Artemisis?unmask

Artemis is the Disney Princess Merida of Brave, and the fit is the tightest in the matrix. Artemis is the goddess with the bow. Merida is the Disney princess with the bow. That's really all we needed to know, but every other aspect of Merida hits the target, as though some master archer was using this pair as target practice.

Artemis is the goddess of the wilderness. Merida's day off is riding into the highlands alone with a bow and eating an apple on a cliff edge. "Touch the Sky" is a montage of her choosing wild country over the castle — the waterfall, the crags, the forest, the fire falls she drinks from.

Artemis is the most Virgin of goddesses, but her behavior, autonomy, and ruthless enforcement of boundaries give her ultimate Chad energy. Merida exemplifies Artemis's Virgin-Chad duality. Faced with a trio of suitors whom she must marry, she famously yells in a Scottish accent: "I'll be shooting for my own hand!" before obliterating the competition. This echoes the challenge crafted by Atalanta, Artemis's chosen, who declared that she would only wed someone who could beat her in a footrace. Due to Atalanta's notorious speed, this was impossible.¹

Artemis is a kourotrophos, protector of the young. In some myths, Artemis is born first and immediately midwifes her brother — she delivers Apollo after Leto's nine days of labour. Merida is the Disney princess with the 3 younger brothers, Harris, Hubert and Hamish, is the elder sister of three, and she spends the film looking after them.

Finally, we arrive at a load bearing part of the Artemis – Merida connection. Bear with me here until the facts are laid bare. As we bear witness, what started as barely visible will quickly become unbearable.

• Artemis is associated with wild animals — deer, her hunting dogs, and the bear.
• One leading etymology derives Artemis from Greek árktos, "bear".
• This theory is supported by the bear cult the goddess had in Attica (Brauronia) and the Neolithic remains at the Arkoudiotissa Cave — The Cave of the Bear Lady — on Crete.
• In some cults Artemis retains the theriomorphic form of a Pre-Greek goddess who was conceived with the shape of a bear.
• When Callisto, a companion of Artemis, was seduced by Zeus, an enraged Artemis turned her into a bear, and in this form she gave birth to her son Arcas, a bear.
• Callisto and Arcas were subsequently placed in the heavens, as the constellations Ursa Major and Ursa Minor (read: Big bear, little bear).

What does Merida, the wild, prideful archer princess do, when her mother tries to force her into marriage? The archetypal teenage act of rebellion: Merida turns Elinor into a bear.²

---

Extra-diegetic. The original title for Pixar's Brave was The Bear and the Bow. And just in case all the bear and bow imagery was still insufficient, they snuck in a final reference to Artemis, the goddess of the moon. In theaters, Brave was preceded by a short film entitled La Luna.³

Footnotes

1. Unless, as in the case of Hippomenes, you happen to have 3 golden apples gifted to you by Aphrodite which you can use as bait. ↩

2. Elinor's transformation into a bear harkens to Artemis's particular brand of cruelty, which is decidedly not Disney friendly. When the hunter Actaeon saw her bathing naked, the goddess transformed him into a deer. And then he was devoured by his own hunting dogs. After Callisto was turned into a bear, she was nearly killed by her own son. Transformation is just the first part of the traditional sentence meted out by Artemis. The real horror for Elinor is to be hunted and killed by her husband Fergus and her clansmen, those who love her but cannot see who she is. ↩

3. See Brave (2012 film). ↩