Lissa Bilyk

A Background on Tangled and Gender-Neutral Princess Marketing

I LOVE Tangled. This is no secret to anyone who wants to talk Disney with me, or hangs out with me on Facebook. I love it. I love it, I love it, I love it. I think Disney has taken the best bits about every single Disney Princess film, mushed them all together, learned from their mistakes, and turned out not only their greatest Princess film, but possibly their greatest film of all time.

And that’s saying a lot, because before Tangled came along, Belle was my favourite Princess (5th Princess, Beauty and the Beast film released in 1991), and The Lion King (1994) was my favourite film.

I guess I love Tangled so much because I identify with Rapunzel. She’s been afraid to leave her tower for eighteen years. I didn’t move out of home until I was 21, because I thought it was some kind of big deal and I wouldn’t be able to handle myself out there in the big wide world. Turns out I was wrong. I even moved to the other side of the planet to be with the man I love.

Rapunzel tangled — This was me for the first 20 years of my life.

But not only that, Disney learned a lot from their Princess and the Frog marketing campaign, Pixar’s success, and Princess films in general. The problem with Princess films, and the Princess marketing in general, is that it’s primarily aimed at girls, young girls. Sure, there are boys out there who love one or several of the Princess films (my hubs-to-be thinks Mulan kicks butt and often sings to the soundtrack) but the whole marketing campaign is very gendered to appeal to girls. Taking a look at Pixar, which Tangled very assuredly imitates – Pixar films are about boys. They are about male leads and male problems and very much appeal to everyone, boys, girls, adults of all genders, families. Yes, there are girls in Pixar films – that’s not what I’m arguing. All of the Pixar leads are male. Pixar knows that male-led films are gender neutral (!!!) and appeal to both boys and girls (take Harry Potter, for example, which appeals to everyone) and girl-led films primarily appeal to females (take Twilight, for an extreme example, even though it’s a romance). Disney could have marketed The Princess and the Frog as a male-female buddy road trip, but they focused on Tiana as the Princess. Her film sold reasonably well – better than recent films but not as well as any of the other Princess films.

rapunzel title change — The title changed a few times trying to find the right marketing angle.

Then Tangled came along. Initially titled Rapunzel Unbraided, Disney knew they had to take a step away from their hand-drawn Princess-marketed films and take a step closer to the direction their recently acquired Pixar animation staff were used to heading in: appealing to a bigger audience than just girls. They needed the Pixar animation, and they needed an appealing male co-lead.

Yes, Rapunzel is the film’s lead. But they gave her the best well-rounded male character companion of any Disney film: Flynn Rider. Ten times better than Naveen, deeper than the Beast, more appealing than Eric and more adventurous than Aladdin, Flynn, like Tangled, takes the best of the Disney boys and distils them with an excellent result. And the marketing department was saying all over the media that this isn’t just a Princess film, it’s a boy’s film too. Disney defended their marketing decision, which was criticised, by saying it’s not just a film about Rapunzel.

Flynn-Smoulder — Flynn and his smoulder.

And guess what? It worked. Tangled spent 6 years in production and cost $260M to produce, which makes it the most expensive animated film of all time. I’m not sure it’s pure coincidence that it’s Disney’s 50th animated feature film, but after 49 attempts (and some very good gems in the meantime), I think they finally nailed it. It received generally good reviews from critics and it is also the second highest grossing animated film ever made by Disney, behind The Lion King, and it’s the fifteenth highest grossing animated film ever made. It’s critically and commercially one of Disney’s greatest films.

I love the Princess films. I love that I’m a girl and can feel no shame in loving the Princess films. But I’m also ecstatically happy that Tangled, which is a Princess film, has finally hit the right marketing angle and the right storytelling angle to appeal to a wider audience. While yes, I do recognise Disney’s desperation to reach for a wider audience, I think they made a better film for it. The only thing – literally the ONLY thing – that I dislike about Tangled is one of the characters – a suggestive geriatric dressed as a baby Cupid. That’s a personal taste thing, though.

Tomorrow I’ll post my Disney Dissection of Tangled.

Birthday Book Bonanza

I’ve been living in England away from the majority of my books back home in Australia for sixteen months now. Knowing that I will want to ship home any books I buy here in England (my visa is only for 24 months) I’ve really cut back on my book spending. I don’t remember the last book I bought, but I’m pretty sure it was in 2010. Divergent doesn’t count, because my hubs-to-be bought it for me Smile with tongue out .

