crossposted from Racialicious; written by Racialicious contributor Shannon Prince
Two years ago while I was studying abroad in Paris, my younger sister called me from the U.S. giggling that she had delicious news to share with me. She announced breathlessly that Disney was creating its first black princess movie. Despite the fact that I was a sophomore in college and my sister was a senior in upper school, we all but swooned.
Oh, I had my reservations – as someone who is African American, Native American, Asian American, and English American, it seemed that Disney had misrepresented the better part of my various heritages. I’m not even talking about the crow named “Jim Crow” in Dumbo or Peter Pan explaining that sexual attraction “makes the red man red” – I’m talking about superficially pro-multicultural films such as Pocahontas whose moral seemed to be that the indigenous warriors who fight in defense of sovereignty are just as wrong as imperialists fighting wars of conquest and Mulan which taught the valuable lesson that Chinese people are cool, if misogynistic, but the Huns are a mass of gray-skinned, barely human, rampaging savages. (The Huns were even seemingly identical in many frames, lending credence to the stereotype that the individual members of some Asian ethnic groups cannot be told apart.)
Given Disney’s history, it’s no surprise that criticism of The Princess and the Frog began early. Some elements of this criticism I found more valid than others. At first I saw no problem with protagonist Tiana’s original name “Maddy,” although some people said it sounded too similar to “mammy.” However, once I learned that “Maddy” was a maid, the phonetic similarity between her name and the slave title did seem as though it could be unwieldy. A voice actor’s tongue wouldn’t have to slip very much to say “mammy” while ordering Maddy to do a chore, and in such a context, the name “Maddy” seemed both deliberately inappropriately evocative and easy for the audience to mishear. On any account “Maddy” struck me as decidedly less whimsical and resonant than “Ariel,” which is of Shakespearian provenance, and “Jasmine” which is a treasured flower in the Middle East, but I’m not quite willing to label as Disney racism what might just be my own cynicism. (Disney did not have to name its other six princesses as they had names already from their original fairy tales i.e. Cinderella or from history i.e. “Pocahontas” was the real nickname of Matoaka.)
Just as Disney changed the name of its protagonist to “Tiana” (which, to me, sounds much more appropriate for a fairy tale princess) it has also changed her from being a maid to being a prospective restaurateur. I had been on the fence about our heroine’s role as a southern belle’s maid. Yes, it’s cannon for fairy tale protagonists to begin their stories having low status, but a black heroine who is a domestic could be legitimately read not as a fairy tale trope but a reinforcement of real world racial denigration. Some may claim that it would be historically accurate for a 1920’s black woman to be a maid, but Disney doesn’t even care about historical accuracy when animating actual history (for example, Pocahontas.) Disney films often include generic European landscapes and eras and anachronistic details and social conventions. Let’s consider Beauty and the Beast. Did French peasants like Belle’s dad really have the time and resources to invent complicated gadgets? Should Belle have had access to so many books or even have been literate? If Disney allowed history to delimit their characterizations, at her age Belle should have been out of her father’s home and in her own thatched roof house with a husband and a couple kids– and had far less teeth. Deciding to suddenly be historically accurate while telling a fairy tale about a black princess seems a little suspect. Not to mention after decades of singing candlesticks and flying carpets, it’s a little late in the game to start claiming a commitment to realism.
Although I didn’t agree completely with all the criticism directed at the film, I was disturbed when some whites were angered by some blacks having concerns with The Princess and the Frog, framing Disney, and white society as a whole, as the victims of unreasonable blacks who weren’t content with the gift Disney, and by extension, post-racial America, had given them. It is important to remember that Disney’s aim is not to serve any community but rather its own bottom line. Creating The Princess and the Frog is not a handout to black people any more than all the films starring white princesses were special gifts to white people. We didn’t beg Disney for a movie with a black princess nor is there any onus on us to be content with the movie or any aspect of American society out of gratitude or to remain silent in the face of issues we see as needing improvement because someone decided to throw us a bone. The condemnation of black criticism from some whites suggests that black people are peripheral citizens or customers who are eternally the recipients of aid and should be perpetually grateful.
What’s especially unfair about those who condemn blacks who criticize The Princess and the Frog is that whites, as a race, are not condemned as ungrateful or otherwise for critiquing the numerous white Disney princesses (or society at large.) Whites have taken Disney to task over white princesses’ independence, agency, body size, beauty, and intelligence among other things. There are academics and writers who have built a discipline out of critiquing Disney – particularly its princesses. While some whites now paint Disney as a desperate corporation scrambling to alter Tiana and assuage the endless demands of blacks, they fail to note how Ariel was the headstrong response to white complaints about obedient Cinderella and Belle was the feminist response to white criticism about willing-to-give-up-her-voice-for-a-man Ariel. Whites have made countless demands about their heroines, and Disney has altered their creations in response to those demands. Yet whites also know that if any given princess isn’t pleasing, in a few years another will be created. This is the first and most likely last black Disney princess. After all, while Disney repeatedly makes white princesses, it has yet to create more than one princess from the same minority ethnic group. In that light, it’s important to get Tiana right on the first (and probably only) shot.
