Mermaids, Princesses, and Other Politically-charged Topics

How Modern Entertainment has Revealed the Gaping Void at the Center of our Culture

I always knew I’d devote some of my adulthood to thinking and writing about politics. I picked up a Rush Limbaugh book when I was 12 or 13 and immediately knew that there was something about these subjects that was electrifying to me. I would spend many quiet hours going over beliefs and arguments in my head, trying to anticipate all possible avenues of attack. In retrospect this wasn’t an optimal activity for my mental health, but adolescents aren’t supposed to be aware of or careful toward their mental health. The fact that so many are these days (although thankfully many of them are play-acting in order to seem more interesting) is another marker of the strange territory we’ve wandered into.

So, I become politically engaged (in my mind) and that engagement spread to encompass economics and sociology. I had very definite and supportable opinions on Keynesian fiscal interventions as a tool of macro-economic management and the pros and cons of industrial tariffs, even in high school. At the time, I rather thought that political debate would encompass foreign policy, and the role of the state in solving social problems, perhaps the arguments for school vouchers or gun control… I hoped that the divisive cultural issues which seemed uniquely aggravating to the American electorate would become less so and we would become more technocratic and more logical and more farsighted in our policymaking.

Here we are, in 2023. I spend a great deal of time reading about racial disparities in policing. That’s something I studied in college in 2015, when the subject was already mostly settled and consensus about positive reforms had been achieved-none of which have been implemented. I field proposals which are, frankly, insane. I spend a great deal of time reading about transsexuality, especially as it relates to minors, and exploring whether irreversible gender modification procedures are a wise avenue for 17-year-olds (or younger people), a question that wasn’t even being considered a decade ago. I don’t think our rapid movement on these issues is progress, by the way. And I spend a great deal of time writing about cinematic superhero adaptations and Disney princesses and Mermaids-not because of my love of Marvel and Disney films, but because the writer’s rooms have been captured as effectively as have most newsrooms, and the rot is apparent.

These are the sites of modern cultural struggle and they are depressingly inane and silly but I did not choose them. Some will protest that it takes two sides to argue… Aren’t the anti-modern ‘Strong Female Character’ (SFC) believers just as culpable as the pro? Aren’t the Blue Lives Matter people just as responsible as the ‘defund the police’ crowd? Well, no. These are all issues where we’ve seen a great deal of movement in the past few years. Indeed, that is the source of the conflict: a cultural and intellectual elite has created a fake consensus within its own narrow, disconnected, self-serving circle and has tried to export its strange and unworkable ideas to society at large. When this has failed or run into inevitable problems, stigmatizing groups and destroying reputations and suppressing ideas and communication have all been employed enthusiastically. The point is that the modern debates would have been almost unimaginable to political observers even two decades ago. We’ve seen swift, radical, poorly considered changes in all of these areas and so the people who promote change in these areas must bear an outsize share of the blame for the attendant cultural and political conflict. If you propose a risky and ill-considered new policy at work, your coworkers don’t bear half of the blame for the drama that results. The advocates of the new policies and ideas must own not just their consequences but the social unrest that their consideration provokes.

Many decades ago Ronald Reagan said “I didn't leave the Democratic Party. The party left me." I rather doubt that it neatly applies to Reagan’s own political journey (he moved to a place never occupied by the Democratic party, but one that was wildly popular with voters). However it is a sentiment echoed by many smart and engaged people speaking about the modern left wing. Just sitting here, right now, I can tentatively name: Bridget Phetasy, Jimmy Dore, Bari Weiss, J. K. Rowling, Hannah Barnes, Joe Rogan, Tulsi Gabbard, Dave Chappelle, Zuby, Peter Boghossian, John McWhorter… and if I took twenty minutes I could probably produce dozens more. These are all people who are left/liberal in their stance (or were part of the left’s political organization), and they have all been set upon by the modern left. There are entire organizations and media empires dedicated to disaffected liberals! To effectively create change your side must build coalitions and expand its appeal maximally. Instead, the left has become obsessed with purity and conformity on every major issue. Consequently it’s being left with the most conformist, careerist, and mediocre intellects, and a large cohort of people with personality disorders. They might bring some passion to the undertaking but they are not people you want to build movements around. A movement peopled by midwits and rejects, built around bizarre and unpopular ideas will not create lasting and positive change in the world.

