Me, My Values, and Disney

Disney films are perfectly engineered to influence and shape our minds. Their incredible worlds, timeless songs, and the unforgettable scenes that they create make it easy for us to accept many of the unspoken rules that they play by. Rule number one: there must be tragedy. Rule number two: love must be a time stopping, earth-shaking, heartbreaking love, love always overcomes, and there must be love. Rule number three: we signed up for a happy ending. She will get the prince, he will save the world, and in the last scene we will be rewarded with a grand musical number.

You won’t catch me constantly peeking over my shoulder to see if tragedy is creeping behind me, and I do not casually bounce back from hardships that I face as if they are nothing. But I do find that I have accepted the necessity of bad in life to grow and to truly live and experience all that the world has to offer. I acknowledge that hard times make me who I am, just as being a beggar made Aladdin who he is, and that it is important to trudge, elbow, and occasionally swordfight through the ugly to prance through the beautiful meadows.

Although I do not go around kissing frogs or rubbing dusty lamps, I know that I practice a few Disney inspired and whimsical beliefs in my own life. I often catch myself daydreaming of a princess worthy love. I don’t plan on washing up on the shore for Prince Eric to find or to fall in love with my commander while fighting the Huns to save my father’s honor. But maybe one day my own Li Shang will show up in his own kind of armor and help me fight another kind of battle, or I will find another beast to teach to read. I fully expect that when I get to be a princess for a day, in a shimmering white ball gown of my own, I will feel more joy than I did watching “I See the Light” during Tangled. I know that the man I marry may not climb to the top of a high tower, and that even if he did my hair is not long enough to hold him, but I do believe that he will be prince charming,

I do not root for the hero in every Marvel movie, I very often don’t hope the guy wins the girl he will certainly end up with, and I more likely than not hate the female lead. But as cynical as I may want to be and as naïve as it sounds, I do believe in happy endings. I believe that we, the heroes of our own stories, will slay our dragons (or at least the best 2 out of 3). I hope that each and every one that I meet finds love, whether it be in another person, with art, or with life. And more than anything, I hope that we all get to end the great production that is our life with a massive, brilliant musical number.