Stay Out Of The Way Of The Princess Thing

So peaseblossom linked to the NYT article on the Princess Industrial Complex that looms so large these days in the lives of young girls and their hapless parents. "Sorry, ladies. Your puny second-wave feminism was no match for the power of the Dark Side..."



There's little need for me to repeat the arguments against Disney's sparkly pink Stalinism here. But there were two other things I found interesting about the article: first, the fact that before the 1930s or so, the gender meanings of pink and blue were apparently reversed--"Pink was considered the more masculine hue, a pastel version of red. Blue, with its intimations of the Virgin Mary, constancy and faithfulness, was thought to be dainty."--and second, the slightly creepy observation that, by edict from the Mouse itself, the eight Disney princesses never make eye contact with one another--"each stares off in a slightly different direction as if unaware of the others’ presence." No, it's not to forestall Poca-mulan-rella slash-fic, but to "ensure the sanctity of their individual mythologies." Seems to me like a JLA-style League of Extraordinary Princesses would be a no-brainer. They even have the ethnic makeup of the Superfriends: you've got your bunch of WASPs, your token American Indian ("'Apache Chief'? I'm not Apache, and I'm not a chief. How would you like it if I called you 'Minnesota President'?"), your Asian, and your fish. But in fact the princesses slide by one another, never quite deigning to notice each other's presence, like, say, debutantes at a ball rudely crashed by an American Indian, an Asian, and a fish. For those geeks who catalog pop culture crossovers and shared universe continuities, this is a stunning epistemological revelation: characters may appear to inhabit the same universe, but they don't, as long as they don't make eye contact! Think of the crises that could have been avoided if Earth-Prime Superboy and Earth-Two Superman had just tilted their eyes demurely to the floor. Maybe this resolves the Seinfeld-Mad About You-Friends paradox that has threatened the space-time continuum for so long.

The article also mentions the new Disney Fairies line, which the Mouse is positioning to capture the hearts and minds (and wallets and body images) of 'tween girls as they graduate from Princess pink. (Disney Prince and Pirate lines are being developed for boys--which doesn't seem at all the same kind of slam dunk.) We visited friends of ours over the holidays with a daughter deep in the target demographic, and she'd gotten the Disney Fairies hardcover for Christmas. It reminded me of nothing so much as a White Wolf hardcover: gorgeous art, a surprisingly detailed world, and signature character portraits for each of the Fairie splats: Water-Fairies, Garden-Fairies, Goth-Fairies, and so on. mgrasso, your next campaign awaits you. I was also amused by the boy-band-esque male fairies, or "Sparrow-Men." Tinkerbell apparently has an admirer named Terence, a muscular young fairie lad who delivers the Pixie dust to all the fairies in Pixie Hollow, and is therefore "more sparkly than the average Sparrow-Man." Why do I think Tink's relationship with Terence is never going to get much farther than fashion tips, catty remarks about Wendy Darling's ankles, and the occasional night out clubbing with the Lost Boys? Not that there's anything wrong with that.

'Some Like It Hot' Shall Be The Whole Of The Law

In other news, yesterday I read George Pendle's Strange Angel, a fun biography of Jack Parsons. I'm assuming the Parsons fans on my Flist know about this book already (head58, I'm looking at you), but if not, high thee to a library. Parsons is a great character: rocket scientist, wife swapper, black magic cultist extraordinaire. When L. Ron Hubbard is calling you loopy and Aleister Superfreak Crowley writes you from England saying, "Uh, maybe you ought to lay off the black magic for a while for a while, Jack--you're weirding me out" it's time to at least consider a sabbatical. But no, Jack summoned the Scarlet Woman of Babylon, then blew himself up.

One random tidbit I'd never heard about Crowley, from a life made up of random tidbits: in 1913, the Great Beast led an all-female string septet called the "Ragged Ragtime Girls" on a disastrous tour of Russia. What do you suppose that was all about? Game ideas featuring Crowley in an insane Some Like It Hot / Road To Tunguska mashup involving some combination of Tony Curtis, Tsar Nicholas, Jack Lemmon, Lenin, Rasputin, and Marilyn Monroe are left as an exercise for the reader.