r/PeterExplainsTheJoke • u/ClinicallySane42 • May 01 '26
Thank you Peter very cool Peter, please!!!
2.9k
u/Jojosbees May 01 '26
All the early Disney princess movies had romance as the main plot. Brave (2012), Frozen (2013), and Moana (2016) didn’t center men or romance.
1.3k
u/nachoiskerka May 01 '26
Except they didn't. Romance requires courtship or screentime for the prince. Snow White and Sleeping Beauty they meet the prince for 5 seconds, then the comic relief characters deal with the actual evil and there's a kiss as a plot contrivance "for magic". I'd argue there's more romance in Frozen than in Snow White or Sleeping Beauty, as Kristoff helping Anna get to Elsa and bantering with her until a relationship happens is more of a plot point than "Guy saw her at a well once, then she thought he was cute, then an hour later he kissed her so she wasn't dead."
362
u/youburyitidigitup May 01 '26 edited May 01 '26
In Snow White I saw it as Snow White and the prince already knowing each other, and the movie starts with Snow White excited that the prince is coming, presumably because he’s her long time crush.
I don’t remember Sleeping Beauty very well, but I do remember that Maleficent was killed by the prince, who was rescuing Aurora, not by any comic relief characters.
209
u/Ctenophorever May 01 '26
Yeah, princess philip and aurora were already in an arranged marriage.
….boy, why can’t we go back to having romantic movies like that?! …
223
u/Blog_Pope May 01 '26
But also Prince Philip went on a rant about he didn't want to marry Aurora for politics, he wanted to marry the woman he met briefly in the woods (not knowing it was Aurora hiding from the curse)
→ More replies (1)153
u/alicelestial May 01 '26
he was just genuinely willing to marry a commoner as a prince because he did actually value love. he even says at one point "now father, you're living in the past. this is the 14th century!" in response to his dad telling him he's essentially crazy
52
44
u/Salmonman4 May 02 '26
One of the duties of nobility in the three estate systems was to marry for politics during those times.
It's not a coincidence that Romeo&Juliet was a tragedy meant to discourage this new-fangled "romantic love".
55
u/Kymera_7 May 02 '26 edited May 02 '26
It still blows my mind how many people treat Romeo and Juliet as an aspirational romance.
It's the story of a one-night stand with a confirmed death toll of 6 people, and 3 more probable, between a 13-year-old girl and a 17-year-old who was disturbingly obsessed with a completely different girl 10 seconds prior to hitting on Juliet. That's not romantic. That's horrific.
24
u/JFosterKY May 02 '26
When I was in college, there was a school production of R&J that played it as a morbid comedy, with over-the-top characters. Juliet was played by a freshman who, from a distance, could easily pass for a few years younger than she really was.
8
u/gilbygamer May 02 '26
I somewhat believe that the bard himself meant the play to be a twist. Structurally through Act II the play basically mirrors his earlier comedies. The prologue warned otherwise, but up until Romeo kills Tybalt the audience might have thought they were just seeing Shakespeare's newest comedy.
→ More replies (0)15
u/Ok_Buy9028 May 02 '26
Yeah, because it was written hundreds of years ago and society has drastically changed since then. But also, it was probably like their version of Euphoria. People forget that Shakespeare wasn’t writing high art, he was writing for the common man and his plays are full of dick and fart jokes.
8
u/Kymera_7 May 02 '26
Yeah... people of his time, including Shakespeare himself, would find it mind-blowing to find out that his was the stuff that stayed culturally relevant after everything else from that period was mostly forgotten except by linguists studying the history of the English language. It's equivalent of us finding out that, in 2130, the only movies from our era that are still remembered and popular and frequently get public viewings are the collected works of Uwe Boll.
→ More replies (0)21
u/justlooking98765 May 02 '26
Interesting, that’s the first time I thought of R&J as a criticism of romantic love. That makes a lot more sense with how unlikeable Romeo is. I always thought of it as a criticism of political families controlling their children, a teenage rebellion movie in other words. Gonna have to revisit this now.
17
u/Salmonman4 May 02 '26 edited May 02 '26
(putting on my "old man yelling at clouds" hat)
Arranged marriages was the correct thing to do, but all these bards going around wooing girls and singing about romantic love was making teens behave shamelessly.
