Disney animated movies, their princesses, and everyone else

ABSTRACT In April 2021, The Walt Disney Company (Disney) announced the Ultimate Princess Celebration, ‘a year-long event spotlighting the courage and kindness these Disney heroines inspire in fans all around the world’ (Deitchman, 2021). Princesses have remained an important element of Disney’s identity and the movies they create. Broadening research beyond these characters and examining a larger sample demonstrated distinctions in the characteristics present in Official Disney Princess (ODP) movies, Actual Princess (AP) movies, and the 45 in the full catalog (All-Movies) that are or share characteristics with Disney Princess Movies. This article compares the race, class, and gender of the protagonist and antagonist as well as other story elements of 45 animated or partially animated movies that typify Disney’s ‘Classics Period’ between 1937 and 2017 across those three groups. This work examines the ways in which the ODP and AP are different from the overall catalog and violate some of the Disney norms to which we are accustomed while fully embracing others. The research found that while the Official Princess movies had more racial diversity in the main characters than the overall catalog, for example, they also had more stereotypical female villains, more magic, and more romance. Acknowledging these divisions can lead to more robust research where a research sample can be critically collected based on the topic of interest. This article provides a foundation for those examinations.


Introduction
In April 2021, The Walt Disney Company (Disney) announced the Ultimate Princess Celebration, 'a year-long event spotlighting the courage and kindness these Disney heroines inspire in fans all around the world' (Deitchman, 2021, para. 2). The celebration highlights how Disney Princesses have remained an important element of Disney's identity and the movies they create. This leads to a focus on research on the princesses. However, examining a larger sample can demonstrate that 'things aren't always as they seem' (Musker & Clements, 1992, p. 0:27:28-0:27:30) and that a critical examination of Disney animation benefits from a close examination of the group of movies to which it is compared to ensure it makes the most sense for the questions being asked.

Literature review
Princesses are a defining characteristic of the Walt Disney Company, especially its animation studio. The path of the princesses began in 1937 when audiences were surprised with the movie known as 'Disney's folly,' Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, a fulllength animated movie in a time when animated shorts were the norm (Pfeiffer, 2022, para. 3). Even now, once inflation is accounted for, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (1937), just makes the cut at number ten on the all-time worldwide highest grossing list IMDBPro Staff (2022) (b). Over the almost 90 years since Snow White, Disney has expanded this catalog beyond princesses yet the princess(es) who started it all are still on the mind of many and the term 'Disney movies' is often used interchangeably with 'princess movies' (Azmi et al., 2016). From princess play (Forman-Brunell & Eaton, 2009) to princess artifacts and culture (Weida et al., 2019), the prevalence of princesses has grown over the past few decades, at least partially motivated by the princesses that Disney has created and re-created. The Walt Disney Company still maintains pages on its website that are specifically dedicated to princess ideas and ideals.
However, Disney's Princess movies have also been critiqued because of how they handle representation, especially race and gender. The movies have been examined for their gendered language (Azmi et al., 2016), negative portrayals of women as protagonists (Elnahla, 2015;England et al., 2011;Johnson, 2015) and antagonists (Duffy, 2019;Kjeldgaard-Christiansen & Schmidt, 2019), and how race is included or excluded (Condis, 2015). Though, the characteristics most associated with this group of movies have come to represent all Disney animation, many of them more accurately reflect smaller subsets.
Missing from some analyses of Disney movies are the animated or hybrid movies between Snow White and Moana that are not princess movies. With the growth of Dis-ney+, more of those movies are accessible and can bring with them other patterns in representation and how they embrace or reject the tropes that are associated with Disney movies, which may be invisible under the veil of the princesses. This paper will examine the race, class, and gender of the protagonist and antagonist as well as other story elements of 45 animated or partially animated movies that typify Disney's 'Classics Period' between 1937 and 2017, selected because of the historical nature and similarities between movies. Within this group, the subset of the 11 Disney princess movies that are most associated with the studios' animation from the same era and the 15 Actual Princess movies will be examined and compared to the overall catalog, which I am calling All-Movies. This research seeks to answer the question of whether Disney Princess movies reflect Disney animated movies and to provide a foundation for those wishing to examine these movies further.

