Prince Charming

Nothing could be more true than that women have been stereotyped in children's films.  For too long, women were weak and helpless, awaiting the savior in the form of Prince Charming who would not only protect them from their peril but also marry them therefore giving meaning to their lives.

However, the films often focused on the women.  Aaron Sorkin defended his treatment of women in his new film "A Social Network" recently by saying that the multiple sexy women were objectives for his main characters, not characters in the themselves.  These Prince Charmings acted the same way in old children's films from Snow White, to Cinderella, to Lady and the Tramp, and Beauty and the Beast.  The women were weak, it is true, but the men in classic children's films were only objectives for those women to reach, overcoming their weakness by, either through brains or beauty, attracting a suitable mate.

Under the ill conceived influence of Third Wave feminism, modern children's films have attempted to make their films less sexist by making the women beautiful, brainy, and kickass.  In Princess and the Frog, and now Tangled, the princess ends up saving the incompetent Prince Charming more than once.  Rather than recreating the medium, these films have simply reversed the roles while hanging on to the discriminating values of a society that is not getting any closer to gender equality.  Now women are expected to be both man and woman, the rescuer and the rescued, while men are now impotent paralyzed objectives.  Even in this, they are still objectives because any woman worth her salt is still not worth any salt without a man, even if that man is utterly incompetent.

If we have women who can do "man things" in these films, why is it still impossible to have men who do "woman things" without it being a moment to laugh at that man's ridiculous incompetence?  I do not blame the film makers.  Film makers are merely the architects of the neurotic dreams of our society.  The particular neurosis in these films is the inability to accept that traditional women's skill has any value for men.  Equality will never be achieved until we can overcome that inability.