Another charge levied at black critics of The Princess and the Frog is that they are trifling to “waste time” getting agitated over cartoons. But the fact is all media, especially those directed at children in their formative years, shape how people see and interact with the world. That’s why fairy tales have morals and Sesame Street has educational value. Children are especially malleable by media because they haven’t or have just begun developing critical thinking skills and are just getting their first and foundational impressions of the world.
Disney recognizes the power of media. The company has often used its films to political ends. For example, Donald Duck was placed in a series of World War II films designed to make children passionate supporters of American troops and enemies of the Nazis and the Japanese army. Then later, Donald Duck was used in the films Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros to promote Franklin Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor policy towards Latin America. Clearly, if cartoons were “just cartoons” Disney wouldn’t make such films.
I have my own concerns about The Princess and the Frog. First, Tiana, the black princess, is paired up with a white prince (or at least a prince who looks white and is voiced by a Brazilian actor who also looks white) who has to save her from a black villain. Some might argue that portraying interracial marriage in film is good – but why then weren’t any of the white princesses given non-white princes to save them from white villains? And since Disney doesn’t give white princesses non-white princes, isn’t this interracial relationship at the expense of black boys who deserve a hero just as much as black girls deserve a heroine? Originally the prince was explicitly reported as being the jazz-loving monarch of a European country. By giving the prince an olive, but still white, complexion and a Brazilian accent, Disney gets to go forward with their original white hero yet make him ambiguous enough to not be unequivocally criticized as white at the same time. Furthermore, there’s a disturbing racial subtext to this plot. As intellectual Gayatri Spivak says, one of the main justifications of colonialism has been “white men saving brown women from brown men.” Here, that racist and sexist notion is invoked. The plot also follows Disney’s pattern of making their evil characters more “ethnic” and darker than their good characters. For example, the Chinese have wheat colored skin in Mulan while the Huns are dark gray. Aladdin is tan with European features while Jafar is brown with Arabic features.
My most serious concern, however, is the way voodoo religion is treated in the film. The prince is turned into a frog by a bad voodoo “magician,” the black villain, and when Tiana’s attempt to save him by kissing him turns her into a frog as well, the two of them must seek the aid of a benevolent voodoo priestess. Most of what people know about voodoo comes from inaccurate information both in fictional entities such as books and films and in ill-informed news stories where in a far-flung country (even one outside of West Africa, the home of Vodoun) the latest depravities of someone labeled a “witch doctor” or the perversely violent beliefs that have taken hold of a population are called voodoo. Voodoo isn’t seen as a specific religion but as a synonym for magic or superstition in a variety of broad contexts. It’s analogous to a film showing white characters adhering to wacky/sinister beliefs a scriptwriter invented and the film referring to it as Christianity or news media referring to any odd or egregious action taken by white people of any faith as Judaism.
Vodoun is a West African religion that was carried by slaves to the Western hemisphere, primarily Haiti and Louisiana, where it became known in its new forms as voodoo. Voodoo is a complex syncretic belief system that draws on African traditions as diverse as those of the Ewes and Dahomeys, the faith of the indigenous Tainos, and Catholicism and Islam. The foundation of voodoo is not charms (which attract the most outside attention) but monotheistic faith, belief in saints and spirits, and a focus on moral values such as charity and respect for the elderly. People do perform rites for protection and defense, but suffice it to say that voodoo is not about being a magician or a fairy godmother. Yet the rites performed in voodoo, when not exoticized and exaggerated past any semblance of accuracy or entirely fictionalized, are typically considered superstitious magic by non-practitioners while rites in Christianity – such as the belief that you can lay hands on people and cast devils out of them or anoint people with oil and heal them – are not.
To underline how offensive The Prince and the Frog’s version of voodoo is, imagine if another religion were treated as a system of enchantment that could be employed for good or for ill. Imagine if the prince had been changed into a frog because a Catholic priest, referred to as a magician, who is wearing a Roman collar but seems to exist in a separate universe from the actual tenets of Catholicism, sprinkled him with cursed water from a baptismal font, and the only way for the prince and Tiana to save themselves was for them to get the pope-wizard to feed them magical communion wafers. It’s because voodoo is an African religious system that it can be treated with such license as though it weren’t a real religion like Christianity or Hinduism.