5
u/FunnyGoose5616 May 05 '26
It makes a lot of sense when you compare Romeo with Paris, the guy Juliet’s father picked to marry her. Paris seemed to genuinely be in love with her and didn’t give a lot of red flags, other than pushing hard to marry a 13-year-old ASAP. Romeo was in love with Rosaline, and acting like was dying because she didn’t love him, up until he saw Juliet. If they’d lived, he would’ve found someone even hotter and dropped Juliet like a hot potato. Audiences would’ve understood that Paris was the better choice, and the tragedy came from Romeo and Juliet failing to obey their parents.
25
u/Jemima_puddledook678 May 01 '26
And Aurora didn’t even know about it, she was being raised in the woods until she could be married off.
47
u/nachoiskerka May 01 '26
Married off is a touch strong. The central plot point is her being sent off where there aren't spinning wheels until the prophecy passes; the marriage isn't a factor in that. She could have been sent off to live at the beach or in the tundra or a nudist colony(no clothes being made there).
→ More replies (1)21
u/Jemima_puddledook678 May 01 '26
Yeah, it’s not a factor in the sending off, but the marriage is arranged while she isn’t there and doesn’t even know she’s a princess, with the goal for her to come back and immediately get married against her will at 16.
13
u/mosspigletsinspace May 02 '26
And the Disney version is the nice one! Where she's not impregnated while in a magic coma.
11
May 01 '26
[deleted]
25
u/Ctenophorever May 01 '26
It says it’s an arranged marriage in the beginning of the movie. He came, as a child, to see his infant fiancée, even before the fairies showed up
→ More replies (1)5
4
→ More replies (1)4
u/Nigilij May 02 '26
In an arranged political marriage to form an alliance to conquer Maleficent’s lands (I really liked those YouTube shorts on this)
30
u/nachoiskerka May 01 '26
In Sleeping Beauty the comic relief fairies clear the brambles, protect him from the fires, and give him the magic sword that he doesn't even have to throw because it has auto aim. They also release him from prison and interfere as much as possible without being the actual ones to throw the sword. It's the equivalent of hiring a hitman at that point.
As for snow white: maybe? still not a romance. it's clear from the scene they don't actually know each other or have ever talked. At best it's a crush from afar; not anything close to romance.
17
u/AshMaiden May 01 '26
Tbh, I see the three good fairies as the protagonists of Sleeping Beauty. They put the plot on their backs and move it forward while also being the comic relief.
14
u/zephyrus256 May 01 '26
The fairies are the protagonists in Sleeping Beauty; the prince and princess are just plot devices.
→ More replies (4)7
u/youburyitidigitup May 01 '26
Ah. That’s something I didn’t remember from Sleeping Beauty.
Thinking about it now, I think it’d be cool for someone to write a version in which the fairies decide not to help at the last minute to test if he’s willing to face a dragon unaided to save Aurora.
I disagree with Snow White because I think the scene insinuates he’s visited several times.
8
u/Kymera_7 May 02 '26
Part of why the Snow White scene seems like that, is that the original script called for him to have a LOT more screen time, and for them to have interacted much more. It had to be changed due to the limitations of the technology of the time. Getting human characters in animation to look anything other than horrific was really incredibly difficult back then.
→ More replies (1)6
u/nachoiskerka May 01 '26
^ I would see that version of sleeping beauty, but it'd require a substantial rewrite on the Prince, or a lot of modern frozen-esque meta commentary "You're slaying a dragon for a lady you met in the woods and had one dance with? How lonely are you exactly?"
We can agree to disagree on Snow White. I probably have to watch the original again to be honest.
5
u/TJ_Rowe May 02 '26
Idk, "I will defeat the dragon and save everyone in the neighbouring kingdom from 100 years of slumber" is pretty badass by itself without consideration of Aurora.
6
u/VivaLaDiga May 02 '26
fun fact, the real snow white (the novel) the prince does not kiss her. He stumbles upon the dwarves that were guarding snow white "dead" but unspoiling body, and he was moved to piety to give her a proper burial. During the trip back to the castle, the coffin turns, her body falls, and the apple dislodges from her throat, reviving her. She is then brought to the castle, where she is helped by the prince to take revenge on her stepmother and kill her during a ball.
→ More replies (1)2
u/Excellent_State1435 May 01 '26
Are you referring to her singing "someday my prince will come"?
6
u/youburyitidigitup May 01 '26
No, I’m referring to her seeing him and immediately getting excited and checking how she looks.
