Disney Princess brand
The Disney Princess brand is a prominent entertainment franchise from the Walt Disney Company, launched in 2000, that features a collection of popular princess characters aimed primarily at young girls. It encompasses a wide range of products, including dolls, clothing, and multimedia content, and has become one of Disney's most successful and profitable franchises, generating billions in revenue within just a few years of its inception. The franchise includes iconic characters such as Snow White, Cinderella, and Ariel, along with more recent additions like Tiana, Merida, and Moana.
While the brand is beloved by many fans globally, it has faced significant criticism regarding the messages it conveys about gender roles and representation. Critics argue that the portrayal of princesses often reinforces outdated stereotypes of women as reliant on male figures for rescue. Additionally, concerns have been raised about the representation of racial minorities within the franchise, suggesting that some characters have been altered to conform to Eurocentric beauty standards. Despite these critiques, the Disney Princess brand remains influential and continues to evolve, reflecting changing cultural dynamics and audience expectations.
Disney Princess brand
Disney Princess is a wide-ranging entertainment franchise based on the Walt Disney Company’s popular princess characters. Since its inception in 2000, the Disney Princess franchise, which is marketed toward young girls and features such iconic Disney princesses as Snow White and Cinderella, has expanded to include everything from dolls to sing-along videos, themed apparel, and more. Within just a few years of its launch, the franchise became not only one of Disney’s most successful properties but also one of the most profitable entertainment brands of any kind, bringing in more billions of dollars for the company. From the outset, however, the Disney Princess franchise has frequently been the subject of criticism from detractors who argue that its emphasis on and portrayal of princesses potentially sets a bad example for impressionable young girls. Regardless, the franchise remains popular with Disney fans and consumers worldwide.
Development
Princesses and other noteworthy female characters have played key roles in Disney films throughout much of the company’s history. After the early success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), the first feature-length animated film, female protagonists—including both privileged young women of royal lineage and strong heroines of more common ancestries—came to be seen as valuable assets to the Disney empire. Over time, undoubtedly due in no small part to their appeal to young girls, characters of this ilk appeared in nearly every film Disney produced and were the subject of a seemingly endless array of toys, clothes, and other products.
Traditionally, despite their widespread popularity, Disney princesses were marketed exclusively in connection with the specific film franchise for which they were created. Disney strictly adhered to this approach for decades, until a breakthrough suggestion made by Disney Consumer Products chairman Andy Mooney in 2000 marked an important sea change in the company’s direction. Recognizing the extent to which Disney’s numerous princesses and other female characters resonated with young girls, Mooney proposed that these characters be marketed together as a single brand. His subsequent efforts to bring this idea to fruition ultimately led to the creation of the Disney Princess franchise.
Character Roster
While laying the groundwork for the Disney Princess franchise, Mooney decided that, instead of simply encompassing all of Disney’s popular female characters, the line should include only those key figures who best fit the "princess" title. To that end, he combed through the long list of Disney leading ladies and carefully assembled a lineup of distinctly princess-oriented characters to populate the franchise.
Considering the important role princess characters played in Disney’s success throughout its history, it was essentially a given that the Disney Princess line would include both classic and modern characters. The clear classic favorites for inclusion were Snow White, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty (Aurora). As the star of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which transformed Disney from a struggling animation studio into a sprawling entertainment empire, Snow White was the original Disney princess. Cinderella, the titular protagonist of the 1950 movie, quickly became one of Disney’s most popular and recognizable female characters upon her debut. Aurora, the prototypical damsel in distress from Sleeping Beauty (1959), rounded out the classic era of Disney princesses. Mooney included all three in his line from the start.
As iconic as the classic Disney princesses were, they were not the only female Disney characters that contributed to the company’s success. Equally important were the princesses of the so-called "Disney Renaissance" of the 1990s. In acknowledgement of their popularity among fans, Mooney also opted to include Ariel from The Little Mermaid (1989), Belle from Beauty and the Beast (1991), Jasmine from Aladdin (1992), Pocahontas from Pocahontas (1995), and Mulan from Mulan (1998) in the Disney Princess franchise. Originally, Mooney also included Tinker Bell, the kindhearted fairy from Peter Pan (1953), but she was later dropped from the line.
In recognition of the fact that new princesses are still being created in the Disney universe, several other characters have been added to the Disney Princess franchise over the years. In 2010, Tiana, an ambitious young African American woman from New Orleans, Louisiana, who starred in The Princess and the Frog (2009), became the first new character added to the line. The following year, she was joined by Rapunzel, the classic long-haired fairy tale character who officially joined the Disney brand with her appearance in Tangled (2010). Merida, the fiery young protagonist of Brave (2012), became the eleventh entrant to the Disney Princess franchise in 2013. Moana from the 2016 self-titled film and Raya from Raya and the Last Dragon (2021) became the twelfth and thirteenth official princesses, respectively.
Reception and Criticism
The Disney Princess franchise was an undisputed hit as soon as it debuted. Despite the fact that its initial marketing plan was limited to only a handful of toy commercials, the franchise raked in more than $1 billion in sales in just its first three years. Moreover, with its vast array of toys, electronics, videos, housewares, and other merchandise, the Disney Princess franchise quickly came to overshadow many of the company’s other leading properties, including Winnie the Pooh and Mickey Mouse.
Despite its popularity with fans, the Disney Princess franchise has been roundly criticized by activists who take issue with the messages it sends to young girls and its depictions of racial minorities. Many feminist critics have argued that Disney’s portrayal of its female protagonists as princesses too often presents an image of women as helpless victims who are incapable of fending for themselves and must rely on men for rescue. Other feminists who recognize that the stronger, more self-reliant princesses of the Disney Renaissance era represented a step forward in the company’s depiction of women have argued that the Disney Princess franchise has actually hindered and possibly even reversed that progress because of its specific focus on fashion and vanity. Detractors also have criticized the creators of the Disney Princess franchise for allegedly altering the look of its minority princesses to make them appear more Caucasian.
Bibliography
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