So when I had my 25th birthday last Friday, I was pretty stoked with the stash I got. It’s all Young Adult, and some are debut novels which I’ve taken a particular interest in.

Angel novel. Debut. From my parents.

Zombie novel. Debut. From my parents.

Vampire spin-off from my favourite contemporary YA series, Vampire Academy, from my hubs-to-be.

YA novel… not sure yet if it’s urban fantasy or paranormal romance. It sounds pretty awesome – I follow the author on Twitter and she’s hilarious. Debut. From a friend in Australia.

This revolves around the work of Edgar Allan Poe, my favourite poet. I think it’s a paranormal. Debut. From a friend in Australia – this isn’t for sale in the UK just yet.

I am awaiting an ARC of this book from a bloggy friend, Penelope, from The Reading Fever – she’s the host of the Foreign Cover Friday bloghop I sometimes participate in. It’s a sci-fi.

Tina Storm: Demon Hunter gets her own novel

When I first started writing the Tina Storm: Demon Hunter Paranormal Short Story Collection, it was basically an excuse to take a break from creating an entirely new world and mythology in The Innocence Saga and have a go at writing something based in reality. By based in reality I meant a normal teenage girl, a bit of an outsider, goes to school, hunts demons with her family, you know the usual kind of…

Oh yeah, that’s not normal. But I did use the opportunity to hammer out some short stories using creatures I wouldn’t normally write about: vampires, werewolves, fairies, djinni, ghosts. I love my short story collection. It’s going on sale in e-book format later this year, and I’ll consider turning it into a paperback but I’m aware it’s only a small book. My editor is working on it as I type.

A few nights ago as my future in-laws took hubs-to-be and I out for a meal to celebrate my 25th birthday, I got thinking about adding some extra stories into the collection to beef it up a bit. I couldn’t really think of any more paranormal tropes other than an ancient curse. The only thing I really wanted to write about was to expand a very badly written one act play I attempted when I was eighteen about a coven of witches. The idea wouldn’t fit into 5000 words, let alone 2000.

So Tina jumped into my head and demand I write her an entire urban fantasy novel about the time she and her mother infiltrated a witches’ coven.

I said, “Go to the back of the queue!”

Maybe that’s what I’ll write come November for NaNoWriMo. It’s either that or the first book of the second YA high fantasy I’m planning, with the three leads bound and gagged in the back of my head so they don’t bother me while I’m writing A Partridge in a Pear Tree. Although I rather like the idea of writing someone not high fantasy for Nano, because it’s out of my comfort zone, like I did with The Edge of Darkness.

Being an author is ~~hard~~ totally awesome.

Foreign Cover Friday: Unearthly by Cynthia Hand

Foreign Cover Friday is a weekly meme hosted by The Reading Fever, where foreign covers of the books we know and love are spotlighted and discussed. To join, either pick your favourite foreign cover, or pick many foreign covers, and start discussing!

This week I’m going with Unearthly by Cynthia Hand for two reasons: point the first: it’s the book I’m currently reading and point the second: it’s my birthday and I’m going to try to keep this post short so I can finish Unearthly and start on Bloodlines by Richelle Mead, my present from my hubs-to-be. It was published in 2011 so there aren’t a lot of foreign covers as yet, but the covers they do have are all interesting in their own ways.

Clara is part-angel. Through terrifying visions of a forest fire she is shown her purpose: to save a beautiful, unknown boy. When she finds Christian, the boy from her visions, he’s everything she could wish for. But Clara discovers there’s a darker side to her purpose. And if Christian is so perfect, why does she have feelings for someone else?

Because I live in the UK, this is my cover. It’s SO gorgeous. I first saw this cover on Amazon and didn’t realise it was the UK cover, so I was pretty stoked when I walked into the bookshop last week and found this baby waiting for me. Also, I have a thing for white hair – the heroine of my YA high fantasy, Innocence Frostcaller, has white hair. I’m drawn to it. I love the trees, which are important to the plot, the ethereal appearance of who I suspect must be Clara (even though it’s not entirely accurate) and the art designs over the top. It also doesn’t hurt that Richelle Mead, my favourite contemp YA author, has a comment on the cover.