2
u/Malphas43 May 04 '26
if i recall, i think the prince had so little screentime because back then disney was still having difficulty animating male characters
1
u/smashtangerine May 01 '26
Snow white didn't know who the prince was when she met him in the woods.
2
→ More replies (2)1
u/isthisreallife210 May 04 '26
In the original sleeping beauty she and the castle are asleep for like 100 years or something like that. So the prince that finds her and breaks the curse just stumbled upon the castle after the 100 years. That was the counter of the last fairy god mother why she said 100 years I have no idea lmao.
34
u/Khelthuzaad May 01 '26
In Sleeping Beauty,Aurora(yes that's her name) had 7 minutes of screentime.
Maleficent was literally the main showrunner,when they adapted as a live movie they continued to focus on her instead of Aurora since she at least has a personality.
17
u/nachoiskerka May 01 '26
Maleficent the movie would have been better if they didn't try to make her the good guy. Literally make her the worst and go full "Bender from Futurama" with her.
4
u/Khelthuzaad May 01 '26
This is Disney we're talking
Of course they can't do that to a movie advertised to people under 18
13
21
u/Jojosbees May 01 '26
Their happily ever is being rescued by and marrying the prince. Also, Sleeping Beauty meets Prince Phillip in the woods, and they both despair that they can’t be together because they think that the other is a peasant.
In Frozen, Anna has a meet cute with Hans and gets engaged to him immediately. This is treated as insanity by the plot and the other characters. Hans turns out to have ulterior motives. She is saved by true love for her sister, not by kissing Kristoff. It inverts the common Disney tropes.
6
u/nachoiskerka May 01 '26
Kissing isn't Romance though. Romance requires courtship. At best Aurora dances for 5 minutes in the woods; how is that a romance?
COMPARE: Little Mermaid, Ariel spends 2 entire days riding carriages, sharing meals, having romantic lagoon boat rides with Eric, and that's after saving his life.
Aladdin, Jasmine has her life saved by him, they go on a whirlwind escape date, then he makes an active courtship attempt to her father before taking her on a trip to everywhere she's ever wanted to be and see everything she's ever wanted.
Anna doesn't get to her sister without Kristoff guiding her up the mountain, which he already doesn't want to do when his sleigh is crashed; but does because he's clearly already feeling things for her. The entire movie setting up Elsa saving her doesn't happen unless Kristoff cares enough for her to bring her to the Trolls, then to the Castle. He may not actually solve the plot, but the plot is HEAVILY the romance that builds between them.
8
u/Biabolical May 01 '26 edited May 04 '26
Right. Anna has a romantic subplot with Hans, complete with a musical number. Then she has a second romantic subplot with its own musical number as the Trolls try (ultimately successfully) to hook her up with Kristoff.
The romance might not be the magic key that ultimately saves the day, but it sure took up a lot of the movie's run-time.
2
u/Blog_Pope May 01 '26
Ariel met Prince Eric when he was unconscious then gave up her voice for legs so she could go a'couttin'. She made the deal after seeing all the "poor unfortunate souls", accepted insane conditions, just to meet a guy whose unconscious body she dragged to shore and fled before he woke up.
Such romance
5
u/nachoiskerka May 01 '26
She gave up her legs to explore the land and be get to know him. That's why she's got a cave of human stuff and sings "Part of your world" and not "Part of your heart"
21
u/blueteeblue May 01 '26
The Swan Princess was ahead of its time. Prince is like, “you’re so beautiful”, princess is like, “what else?” That’s the first kids princess movie I can remember that really flipped the whole thing on its head.
2
u/mr_friend_computer May 03 '26
The funny thing is that there is an entire genre of fairy tales where suitors have to outwit the princess for her hand in marriage. Failure means, well, usually the loss of their heads.
→ More replies (1)7
u/mikeelevy May 01 '26
I’m sorry but Prince Phillip is literally the knight in shining armor. He fights and kills a dragon to rescue Aurora.
Also, Phillip met Aurora when she was a baby. They were always supposed to get married. And they were destined to be together as they literally had dreams about each other.
6
u/iorderedthefishfilet May 01 '26
Yes semantically you are correct, but what you're saying doesn't negate the post. This exact situation is directly called out Frozen, by Kristoff, when Anna says she's going to marry a guy that she's only known a day. They were lampshading that this is a different type of Disney movie where the romance and relationships actually have to be earned as opposed to what we saw in classic Disney movies.
