Hitting the Wall With "Homeland"

This is my second attempt to start watching "Homeland," the much awarded, much praised Showtime drama that became a great big deal when it premiered two years ago. The first time around, I watched the free episode that was released when the show first premiered. Not impressed, I didn't give it another thought until all the accolades started rolling in and I started getting recommendations from friends. This time around, I got through another episode, but I still have no desire to go any further. To put it bluntly, the show bothers me on several levels.

Damian Lewis stars as Sergeant Nicholas Brody, a Marine who was held captive by Al Qaeda for eight years before being rescued and returned to the United States. Worried that Brody might have been compromised during his time as a POW, a CIA intelligence officer, Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes) begins a one-woman campaign to watch his every move with the help of the CIA's surveillance equipment. She spends much of the first two episodes installing and then utilizing all manner of hidden cameras and microphones to spy on Brody, his wife Jessica (Morena Baccarin), and their two children. When she's not doing that, she's busy trying to justify her actions and the intense level fo scrutiny to her boss, David Estes (David Harewood) and her mentor Saul Berenson (Mandy Patinkin). Carrie's ultimate goal is to track down the terrorist Abu Nazir (Navid Negahban), who Brody was in contact with during his imprisonment.

I don't have an issue with the basics of this premise. The subject matter is timely and the ideas are intriguing. However, I have no patience with the typical, unrealistic complications that have been included to add more drama. It's not enough that Carrie is an underdog at the CIA, obsessing over a threat that only she seems to believe is there. No, she has to be bipolar and emotionally unstable too, constantly on the verge of a mental breakdown. Sure, it's believable that Jessica Brody would have had an affair that now has to be kept under wraps since her husband has returned from the dead. But did the affair have to be with his very best friend Captain Faber (Diego Klattenhoff)? I found it difficult to watch these episodes of "Homeland" and not see all the seams and the structuring, all the little things designed to make the show more tense and exciting, while at the same time making it feel like generic Hollywood product, completely undermining its believability.

I think part of the problem is that I know that this isn't how intelligence gathering really works, and it's jarring to see the procedures being flaunted so flagrantly left and right. I have this problem with police and lawyer shows too, though my brain has learned to treat them as fantasy after years and years of exposure. "Homeland," however, makes many overtures toward being more realistic than other spy media, but it doesn't make quite enough of them. When I'm watching it, I'm stuck in this odd mental place between the starkly candid "Zero Dark Thirty" and the obviously fantastical James Bond movies, not clear on how much real world logic is applicable to the events I'm seeing unfold. The universe seems similar to the dodgy one that "24" used to inhabit, with more nudity and profanity because this is a premium cable show. I don't think the adult content helps much. It just makes the whole story feel more tawdry and salacious.

I can see how "Homeland" could get much, much better, and I'm sure that it does eventually. However, I find myself totally disinterested in what it's shaping up to be. To me, "Homeland" looks like another paranoid, gung-ho military fantasy about chasing down mysterious terrorist threats and unraveling plots set in motion by evil foreigners - and like so many other films and television shows in the same vein, it feels exploitative, reductive, fear-mongering, xenophobic, and downright distasteful at times. I find it very hard to get any entertainment value out of this as a result. There's too much focus on visceral thrills and emotional turmoil, to the point where the elevated tensions feel very artificial and contrived. Playing up and twisting real-world fears about terrorism like this makes me extremely uncomfortable, especially where there's no grounding context to speak of, and the subject matter is such sensitive stuff. I'm guessing the story will get more nuanced, but the terrible old cliches are killing it right now.

What's worse, I don't find a single character likeable or intriguing enough to want to see more of. Sure, I like all the actors involved here, and I'm thrilled for Claire Danes that she got to sink her teeth into such a substantial role at last. She's great as Carrie Mathison. However, I have no interest in watching Carrie Mathison continue to obsess about Sergeant Brody. I don't care what happens to him or his wife or the kids who look nothing like their mother. The only character I find sympathetic is one of Carrie's intelligence assets, who is almost certainly going to get herself killed off soon in a way that imparts the maximum amount of trauma and guilt on Carrie. And you know what? I don't particularly want to watch that happen. Maybe after I finish off a few more shows and I'm in the mood for something darker I can try to suck it up and tackle "Homeland" again.

