Disenchantment is a American animated Sci-fi comedy about a princess, her personal assistant, and her pet demon that go on adventures and cause mischievousness. Her father, King Zog, is ruler of Dreamland and first and foremost a father to Bean. He is like every traditional father with the belief that she needs to have her underneath his win at all times but sometimes he takes it to an extreme and ends up locking her up in her room. It makes sense that he would do this as a result of her mischievousness throughout the series but when she is trying to help her kingdom and her father, he tends to not see this and it drives him over the edge, locking her up in the tower. Watching this series, I observed the strictness of gender roles and what it means for a woman in her time. King Zog wants her daughter to get married but she sees this as a political tactic to maintain the royal family of Dreamland and this is due to the fact that he thinks that his daughter is not able to make her choices and should just be married off. On the contrary, Bean does not want to marry just anyone and she does not want to be tied to commitment at the moment and would prefer to have fun and live her life. So, she struggles to live up to her dad’s expectations but she also desires to be her own person. In episode 1 of season 1, Bean was forced to marry Prince Guysbert in order to secure a political alliance between her father’s kingdom and her will-be-husband father’s kingdom but she ran away from the palace at night to avoid getting married. She ended up going to a local tavern to play poker(Coate,”Disenchantment”). Bean, being the woman that she is in her time, is limited to the belief of growing up to be married at a young age and live a boring life while her husband takes care of the kingdom and she chose to run away from that. This shows us that Bean promotes the feminist ideology of our time in which a women is allowed to do as she pleases with her life and not confine herself because of what society says. Society is cruel. It tells women that they need to have a man in their life to function and once they have that man, they are subliminally labeled property of those men. For example, back in 2014, Ariana Grande was filmed saying that “I’m not Big Sean’s Ex or “Niall’s possible new girl”(Woodward, “Buzzfeed”), she is her independent person. That being said, she is shutting down this idea that a woman needs to have a man to be of value and when talking about Disenchantment, we also see this resistance and advocacy for women’s liberation. I think that Bean is a feminist icon that can reach audiences, even male audiences through comedy.

References:
Coate, Isaac.”Disenchantment Season 1 Episode 1 Recap.”ComingSoon,https://www.comingsoon.net/tv/reviews/968611-disenchantment-season-1-episode-1-recap

Woodward, Ellie. “19 Times Ariana Grande Shut Down Sexism The Hell Down.” Buzzfeed, https://www.buzzfeed.com/elliewoodward/times-ariana-grande-shut-sexism-the-hell-down