I think that the left was secure enough in their cultural dominance and their (mistaken) sense of being in line with the progressive arc of history and so they became puritanical and intolerant. That intolerance and rigidity will be their undoing, for those elements are poison to the brilliant and the creative. By chasing a worldview that prizes power above all they have guaranteed that they will lose it… and I don’t think that this will take decades.

One of those previously-referenced bizarre and unpopular ideas is a very dogmatic view of femininity. The age-old roles of women as mothers and wives and homemakers aren’t completely rejected but are treated as undesirable and rather backwards. They’re rarely represented positively, despite being the oldest and most important roles extant in human society. In all cultural depictions of women, the invisible (never acknowledged) commandments dictate, these roles cannot be celebrated or emphasized. They should be eliminated whenever possible. In this worldview, traditionally masculine traits - ambition, aggressiveness, intemperance, emotional distance - are toxic when displayed by men but are the new palette for character-building for writers of the Strong female Character (SFC).

“It’s the worst thing ever when you open a script and read the words ‘strong female lead. That makes me roll my eyes. I’m already out. I’m bored. Those roles are written as incredibly stoic, you spend the whole time acting tough and saying tough things.”

-Emily Blunt (actress)

This rendering of reality is obviously distorted and artificial but it wouldn’t arouse so much dissatisfaction among fans and customers if the new products weren't also badly written. I think that to be a convincing and worthwhile writer you must have had experiences which develop personal depth. It will be difficult to write a hero’s journey if you’ve never been on your own-indeed if the very concept of a hero’s journey is weird and aversive. In the 1990’s we had plenty of writers who fought in Vietnam or participated in the Civil Rights activities of the 1950’s and 60’s or experimented with radical new lifestyles or outlooks. I imagine that today’s writer’s rooms contain the most shallow and immature people ever, in terms of character and life experience. A more socially desirable attitude towards sexual harassment and ethnic diversity are fine things but they’re not enough to create great fictional narratives. No amount of ‘correct’ opinions are.

Whatever the precise reasons, modern stories tend to be derivative acts of mimicry uncomfortably inferior to the originals. I would say this was a negative trend even if the products were still popular and profitable but they’re not profitable. Disney remakes of The Little Mermaid and Snow White (in production as Snow White 2024) repeat the new archetyping of the female protagonist (seen in the Peter Pan live action remake and the more recent Mulan and, to some extent in almost every possible fictional offering in the past few years): she’s powerful, including physically. She’s a fearsome fighter and has immense physical courage BUT she’s also kind and sympathetic, and she’s smart. She often possesses skills and talents which are as unbelievable as they are convenient for the plot. She will never be beaten by a man in battle or in an argument and the misogynists and dullards around her who condescend to her because of her sex usually regret it. It’s a bit of a balancing act to portray powerful and vengeful characters who are also kind and pure but many writers have pulled it off, to some extent. They generally lessen and weaken the male characters in her orbit to further emphasize the change. None of this ever improves the story.

The problem is that the SFC is essentially perfect. She doesn’t learn from mistakes because she doesn’t make any. She doesn’t learn courage or fighting skill or wisdom because she has all of those things from the start. The commandment that the antagonist (usually a man, usually white) may not best the protagonist (usually a woman, usually nonwhite) means that the antagonist is never really a threat. It means that the narrative arc is really just a straight and even line, and that’s just not good storytelling.