Methods
The animated movies that were selected for comparison are those that most closely resemble the princess movies. The movies are animated, inspired by another source (not an original story), from an original Walt Disney studio, and are full-length. From 1937 through 2017, there are 45 movies with these characteristics (please see full movie list in appendix). These are the essential movies that define Disney's 'Classic Period,' which I have named for the early clamshell VHS tapes produced by the company's home movie division.
Each of the 45 movies in this period was viewed at least twice. Following the review of the notes from these movies and their literary sources, codes covering several patterns were extracted from the data itself, following a grounded research approach. The codes were then divided into subcategories, and additional codes were created based on the quality of those categories during a third round. Some codes also required a fourth round. This created 2507 movie excerpts. Quantitative data was then extracted from these excerpts and used to create 190 quantitative variables from the qualitative data and 39 additional variables through the recoding or calculation of those variables.
For this research, the two overarching categories of interest are the main characters and the story. The characteristics selected under the organizing framework of the main character are gender, race, class, and family. The story elements that this work focuses on are love, consequences, literary source, and magic. The variables selected are briefly presented below.

Variables
The Walt Disney Company has developed a particular definition of a Disney Princess. Most importantly, they are human and, though essential to Disney's marketing, are often not able to sustain their own individual marketing lines (Suddath, 2015). However, this research makes a distinction between Official Disney Princess (ODP) and Actual Princesses (AP) movies as well as the All-Movies category. According to Disney, there are currently twelve Official Disney Princesses: Snow White, Aurora (Sleeping Beauty), Cinderella, Ariel (The Little Mermaid), Belle (Beauty and the Beast), Jasmine (Aladdin), Mulan, Pocahontas, Rapunzel (Tangled), Merida (Brave), Tiana (The Princess and the Frog), and Moana (Konnikova, 2014;Setoodeh, 2007;Suddath, 2015). Since Merida is the only princess from an outside studio (Pixar), she will be excluded from this research.
In addition to the ODP, Disney also has a few movies that include actual princesses who are not a part of the company's princess marketing campaign. These 15 movies that I am referring to as Actual Princesses (AP) movies include those characters who either began their movies as or became princesses by the end of the movie using the definitions of their culture or world. These are characters who can (or in some cases are forced to) live a princess's life, generally through marriage or heritage. Though I have often argued that Tiana does not get to take advantage of the princess lifestyle given that Prince Naveen's parents have disowned him, in this paper, Tiana is included as someone who ends the movie in this position. Like Jasmine's position in Aladdin, these princesses do not have to be main characters but should be closely connected to the main character, usually as a love interest. This definition includes animals, but it also excludes some Official Disney Princesses. These two categories of Disney animated movies -Official Disney Princess movies and Actual Princess moviesand the All-Movies categoryare not exclusive. Many movies are both ODP and AP and All-Movies includes all the movies in both categories.
Race is measured both visually and in context as not White or White. The binary was used because when race was broken out into more specific categories, the numbers within each of the non-White groups were small. Although I would generally not categorize racial groups completely in opposition to White, it seems appropriate here as that has historically been the norm in Disney animated movies. The groups that compose not White are Asian, Black/African American, Latin@, and Indigenous Peoples. No character was characterized as Latin@ in this research.
A main character in this research is the protagonist when the story is focused on them. This is generally indicated by following the storyline of that character or choosing to keep the focus on them, as other characters move in and out of the spotlight. The protagonist's story is what moves the plot forward. A main character is defined as a villain when they are the antagonist and are actively working against the goals of the protagonist.
The gender variable is an indication of whether the protagonist or villain is presented as a male or a female. This corresponds to any kind of main character, whether they are human or of another species. If a character is not presented as one or the other gender, they would be coded as other. There are no examples of 'other' in this research.