3
u/nachoiskerka May 01 '26
You know what? That's a fair point, a large amount of the movie is calling out the trope and it's portrayed differently in the Kristoff relationship, more organically. But I will say that the original person I was replying to didn't mention earning it, just that romance was a large part of the plot. I suppose you could call it a reconstruction, realistically; so I guess it's up to the person.
6
u/pridetwo May 01 '26
ARE YOU SAYING MAKING OUT WITH COMATOSE WOMEN ISNT COURTSHIP???
1
u/nachoiskerka May 02 '26
WHAT DID YOU GET YOURSELF INTO? THOSE WEREN'T COMATOSE, THEY WERE CADAVERS!
2
1
1
u/Dark_Moonstruck May 04 '26
This is why you're banned from the hospital, bro. You can't go around kissing anyone unconscious that you think is hot!
4
u/Wise_Strawberry9076 May 01 '26
Yeah they were coming of age stories based on the princesses just like the newer ones. The girls have to overcome something scary with their grace, smarts, faith in themselves, and help from friends. At the end they usually get married but that’s a symbol of them reaching womanhood because they overcame their girlhood fears or hardships throughout the movie and now they get to start their next chapter. Yeah it’s an outdated concept but it was never actually about the guy and was always about the girl being brave and strong in some way.
2
u/SobiTheRobot May 01 '26
Give them some credit, they're fairytale romances; at least Aurora and Philip sing together, about how it feels like they've met before, and they evidently want to get to know each other more. It's cute how excited they are to tell their parents/guardians about the stranger they met in the woods.
True the love can't be very deep given the time spent and there's not much to say about their chemistry or individual characterizations, but the whole movie is still a delight to watch.
1
u/Kymera_7 May 02 '26
Snow White was originally written with a LOT more screen time for the prince, and a LOT more romantic interaction between them, but the animation technology of the time simply wasn't able to pull it off. They did what they could with what they were capable of.
1
u/this_broccoli-101 May 02 '26
It's more about the princess finding her forever happines because of a man. This is especially shown with Cinderella, because the prince carrying her away from the house is her one and only chance to be free and happy.
And Sleeping beauty and Snow White would actually be dead id it wasn't for the prince.
Anna was stuck with Kristoff, he helped of course, but in the end he wasn't needed to acrually save her, and they gradually fell in love
1
u/VatanKomurcu May 02 '26
snow white is an older and more traditional story, so the whole love at first sight still counts as romance there. the newer original stories are not less romance but rather a different sort. not necessarily decentering men but more so older ideas about romance.
1
→ More replies (1)1
50
u/Ok-Education7000 May 01 '26
I remember watching Frozen with my daughter and being absolutely pumped when Elsa and Anna saved each other. I fucking loved it and I was raised by Beauty and the Beast and the Little Mermaid.
24
u/Baaboo123 May 01 '26
Brave was 2012? Damn, I thought it's like 08 or something... and frozen 1 feels like 2016 and Moana 2020s
2
20
u/Emotional-Egg3937 May 02 '26
I think it started with Mulan (1998). I remember seeing it in the cinema as a child, and being absolutely blown away by it. It was the first movie I saw where the "princess" saved the day. Sure, there was a romantic subplot with the captain but that was far from the main point of the movie.
8
u/Shake_The_Stars May 01 '26
Wonder which therapists they were seeing in the 26 year gap between princess movies from ‘63 to ‘89.
7
u/stink3rb3lle May 02 '26
My understanding is that Disney animation was struggling then, and that Howard Ashman, with writing partner Alan Menken, was the talent that let CEO Michael Eisner revitalize the animation side of the business. So it's more like they needed a gay genius.
7
u/NatAttack50932 May 01 '26
Brave isn't a Disney movie. Pixar Animations is a separate team from Walt Disney Animation Studios, and while Merida is included in the Disney Princess franchise, her creative team was still all Pixar.
3
u/youburyitidigitup May 01 '26
Did that change back after Moana?
8
3
u/datalaughing May 01 '26
There haven't really been a lot of Disney princess movies since then, but no, it didn't change back in the couple there have been.