This is the HarperTeen US cover. Although I don’t like the overuse of the blue palette, the girl is quite pretty and I love her dress and all the arty-farty stuff around the cover text. The ever-so-important trees are still there in the background, but I wonder what on earth is a girl in such a gorgeous dress doing wandering the woods outside?

This is the HarperCollins Australia cover. I like my cover better! Sorry, homeland. Although the girl is a more accurate description of Clara with the orange hair (and maybe the dress, I don’t know because I haven’t finished it yet). I love the pose Clara is using and the trees framing her, and the use of the pale orange in the background which, as anyone who’s ever lived through an Australian summer will tell you, is the red-orange rays of the sun filtering through the smoke of bushfire – an all too common occurrence in any Australian summer. Nice touch there, HarperCollins, appealing to this market directly! I think the text is a bit too basic to grab my attention, although the dress totally makes up for that. It’s gorgeous!

This is the Portuguese cover. I don’t like it very much. For a start it’s all blue. And then Clara appears to be naked. What’s up with that? She’s not a woman, she’s a teenager.

These three covers are clearly heavily inspired by the US cover. The Croatian cover on the left is actually pretty cool. It’s toned down on the purple and it shows Clara’s wings while turning her blonde. The Polish cover in the middle lacks the wings of the Croatian version but has paled the purple even further, which I like a lot. Clara’s hair colour has also changed for this cover and the Spanish cover on the right, which out of all of them I believe I like the text design the best.

Croatian Translation: Angel Wings
Polish Translation: Unearthly
Spanish Translation: The Design of the Angel

What are your thoughts?

Which covers do you like? Which do you hate?

Check back at The Reading Fever for her Foreign Cover Friday!

Disney’s Working Class Princess: The Princess And The Frog

I’d never watched The Princess and the Frog before I did so for this weekly Disney segment. I wish I hadn’t left it so long. It was released in 2009, so well after the established 8 Disney Princess franchise had been set up (around 2000-2001). Yet Tiana was easily added to the Princess line up in 2010 more than ten years after the last official Princess film was released (Mulan). Also, I always forget that I love jazz music until I listen to it, so I completely adore the soundtrack as well.

The film is based on a book that is based on a Grimm fairy tale, and the most interesting thing about the film (apart from being set in 1920 New Orleans with Disney’s first African American princess) is that the film is self-referential. The characters interact with the original tale, recognise it, and try to emulate it. This, of course, leads to more problems and conflicts as they then try to undo the spell cast on the Prince by an evil voodoo witchdoctor (voiced by my favourite voice actor, Keith David).

Working Class Princess

Now, let’s make one thing clear. Tiana’s not a princess. The closest thing the United State of America have to royalty is the First Family. Prince Naveen – a legitimate, if dishonoured royal – mistakes her for a princess because of the clothes she is wearing to a costume party – which is the first thing I hate about Naveen, but I’ll save my anti-Naveen rant for later. However, I love Tiana so much. I don’t know why this film, although selling better than the more recent hand-drawn films (Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Brother Bear) didn’t sell as well as the Renaissance films (from the 90s). I think basically in my opinion, The Princess and the Frog really paved the way for the roaring success of Tangled. Which is sad, because I once again underestimated a film (I refused to watch Cars for years, and it turned into my favourite Pixar film) and when I finally saw it, fell in love with it. Most of it.

Tiana is not only a waitress at two jobs, but a very competent cook, and shown studying cooking on the commute to work.

I fell in love with Tiana. Tiana is hard-working, a no-nonsense dream-catching go-getter. She’s working hard to achieve her dreams, working two jobs for years, putting up with heaps of negative feedback and being told she won’t achiever her dream from colleagues to real estate agents. There’s even a racial slur in the film which made me fumingly mad. Intentional, of course. Tiana has to fight against so much: gender, race, and a poor socio-economic background in the 1920s, a father who died in the Great War. She’s the toughest of all the Princesses, next to Mulan, because the society she lives in makes it hard for her to do what she wants.

The art styles used in Tiana's solo song "Almost There" were just amazing.

