Sunday, September 25, 2011

Walt Disney and his Princesses

Right off the bat, check this out if you haven't:
Then go to the comments and see if you can find all the idiots slamming the Snow White and Pocahontas girls for being Asian American.  Really disgusting stuff, I was so upset. 

I have....a lot of biographies on Walt Disney.  Besides John Williams, Walt Disney is my hero.  I've written papers on him and gotten A+ on them.  I think I own maybe 5 biographies.  I won't even acknowledge that Walt Disney: Hollywood's Dark Prince trash because it's just one disgruntled journalist's sullying cash-grab.  Can't stand it.  The fact is...I owe Disney my happiness.  I was part of "that generation", not even "that generation" but that age group.  I was raised on Disney.  The animated Disney films of the 1990's and before didn't give me twisted perceptions of body image or unrealistic expectations about marriage (as in to princes) because I'm not stupid.  Disney isn't even about escape.  What Walt Disney really wanted was to improve the world.  And you could see in his films, that was his mission.  

Here's a list of Disney films I feel everyone should have seen just to know them, not in any particular order:
  • Snow White
  • Sleeping Beauty 
  • Cinderella 
  • Beauty and the Beast 
  • The Lion King
  • Hercules
  • Mulan
  • Hunchback of Notre Dame 
  • The Little Mermaid 
  • Pocahontas 
  • Tangled
  • The Princess and the Frog 
  • Fantasia 
  • Make Mine Music 
  • Peter Pan
  • Alice in Wonderland
  • Aladdin 
  • Mary Poppins 
If it seems like I listed basically all of them, that's because I did.  I watched all of these in 2009 when I was feeling lost and lonely at (where else?!) Boston University.  It saved my sanity.  It completely changed me.  I live and breathe Disney.  I actually want to write my next paper in my advanced writing class about something related to Disney, perhaps the psychology of the songs or the racial issues in the movies--it has always grilled my hamburger so badly that Mulan is never included in the Disney princesses. 
Where's Pocahontas?! 


And I'm sure every girl has thought of it, and if they haven't, they will now.  "Which Disney princess am I most like?" I've known this for years.  I think since I was 14.  I'm most like Princess Jasmine.  Hands-down.  No contest.  Maybe a little bit Tiana, a little bit Rapunzel, being super ambitious (so much so I feel like I have no friends sometimes), and stuck in my house kept away from, well, everything.  But I'm like Princess Jasmine because, get this, my father figure is super powerful and my family is upper middle class.  In LA, that's pretty good, because our state is pretty durn bankrupt right now l.o.l., anyway.  My dad expects me to marry a certain type of guy (aka Chinese American), but I secretly want to marry whoever I want (shh don't tell him).  Then in high school, a half Chinese half white guy who comes from a less fortunate family than mine (his struggling musician parents had a really ugly awkward split so he basically did everything for himself) took an interest in me and basically tried to get me to do all these things that just sounded really out of the box to me.  Going out past 10pm?! What the heck?! Going to get frozen yogurt at Old Town instead of going straight home after school? Crazy! SOUND FAMILIAR?! It should, because that's basically Princess Jasmine's deal.  This guy was my Aladdin. 

I.  am.  Princess Jasmine. 

Oh Disney, you and your watermark...
If I could, I would hire myself out as a Disney expert.  I want to work for the Walt Disney corporation as a Disney history and culture expert.  WOULDN'T THAT BE SO COOL?! I would totally do that.  Just to show how obsessed I am with Disney, I'm going to embed some tracks of myself singing some Disney songs in Mandarin for my extra credit project in my Chinese V class.  I think I spent 5 hours singing nonstop; you can kinda tell in "Part of Your World".  I am so brave for doing this....take a gander:
Part of Your World (Mandarin):
God Help the Outcasts (Mandarin):
Colors of the Wind (Mandarin):


And...no...I had no idea what I was singing, I was just doing it phonetically. Real Love. Live & Breathe.

Also major apologies for being late.  I've got an origins of humanity midterm tomorrow that I haven't even started studying for....maybe I'm not like Tiana...x).  Toodles! 

xo 
-E

2 comments:

  1. I love this post Eli. You always make me giggle.

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  2. your voice is gorgeous! And even though I don't know Mandarin, I still knew all the words and was singing to your mandarin.

    Nicely done, Eli
    xo

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