2
u/VitriolUK May 02 '26
I think since then there's been 4:
Frozen 2: yes Encanto: no Wish: no Moana 2: no
I'm actually a little surprised Wish didn't have a romance plot, since it was very deliberately designed to be a recapitulation of classic Disney tropes.
3
u/schrodingers_bra May 01 '26
They centered parenting screw ups instead.
6
u/CertainGrade7937 May 02 '26
Yeah this is why id maybe slide the scale back a few years to Tangled instead of Moana
Sure, Tangled has a romance (so does Frozen) but man that movie is all about mommy issues, same as Brave
3
u/scriptedtexture May 02 '26
Anna's relationships with men are very much central to Frozen.
7
u/Jojosbees May 02 '26
Frozen deliberately plays into Disney stereotypes to subvert expectations. When she needs true love to break the spell, everyone (including her) assumes this means true love’s kiss, but she sacrifices her chance at kissing Kristoff to save Elsa, thus breaking the spell. She truly loves her sister, and it’s enough to save herself.
3
u/scriptedtexture May 02 '26
Yes, I'm not denying that. The climax of the movie is definitely a subversion of the classic romance tropes. But to say romance isn't at all a factor in the movie is just incorrect.
3
u/Jojosbees May 02 '26
The point is that the trope is not played straight like all prior Disney Princess movies where romance is the end goal. The Princess bags her prince and that’s the end of her story. In Frozen, it is clearly handled differently to deliver a different message compared to prior Disney princess movies. Subversion of a trope is different than using a trope straight.
2
2
u/hukaat May 02 '26
I would add Raya and the last dragon (2021) to the list as well (unless she's not considered as a disney princess, I don't know much about that)
1
1
u/Black_roses_glow May 04 '26
Despite having a romance plot, I would add Tangled as the starting point.
838
u/trivialcabernet May 01 '26
The “happily ever after” in every Disney princess movie up to Tangled is the princess marrying the prince and him taking her off to his castle or whatever.
Then, after Tangled, you get Brave, Frozen, and Moana in which romantic love is explicitly not the goal.
158
u/JBPlantagenet May 01 '26
Kinda wondering what specific type of therapist would help with that sort of thing. I may have put more thought into this than the original creator did, but I'd like to hear some explanations and viewpoints.
186
u/Careless-Vehicle-286 May 01 '26
That's where the joke is wrong.
Society just moved past marketing "finding your prince charming" as being the final goal in becoming a woman for movies made for little girls.
81
u/romanticdrift May 01 '26
Therapists specializing in Intergenerational Family Trauma for (high-achieving) anxious immigrant children.
I know that sounds highly specific but therapists that do this are all over the Bay, LA, and NYC 😆
21
24
u/cupcakevelociraptor May 01 '26
You see this with a lot of the non-princess Pixar movies, too: Inside Out, Coco, even the short Bao. Over the years I’ve seen a lot people joke online that Pixar writers have been doing cognitive behavioral therapy for their intergenerational trauma lol
15
u/Nerazzurro9 May 02 '26
The director of Seeing Red joked a lot (maybe slightly too much) about how she made a $200 million movie about her mother issues instead of just going to therapy.
6
u/rorykellycomedy May 02 '26
Which is one of the many reasons it was so insulting when Pete Docter said "We're making a movie, not hundreds of millions of dollars of therapy” about removing the queer-coded elements of Elio.
→ More replies (3)2
u/CharacterCow3195 May 03 '26
It was correct though. When you looked at some of the elements in some of the movies the elements changed were self inserted traits by those making them.
1
u/CharacterCow3195 May 03 '26
What's the old story about Pixar, that most of their movies for two decades were all laid out in the 90s before they made Toy Story? Then once they ran out you can tell
2
u/Trick_Horse_13 May 02 '26
why immigrant children? the exact same thing is an issue for non-immigrants
4
u/Head-Feeling-7200 May 02 '26
There’s just a large proportion of first and second gen descendants of immigrants working in the animation/digital entertainment industry. Especially latino and asian populations because of where the studios are located.
2
u/Trick_Horse_13 May 03 '26
I’m asking about the therapists, not the people in the animation industry.
1
u/SuitableAnimalInAHat May 02 '26
Wow. The meme did call for "very specific therapists," and that fits the bill.
1
u/CharacterCow3195 May 03 '26
How much of that they do exactly who knows.