But not today.
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Don't Worry About Will Smith

Boy, Will Smith is having a rough week. I haven't seen so much vitriol aimed a a mainstream movie since "John Carter" came out. Everyone in the media seemed to be falling over themselves to pronounce Smith latest, "After Earth," a bomb, well before any actual box office numbers came in. Reviews were largely negative, but they weren't "worst movie ever" bad, as I saw some Twitter users claiming over the weekend. Few people were talking about the actual content of the movie, but plenty were talking about the Smith family being Scientologists (which they've denied), M. Night Shyamalan being a hack, and the obvious nepotism of giving Jaden Smith such a large role in the movie. It seems a lot of people have beef with the Smith family, and they've been taking the opportunity to vent their spleen.

From a business standpoint the important part is that "After Earth" will likely spell the end of Will Smith's unprecedented box office streak that made him the king of summer blockbusters for more than a decade. Since 1996, every summer film he's starred in has made over $100 million domestically. However, Smith has been noticeably slowing down lately. Since 2008, he's only done one other film, "Men in Black 3" which brought in a decent, but unimpressive $170 million. His next will be Akiva Goldsmith's "A Winter's Tale," a smaller project where he only has a supporting role. Smith doesn't have any other big blockbuster-type films confirmed at the moment, and the worry is that if he doesn't put in more appearances at the top of the box office charts soon, his star wattage is going to take a serious hit.

Will Smith is one of the last of the real A-listers, the Hollywood leading men who can be counted on to open a picture. He still commands a big paycheck and has a lot of clout on his projects because people will still go to see a movie solely because he's in it. "After Earth" would not have been made without him, and certainly not with such a sizable budget. I think it's easy to see what went wrong here. Columbia, figured that lots of special effects and Smith's presence would be enough to convince moviegoers to show up, and some of them did. However, they didn't count on the negative effects of the movie also starring Jaden Smith, who audiences have never really warmed up to despite his high profile. Then there was director M. Night Shyamalan, whose name wasn't in any of the marketing, making it look like the studio was trying to hide his involvement. Worst of all, Smith wasn't playing a typical wisecracking, charismatic Will Smith character, but a dead serious authoritarian figure.

The audience had a lot of doubts from the reactions I saw to the trailers, doubts that were never adequately addressed. When the bad reviews started coming in, suddenly it was an excuse for everyone who ever had any complaint with the Smiths or Shyamalan or Scientology to start pushing back against the marketing hype. We had multiple articles with conspiracy nuts looking for Scientology messages in "After Earth" (none of them very convincing), dissections of Shyamalan's career woes, and endless speculation about Will Smith's parenting skills. It's doubtful that audiences are going to trust a Will Smith movie to be synonymous with a good time after this. "After Earth" may be the equivalent of Tom Cruise's couch-jumping moment on "Oprah" all those years ago, when the facade cracked and we started seeing the actor as a fallible human being instead of our favorite movie star.

Of course, Tom Cruise movies still do very well, and his career has been fine. "Oblivion" had a similar science-fiction premise to "After Earth," and it did decent business. However, Cruise's name doesn't have the same cachet that it once did, which is why the marketing department had to work a little harder, and they made sure that Morgan Freeman and all the spiffy CGI were featured in the trailers too. I don't think Smith should have any trouble getting back on track. He's only 44, and has a lot of photogenic years left. Another "Bad Boys" sequel ought to fix things right up. Also, the biggest complaint with "After Earth" in the end seemed to be the nepotism, which may be obnoxious, but much more understandable than Cruise's couch-jumping anti-mental health care antics.

Then again, we have to ask whether Smith wants to keep being king of the summer box office. He came up with the story for "After Earth," and we can probably assume that his character, Cypher Rage, is the kind of part that he's more interested in playing these days - darker, cooler, and more mature. It might be time for him to move on to another stage of his career and start looking at more diverse material. Personally, I'd be happy to see him making smaller, riskier movies like "Six Degrees of Separation" again, which I still think is best performance. Or maybe he's happier off the screen these days than on it.

