Happy Ever After and the Modern Broad

This year, my family’s Thanksgiving festivities included a trip to the multiplex to see the much-touted Disney film, “Enchanted.” Little girls in my family are affected by a deep touch of the princess fascination, and I was eager to see what a Disney princess movie billed as a spoof had in store. I was interested in a fresh take on happy-ever-after for another reason, too: I’m getting married—for the second time—this July.

Hence, in addition to the multiplex, the weekend included a scouting mission to the site at which my partner and I will wed. With my parents and favorite aunt and uncle in tow, my fiancé and I took in the scenery (aka my best girlfriend’s backyard), set our sights on our hopeful future, and chanced a quick turn down the ad hoc grassy aisle. And in the darkness of the theater during the next day’s screening of “Enchanted,” memories of my first wedding came flooding back, unwelcome as the discarded Junior Mint I later found stuck to my shoe.

The movie failed to offer the revisionist perspective falsely promised by director Kevin Lima. But the heartbreak was deeper still. Purported to turn Disney conventions on their head, the film’s regressive sexual politics parlay a message to girls that’s more noxious than the singing squirrels in Andalasia (the two-dimensional fairy tale land in which the plot begins).

It’s the treatment of a minor character, Nancy (Idina Menzel), I’m talking about. [Spoiler Alert] Nancy is a 3D-world single woman set to marry sensitive superdad Robert (Patrick Dempsey) who suddenly, in the movie’s closing minutes, lands “happily ever after” in Andalasia married to a narcissistic cartoon prince instead.

A New York City career girl when the film opens, Nancy works in the fashion industry and is happily dating her McDreamy. A jaded divorce attorney, Robert plans to marry Nancy—that is, until he meets and falls for the transformed human Andalasian, Giselle. In an effort to sell his young daughter Morgan on her pending stepmother Nancy, Robert explains that Nancy is a strong, independent woman—like the ones featured in the women’s history book Robert gives Morgan as a gift. By movie’s end, Nancy has swapped places with Giselle, given up her business, and traveled back to fairyland with Prince Edward—the storybook Prince Charming and textbook narcissist whose behavior mimics the self-absorbed Queen in Snow White who constantly seeks affirmation in the magic mirror.

Just before the credits roll, Nancy and Edward get their big flat cartoon wedding. McDreamy gets Giselle. Giselle gets to remain 3D. Morgan, who sports karate garb when we first meet her, ends up decked out in princess clothes. Her transformation from kick-ass to corny parallels Nancy’s. In a closing shot, cartoon Nancy abruptly ditches her cell phone at the altar in a final gesture of capitulation to her new role as princess of the 2D kingdom. Her transformation is complete. [Spoiler Alert Ends]

I, once, was Nancy. A victim of my own desire to marry a sparkling prince charming, I fell down a rabbit hole and into a poorly charmed marriage. While I kept my cell phone (and my career), I lost myself in the shadow of my knight’s shiny armor. I learned about happily-never-after the hard way. We divorced after two and half years.

Second wedding on the horizon, I am no longer in that daze that comes from seeking one’s mythical prince. Animated characters have height and width, but no depth. With more life experience and deep soul-searching, I’m no longer deluded, released from the poisonous spell. My current fiancé’s charms do not merely dangle impressively from his chain mail. They come from a richer place, deep and down within.

Yes, I am no longer deluded, and anyone who finds Disney’s new film revisionist is as deluded as the talking chipmunks in Andalusia—I mean, Andalasia. With “Enchanted,” Disney claims to be replacing the princess mythology with ironic fare. But the only irony, in my opinion, is in the way this film replaces the starry-eyed hopes of the princess hopeful with the love-starved desperation of the modern working girl. Having been that girl, I offer the following 3D advice to every girl and single woman flocking to see this film:

Don’t bet on the prince.

Keep your job; hold on to your integrity.

And ultimately, know that weddings are like fairy tales, but marriages, like histories, are real.