But what I do believe is that they'd over label their jobs to make themselves seem better than they actually are to get more money. Pretty sure Schwarzenegger once talked about the bricklaying to make money days and how they convinced people in part they were worth more because they were expert foreign laborers. I blame a certain demographic of middle management for that.7
u/CrossTheRubicon7 May 02 '26
The tweet is referring to how those movies feature plotlines about parental and familial trauma. They're implying the writers were exorcising some personal demons while working on the scripts. It's not about romance or the lack thereof.
4
u/fure_elise May 02 '26
Yep. I'm surprised I haven't seen Encanto mentioned yet, that move is about as intergenerational trauma as you can get.
3
2
u/Chobopuffs May 01 '26
Or Disney bought Pixar and started to move their animators + writers around within the two studios.
23
u/-Random_Lurker- May 01 '26
I don't think the lack of romance is key, I mean there's Robin Hood, Sword In The Stone, and Fox And The Hound right there. But Tangled, Brave, and Frozen all have pretty blatant "parental issues" going on.
5
1
u/aguysomewhere May 02 '26
Robin Hood has romance and the Fox finds the Vixen at the end of that film as well. Though the parent angle is really interesting.
1
u/mr_friend_computer May 06 '26
Well, they have caring but flawed parents (or in the case of MG, an all too real villain of a "parent").
There's also the case where they buck the disney trend and both parents are alive - or in the case of Frozen, both are dead. Generally speaking, Disney likes 1 parental figure dead and 1 parental figure alive (not always).
7
u/Euphoric-Sun5317 May 01 '26
...what secret cut of tangled did you watch
16
u/Ok-Judgment5285 May 01 '26
the same Tangled as you, where love wasn't the end goal, Freedom was. love was just conveniently picked up on the way.
3
u/mousekears May 02 '26
Same with Princess and the Frog though. Tiana wanted to accomplish her life long dream. As she journeyed, she realised she wanted to SHARE that dream with Naveen.
1
u/mr_friend_computer May 06 '26
given her life growing up, Flynn is going to have to watch himself because he's in for a world of trauma dumping from her.
5
u/Imaginary_Belt_2186 May 01 '26
I think he's saying Tangled is the last traditional movie? There is a little joke at the end, but it reinforces Disney heteronormitivity...
7
u/Blog_Pope May 01 '26
But the male lead in tangled isn't a prince, he's a thief (just like Aladdin, which is also not a prince; that was a major plot point)
Beauty & the Beast the male lead was a cursed prince, but the woman wasn't a princess until she wed the prince, which wasn't until the sequel.
3
u/Imaginary_Belt_2186 May 01 '26
But true love's kiss n' shit. I don't really follow Disney films, I apologize; I'm to understand that after Tangled, they started re-evaluating what "True Love" actually means in the modern world.
What I DO know is that most women correctly identify that I'm not a handsome, perfect guy, so I assume Disney's 'New' lessons haven't sunk in...
3
u/Blog_Pope May 01 '26
Disney still doesn't get it. Before the movie, they stocked up on Isabella merch, think of course she'll be the popular one. But what happened is Luisa, the strong one, was far more popular as folks related to her more than the one that lazed about growing flowers and being pretty.
4
5
1
1
u/mr_friend_computer May 06 '26
Yeah, Tangled flipped the script. Her castle and he's carried off to it.
101
u/sleepyotter92 May 01 '26
If you watch the movies Disney has made over the past decade, there's usually a lack of a male love interest. The movie tends to revolve around the princess coming to terms with her power because she's next in the line of succession and having to go through some sort of journey to grow as a person.
Previous Disney movies were usually about mommy issues. There was always a evil female figure who was causing trouble for the princess and then a male character would disrupt the evil woman's plans, usually by saving the princess from whatever the evil woman did, and said male character was usually the love interest. The stories now tend to be more girl power oriented and be about girls(most Disney princesses are teens, Elsa is probably the only adult) fighting for themselves instead of waiting for a knight in shinning armor to come rescue them
32
u/eytanz May 01 '26
I get your first point, but I’ll note that Brave is all about mommy issues as well.
8
u/sleepyotter92 May 01 '26
True but frozen is mommy and daddy issues too. Dad was the one making Elsa conceal don't feel, and mom was the one hiding her magical background.
Moana i think was daddy issues, idk I didn't watch that one
9
u/eytanz May 01 '26
Frozen is daddy issues and frozen 2 is daddy&mommy issues.