Families also play an important role in Disney animation. The presence of a mother, father, and stepmother were examined. These were measured by whether the character is alive and/or present in the movie. In those movies where the parent is visible or mentioned in the beginning but absent after a time jump, the parent is coded as not present.
Protagonists were assigned to a social class based on their family's position in the movie world, even if the character was treated poorly in that family. Those who are already royalty by their culture's definition were placed in the upper class and those who were not royalty but had good places to live and regular food to eat without a struggle were coded as middle class. Those who worked hard to keep themselves taken care of similarly to those in the middle class were categorized as working class, and those who did not have access to regular food and safe housing like Aladdin were coded as lower class. Change in social class within a movie was also examined.
Species is a variable that characterizes the species of the main character as a human, animal, or other. Disney characters mostly fall into the categories of human or animal, but there are a few instances of hybrids of animals and humans (ex., mermaids) or humans and robots (ex., androids) and other creatures like gods or spirits.
The story variables capture elements of the story being told and an indication of the source. In this research, these elements represent characteristics thought to be typical in Disney movies. The variables used to categorize the story are magic, love, consequences, and the type of literary source from which the movie was adapted.
Magic is at the center of many Disney movies, and movies were included in this category if magic is used to move the story forward. This was further divided into problems and solutions. Movies were counted if magic was the cause of the problem or provided the solution. A movie could include both magic and real-life problems or solutions.
The stories in the movies were categorized as romantic love if the result was the protagonist falling in love. A movie would have this distinction even if love were not the intent of the story but a by-product of the protagonist reaching his or her goal. The couples in these movies are all heterosexual and cis-gendered.
In opposition to love, the research also includes several different consequence variables for the villain. These variables are intended to be a contrast to the 100% of movies with a 'happily ever after' ending. They are not mutually exclusive but indicate if a villain was punished for their wrongdoing and whether another character (usually the protagonist or someone closely connected) enacted vengeance on them by being responsible for their punishment.
There is also a measurement of whether the villain changes at the end of the movie. A villain is considered to have changed if their morality or behavior changes from destructive to supportive or if they make another change that leads to them being accepted or forgiven by the character(s) they have wronged.
The type of literary source covers the type of source from which this story was developed. These are six categories treated as mutually exclusive. Fairy or folk tales, legends, myths, fables, children's books, and literature. Fairy/folk tales have generally been passed down as part of an oral tradition and then written. They often have characters who are clearly good or evil and include elements of magic or luck. Many Disney movies based on fairy tales were created or put in written form by Hans Cristian Anderson or Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, but some also come from other authors or have been attributed to multiple people. Legends are fictionalized versions of the lives of real people, or people believed to be real. Myths are about world-building or gods or creatures that were tasked with creating, running, or destroying the world. Fables are stories meant to share a moral, usually with animals as the main character. Many of these stories also have multiple versions. Children's books and literature generally have only one version and a specific author. Children's books include both picture books, which are short and meant to be read aloud to young children, and longer texts designed for children to read themselves. Literature tends to be long texts often, but not always, with adults as the audience. While some of these movies could be coded multiple ways, only one source type was coded.
It is important to note that there is some subjectivity in many of these variables, especially those related to the story. Any research completed examining these variables will, therefore, need to explain how the variables are defined.

Official Disney Princesses
Official Disney Princess movies are generally led by a female character. Only one of the 11 ODP movies in this research has a male as the protagonist, with the female playing a primary or equal role in 91 percent of movies. Most of the movies also feature human protagonists, although not necessarily for the entire movie, as Tiana, to the dismay of many, spends much of her movie as a frog. Ariel is the only hybrid in these groups of movies as a part human/part animal. She is counted as an 'other' species in this research (although there may be some argument as to whether she should be counted as human as that is where she ended up and perhaps what she was all along). Given that she is an ODP, Disney counts her as human. The main characters in these ODP movies are almost equally split between White (54%) and non-White (46%).
