I have always loved fairy tales, so I eagerly watched The Princess starring actor Joey King. Then I watched it again, and again, and again. It's become one of my favorite films. Our hero takes on the brutal patriarchy with lots of bloody violence. What’s not to love?
The Princess turns the usual fairy tale upside down. She is a badass and I love her. No man has to save her. She will save herself.
Her story unfolds through flashbacks, revealing to us, alongside her, the events that transpired in the kingdom following her refusal to marry Julius.
It’s a fun movie with plenty of action, lots of blood and some funny lines, and it led me to think oh, so many thoughts. I'm fascinated at how accurately this movie, billed as an action/fantasy, reflects our patriarchal rape culture.
The reactions to a woman who says no more are predictably violent. There is gaslighting for one. And that’s not all! There is jeering, belittling, ridiculing, slapping, restraining, punching, threatening and all sorts of name calling. The Princess is called a bitch, a cunt and told to fuck off and that she will “get married, like it or not.”
And still, the Princess never stops fighting. Using whatever weapons are at hand including her hair pin, pearls, handcuffs (you need to see that!) and swords, she not only rescues herself, but she rescues her family and the kingdom. She is intuitive, cunning, and aggressive. So, of course, she is my hero and I love watching her aggressively fight back against forced marriage, rape, and loss of freedom. The Princess gets as low and dirty as you can get, literally traveling through the sewer to rescue her family. She will do what it takes.
The other women in this tale are trapped in their stations, but a few stand out. Linh, the warrior who trained our princess since she was young, is everything we want a mentor to be and she has taught the Princess that she must fight from her heart. She has reminded her repeatedly that a true warrior is defined not by how she fights but by what she is fighting for.
Over and over Linh emphasizes the importance of patience and focus and we see how the Princess uses those instructions to remind her to successfully combat her attackers.
The Queen uses the only power she has, which is her voice. She gives permission to the Princess to train to fight with Linh from an early age. When our cruel villain, Julius, tells her to call for her youngest daughter, Violet, she swears to him that she “will cut out my tongue first.” She has a voice and is ready to suffer or die using it.
But while the Queen uses the only power she has, her voice, and even little Violet fights back, the villain's woman wants the power she can get by being close to male power. (Sound familiar?) She also sees the Princess and probably all women as competition. This also mirrors our society. One of the manipulation tools of patriarchal society is making the women compete against each other for the (man) prize, in this case, Julius.
However, the character I find the most fascinating is the King. I am intrigued by him because he is the epitome of The Good Man.
The Good Man King is gentle with both his subjects and his daughters. He speaks to his wife, the Queen, with respect. He is kind and polite to servants.
The mistake the King makes, as many Good Men do,
is assuming other men are good men too.
This Good Man has never been violent. He has kept the peace in his kingdom but he has never been the one to fight. He sends knights and other men to wage war, yet seems to forget that these men are killers. It doesn’t matter that he knows how men act in war and in peace. Because he thinks in an “honorable” fashion, he assumes other men look at things the same way. The Good Man does not help us. The Good Man is good but that’s it.
The King, this “good man” is shocked and bewildered as our story continues. Julius was a man of good family! What? How can he act like this?????
Because he wouldn’t do that thing, he assumes most men wouldn’t.
He is the “No help” man.
He doesn’t believe in what he sees with his own eyes.
Just as in our society, when women try to tell Good Men everything that has happened to them because of violent men, women are not believed. (The Me Too movement comes to mind.) Because there is such an overwhelming amount of misogyny in our society, their stories are not trusted; women are assumed to be lying.
When the Princess correctly points out the King's hypocrisy in not letting her train to fight as a knight because of what could happen to her, his child, but …” will sell me into the bedroom of a man I barely know!” He tells her she needs to do her duty. (The be raped every night is understood) He tells her, she is “an impetuous girl who only thinks about herself.” Gaslighting anyone?
The Good Man refuses to see what is wrong with the system that has worked forever. The system that says a male must be the heir, and his daughters must marry for strategy. The patriarchal system that demands that everything stay the same.
Every sentence he utters and every move he makes shows how clueless he is. Even after witnessing the violence of Julius’s attack on his kingdom, and observing his daughter being beaten, when Julius threatens to rape Violet, he utters, “Julius, you wouldn’t!” WTF man??
He is ineffective in stopping violence, therefore, in my mind, condoning it. The betrayal by a Good Man is often worse than outright violence and abuse. The Good Man has the power to help. Since he takes that power for granted, he doesn’t realize how that influence could be used in a different way, or in fact why it should be.
Once the Princess has freed them all from Julius, The Good Man King finally does something worthwhile, and makes the Princess his heir. He asks for her forgiveness and he announces that “henceforth the daughters of this kingdom will make their own fate.”
Finally. The Good Man acts.
But there is so much more he could have done and sooner. By finally helping the Princess, she can now help the other women in the kingdom. See how that works?
(I carry the story on in my imagination.)
If all of the Good Men would join forces with women, it would be incredible.
But, until then, we fight with everything we’ve got. Remember. Patience and Focus.
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