SALT LAKE CITY — Are Disney princesses the new movie villains?
Two panels at Salt Lake Comic Con, which took place Thursday and Friday at the Salt Palace Convention Center, set out to determine just that. But what they found may not be what some would expect.
Instead of denigrating the princess archetype found in many movies today, the panelists seemed to support and encourage it.
"We had a hard time thinking of a bad princess role model," Bree Despain, a panelist on the Friday panel titled "Princess Power: Defying Negative Princess Tropes," told the Deseret News after the discussion.
She described a princess as a brave leader who take charge of her circumstances and need to be appreciated for working "within her own realm of power to make a life for herself" — like Snow White who fought to free herself from an abusive caretaker — and encouraged moviegoers to not get fooled by the pretty dresses princesses wear.
"There’s been this overcorrection where suddenly we don’t want girls to be feminine at all," Despain said of the panel she took part in. "And we want to see that come back to the middle where it is OK to be feminine and strong at the same time."
She said that the idea for the panel came after she had encountered some parents who didn't allow their daughters to wear princess outfits, dress in pink or watch princess movies, none of which sat right with her.
"If you are saying to your girl, 'you can be anything you want, but you can’t be a princess,' then we’re really saying to them that being a girl is not good enough. So we want to allow our daughters to love dinosaurs and to love princesses at the same time," Despain said.
But what about princess movies that misrepresent the culture they claim to emulate? Is it OK for people to watch — or a girl to want to dress up as — a character who spreads misinformation about a culture?
According to Lehua Parker, moderator of the panel held on Thursday, titled "Disney's Princess Movies and Cultural Appropriation," and a descendant of the Maui from "Moana," the movie did not accurately portray a Polynesian tradition at all.
To her, "Moana" was a combination of multiple cultures from Hawaii, Samoa and Tonga that looked like all of them, but represented none of them. She said for some people she knew, it was frustrating for them to experience the misrepresentation of their culture.
Panelist Sarah Hanisko, the creator of Geek Parenting Podcast who has a Ph.D. in conflict analysis resolution, agreed that those kind of experiences in Disney movies, which happen more often than not, are unfortunate. However, she said, they can lead to positive outcomes.
Hasinko explained how her 5-year-old daughter became "obsessed with wanting to learn Polynesian dance" after watching "Moana." She said that watching the movie, which provided a watered-down version of the islands, is what inspired her daughter to learn more about the cultures the princess represented — and prompted her as a parent to learn more with her daughter.
"I think it can be negative if we don’t take the opportunity to look at it as a learning opportunity," Hasinko said.
She said it is the parents' responsibility to make sure their children understand what they are watching and to have those hard conversations with them about the media.
"That’s our responsibility as parents," Hasinko said. "When you sit down and watch something that might be problematic with your kid, it is important to have conversations with them."
And even with some misrepresentations in movies, good can still come from them. Hasinko said that regardless of the cultural truths or facts about a place, moviegoers can still learn something from a fictional story.
"The lessons are what is important, not necessarily the environment in which those lessons take place," Hasinko said.
Parker also agreed, saying it is not necessarily the movie itself that matters, but the conversation and lessons that come from it.
"It is starting the conversation. It is opening doors, because now people are curious," Parker said.