Despite the family structure that seems to be well-known in ODP movies, 46 percent of protagonists in Official Disney Princess movies have their biological mothers which, though not a majority, may run counter to how Disney movies are considered by the public. Most Official Disney Princess movie protagonists have biological fathers during their movies. Fathers are found in 73% of those movies that indicate family structure. In contrast, however, is Tiana's father who is in an early pre-title scene but is absent, and presumed dead, for the rest of the movie. In the group of ODP, 27% have stepmothers. A few of the early movies, such as Snow White and Cinderella have this family dynamic present but other early princesses, like Aurora, have both of their parents. Not examined for this paper are the characters who have parent surrogates, often good or bad magical creatures, who raise or take care of them when their parents cannot.
The villains of the ODP movies skew more in the White direction (67%) as the race of the villains does not always correspond to the race of the protagonist. Pocahontas' villain, for example, is White. There are also some villains who do not have determined races, like Ursula who, as a black and purple octopus, does not belong to a specific racial group, although is supposedly based on drag queen Divine (Dart, 2016), who is White. The ODP movie villains tend to be female, as they are in 55% of the movies. Eightytwo percent of ODP movie villains are human.
Fifty-five percent of the Official Disney Movies' protagonists were categorized as upper class, and 27% in the middle class. The subjective nature of class is even more challenging when examined across cultures, time periods, and species, but the majority of characters do not change their class status. For those who do, the largest change is from middle to upper class (18%).
The stories of most Official Disney Princess movies are developed from fairy tales (73%). In contrast, Moana, which took longer than other ODP to join the Princess line, is based on the Māori stories of Maui and falls into the myth category. Official Disney Princess movies also tend to find ways to incorporate magic into the progress of the story. Though only 64% of movies include problems that emerge from or are caused by magic, 82% of the solutions were connected to it.
The love that dominates in these stories is romantic in nature, as 91% of movies focus on the family of procreationthe families that individuals createrather than the family of orientation (Murdock, 1949)the families into which individuals are born. Moana and Mulan are the only two protagonists in ODP movies whose adventures are not about love or finding a partner, although Mulan does still end up finding one.
Most of the villains in Official Disney Princess movies are punished by the end of the movie (91%). Moana, however, does not include punishment and is the one movie where the villain changes as Te Ka reverted back to Te Fiti when her heart was returned. Punishment of the ODP movie villains is often connected to vengeance, as 55% of movies include a vengeful punishment. Both Prince Eric and Prince Phillip, for example, enact their vengeance against the villains of their respective movies.

Actual Princesses
The category of Actual Princesses leads to much confusion among casual Disney fans. As described above, not all Official Disney Princess movies include princesses, and not all Disney princesses are in Official Disney Princess movies. However, like the ODP, the movies with Actual Princesses are also majority female-led with 67% of the movies with female protagonists. The protagonists in these movies are 80% human and, of those humans, 69% White. The exclusion of Mulan and the addition of some princ (ess)es whose race is too subjective to define in this research change this number from the ODP movies as for these purposes, animals do not have a race. Family breakdown numbers are similar to the Official Disney Princesses with 27% of movies where the protagonist does not have a father, 87% where they do not have a stepmother, and 53% do not have a biological mother.
Actual Princess movies are more likely to have White villains (80%), as even some of these movies with protagonists with undetermined race or who are non-human have White villains. The difference is slight between the villain's gender in this category and the gender of the villains in ODP movies. Forty-seven percent of the AP movies have female villains. Villains in these movies are not as human as the ODP at only 73%.
Given the nature of this group, like the previous one, there might be an expectation that the protagonists in the Actual Princess movies are all upper class, but this accounts for only 60% of movies. The characters also do not experience much change, with 60% of AP main characters stagnant in their class. A fifth of these characters change from middle to upper class (20%). It is also important to remember that the Actual Princesses as represented here are not all main characters in their respective movies.
Sixty-four percent of the movies with Actual Princesses are inspired by fairy tales, and 87% of the movies have stories about romantic love. Even in Atlantis, which is more about adventure than many of the other movies, the characters still find romantic love.