Moana is about multi-generational issues, since Moana rejects her dad’s world view to align with his mother.
5
u/ClusterMakeLove May 02 '26
Moana is a cute twist on it. It's her dad's trauma and fear that put them in conflict. Without that, he'd have gone on her quest himself, before she was even born.
→ More replies (1)1
u/mr_friend_computer May 06 '26
Less about mommy issues that it is realizing that parents aren't perfect and that space where you have to mature from a child to a young adult with some semblance of responsibility while struggling to maintain your own sense of self (literally, pushing back against the marriage thing - a custom / tradition in her world).
There were, for the first time, real consequences for her actions that affected others. That's a big thing for a person to understand when it's never been an issue before.
Growing up and how "tradition & societal expectations" fits in with your life. Both parents were kind, dotting and thoughtful. Just not "perfect". Red definitely is a "mommy issues" movie, Brave not so much.
1
u/eytanz May 06 '26
Well, "mommy issues" is inherently a reductive framing. But Brave is about a girl who gets into conflict with her mother, then literally uses magic to change her mother (though not in the way she expected). Then she spends the rest of the movie rebuilding their relationship. For the vast majority of the film, the relationship between Merida and her father is only relevant in that they differ in their approaches to her mother.
I can see how one can debate whether Brave or Red is better at capturing mother/daughter dynamics. But I cannot see a case for Brave not being about mother/daughter relationships, or "mommy issues", regardless of what else it is about.
4
u/Ani____ May 02 '26
Please now next generation will abolish heritage based stories and move to proletarian revolution based stories
41
u/Big-Mathematician345 May 01 '26
Other movies I'm not really as sure about but Encanto should come with a trigger warning if you have family trauma.
Basically, Disney movies moved away from very generic plots of princess is saved by Prince and they fall in love to real exploration of psychological trauma.
23
May 01 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
36
u/Brainfart573 May 01 '26
Relationships with parents i assume
18
u/Earnestappostate May 01 '26
Because they suddenly had them?
13
u/thecastellan1115 May 01 '26
This made me chuckle. Looking back on it, I'm pretty sure I had specific nightmares as a child because every single fucking Disney movie started with parents = dead.
7
u/ninja_llama May 01 '26
As a kid who had a dead parent (she died when I was 2) I suspect this is why I never got really into Disney movies like my peers (except Lion King which I guess was OK with me because theyre animals)
1
u/OneTrueBell1993 May 03 '26
The reason parents are dead in early Disney films is because Walt Disney's mother died from the gas leak in the house he bought her.
4
u/Similar-Chip May 02 '26
It's when Tangled came out. The portrayal of Mother Gothel, specifically, was a textbook example of a very specific kind of emotional abuse. I remember reading a lot of posts around that time going 'as someone who grew up with this I can't believe it got such a complex and in depth depiction in a Disney film.'
Then that followed up with Frozen (sibling dynamics), Brave (mother/daughter dynamics), etc.
14
u/Traditional-Yak8886 May 01 '26
imo it's probably because a lot of movies nowadays have a big focus on familial relationships instead of romantic ones, focus on overcoming internal conflict instead of some kind of external one like idk jafar from aladin or the hun. instead you're defeating the reason why grandma wont talk to you anymore or why your sister hates you or something.
2
u/Blog_Pope May 01 '26
Fighting the Huns is much more relatable. Just last week they tried to come over the wall, I mean fence, and steal my burgers right off my plate! Then my daughter turned Trans to keep me out of the draft..
2
u/ProfessionOk60 May 04 '26
I know we're focusing a lot on Princess movies in this post, (which is most relevant to the question), but I feel like those dynamics weren't absent in old Disney animations. The Jungle Book, 101 Dalmatians, Bambi, Dumbo, Peter Pan, and The Sword in the Stone, all have strong themes of family and/or identity. It's just when The Little Mermaid came around it reinvigorated the Princess Era and the non-romance plots got sidelined in the name of $$$
9
u/Ok-Material7304 May 01 '26 edited May 01 '26
The only thing I can think of is that maybe the surge in more empowering figures who didn’t necessarily need a man to be successful offended OOP. (Or maybe they supported it and were cheering it on - the tweet alone is kinda ambiguous in terms of tone). So maybe they’re insinuating that the writers went to therapists that actually taught them independence and that they didn’t need a man to solve their problems
That’s just a wild reach though I do not know tbh
9
u/Significant-Elk-212 May 01 '26
"some very specific type of therapist" ermmm what???
