Disney and Real Love

Cinderella

So this is love, Mmmmmm
So this is love
So this is what makes life divine
I'm all aglow, Mmmmmm
And now I know
The key to all heaven is mine
My heart has wings, Mmmmmm
And I can fly
I'll touch ev'ry star in the sky
So this is the miracle that I've been dreaming of
Mmmmmm
Mmmmmm
So this is love

Beauty and the Beast

Tale as old as time
True as it can be
Barely even friends
Then somebody bends
Unexpectedly
Just a little change
Small to say the least
Both a little scared
Neither one prepared
Beauty and the Beast

Ever just the same
Ever a surprise
Ever as before
Ever just as sure
As the sun will rise

Tale as old as time
Tune as old as song
Bittersweet and strange
Finding you can change
Learning you were wrong
Certain as the sun
Rising in the east
Tale as old as time
Song as old as rhyme
Beauty and the Beast

Tale as old as time
Song as old as rhyme
Beauty and the Beast

Sleeping Beauty

I know you
I walked with you once upon a dream.
I know you
The gleam in your eyes is so familiar a gleam
Yes, I know it's true
that visions are seldom all they seem
But if I know you, I know what you'll do
You'll love me at once
the way you did once upon a dream

What is it about Disney Princesses? I look back now and realize that those fairy tales give off a false sense of hope. Mostly it is our own view of the tale that makes it that way. We generally think, now why can't I have a happy ending like that. But, look with me, if you will, at the journey they took to get to that love. Cinderella lost both her father and her mother and was left in the care of a woman who treated her as a servant in her own house. She was forced to live in an attic and take care of the things they should have hired someone else to do. She gets to go to the ball only to leave after meeting an amazing man. She gets locked in the attic and only barely gets out in time for her to reveal that she is the one that the price loves. Yes...in the end she gets the prince...but I very seriously doubt that it was a happily ever after. She probably dealt with abandonment issues, and was possibly even a little OCD when it came to cleaning the palace. There would be times when she wouldn't know how to communicate with her husband, and he would probably get a little frustrated with her at times. Yes, they would love each other...but things for Cinderella were and would be far from perfect.

Now let's look at Belle. She has no mother to speak of and ends up taking care of her father when it should be the other way around. She lives in a little town and aspires for something more. She ends up trapped in a castle, made to make nice with a literal beast, and is forced to be away from her father (the only one she's ever known love from). I don't know about you, but I am not really all that jealous of Belle's journey to love. And would they have trust issues? Think about it, the whole reason they ended up together is because the Beast forced her to be there (and yes, I know he eventually let her go)...but would they be able to trust each other completely?

Aurora...This girl is made to live a complete lie (talk about having some trust issues)...She grows up not knowing her mother or her father. She's raised by three women in the middle of the forest. She has no friends. She is so lonely. And then the truth is revealed her to. I can't imagine what it must have been like to find out that the people you trusted with everything, even your love, had been lying to you your entire life. Then she is tricked. She is placed in pretty much a coma...and is completely helpless. And once she and Phillip are together, what will thier happily ever after be like? I think it would take a while for her to trust completely. And what about the whole parent thing. She has to get to know her parents. That would be so wierd.

This is something that I have always found funny about romantic movies...yes, there is generally a happy ending (if there weren't then what would be the point of watching it)...but what about all of the stuff that led up to that. The Wedding Planner is my favorite movie to analyze when it comes to this. Mary was engaged and then cheated on at her wedding shower. She then led a very lonely life. She was all work. She had shut all chances of love out. Then, when she thinks she might have found the guy that could change all of that he winds up being taken. Not just taken, he was a client. All the while, her father is trying to match her up with the guy from Italy...she almost throws away her love for Steve for safety and the chance that love might come to her. Yeah...she gets the guy in the end...but do we really want to have to go through all of that just to get the happy ending?

I believe that love is something worth having, but instead of romantically fantasizing about our happy ending...let's make the journey to that love...yeah...let's make that journey the happy part of the tale...and let's not forget that once that love is found...it is not the end...but the beginning...

GOD IS LOVE...and that is something that we have to know...we have to believe...we have to hold on to...because He is the author of our love stories...He has the script...we're just following His lead...