Just Some Terrible Disney Characters -- and by Terrible I Mean Monstrous

I don't even remember these characters, yet I can imagine that as a child they would haunt my nightmares. Especially the Peter Pan mermaids that are a total departure from the Little Mermaid's variety. Also, that gif of Lucifer (LUCIFER, REALLY) the cat from Cindarella is still really terrifying. I also never though of the clams as babies, but that makes sense and the Walrus is also super gross. I can't even. What are you doing Disney, what are these characters and why are you showing them to little kids?

Definitely Not the best Disney Movie Ever

This actually assaults my senses. I barely even remember The Emporer's New Groove, there is absolutely no way it's the best Disney movie ever created. I'm sorry, Kuzco is a horrible, unlovable protagonist with very few if any redeeming qualities that takes advantage of a good-natured peasant family. I wish Yzma had become Empress instead of Kuzco becoming emoporer, as this Buzzfeed article specifies, at least she isn't totally heartless:

 http://www.buzzfeed.com/samstryker/why-do-we-even-have-that-lever#.slYkbveAN

The Princess and the Frog Didn't Need to be Historically Accurate, but it Could've Done a Little Better

http://www.buzzfeed.com/kmallikarjuna/7-disney-characters-dressed-in-stunning-period-costumes?sub=2416459_1355727#.jamDdpQlm

So recently we watched the Princess and the Frog and read some scholarly articles that discussed the historical accuracy of the movie which is, to put it lightly, somewhat lacking. One of the scholarly articles we read was a piece called "After 75 Years of Magic: Disney Answers Its Critics, Rewrites African American History, and Cashes In on Its Racist Past" by Richard Breaux, and while I don't agree with him that we should have made Princess and the Frog entirely historically accurate, I definitely think that the story could be more explicit when it hints at the racial struggle of the time. While the 1920's South was definitely not a welcoming environment for Blacks, I don't think that a Disney movie is the proper place to make entirely accurate representations, for example there need not be a lynching or anything in Princess and the Frog. However, I don't think it would've been entirely out of the story to have the bus driver tell Tiana and her mother to go to the back of the bus, or to have Tiana's mother be a seamstress or a laundress rather than a dress-maker, and even to have the men selling Tiana the warehouse that eventually becomes her restaurant, to initially deny her the space and explicitly say that it is because of race. While those are hurtful, subjugating images, they're true to history, and in my opinion if Tiana overcame those struggles, opened her restaurant, married her prince, and still and the same happily ever after, the ultimate message of the movie would be preserved if not made more significant. Had they made the movie slightly more historically accurate and had Tiana faced that kind of racial discrimination at the beginning of the film, her achieving her ultimate goal of owning her own restaurant would have been all that much more empowering, I think. Also, I think that, much like how Frozen was dubbed the feminist Disney movie to end all feminist Disney movies, the Princess and the Frog could have been that movie for Disney concerning race. Not only would more families have brought their children to see the movie because of the shock value of more explicit historical accuracy, I think it would be well received as a story of triumph against all odd.

There could, however, be negative response because one of the only princess in the Disney canon who had to overcome this kind of racial adversity would be Tiana. However, my counter to that would be Pocahontas who was literally called a savage and had her people murdered by English settlers -- if Disney can step on all those Native American toes and get next-to-no backlash, they should be just as comfortable semi-accurately representing Black history in America. Pocahontas' story is essentially the kind of historical accuracy I'd be hoping for with the Princess and the Frog, broad strokes, not specificity. Pocahontas certainly didn't delve into the smallpox riddled blankets that  were absolutely present at that time. Or that the English settlers initially tried to enslave the Native Americans before bring over Africans to be slaves. Or that the English absolutely massacred the Native American population to take their land and natural resources. I'm not asking Disney to 100% take down the rose-tinted glasses of fairytales through which they tell these stories, but they could be at least a little more accurate and still be profitable.

PS: The link above shows princesses in their historically accurate garb. Even that I think is a little romanticized because if Tiana comes from the "ghetto" of New Orleans, she sure as anything would not be wearing such a swanky flapper dress. That's my last piece, here I will rest my case.

Nani is the best, and probably my favorite Disney Princess

http://moviepilot.com/posts/2015/01/23/7-times-when-tumblr-users-proved-how-deep-their-disney-love-is-2607593?lt_source=external,manual,manual