But I don't see any reason to worry about him. All the biggest movie stars have had a few flops in them, and there are probably going to be far worse ones this summer. Stay tuned.
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Life and Times of a "War Witch"

We first meet Komona (Rachel Mwanza) at the age of twelve, forced to become a child soldier in a violent civil war engulfing an unnamed sub-Saharan African country. With this kind of subject matter, you can probably guess that that the story will be traumatic and sobering, and that there will be very adult subject matter and intense situations that often will be difficult to watch. Terrible things happen to Komona, starting with her conscription, where she is forced to kill her own parents as part of the initiation. She is starved, beaten, raped, taught to kill, and constantly placed in harm's way. These things are numbly matter-of-fact. However, Komona survives by becoming the "war witch" of the rebel leader, the Great Tiger (Mizinga Mwinga), and befriending an older albino boy, the Magician (Serge Kanyinda).

While cruel and harsh, "War Witch" is a fascinating coming-of-age story full of strange wonders. Komona can see ghosts, or at least has strong visions of the dead, who are represented by people wearing white makeup. They exist so causally in the frame, it took me some time to realize that they were ghosts, and not some newly encountered tribe of people being conquered or displaced. They become a regular presence in Komona's world, just as real to our heroine as the living people around her. Magic and ritual are treated as vitally important, forces that must be respected though their workings remain mysterious. Charms and curses are common items of currency, and unusual occurrences are readily attributed to intervention by the spirit world. Thus Komona's title of war witch affords her some power, but rarely enough to keep her from further harm and tragedy.

Komona's story isn't entirely dark and harrowing. In the middle segment of the film, she and the Magician manage to escape the rebel army for a time, and have their own adventures together. These scenes are funny, romantic, touching, and even lighthearted. They're also important in helping Komona to come into her own. Rachel Mwanza's performance really starts to shine here, as Komona becomes less passive and more willful. She's sympathetic from the start, but it takes a while for her to become a truly admirable figure that you want to root for. Initially she and the Magician are thrown together by circumstance, and when they leave together she follows his lead. Gradually, however, Komona develops a real relationship with him, and it's lovely to watch. Serge Kanyinda's Magician is a fun combination of mystic, con-man, and frustrated teenage boy. We're reminded several times throughout of how young these characters are, but it doesn't have the same impact as seeing them being young together, when they finally have the opportunity.

"War Witch" was primarily shot in the Democratic Republic of Congo with local talent, mostly non-actors. The young leads have no other screen credits to their names. As is common in these circumstances, the film occasionally feels a little like an ethnographic exercise, but I was impressed with how well director Kim Nguyen was able to avoid exoticizing his subjects, always bringing out the humanity of the people and their communities. There's a great sequence where Komona and the Magician go to live with the Magician's uncle, the Butcher (Ralph Prosper). We see the pair participating in activities like extracting oil from the surrounding trees, working alongside the other villagers. It's not clear what they're doing at first, but as the camera captures the process, step by step, the exotic becomes normal, and we understand that Komona and the Magician have found their way back to the routine of an ordinary life again.

I can't help but want to compare "War Witch" to "Beasts of the Southern Wild," which is also tells the story of a young black girl surviving in a tumultuous environment full of dangers, and heavily features magic realism and fantasy. However, it feels like too easy a comparison to make, and probably not a fair one. "War Witch" is more firmly grounded in the real world, and though magic is a major theme, the only really fantastic elements are Komona's ghosts, who she may be imagining. "War Witch" is also a much more straightforward affair, without the wild visual stylization or the child's eye perspective of "Beasts." Its themes are more heavy-handed and treated in a more conventional way. After all, Komona's journey represents real-world horrors that plague real people. By necessity she's far less of an abstraction than fearless little Hushpuppy, which is why I think "War Witch" ultimately hit much closer to home for me.

"War Witch" is one of the better surprises I've had from the films of 2012. Yes, it's a brutal and unforgiving film about child soldiers, but that isn't what defines it. Rather, it's about a young woman surviving tragedy, realizing her own power, and burying her ghosts. It's a story that I'm glad to see told, and told so well. And I hope other people will find it.
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"Side Effects" and "Behind the Candelabra"

These are the last two Steven Soderbergh films for the foreseeable future, since Soderbergh has announced his retirement. "Side Effects" was theatrically released back in February and just hit home media. "Behind the Candelabra" was produced by HBO as a television movie and premiered over Memorial Day weekend. I managed to catch one of the repeats last week. The films have nothing to do with each other, except, perhaps, that they can be seen as examples of Soderbergh's occasional genre experiments. "Side Effects" is a psychological thriller, a little more of the Brian De Palma than the Hitchcock variety. "Candelabra," on the other hand, is a campy examination of the romantic pairing of the famously extravagant pianist Liberace, and a young man named Scott Thorson, who gets caught up in his fame and excess. I don't have enough to say about them to warrant individual reviews, so I'm writing them up together here.