Tiana’s Pride, Tiana’s Dream

Tiana doesn’t believe in wishing. She believes in hard work. Her best friend, Charlotte, is a spoiled, shallow (but totally funny!) debutante and Tiana contrasts her so sharply sometimes I almost cut myself watching. See what I did there? Oh, Charlotte’s not all that bad. Tiana’s a good friend of hers. But Tiana still has to work twice as hard and twice as long as any of her friends to achieve her dream when Charlotte could simply throw the cost of one dress at her to help her open up her restaurant. Tiana works hard, and she’s proud of that fact. She tells Naveen, “I’ve had to work hard for everything I’ve got,” which really resounds with me, and I think it leaves a great message to its target audience. No more Domestic Goddess princesses. No more princesses who do nothing but wait for someone to rescue them. Tiana is on her way to getting what she wants, and she’s only 19. Even Belle (mon amie!) wanted something (adventure) but wouldn’t actively go seeking it of her own free will. Even Ariel (poor unfortunate soul) didn’t seek out Ursula until Flotsam and Jetsam suggested it. Tiana is on par with Jasmine, Mulan and Pocahontas who all sought their own path without outside influence and who, incidentally, are all non-Caucasian. Perhaps that’s because the non-Caucasian princesses are the most recent films, but maybe I’m sensing a theme here!

The dream is Tiana’s but it’s also Tiana’s father. Tiana’s mother, voiced by Oprah, has a role in the film. Oh my gosh, a present mother in a Disney film! No way! Gender reversing the films of the 90s, Tiana’s father is the absent parent. But he’s still present in a big way, because he’s the one influencing Tiana’s current dream. All she wants is to open her restaurant, which is exactly what her father wanted but never achieved. So the question is, is the dream really hers, or was it just pushed on to her by her father so often and for so long that she adopted it as her own dream?

Young Tiana and Adult Tiana wishing upon a star - a rare occurrence.

Frog Time

Yes, Tiana’s a black princess. I think that’s wonderful. I think she’s beautiful, both inside and out. Unfortunately, she spends the majority of her time as a frog, so we lose the visual images of a strong, confident, young black woman doing all these amazing, brave, independent things. I suppose the best thing about Tiana’s representation is that her black voice carries over in to the frog body. You can clearly hear the New Orleans twang. And she still carries over her amazing independent spirit and her strong will. If anything, she learns to become softer, and learns to let go of the dream she has kept tight for so long.

Now, I just have to have a Prince Naveen rant. The entire film is his fault. If you ask me, and clearly you asking me or you wouldn’t be reading this blog, the only thing Naveen has going for him is the fact that he isn’t black (I LOVE inter-racial couples, and I’m so impressed Disney put one in their first modern Princess movie) and that he changes from the lazy prince to an honest hard worker by the end of the film. It’s a good character arc, but because of the character he was when the film started, I don’t even like him by the end. Comparing him to Flynn Rider from Tangled, his contemporary Disney ‘Prince’, at least Flynn was also working hard to achieve his dream. Naveen just wants to marry some rich girl. He’s a total gold digger, and the exact gender opposite of some of the earlier Disney Princesses… mainly Giselle from Enchanted, who, despite not being a princess or really anything special at all, still harboured a fantasy to marry a prince.

As usual, Tiana does more than her fair share.

Sure, Naveen is supposed to redeem himself at the end by refusing to marry Charlotte and choosing to spend his life as a frog with Tiana but still… I’m not entirely convinced. And when they are both transformed back into humans (which is a totally cool loophole, BTW) he’s had the adventure of a lifetime and changed his ways, but Tiana? She’s going back to working hard her whole life despite being a princess now. Tiana doesn’t really have much of a character arc. She starts off independent and strong with a dream, and she ends up achieving that dream and snagging a prince as well. It’s the exact same line Sex and the City is trying to sell: you can be superwoman, you can have the career you want and be sexy and independent AND you can marry the (rich) prince of your dreams. I suppose what Tiana’s got going for her is that unlike her friend Charlotte, she’s not sitting around wishing for her life to happen, she’s out and living it.

Naveen and Tiana dance together at Tiana's Palace.

Now, I’ve written a lot about Tiana because these posts are a discussion of the Disney princesses, but quite honestly, Tiana was the best thing about this film (and the songs). I didn’t like the supporting characters and the plot had holes the size of my fist. I love Tiana and think the film should be seen on her merits alone. And as usual, I’m ending with a Disney kiss.

PSYCHE! No, really. here you go: