Return of the King — © Copy­right 2012 by William Beem

Return of the King

Have you ever won­dered why the cen­ter­piece of the Magic King­dom is called Cin­derella Cas­tle? That makes no sense at all. It’s the cen­ter­piece of a king­dom. That implies there is a king. In fact, the King appears in three Cin­derella movies. It’s his king­dom. Although Dis­ney is cater­ing to lit­tle girls who want to be a princess, I think it’s clearly time for the Return of the King.

Dis­ney seems to be push­ing all the lit­tle boys to be pirates mod­eled after Cap­tain Jack Spar­row. He’s a fun char­ac­ter, but he’s not even King of the Pirates. They gave that job to a woman! The Princess theme keeps com­ing back, even in a pirate flick. That just ain’t right, man.

It’s time for the return of the King. We have plenty of Princesses in Dis­ney movies of the past decade or two. Notice how none of them are Queens, though? I’m told that it’s too much work to be a Queen, so they teach all the lit­tle girls to become a Princess. It works. You never fail to see some lit­tle girls in the Magic King­dom wear­ing a Princess dress from one Dis­ney movie or the other. It’s just that a King­dom ought to have a King.

Where are the role mod­els for young boys in Dis­ney movies? To be fair, there are six princes to match six fairy tale princesses in Dis­ney movies. Yet two of them need to be res­cued by the princess and a cou­ple of them are com­pletely bland. Aladdin seems to be the only one who can hold his own, and he still plays sec­ond fid­dle to Jas­mine. I sup­pose the only real male role mod­els in Dis­ney films are dogs — Pongo and the Tramp. Is that what we are — dogs?

No, we men are not dogs! It’s time to rise up. It’s time to once again storm the cas­tle. It’s time for the return of the King.