"Side Effects" is one of those films that is more enjoyable the less you know going in, so I'll stick to the basics of the premise. A young woman named Emily (Rooney Mara) suffers from depression and is being treated by a psychiatrist, Dr. Banks (Jude Law). Her condition proves difficult to combat, and Banks is convinced to put her on a new drug, which leads to some very bad consequences. Channing Tatum and Catherine Zeta-Jones are also in the mix as Emily's husband and one of her former psychiatrists respectively. "Side Effects" depends entirely on the performances of these four actors, and they all deliver. Rooney Mara is particularly impressive as the afflicted Emily, whose state of mind is so important and so difficult to ascertain. The film only works as written because of Mara's ability to keep us guessing. Jude Law also does a lot of commendable heavy lifting, as he becomes our central POV character for a good chunk of the film.

I can admire "Side Effects" for its craft and its ambitions. However, I didn't enjoy this one very much. All the characters are pretty terrible people, which meant I didn't care one way or another what happened to them. As good as the machinations of the plot played out, their impact was muted because I found it hard to connect with one side or another. Rooney Mara's Emily is fascinating, but remote, a puzzle of a woman whose claimed motivations sound like they could be just another layer of deception. Dr. Banks is initially positioned as the good guy, but quickly becomes just as despicable as everyone he believes is machinating against him. "Side Effects" too often feels like it's going through the motions, giving Soderbergh a chance to play with familiar genre conventions. There are some original ideas in the mix, and I enjoyed the early discussions of mental health treatments and medical ethics in particular. However, once the mystery elements kicked in, that all faded into the background very quickly. "Side Effects" is a very good film, but you get exactly what you'd expect..

"Behind the Candelabra" is more fun. Those of you hoping for a conventional Liberace biopic may be disappointed, because the movie focuses solely on the relationship of Liberace (Michael Douglas) and his much younger lover Scott Thorson (Matt Damon) during the late 70s and early 80s. Liberace is still famous and beloved, but getting on in years when he and Thorson first meet. The story is told entirely from Thorson's POV, and much of it concerns his gradual descent into drugs and emotional turmoil as the relationship goes from blissful to bitter to bizarre over the years. Buying into Liberace's lifestyle of easy hedonism and excess takes its toll, and the movie follows the arc of so many other drug memoirs and cautionary tales about the good life. What separates "Candelabra" from other made-for-TV tell-alls is that it has a great sense of humor about itself. You've got Michael Douglas, Matt Damon, and several other familiar faces willing to make themselves look utterly ridiculous in all manner of makeup and garish 70s fashions, and turning up their performances to gloriously campy heights.

I wish I was more familiar with Liberace, because I had trouble gauging Michael Douglas's performance. How much were Liberace's mannerisms and the voice exaggerated? The flamboyant persona works wonderfully when he's onstage performing, but is less convincing when he's not. Or is that the point Soderbergh and Douglas were trying to make? Ultimately "Candelabra" shows some affection for Liberace and what he stood for, but only after gleefully getting us acquainted with all of his secret vices and indulgences and bad habits. A word of warning - if you're not comfortable with onscreen sexuality of the same-sex kind, you may want to give this a pass. Nothing ever gets pornographic, but the portrayal of Liberace and Thorson's sex life is pretty candid. At times I thought it was a little too candid, but it did help to give the picture an unusual degree of intimacy. Even if you find these people ridiculous, as I did, you'll find yourself sympathizing with them.

"Behind the Candelabra" seems an odd choice for Soderbergh to end his filmmography with, but then his filmmography is full of outliers, so I guess it's fitting. I'm not sure if "Candelabra" is a good film. I suspect it may be a bad film with really exceptional execution. However, it's definitely a memorable one, and worth seeing. I'm a little less inclined to recommend "Side Effects," but only because there are so many other films like it. If you're in the mood for psychological thriller, it should certainly fit the bill. And if this is really it for Soderbergh, I think it's safe to say that he quit while he was ahead. So good for him.

