Princesses Without Parents (or Why Does Disney Kill Off Parents?)

My recent reading has been about young characters with absent mothers (and, in one case, an absent father as well), which made me revisit an old topic of thought: Disney animated movies and what they seem to have against mothers. As I thought about it, though, I realized that not only do most Disney characters lack mothers, but they also lack fathers.

Think about the Disney “princesses.” Cinderella and Snow White’s mothers are dead, their fathers also presumably, and they’re left with “evil stepmothers.” Briar Rose (of Sleeping Beauty fame) has parents, but they’ve sent her off to live with fairies for protection and then fallen into a long, deep sleep under the influence of a spell. Little mermaid Ariel doesn’t appear to have a mother, and her father, what with having a fishy kingdom to run and all those other mer-children and young adults to look after, has, not surprisingly, little time to focus on leg-longing Ariel. Belle – who rescues the Beast – also appears to have uninterested parents at best … I don’t recall ever seeing them in the film.

The other three “princesses,” each have a father, but it’s a father that they must save in some way, switching the traditional parent-child dynamic. Jasmine has an ineffectual Sultan father at risk of losing his kingdom to the evil Jafar. Mulan has a father who is unable to answer the call to arms from his emperor due to physical disability so Mulan does it for him. Pocahontas must rebel against her father, Chief Powhatan, to save the British settlers.

Beyond the princesses, the Peter Pan children presumably have parents… parents who leave them in the constant care of a dog Nana. Mowgli is off roaming the jungle, having been stolen from his parents.

The animal heroes don’t fare much better: Bambi’s mother is killed by a hunter early in the film. Dumbo’s mother is locked up as deranged similarly early. As for Simba, his father is murdered by his uncle, and who knows where his mother has gotten of to. (Hamlet anyone?) For each character, these are pivotal events in the plots of their lives.

(Hey – even Miss Bianca and Bernard of The Rescuers, who are ostensibly the heroes, go to rescue a little girl they who is, you guessed it, an orphan!)

At best, in each of these movies, the protagonist’s parents are background characters, people who have little role in their children’s lives. Occasionally, the fathers (but not the mothers) are sources of danger or conflict, the cause of the characters’ adventures. At worst, the parents are traumatically dead.

So what is it about the absence of parents that is so powerful that it appears over and over and over as a theme in the movie fare we show our children? Perhaps the absence of parents frees the characters in some way. Lacking parents, these characters have the freedom to have adventures, to be heroines and heroes. Often, the loss or inability of a parent actually spurs the adventure. And, let’s face it, some of these films are scary, particularly because the characters are doing it, by and large, alone. Oh, maybe they have a few loyal sidekicks, but they don’t have the support of their parents, and that makes life frighteningly challenging for the protagonist and makes the movie interesting for us viewers. And while a life without parents is scary and certainly lacks the firm stabilizing influence parents provide for children, such a life also has, dare I say it, excitement. That’s a powerful message for our children.

And I’m not so sure about that message, though it does appear to be a strongly American one. After all, it is the clearly stated goal of most American parents (most Western parents even) for their children to “leave the nest” and start “lives of their own.” Perhaps these movies just tap into our culturally-imbued sense that our primary role as parents is to prepare our children to go off on their own adventures then for us to bow gracefully off stage into the wings of our children’s lives.

Regardless of the roots of the message, it is one to which I pay attention, and I encourage other parents to notice it as well. While I have no intention of banning Disney films in our house, I do plan to introduce the ones with more traumatic scenes (like Bambi – I still remember sobbing when Bambi’s mother dies…) later and cautiously. I plan to talk with my daughter about the messages these films send. (Hey, I haven’t even touched on the “every girl must have her prince” message. That’s for another blog.) And I plan to reassure her that absent parents in movies do not translate to absent parents in her life.