lying about sleeping with Matt Cardle. She has not been quoted, but she is undoubtedly guilty because she has been accused by no less an authority than the News of the World, commonly known on Fleet Street of the Scourge of the Evil-Breasted-Womankind. (All women are evil, and the fact that they have STOLEN THE WORLD'S SUPPLY OF BREASTS can only confirm this in the mind of any right-minded person) and the Flame of Righteousness. When the News of the World says something, you can be sure in your own mind it is Incontrovertibly True.

She has been accused of being a drama queen, of having pictures of herself naked on her phone, of being "unpopular in the X Factor House" and is probably the Untidy One there, too.

Well, this is ALL TRUE. And here is the proof: she has worn feathery eyelashes. She has shown frequently that she idolises Etta James. And most damning of all, she did not sit on her bumcakes at a till, or in a callcentre, or at home, waiting for Simon Cowell to elevate her to stardom. She has worked her bony arse off trying to be a popstar. She has auditioned, and sung, and learnt the piano and the guitar, and written songs and sung them. She has gone to America to make a dodgy online series. She has written and recorded an anti-bullying "anthem". She has worked at making her dotty drama queen dream come true. For this, she is guilty, Guilty, GUILTY. And may never be forgiven.

Who Knew?

A week of revelation on the gogglebox.

Lady Mary, whom I hugely enjoy hating, has finally got some comeuppance. This youngest and prettiest of all the Evil Cows on Downton Abbey permitted a Foreigner first into her bedroom and then into her back bottom, and was hideously punished for this crime against her class - and her arse - by his prompt and irreversible death.

On the one hand, this is most pleasing. Lady Mary was thoroughly taken down a peg or two. On the other, it points to buttocks of amazing, not to say supernatural, power. Who may attempt to make Lady Mary next his sex toy and yet " a virgin for her husband" and what will become of them? Does her fatal bottom employ its mighty power only against foreigners, as her family's perky xenophobia might lead one to suspect? Or is it against all comers? And is it only her back bottom, or must Lady Mary's husband take on a virginity which must surely end his bridal night in Death? It is all a very jolly speculation. Matthew, the drippy heir apparent, looks like the likely next suitor, but he is too wringing a wet blanket to attempt either extra marital or anal activities with anybody, and may thus bury them all...

And then, in the Apprentice, somebody with a proper London accent survived the Boardroom. Lord Sugar picked on somebody a bit quiet for the boot, and over on "You're Fired" the delightful Dara O'Brain more than made up for Adrian Chiles, and Jack Whitehall restrained himself from being a complete nobdollop and was really quite amusing. A week of wonders, indeed.

Excluded

... was the title of the BBC's drama offering for the "Education" season last night. It was called this because, obviously, it was not what it was about. Why, you gasp, what was it about? Having sat through the whole everlasting hour, I can proudly report that I know the answer. It was about NOTHING.

It was a confused and confused piece of failed agit-prop where a group of cardboard cut-outs mouthed unlikely dialogue to communicate dated, ideologically charged, ill-thought out claptrap. It was about the BBC having no earthly idea what might be going on in their chosen "topic", and refusing to use its considerable clout to find out. It was about throwing together a ragbag of ridiculous, outmoded cliches equally lacking in drama and information. It was a grimly tedious hour of shit tv.

There are obvious and immediate conflicts in a piece like this: on the one hand it is intended as a state-of-education piece; its aim to communicate a recognisable portrait of secondary school is a challenging one in itself, and it's also in conflict with the basic demands of drama, which require focus on characters, rather than types, and change, in both situation and character. A portrait must be very skilfully drawn to incorporate dynamism.

But it seemed to me - and as a teacher for seven years and a screenwriting graduate of the NFTS before that, I feel qualified to judge - that it failed on both counts.

I found it a hideously inaccurate portrayal of school. It's inconceivable that a newly trained teacher would set up his very first lesson as badly as did the lead character. Lesson planning over the last ten years has become fiercely structured; few teachers set up a first lesson without a planned starter activity, a seating plan, greeting the kids, taking a register or sorting out books. If you want an accurate picture, the devil is in the details. If you don't want to deal with all that palaver - don't set your scene at the start of a lesson.

Nearly all teaching nowadays involves a storm of photocopies that kids can cut up or colour in or stick together; it is vastly unlikely that an NQT - who would have spent a term and a half teaching by then - would go in to a GCSE class so unprepared that he would still be muttering "I have a background in electronic engineering", unless he were absolutely hopeless.

I have experienced plenty of unprofessional behaviour in schools, but it's stopped short at making faces behind a colleague's back - apart from anything else, it would destroy that member of staff with the kids, because he'd be behaving like one of them, which they consistently despise.

To address the question of drama; drama requires conflict, characters, a story. What was the story here? Everybody was a bit annoyed. That was about it. It was supposed to focus on exclusion, from the naive point of view that exclusion is a hideous experience which is rare and terrifying, traumatising for the child and onerous for the school, a product of poor teaching and school indifference or active persecution of the poor misunderstood child.

It takes a lot more than refusing to leave a classroom to get excluded. Throwing a chair? One of my Year Tens greeted me by throwing a chair in my first week; recorded, reproached, apologised, over. Throwing a brick at my class through a window? No consequence at all. Admittedly the time one of my year sevens went mentaltastic and danced over the desks hurling flour at his classmates and resisting deportation to the point of lying on the floor and holding onto the doorjamb, he did get excluded. For a Whole Day. But it was not the heinous behaviour heretofore described that did it; it was swearing at the deputy head who was finally called to take him out. A combination of vandalism, uncontrollably dangerous behaviour, and extensive disruption to other pupils is required to get a child put onto the "Stages" of exclusion, let alone actually sent home. If the child has a good excuse - being ADHD and refusing medication counts - you can try a lunchtime detention.

So poor misunderstood children are not really the ones who are excluded. This would be pointless in an era when a lot of kids carry weapons. This programme's worldview would appear anachronistic to a jaw-slackening degree.

I struggled to find a story. If it had been a story about a child terrorising other kids and not being excluded, it would have resonated with me. If it had been about a child who was excluded for being a victim of bullying, that, too would have resonated with me. If it had been a child who self-excluded as a consequence of bullying, I would have bought it. But excluded for throwing a chair? Grow up.