princesses
Explanation
The Joke
Two people discuss how modern movies now feature princess characters "doing important stuff instead of just getting saved." One responds positively at first -- "Great! Now it's the girls who are subtly legitimizing a system of hereditary aristocracy." The other adds, "How nice that they can have charming little adventures, eating the fruit of the farmer's sweat and dwelling in the monument to the laborer's toil." In the final panel, one character notes that a princess in a movie "started life as a peasant," and the other immediately yells "Class traitor!"
The Humor
The comic takes the common progressive celebration of "empowered princess" movies and pushes it through a Marxist/class-analysis lens to absurd effect. While many people praise modern Disney-style films for giving princesses agency and breaking gender stereotypes, the comic points out that the characters are still princesses -- members of a hereditary ruling class that exploits the labor of common people. Making the princess more active and heroic doesn't change the fundamental class dynamics; it just makes aristocratic rule more palatable.
The punchline -- calling a princess who rose from peasant origins a "class traitor" -- is funny because it takes the class-consciousness critique to its logical extreme. Even when the story addresses social mobility, the characters find a reason to object, revealing that their critique is less about genuine political analysis and more about the joy of finding fault with everything.
References
- The comic likely references Disney films like Brave, Frozen, and Moana, which feature princesses in more active, heroic roles.
- The "started life as a peasant" line may reference characters like Rapunzel (Tangled) or similar rags-to-royalty stories.
- The Marxist terminology ("hereditary aristocracy," "fruit of the farmer's sweat," "laborer's toil") draws on socialist class analysis.