Happy watching.
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NBC and the State of Network TV

Big news over the weekend. Fans of "Community" will be happy to hear that ousted showrunner Dan Harmon will be returning former season five, possibly along with another former writer, Chris McKenna. This is an unprecedented move. Showrunners generally never return to the shows they've left, especially when they've been fired the way that Harmon was. However, nothing is normal at NBC these days. "Community" is one of only two comedies that they renewed this year, along with "Parks and Recreation," because even though its ratings are low, it reliably brings in the most prized demographic of younger viewers, the ones who have been abandoning network television in droves lately. It's likely the same reason why they renewed the low-rated "Hannibal" for a second season last week, a very, very late decision that happened well after the big upfront presentations of next year's lineup. At the moment, neither "Community" or "Hannibal" are technically on the NBC schedule, which underscores how unusual both decisions are.

Even though this is good news for me, because I like "Community" and "Hannibal," there's no way that any other broadcast network would have brought them back. The shows have only survived because of how dire the situation is at NBC, and has been for so long. The ups and downs of the networks are usually out of the public eye, of interest to business analysts mostly. However, the epic decline of NBC from the highest rated network for much of the 90s and early 2000s to a fourth place also-ran that is losing ground to cable broadcasts and Univision, has become common knowledge. Some blame specific executives, the mishandling of established hits, and bungled launches of new shows. There have been a string of high-profile bombs over the last ten years, including the particularly damaging decision to put Jay Leno in the 10PM hour during the 2009-2010 season. The once prized Thursday night comedy lineup lost "30 Rock" and "The Office" this year, leaving the much beloved but little watched "Parks and Recreation" to anchor the night. Three new Thursday comedies will be launched in the fall to try and fill the gaps, a risky move considering NBC's recent track record with sitcoms. However, the network doesn't have many options at the moment.

The success and failure of the networks tends to be cyclical. ABC went through similar third place woes in the 70s, and CBS had a bad slump in the 80s. FOX, of course, started out at the bottom in 1986. Usually networks are more interesting when they're in trouble. The programming gets more experimental and innovative. Programmers take risks that they wouldn't otherwise. Right now, NBC is the network I tend to watch the most because its programming is more ambitious and daring than what you find in the rest of the mainstream. If history is any indicator, eventually one of these experiments is going to work, and NBC will be able to dig itself out of the ratings hole. However, network television is currently in a particularly unstable period, with viewing numbers down across the board, and increasing audience defections to cable television and the internet. As the recent battles over retransmission fees have revealed, network revenues are shrinking, and it may not be financially feasible for some of the major players to continue if the ratings continue to drop. There's a growing possibility that NBC could be sunk for good.

This past season was particularly dramatic. NBC had several shows that seemed to connect early on: "Revolution," "Smash," and "Go On." However, all of them suffered severe declines and "Smash" and "Go On" ended up cancelled. Their biggest hit, "The Voice," hasn't been able to function as an effective lead-in for the programs scheduled after it. "Do No Harm," the heavily hyped medical drama that was supposed to fill the 10PM Thursday night slot occupied for so many years by "ER," posted historically low premiere ratings in February, and was quickly axed after only two episodes. It was the latest in a long line of promising NBC dramas that bombed in the same time slot. Nearly all of the network's early gains were erased by the time May finales rolled around, and NBC finished in 4th place. The NBC execs are faced with starting over yet again, building on a schedule that's in even worse shape than last year.

However, the situation may not be as dire as it looks. It's important to remember that NBC is still getting the viewers that the advertisers want. This season it was a respectable third in the 18-49 demographic, and tied for second with CBS in the 18-34 demographic. And if they've been losing viewers, other networks have been losing more. It was FOX came out with the biggest losses, down a staggering 22% of total viewers from last year, while the other networks saw single digit drops. Whatever forces are causing the declines of network television, it's FOX that's currently feeling the brunt of the impact. However, it's pretty clear all that nearly all the major broadcast networks in the rut now, and if NBCs fortunes have been bad, the same is true of everyone else. NBC may not need to increase viewership at all to get ahead, but just hold the line.