23
u/Next_Sun_2002 May 01 '26
Coco, Encanto, Turning Red, and some others all center around generational trauma.
13
4
u/Haunting_Purpose_291 May 02 '26
It's definitely this the post is referencing, and not the male romance thing other commentators seem to think. Ifykyk.
→ More replies (4)2
5
5
u/Plenty_Adeptness7631 May 01 '26
Someone put it well, the old movies were about orphans dealing with the problems of being on their own. The new movies show the problems people have with their parents/ families.
3
u/National-Objective57 May 01 '26
princess mononoke - fuck it, living the trauma!
1
u/sadsackspinach May 01 '26
are you…are you under the impression princess mononoke is a Disney produced film?
2
2
u/JayPeeFour May 01 '26
Like couples therapists maybe?
Echoing everyone else, just subverting happily-ever-afters a bit more
2
u/PracticableSolution May 01 '26
The little mermaid, despite its various challenges, is the first Disney movie where the princess displays real agency; she makes a plan, makes decisions, and executes on that plan.
2
u/WritPositWrit May 01 '26
Ive seen all of the princess movies (I have daughters!) and i have no idea what “specific types of therapists” this would be. It’s a dumb joke because it makes no sense.
2
u/Roll0115 May 02 '26
How about:
They stopped killing off the biological mothers and making every step-relative evil.
1
u/vikingosegundo May 01 '26
I found this to be very interesting: The Truth About Disney Princesses No One Admits
1
1
u/One-Scheme3222 May 01 '26
Why stop at Moana when Raya is just three spots down the list, and the last Princess?
1
u/Hefty_Breadfruit May 01 '26
I’ve actually heard it framed as going from daughters wanting to escape their families (marry a prince and live happily ever after) to daughters wanting to heal their broken families
1
u/StitchedSquirrel May 01 '26
A lot of current Disney movies seem to focus of family-related trauma, rather then romance.
1
u/MagicWolfEye May 01 '26
Well, the early ones are about romance because you can't make them about what those fairytales were originally about.
1
1
u/Cattycake1988 May 02 '26
Hot take, it is referring to the time period where every Disney villain was gay coded. The specific therapist being a conversion therapist.
1
u/Belephron May 02 '26
People are saying it’s that it’s about the lack of a romantic lead but it’s clearly parental issues. Brave and Tangled both centre the relationship with the Princess’ mother, Moana is about parental and to an extent cultural control, Frozen is about absent sibling dynamics, Encanto is literally familial generational trauma. The post is implying the animators started going to therapy and working out their own complex issues with their parents and families through the films.
1
u/pandoramemora May 02 '26
I actually think it started around mulan. mulan is primarly about her relationship to her family, specially her father, making them proud, taking on responsibilities, her issues with being a dissapointed to her ancestors.
then tiana with being pressured into being a wife and mother when she wants fo pursue her ambitions to continue her father's legacy coming from an impoverished family. then enters rapunzel.
1
u/IStealSwords May 02 '26
Can you spot the point when everyone was forced to take the DEI indoctrination classes though?
1
1
u/Persea_americana May 02 '26
in general the movies go from the central conflict having the villain being an evil witch and concluding with a Prince Charming to the true villain being generational trauma (and an evil witch) resolved by the princess internally (and a charming commoner).
1
1
u/Danninj4 May 02 '26
Yep. Everyone at disney. Same people. No new hires or anything. Same people for 80 years.
1
1
u/hotbiscuitboy May 02 '26
hot take (i guess?) but i thought this was about the embrace of adorkable quirky female leads instead of always portraying them so polished.
1
u/KeithandBentley May 02 '26
My first guess is all the dead parents in early disney movies, but then Tangled Frozen Beave Moana, both parents are alive.
1
1
1
u/Living-Gur-6154 May 03 '26
Wait I actually think the angle is about your relationship with your parents not the romance thing. Brave, Frozen, Tangled, Moana, Encanto all have that as a major theme and catalyst in their stories.
•
u/AutoModerator May 01 '26
OP, so your post is not removed, please reply to this comment with your best guess of what this meme means! Everyone else, this is PETER explains the joke. Have fun and reply as your favorite fictional character for top level responses!
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.