Princessia

 While her mum is at work I look after my two year old granddaughter. We have fun. Lots of squeals and cuddles, she is, of course, totally adorable. She is my little princess, and my life would be more empty if she were not there.

Sometimes we watch television together. She has her favourites just as I have mine. We don't bother too much about what is in between, and more often than not the television is switched off when there is nothing to watch.

One of my least favourite programmes is Princessia. Well, truth be told, I detest it. If you ever thought that the Disney princesses were less than educational, then I think you would shudder if you were to watch Princessia.

Princessia is a Belgian television production about five very dumb princesses. They attend a school where they learn to be princesses. Now, there's a thought. It reminds me of when I was at boarding school in the south of England. In an exchange with the house mistress who didn't approve of the way I dressed (it was weekend, and I was wearing a long velvet skirt.. it was the 1970s after all) she asked me why I thought I was attending that particular school. I had a very clear idea and told her that I was there to pass my exams so I could attend university later. She was quick to correct me: "You are here to become a young lady!" and sent me off to change my clothes. So much for education.

In the meantime we have had the joy of watching Dr. Amanda Foreman trace an enlightening and moving history of women. A surprising account of just how much collective cultural effort has gone into keeping up the princess archteype through the ages. And we are still doing it today.

In, I think, the second programme (please forgive me if I don't go and check), Dr Foreman speaks of the balance of Yin and Yang and how at one stage  Yin becomes not a counterpart, but a subject of. Now, if you're sitting there shaking your head, think of other dichotomies such as light/dark, tall/short, wet/dry (oops, are you thinking it should be the other way around...?). In all these dichotomies there are Yin and Yang elements, but the more positive in our emotional, if not rational experience, is placed first. The same happens with man/woman. If we start talking about woman/man something jars. Helène Cixou goes further, and places the two one above the other in hierarchical fashion.

Let me give you another example.

I was very moved at the "Who do you think you are?" episode on the BBC featuring Anita Rani. Her journey begins in Bradford, a town I know very well.  where she grew up. While she was growing up she was told not to do a lot of the things her brothers did because she was a girl. Her question was always "Why?".

Her journey to discover her grandfather took her to speak to an old gentleman who had been a young lad during Partition - when India and Pakistan were split off and entire communities displaced. It was a time of unspeakable atrocities and extreme violence.

The old gentleman told Anita how he was part of a large family, many brothers and two sisters, his father was the village elder. During Partition a rival gang attacked his village and demanded a young girl from the village elder. Once she had been delivered to them, they would leave the village in peace. Of course he refused. What happened next though, makes your blood curdle. Rather than deliver his daughter to the bandits, he took his sword and cut off her head. The old gentleman describes how she took off her scarf, and how her sister held up her plait so that the cut would be clean and painless. Her sister was next, and so all the girls in the village followed. The women threw themselves into wells. So many that the wells spilled over. The old man, when he finished his story, patted Anita's hand to comfort her. She had been very brave to hear this story, and he added: "No children were hurt, all the children were saved."

The girls were spared a fate worse than death. The boys, well, they lived.

In A Hero with a Thousand Faces the very much quoted Joseph Cambell (ever read the book..?) states:

"When the child outgrows the popular idyl of the mother's breast and turns to face the world of specialized adult action, it passes, spiritually, into the sphere of the father - who becomes, for his son, the sign of the future task, and for his daughter, of the future husband.  Whether he knows it or not, and no matter what his position in society. the father is the initiating priestthrough whom the young being passes into the larger world. And just as, formerly, the mother represented the "good" and "evil", so now does he, but with this complication - that there is a new element of rivalry in the picture: the son against the father for the mastery of the universe, and the daughter against the mother to be the mastered world." J. Campbell, 1993, p 136

How is that for food for thought?

I'll leave you with just one more consideration: if the five princesses of Princessia had been black, and the teachers at the school been Saint Nicholas, what would public response have been? Spot the difference...

I just hope that my little princess granddaughter will grow up to be a proper human being.