We'll see what happens next. Stay tuned.
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"Veronica Mars," Year Two

Some spoilers ahead.

I wasn't happy when I first saw the opening credits for the second season of "Veronica Mars." Instead of Meg (Alona Tal) or Mac (Tina Majorino) joining the cast, instead we got expanded roles for the season one background players, the Casablancas brothers, Dick (Ryan Hansen) and Cassidy, nicknamed "Beaver" (Kyle Gallner). Plus, there was Jackie (Tessa Thompson), the new African-American student who was clearly intended to be a new minority gal-pal for Veronica and a love interest for Wallace. Fortunately, Meg and Mac still had pretty big supporting roles in this season, and the new featured characters all ended up being developed pretty well.

For much of year two, it felt like "Veronica Mars" was trying to transition into becoming something else, a show that would be more sustainable over the long run, maybe. I want to emphasize how different the first and second seasons are from each other, in ways that aren't immediately apparent. The multiple flashbacks and dream sequences, which were a big part of the DNA of the early episodes, are almost entirely gone in season two. So is most of Veronica's angst about her past - Lianne and Lily are barely mentioned this year, and the Kanes' influence is hardly felt on the new storylines at all. Veronica is no longer a social pariah, and is actively trying to put that part of her life behind her, though she still chafes at the divide between the rich and poor in Neptune. If there was anything that the writers really bungled about this year is that they set up this great tension between the 09ers and the 99% at the beginning of the season, and then absolutely nothing came of it.

No, the big mystery that occupies Veronica Mars' time during her senior year is finding out who is responsible for causing a fatal bus crash that killed several of her classmates, and that may have been targeting her as well. There's a big list of suspects, including Woody Goodman (Steve Guttenberg), the local businessman who wants to become Neptune's mayor, Dick and Beaver's golddigger stepmother Kendall (Charisma Carpenter), Weevil and other members of the PCH biker gang, and the local Irish mob family, the Fitzpatricks, who have beef with them. There's some time spent examining the dysfunctions of the Casablancas family, but nothing nearly as juicy as all the drama with the Kane and Echolls clans in the first season, or as thematically interesting. Year two of "Veronica Mars" is much more sprawling, with fewer obvious connections between Veronica and her big case. Sure, we get some nice twists, but they're more convoluted, and feel even more like contrived soap opera fodder than the first time around. Teen pregnancy! Child abuse! Mad bombers! Logan sleeping with anything that moves! It would be deplorable if it weren't all so much fun.

And boy is "Veronica Mars" fun. It's very easy to nitpick this season's weaknesses, to talk about the disappearing and reappearing characters, poorly developed ideas, messy logic, and the sad neglect of some of the most important relationships and concepts from the previous year. The execution problems are obvious. However, that doesn't take away from the show still being consistently well-written, inventive, and able to spring some great surprises when it counts. I liked that the characters have more room to grow, now that they're free of the constraints of that incredibly plot-driven first season. You can see this particularly in Wallace, Veronica, and Mac, who have some of their best moments just dealing with average teenager problems instead of their fancy detective shenanigans. As much as I appreciate Veronica being so smart and tricky, and always having the perfect comeback, sometimes she's a little too good at being the omnipotent girl sleuth. This season, I didn't have that problem with her at all.

While it held my attention, the big mystery wasn't as satisfying, because the stakes weren't as high and our main characters didn't feel like they were being seriously affected by the mess this time. I think most of the story issues came down to trying to do too much, and not putting the right amount of narrative emphasis in the right places. Boy, could we have used another episode about Woody, or some more time with the Fitzpatricks to flesh them out, or a better look at what was going on in the Casablancas household. While I like that the writers kept a lot of possibilities open for the ultimate Big Bad, they ended up with a lot of extra story threads that were just too underdeveloped for me to care much about. For every payoff that did work, like the identity of our mad bomber, there was another that didn't.

Still, I got a lot out of this season, and I was happy with many of the choices that the show's creators made. I know the third season is supposed to be another step down, but so far "Veronica Mars" is going strong enough that I am willing to give it the benefit of the doubt and keep going. After all, from what I've seen so far, mediocre "Veronica Mars" still beats most shows on their best days.
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Are the Disney Princesses a Problem?

