Hollywood literally cannot tell a “looks don’t matter” story without sneaking the looks (or status) back in by the third act. The Beast turning into a generic prince. She’s All That spends ninety minutes insisting personality matters, then resolves it with a makeover. The Princess Diaries goes one further: “you’re fine as you are” turns out to mean “you’re fine as you are, also you’re secretly a princess.”
I don’t think the people writing these endings believe the lesson themselves. An industry that runs on headshots and red carpets isn’t positioned to sell “looks don’t matter” with a straight face, and that disbelief leaks into the third act. Shallow people writing a story about looking past shallowness was always going to end with someone getting hot again. What bugs me is that they sell this corrupted message to our kids, repeating the cycle.
Well, the story of the ugly duckling is significantly older than Hollywood. The “looks don’t matter” archetype has always been “it’s okay if you look ugly now so long as you become beautiful in the end.”
Yes and no, they bucked it by just making the princess also “ugly”. Thus “fixing it” we still didn’t get the looks don’t matter you can get the pretty one as an uggo story
Yeah he should’ve been turned into a middle aged balding guy with a potbelly. The original story was basically an allegory about arranged marriage. It was written for young girls who would be wedded to an older man. To teach girls that their old future husband might look like an ugly monsters but they might possess a good heart.
Hollywood literally cannot tell a “looks don’t matter” story without sneaking the looks (or status) back in by the third act. The Beast turning into a generic prince. She’s All That spends ninety minutes insisting personality matters, then resolves it with a makeover. The Princess Diaries goes one further: “you’re fine as you are” turns out to mean “you’re fine as you are, also you’re secretly a princess.”
I don’t think the people writing these endings believe the lesson themselves. An industry that runs on headshots and red carpets isn’t positioned to sell “looks don’t matter” with a straight face, and that disbelief leaks into the third act. Shallow people writing a story about looking past shallowness was always going to end with someone getting hot again. What bugs me is that they sell this corrupted message to our kids, repeating the cycle.
Well, the story of the ugly duckling is significantly older than Hollywood. The “looks don’t matter” archetype has always been “it’s okay if you look ugly now so long as you become beautiful in the end.”
At least Shrek bucked the trend
Yes and no, they bucked it by just making the princess also “ugly”. Thus “fixing it” we still didn’t get the looks don’t matter you can get the pretty one as an uggo story
Howard and Bernadette in big bang theory. Or Leonard and Penny.
Yeah he should’ve been turned into a middle aged balding guy with a potbelly. The original story was basically an allegory about arranged marriage. It was written for young girls who would be wedded to an older man. To teach girls that their old future husband might look like an ugly monsters but they might possess a good heart.