Ice Princess (2005) starring the late Michelle Trachtenberg as female teen physicist, Casey Carlyle.
I was saddened to hear of Michelle Trachtenberg’s death. Michelle Trachtenberg is a Millennial icon and was in many popular shows and movies that defined our age. Coincidentally, a few months ago, I rewatched her 2005 movie Ice Princess.
I first saw the movie back in the theater when it premiered. It was heavily advertised and seemed like a classic underdog story with cool figure skating. I was also a young, teen girl who did very well in Math and Science classes.
Casey, portrayed by Michelle Trachtenberg, is a 17-year high student who loves ice skating and does very well in Physics classes. Casey is up for a scholarship at Harvard. To get this scholarship, she needs to complete an independent study project, and she decides to determine how the laws of Physics apply to figure skating. She films and analyzes figure skaters at her local ice rink but decides to take lessons to demonstrate the spins and jumps herself. Her natural aptitude for figure skating means she progresses through the classes and competitions easily. She spends more time and more money to continue competing. Hence we have the “dilemma”: should she choose Physics or Figure Skating?
The main strength of the movie is its complicated female characters. At the time, it was the first movie I had ever seen that showed truly complicated female characters. The “mean girl”, Gen (portrayed by Hayden Panettiere), was not actually mean—she was just tired and stressed from figure skating. The mothers were not the warm, cuddly mothers I was accustomed to seeing in media. Casey’s mother Joan (portrayed by Joan Cusack) is an opinionated feminist (I loved her literary references to writers like “George Sand”), who loves her daughter fiercely but is grappling with her own issues. It’s clear she was burned badly by Casey’s father (who never appears) and resented not being able to go to college right after high school. Though apparently, she obtained some advanced degree since she teaches at a college level. She projects all her resentment on her daughter, pushing her to succeed in Physics, go to Harvard, not to date. When Casey decides that she does not want any of these things, Joan immaturely stops talking to her for weeks. Tina Harwood, portrayed by Kim Cattrall, is the coach and owner of the local ice rink and Gen’s mother. Tina is petty, outspoken, and ambitious. In a cruel attempt to give her own daughter an ‘advantage’ in a competition, Tina sabotages Casey by giving her skates that were not broken in, and Casey’s feet are horribly blistered. Eventually, she makes amends to Casey and decides to coach her when Gen quits ice skating in protest.
And that brings us to Casey, the Millennial Trophy Child. Like Akeelah Anderson (portrayed by Keke Palmer) in Akeelah and the Bee (2006), these girls “rebel” from their mothers (who have dramatic aversions to their children’s hobbies), by sneaking off to practice ice skating or spelling. Adults routinely humiliate them in public. These young women face anger and punishment from their Mothers for “defying” them and “sneaking” off. Yet they are compelled to pursue their passion while bearing large burdens of guilt on their shoulders. This feels typical for that era.
Many Millennial women were encouraged into STEM majors, which were promised as some sort of panacea against future unhappiness or economic insecurity and because, girl power. However, they were not equipped to succeed in these often times hostile spaces and many Millennial women have since left STEM all together. Like Casey, family members and teachers also really encouraged me to pursue STEM in college rather than my passion of creative writing. And while I do enjoy the work I do and genuinely love science, there were many disillusionments along the way.
It’s clear, that Casey does well in school and is not afraid of confronting the arrogant men she encounters with her brains. It’s clear she would do very well academically in a Physics major. She has a strong interest in Physics…but only when it’s applied to figure skating. This aligns with a lot of efforts to motivate women in STEM through “girly” applications which enforce gender stereotypes and are not effective in truly inspiring women to STEM anyway
Maybe Disney was trying to make a more “modern” princess. It’s clear that Ice Princess was trying to make “Physics” look cool to girls who view this movie. I, in fact, as a girl, did find it really cool and it probably lodged into my brain somewhere. So, this is not terrible, until we get to the BIG MOMENT.
While pursuing her passion for figure skating, she finishes her Physics project. While presenting her project at Harvard, she makes a dramatic decision to leave in the middle of the interview and give up the scholarship. Her mother is rightfully upset by this precipitous decision and Casey declares that she will pursue her own dreams of figure skating. It’s clear that not only will Casey not apply for the scholarship, but she will not even apply for general admission to Harvard. Again, this frames feminism “as a choice”, a tactic often used to justify women embracing their own subordination.
There is no consideration, though, that an Ivy League school like Harvard would have loved a “well-rounded” candidate like Casey who is a competitive figure skater and Physics major. Many Ivy League students compete in the Olympics, so there was no need for Casey to give up anything. While the movie attempts to make Physics look glamorous, the “Harvard mixer” Casey attends has stereotypically awkward students whom Casey dreads interacting with. Casey prefers glamorous figure skating outfits to business attire. In the first scene of the movie, Casey is happily ice skating on the pond behind her house; she pleads for more time while her mother urges her to go inside and study. Even the movie poster depicts an overwhelmed “nerdy” Casey and a “glamorous” Ice Princess Casey (in her final skating scene she even wears a tiara). When I first saw the movie, I hated (and so did my mother) Casey giving up on Harvard. I had really loved the movie up to that point and the end felt a little icky to me, in some undefinable way. But other people that I knew, thought it was “amazing” that she gave up Harvard to figure skate. So, the movie was playing into attitudes of the era.
Casey getting ready for the Harvard Physics mixer.
However, the movie does make some attempts to remediate this. Casey uses her Physics skills to coach other skaters. The popular girl, Gen, quits skating so she can do better in school. The rigor and tedium of figure skating practices have made Gen’s grades and relationships suffer. Gen even decides to accept tutoring from Casey’s “nerdy” best friend. And Casey decides to take college classes (at an unspecified university) after reconciling with her mother. Improbably, there is a chance she could make it to the 2006 Winter Olympics. The movie does emphasize the pressure and rigor of figure skating as an athletic and artistic event. Though Casey’s success in figure skating is unlikely, the movie emphasizes the sacrifice, determination, and effort she puts in to succeed. The movie does try to show that Physics can be both demanding and relevant and glamorous. This is refreshing, given how a few years later in 2007, The Big Bang Theory would premiere, reinforcing sexist Physics stereotypes on a weekly basis for 12 seasons on network TV. In that series, the main female scientists were not physicists and the few female physicists that appeared in the series were one-dimensional sexist stereotypes (don’t worry, I’m planning several posts breaking down the The Big Bang Theory). Generally, there are very few female physicists portrayed in mainstream TV or movies. Natalie Portman’s Jane Foster in the Marvel Movies is probably the most well-known, but she is an astrophysicist operating in fantasy realms. Women physicists in other supporting roles include Mileva Marić (Samantha Colley) in the 2017 Genius biopic series on Albert Einstein, and Denise Richards in The World Is Not Enough (1999) who portrayed a nuclear physicist. So, Casey Carlyle, 20 years after the movie’s premiere, remains one of the major depictions of a female physicist in film.
I think Trachtenberg was phenomenal in this movie. She captured Casey’s vulnerability, determination, intelligence, and nativity very well. Back then, unlike other girls I knew, I liked the Physics scenes, and did believe that the movie made “Physics” look fun. Even to this day, I still use Physics principles at work. So, I guess the movie did inspire me. Rewatching as an adult, I was surprised by how well I remembered the movie, and I really enjoyed it. I would love to know how Casey’s life turned out. Maybe she had a great ice-skating career and ended up going to Harvard for graduate school. Maybe she abandoned STEM and ice-skating and became a writer.
Rest in peace Michelle Trachtenberg.