The other-more recently displayed and larger-issue is the animus and goal of the main character. We’ve already established that the main character will be female. Female characters in stories (as female humans in the world) are often concerned with their relationships and romantic love is foremost among them. The ‘modern audience’ supposedly doesn’t want to see a princess pursuing the love of a prince, though (actually all of these stories are more complex than that and involve much larger themes than romantic ones). Modern audiences actually do want this (at least about half of them do) as much as they ever really have, but the writers are not only younger and more puerile-they’re far more culturally disconnected from normal people than they used to be. I imagine they generally regard the American exurb with incomprehension and disdain, for their worldview is corrosive to the mainstream. That corrosion is its central purpose, and its primary stated goal.

In any case, the era of Disney princesses in fictional, heterosexual romantic encounters is over. Even where there is a hint of romance the traditional framework of the story will be changed beyond recognition. The female character will have been strengthened so that she is the protector, or she will be uninterested in men. Just as having a n unbelievably perfect protagonist makes for a boring story, having a self-sufficient and emotionally intendent one makes for boring intercharacter dynamics. What is the point of stories, if not to reflect the pain and troubles and triumphs of real life? Unfortunately for modern writers, remakes with a half-hidden motivation to politically indoctrinate will never achieve the same resonance, because they lack depth and humanity.

She will never evoke the love of fans or inspire children like her predecessor, Luke Skywalker. The writers who created her never sent her on an analogous quest of growth and discovery and so most people cannot identify with her. Even among children, or people without knowledge of writing fundamentals, there’s a nagging sense of emptiness and dullness around the character of Rey. She was beloved by feminists and review-writers… but the former doesn’t watch Star Wars films and the latter isn’t a demographics large enough to build billion-dollar film franchises upon.

Many modern feminists seem to presume that boys like battle and girls like love ONLY because society has reared them that way but there is now a mountain of social science data which contradicts that idea (called the ‘Blank Slate’ fallacy by Jonathan Haidt). Try this: when a woman says that “men liking objects/systems and women liking people” or “men liking war films and women liking rom-coms” is just a residue of patriarchy, find out if they are interested in people… or math. Find out if they prefer to watch period dramas and rom-coms, or action films. Nearly always you will find that you are speaking to a woman who is ‘traditionally feminine’ in many of the ways that she is now belittling. This is a political orthodoxy, not a set of observations about real men and women. It flies in the face of all of our experiences and appeals to a set of hidden, theoretical ideas. Unfortunately (for them) they’re incorrect. This orthodoxy is driven by political goals and esoteric theories about power dynamics and meaning-creation, not by the welfare of actual men or women. It is slowly fading away now that science has definitively refuted it, and many women have rejected it, but it will live on in Gender Studies departments and non-profits, and in the entertainment industry… although that last area is subject to the demands of profitability in a way that the other two are not. It remains because it’s psychologically flattering to professional women, and because it’s still the reigning orthodoxy within most elite institutions.

Modern activists may be dedicated to their political goals but they are also usually quite soft, and cowardly. I’ve never actually known a social justice activist who has changed his or her life to accord with their low-carbon, anti-hierarchy, pro-equity values. Instead, there’s a universe of prosperous young people who wear the beliefs like jewelry, advertised on their social media pages. These beliefs aren’t so deeply rooted that they will resist widespread institutional and social rejection but the rejection has to happen. There are signs that it’s happening in Hollywood and the streaming studios right now (or perhaps beginning to) and it will be interesting to see how the entertainment industry shakes out during the next 5-10 years.

It would be a mistake to think that just because the believers aren’t willing to sacrifice for their goals the ideas are inconsequential though. The disappearance of traditional romances in Disney films is reflected in the epidemic loneliness among young people today. The lack of heros’ journeys and the self-centering of modern protagonists are reflected in the increasing reluctance of young people to ask each other out, and get driver’s licenses, and get jobs, and confront unfamiliar ideas. The values which have spoiled many films and TV shows will ruin society unless checked and reversed. In the meantime it’s surely not too much to ask to be able to lose ourselves in the stories on our screens. Surely it’s not too much to ask for relatable characters to fascinate us, and inspire us to be more loving and braver than we are.

Thanks for reading.

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