The Merida makeover kerfuffle has mostly blown over, but I wanted to put in my two cents, not just on this particular controversy, but the existence of the Disney Princess brand in general. During my last trip to the Disneyland theme park, it was hard to escape the princesses. Everywhere you looked, there were little girls dressed up as Merida from "Brave," Rapunzel from "Tangled," Tiana from "The Princess and the Frog," and a smattering of Belles and Ariels and Jasmines. I caught a glimpse of the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique near Sleeping Beauty's Castle, a salon where girls could be transformed into their favorite princess for the day. (Contrary to a recent episode of "The Big Bang Theory," grown ups aren't allowed to wander the park in costume, for fear of confusing the kids).

The cynical part of me thought that all the little girls in their color-coded princess gowns were awfully generic looking. Sure, they were obviously having fun and they looked adorable, but it reinforced for me that the bulk of this whole Disney Princess branding business is tied to selling traditionally gender-coded merchandise for girls like dresses and accessories and dolls. And the shinier and sparklier, the better, which is why Princess Merida was redesigned with a fancier gown, better groomed hair, and it looks like she's wearing eye make-up. If you look at the other princess characters, you'll notice that they've all been redesigned like this to an extent. However, Merida's makeover is especially jarring because it's so contrary to her character. PIXAR did a great job of creating a princess who valued her individuality over tradition, and was more interested in adventuring than being cooped up at home, learning to be a proper lady. In one scene, she rips her way out of the constraining, pretty dress that her mother has stuffed her into, in order to win an archery tournament.

I don't have any issues with the individual Disney Princesses as role models. I think this generation's Merida and Tiana and Rapunzel are great examples of well-rounded, interesting animated heroines. Even the older, more traditional princesses like Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and Cinderella have their good points. However, the Disney Princess branding insists on presenting all of them as these slightly differentiated variations on a very generic, ideal princess type, where the emphasis is all on looks and clothes. It's notable that the more action-oriented heroines who are part of the Princess brand, Mulan and Pocahontas, don't appear nearly as often as their more passive contemporary, Princess Jasmine. If you like Merida because she broke a lot of the rules, it's very strange to see her being shoehorned back into the role of the pretty princess character who is being used to sell more dresses and dolls. Fortunately, there's plenty of "Brave" merchandise that features the more recognizable Merida, with her messy hair, bow and arrows, and plainer clothes - even action figures and some toy weapons! However, they don't appear under the Disney Princess label.

Was making Merida a Disney Princess a mistake? Adding Merida to the lineup might have been viewed as a positive decision if you see it as an attempt to shake up the princess image a bit, and try to broaden what being a Disney princess means. However, when Disney started right off by giving Merida a glittery redesign to make her fit in with the other princesses, it was apparent that this wasn't the case at all. No, Merida became the eleventh official Disney princess because she's popular, she appeals to the same audience, and she makes for good crossover synergy with the PIXAR brands. And it's no wonder that the decision ended up becoming a perfect flashpoint for all the criticisms that have been levied against the Disney Princess brand in the last few years - chiefly that it promotes problematic gender roles and perpetuates all the regressive, shallow, antiquated ideas associated with princesshood. Concerned parents can try to keep their girls away from the princess merchandise, but the brand is so pervasive, that it can be difficult.

For the record, Belle was always my favorite Disney heroine, but not because of the pretty yellow dress. I liked her because she was a bookworm and a social oddball. Also, "Beauty and the Beast" coming out when I was still in the target audience for animated kids' film probably had a lot to do with it. The Disney Princess brand wasn't around in my day, and I wonder if that would have made any difference. It wasn't until the year 2000 that Disney started treating their princesses as a collective entity, and created this incredibly lucrative brand that now moves everything from bedding and toys to consumer electronics. So the Disney Princesses are not going away any time soon, but surely there's room to improve the message a bit. They have this wonderful set of characters that they aren't really using to their full potential. I'd love to see Disney make some adjustments to help the princesses be a little less Barbie and little more Dora the Explorer or American Girl.

After all, there's no reason you can't put an emphasis on good role models and good stories, and still hawk plenty of pastel-colored merchandise at the same time.
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