I'm really on a feminist bender regarding Disney because of this final paper. When I was casually trolling Buzzfeed (as one should always do on a beautiful Sunday evening) I found this article about seven times tumblr users showed their love for Disney, but what I focused on within that was their love of specifically Nani, the big sister from Lilo and Stitch. Nani is a 19 year old who is essentially the surrogate mom to her boisterous little sister who constantly wreaks havoc on Nani's home and life. Yet, even when dealing with her sister, Nani is tender, loving, and supportive, and barely waivers in her supporting her sister's wild imagination and ideas even when aliens enter into her life and home. She has a totally realistic relationship with Paul, she lives within her means and even struggles to do so, she stands up for her little sister even when it causes her to lose her job, and she's just generally the toughest, most awesome Disney character. Even her appearance is more empowering than the average Disney princess. She has powerful, surfer legs that help her be the strong action hero she needs to be for Lilo and Stitch. She isn't some unachievably waif-life princess and she sure as hell is not the demure little "good-girl" of all the other Disney movies. I haven't seen Lilo and Stitch in years but after reading this article, I'll be watching this all the time with my little cousin Lindsey.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/krystieyandoli/terrible-love-lessons-we-learned-from-disney-princes#.aczwOjdA4

As I ponder gender roles in Disney, here's a little Buzzfeed article on all the things that Disney has taught us about romance that are damaging and or wrong. And I have to agree because even in the movies where Disney is trying to be progressive, they mess up romance. Example: my future paper topic, Maleficent, where all the romantic relationships are either underdeveloped or dangerous. A complete person shouldn't be entirely reliant on a relationship to define them, shouldn't need to change themselves to have a happy relationship, but can also HAVE a relationship. Romance, one of Disney's most frequently featured plot lines, is something they consistently fail at accurately representing. Since love such an important piece of life, they should really work on getting this right.

The Princess and the Frog

I know a lot of people commented on the fact that Tiana was a princess who just happened to be Black, not a Black princess, but to be honest I don't really understand the difference. This is a failing of understanding on my part I'm sure but let me please explain what I mean. I mean, although I do understand culturally that there are differences between "traditional" White families and "traditional" Black families, but I don't really understand how that would make Tiana behave any differently from the other princesses. She was the hardworking princess, which I personally think all the princesses should have been but aren't, and which could be a universal trait. She doesn't speak in the "dee"s and "dem"s that the author of the Coons and Cannibals article (rightly) took issue with in Song of the South. Is that what makes her not a Black princess? I feel like her story in the movie, the fact that she faced some negative racial biases, the fact that she wasn't from a royal family, etc. did distinguish her from the older Disney princesses, but Disney was careful not to totally caricature her. Had they made her have a "ghetto" accent or abide by racial stereotypes, I think that would be a more offensive/problematic representation of Black culture than this. The Princess and the Frog is a children's movie and so would not necessarily be welcome to delve into the utter darkness that is American slavery and then post-Slavery era racism. They touch upon it slightly, but in a way that only hints to discrimination and glosses over the true pain that non-Whites would have felt during the 1920's. The fact that Tiana overcomes that racism and then runs a successful restaurant herself, married to a man she loves, is better than the quintessential Disney ending where the princess becomes her prince's property, but yes it isn't the traditional Disney ending. Like I said in class, all of these can't be combined into one character: Disney cannot have a historically accurate representation of the lives of African American and other minority individuals in the 1920's while simultaneously having the princess experience the traditional Disney fairytale. Tiana cannot both rise up and over come oppression, and have a cushy life where she dances in the woods, meets a prince, becomes his wife, and lives happily ever after. Rather than trying to smash all of these characteristics into one Princess and have that be Diseny's one, token non-white princess, Disney just needs to diversify all of their princesses and incorporate historical and cultural components just as they would in the stories of the white princesses. If I were Disney, I would just take a hiatus from having white protagonists, we've got plenty of princesses to draw on. If the next five years of Disney princess movies, be they relevant to the racial culture of the princess or not, had non-White princesses, it would change the oppressively white feel that Disney currently gives us. And as long as they gave it a great plot and a great score, I think it would be well-recieved.

TL;DR: Disney needs to stop trying to one-and-done racially diverse Disney princesses, and needs to learn how to incorporate traditional cultures and happily-ever-afters in a balanced way so that the spectrum of racial and cultural diversity present in the world and specifically the US can be accurately represented in such a quintessential-American culture piece.

Maybe it is time for an update, but the classic is so iconic

http://www.disneydining.com/cinderellas-castle-to-be-renamed-for-elsa/

Apparently, Disney is considering renaming Cindarella's Castle to Elsa's which is a welcome update, I'm sure young girls now would so much rather meet the magic Queen Elsa than Cindarella (supported by the fact that Elsa outsold Barbie this Christmas), but Cindarella's castle is just so classic. I don't know, maybe it's just that when I think Disney, I think Cindarella: it's as if she is the Queen of the princesses and that the others are all just additional. She wasn't even the first princess, though, so I don't know how she became so significant in my mind. By seniority, Snow White should be the most significant princess yet somehow Cindarella has dominated little-girl-culture. And now it's Elsa's turn. Maybe I'm just hankering for a throwback because Old Duke is right around the corner, but I wax nostalgic thinking about Cindarella's Castle which is something I wouldn't do if they changed the name to Elsa's Castle.