Villains in Actual Princess movies are punished in 87% of movies, and they change in only 13% of them. Villains were the victims of vengeance in almost half of the Actual Princess movies with 40% experiencing this type of punishment.
The AP movies lean slightly more in the direction of real life than in the ODP movies with only 80% of these movies having magical solutions to problems. Sixty-seven% have magical problems.

And everyone else (All-movies)
The Official Disney Princess movies make up 24% of the 45 movies that fit the characteristics described above. Actual Princesses represent a slightly different population at 33%. The other movies, represented by the All-Movies category, in this research are not as well-known or marketed. However, this is not always the case, as Frozen falls into both this and the previous category. Neither Anna nor Elsa are Official Disney Princesses. Overall, 36% of the animated movies have female protagonists and 33% have female villains. Sixty-nine percent of the protagonists are human, and 78% White. The villains are 90% White and 70% human.
It is more common for the protagonists in the movies from the Classics Period to not have a biological father or mother in their stories as they are absent in 53 and 59% of All-Movies, respectfully. Ninety-six percent did not have a stepmother. It is important to note that some of the movies in the All-Movies grouping include adult characters or animals where this family structure would be less likely to be present.
The largest class group in the All-Movies collection is the middle class which is the class of the protagonist in 42% of the movies. Working class was in the second position with 27%. Like the other movie groupings, most of the characters did not change in their social class but the largest group that changed went from working to middle class (18%).
Many of these movies take children's literature as their inspiration (39%) with the next largest group, general literature, at 25%. Mars Needs Moms and 101 Dalmatians are two examples of movies from the former category, while Olivier and Company and The Jungle Book represent the latter.
Magic is less prominent in these movies. Problems are not generally caused by magic as only 33 percent of All-Movies include problems based in magic. However, some sort of magical solution is often still employed to fix problems as 51% of problems are solved through magic. Romantic love, though still a majority, is less of the story in All-Movies at 55%.
The consequences, across the All-Movies collection, continue in the downward direction from the other two groups. Seventy-six percent of villains are punished at the end of the story and only thirty percent of the villains in the movies have vengeance taken against them. The ringmaster and the other elephants in Dumbo, for example, do not receive the appropriate revenge for how he and his mom were treated. Twenty-seven percent of villains change in these movies.

Discussion
The movies of a multinational conglomerate like Disney can provide a wide-ranging collection of storylines, characters, and ideas. The holdings of the company include Pixar, The Muppets, Marvel, and Twentieth Century Studiosall movie studios and properties with different characters and philosophies. Even with a focus on just Disney animation, there are many ways to group and examine this data to uncovering the underlying patterns. One of those groupings includes looking at the princess storiesthose movies that are most highly associated with the Walt Disney Companybut it is important to recognize that the patterns visible there are not always consistent across the entire animation catalog. Uncovering the presence of these patterns is important to understanding where the company needs to make changes, where they may have made some progress, and the variables that need further examination. A researcher might focus on how the movies have improved in their representation of women, for example, but could miss that outside of the Disney Princesses, most of their characters are still male.
The Official Disney Princesses were designed to serve a particular purpose for the Walt Disney Company. They group together characters that could then be marketed in large or small groups to children, primarily young girls, in a way that allows the company to continually make money from them. For this to work, there are some characteristics that had to be deliberately selected or designed. For this reason, it may not be surprising that the ODP movies are more racially diverse than the other two groupings. The diversity of the characters allows for a larger audience for those characters, which is a better fulfillment of Disney's marketing mission than a less diverse line. The ODP movies are the most racially diverse across the three groups, and the percentage of movies that are led by a white character grows with AP, and changes slightly as the groupings move toward All-Movies. Overall, from the evidence in the All-Movies category, these movies are still more likely to have White protagonists.
