Revisiting Disney: The Princess and the Frog

Wednesday, April 1, 2015

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.

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Disney's as a Boys' Toy Too

I rarely remember that little boys, as well as little girls, watch Disney movies and look up to some of the characters. In many of the earlier films, the men/princes aren't really a significant piece of the story, but more recently males are playing a greater and greater role in Disney and Pixar movies. Males like Chang, Sebastian, and Wasabi serve as role models for young boys just as the princesses do for little girls. Because of this, it's just as important that little boys of all appearances and personality types appear in animated films. The Feminist community has been more outspoken about female representation than the male community, perhaps because women tended to be placed in a subservient position to the men of the stories in earlier Disney movies. However, if you try to closely examine the character of the men or male characters in the early Disney movies, they tend to just be place holders that allow the princess to achieve their happily ever after. In later films they are hyper masculine and tough, even sometimes emotionless, if they want to be attractive to the females in the story. The non-human characters like Sebastion, Timone, and the like can be more sensitive because they aren't the male protagonist trying to win the girl and save the world. If we're going to work to build up strong, independent girls, we should work equally hard to help develop sensitive, thoughtful boys. This begins with providing more complex characters for them to look up to and more representation in the male characters in Disney films.

Identity and Disney

Disney Characters' Race Breakdown

Although Disney is often criticized for its lack of diversity in the characters in its animated and live action films, the statistics are fairly close to those of the US census. Although in Disney, about 75% of the characters are White, and so minorities are somewhat underrepresented, the statistics are fairly close to the true proportions. In America, about 62% of the population identifies as White, while 17% of the population is Hispanic, 13.2% is Black, 5% is Asian, and 3.8% of the population identify as multiracial, Native American, or Native Hawaiian. While more diversity would be nice, especially regarding Latinos considering they are 17% of the US population and only one single Disney character is identified as Latino, the statistic is less drastic that I would have anticipated.