There is also a large gap in gender, again, created between the ODP movies and the other two groups. Ninety-one percent of ODP movies have female main characters versus 67% for AP, and 36% for All-Movies. The Official Disney Princess movies have very few male main characters and Actual Princesses have a slight majority of female main characters, but across All-Movies, male characters are the norm. This dramatic difference between the ODP and All-Movies can shift thinking and analysis of Disney movies away from movies for girls and into a larger audience of children, worldwide. The villains have a similar shift in race and gender with race growing from ODP to AP and gender reversing to predominantly male in the AP category.
Disney movies are often categorized by absent and evil parents which is partially reflective of the pattern across All-Movies but is not the same in the smaller groups. Biological mothers are present in almost half of the movies with little change between the three categories. Biological fathers are much more likely to be present in Disney princess movies than the All-Movies category and so research on the absence of fathers would have more data in the All-Movies group. Movies with evil stepmothers, however, are predominantly found in princess movies and so those percentages are higher in the smaller groups. While different research has theorized why Disney characters do not have mothers often connected to the death of Walt's own mother due to "a faulty connection in the gas furnace … [in the home] presented to them by Walt Disney on their golden wedding day" (Staff The New York Times, 1938)), the same has not been said about the lack of fathers, most present when you look at All-Movies and move away from the focus on princesses.
Many of the actual princesses in the Official Disney Princesses movies are already royalty at the beginning of the movie but may move, by Max Weber's definition of class, to better life chances (Weber, 1968). Other princesses make their way into the role over the course of the movie. Both princess categories have more upper-class main characters with Actual Princess movie characters with the most upper-class characters at 60%. In the All-Movies group, more characters are middle class. Despite the public's perception of Disney characters fighting (or wishing) to move up in the world, approximately 60% of protagonists do not change across all three categories.
There is a difference in the consequences of the villains across these movies as punishment is more prevalent in ODP movies, lessens in the Actual Princess movies, and then continues the downward trend in All-Movies. More than half of the ODP movies include vengeance, while fewer than a majority of AP movies, and only a third in the All-Movies category. This may come from the fairy tale inspiration of the princess movies, while the other movies, often more based in reality, avoid most medieval imagery like the evil queen falling off of a mountain as birds attack her. The movies across the whole catalog have more characters who change rather than being punished or having vengeance enacted against them.
Although Disney movies are often known as love stories, princess movies have more romantic love. The standout, again, is Moana, who does not have a love interest in any part of her movie and does not seem to need much from the male characters in it. As the final movie in this analysis, this builds on the tradition from Frozen of the importance and power of familial love. As an example, that violates the rules of so many Disney Princess movies, Moana may be the introduction to a new Disney period with a focus on strong characters from a diversity of cultures.

Conclusion
The distinctions between these three groups emphasize the ways in which the Official Disney Princesses and the Actual Princesses are different from All the Movies in the overall catalog and violate some of the Disney norms to which we are all accustomed while holding tightly to others. It also means that any analysis of the effects of Disney movies that only focuses on princess movies presents only part of the story and may seem more progressive than the studio as a whole.
The company's animated movies are not a monolith and future research should be built on that foundation. This analysis provides a framework for selecting a research sample that is informed by the topic of interest in a different way. Examining how racial representation (or the lack thereof) has changed over time looks different in the Disney Princess movies than in the overall catalog. The dearth of strong female characters is more obvious across the larger catalog and the evilness of the older woman villains would be tracked differently depending on which group is analyzed. Also important, although emphasized only briefly in this research, is the new period, beyond the Classics and how those movies take a different approach to some of these variables.
While the casual movie viewer often considers Disney a princess movie studio before all else, this research argues for a consideration of which movies are included or excluded in a reflective critical analysis and presents a starting framework for comparative studies of Disney movies over time and will ease in that selection.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributor
Dr. Alia R. Tyner-Mullings is a professor of sociology and part of the founding faculty at Guttman Community College. She is the author of Enter the Alternative School: Critical Answers to Questions in Urban Education, the co-editor of Critical Small Schools: Beyond Privatization in New York City Urban Educational Reform, and the co-author of Writing for Emerging Sociologists and The Sociology Student's Guide to Writing. She is also the primary editor of the Ethnography Made Easy OER.