The last thing that concerns me about The Princess and the Frog might be termed Esmeralda’s Eyes syndrome. In the Disney movie The Hunchback of Notre Dame, which had its own racial problems, the Romani woman Esmeralda, in the film referred to as a gypsy, has deep brown skin, black hair, and bright green eyes. Now I know that people whose skin isn’t beige, including those among the Romani people, don’t necessarily have brown eyes – my own great-grandfather was a golden skinned man with lovely baby blues, but Esmeralda’s eyes didn’t have the naturalness of Sharbat Gula’s. The vivid aquamarine shade of Esmeralda’s eyes jarred distractingly with her skin. As a child watching the film I was struck by how my sister and I would have had a heroine, or at least a hero’s love interest, with exactly our features if only Esmeralda’s eyes had been brown. So many girls, whether they were Romani, black, Pacific Islanders, or South Asians, could have finally seen themselves reflected in a Disney leading lady if that one small detail had been changed. I felt, rightly or wrongly, as though Disney had made Esmeralda’s eyes green to keep girls like me from identifying with her, to thwart us, to show that in order to be beautiful or worthy of headlining a Disney film you had to have at least one European feature, and animators were determined to provide Esmeralda with one even though it clashed alarmingly with her other features. I felt as though Disney were saying to whites, “Yes, Esmeralda is non-white, but not really.”
How does this relate to The Princess and the Frog? When I read the plot of the film I felt disappointed to learn that the heroine spends a significant chunk of the movie not as a black princess at all but as a frog. After decades of waiting, would it be too much to actually see an hour and a half of a black princess on the screen? I can’t help but think that Disney would never hide a non-black princess away in animal form for a large part of a film – maybe because they never have. This is a fairy tale with a white prince and a black princess who, for much of the movie, isn’t a black princess at all. Perhaps in the scenes where Tiana is hopping around in her toady body whites in the audience will forget how melanin-endowed she was in the movie’s opening and identify with her. Still, I can’t help but wonder if The Princess and the Frog came down with a case of Esmeralda’s Eyes syndrome – if this was Disney’s way of saying to white audiences, “Yes, Tiana’s black, but not really.”
Despite the fact that I’m an arguably political person, I can still remember the elation I felt when my sister told me Disney was making a black princess. Even while I knew about Disney’s poor track record with race, I was willing to put everything aside and start them off with a blank slate. One of my favorite songs is “Part of Your World” and the scene in Beauty and the Beast where the Beast gives Belle the castle library still makes me smile. Disney magic is potent. For many young girls Disney is a primary root of day-dreams and imaginative play. They are invested in the stories Disney tells and the characters Disney invents. Disney’s images, songs, and stories become deeply rooted in American culture and people’s family and personal histories – that’s why a visit to Disneyworld is an almost mandatory event in American childhood and people scramble to get Disney films before they are locked away in the “Disney vault” as though they were precious treasures – for many people they are. The idea of Disney’s prodigious musical and artistic skill focused around a black princess delighted me – so I regret that I’ve had to switch from wonderment to wondering why the trailer reveals that the film’s obligatory animal sidekick is a firefly who is missing teeth – and the ones he has are crooked. (I mean, really, Ariel gets a calypso-singing crustacean, Cinderella has mice that can sew, and the black princess gets a raggedy half-toothless firefly – when she isn’t spending the movie being the animal sidekick herself. Sorry, I’m through with my digression.) Even despite all this the little girl in me who still wants a pair of glass slippers hopes that Disney will get it together and produce a movie worthy of the generations long wait of all the black girls, some of them now grandmothers, who have been hoping for a black princess.
But maybe I’m just believing in fairy tales.
Just briefly–and to echo the sentiments of the poster before me.
I loved your analysis, but my only complaint is generalizing those who perpetuate negative stereotypes and oppression as “white.” It implicitly reinforces a black/white or people of color/white and reduces the problem to the same racial dichotomies that have historically justified racism.
I’m a white person who experiences the intersections privilege and oppression through my gender, class, sexuality, etc. and, moreover, I consider myself an ally to people of color and critical race scholars. I understand my privileges as a white person watching Disney movies, but as a queer person, I must also view the films with a double consciousness in order to enjoy the magic. I’m still waiting for two Princesses or, hell, after Mulan, I’m waiting for a princess who doesn’t hang up the sword whenever a square-jawed gent steps into the scene.
Firstly I would like to say, you write beautifully. You are very eloquent and obviously put a lot of thought and effort into your research. That being said, having seen the movie today, I agree with most of what you said. I do, however, disagree with how some of it was said, and the comments made by some of the posters. It seems to me that racism is a double edged sword. We cannot be free of race based judgments until people stop making broad generalizations based on vague ideas of what other people think/ mean/ etc. I am mixed race, but because of the color of my skin people assume I am 100% white and often make comments such as Melissa did, how all white people think a certain way, so I must think that way too. Comments like that only fuel the fire and create more racial tension.
My biggest problems with the movie were how they portrayed voodoo. In addition to showing it as an evil way for people to get what they want without working for it, there was a definite misuse of symbolism and culture, such as the veve’s, or the symbols that call down the loa. Also, Facilier was a bokor, but even in making him a part of Sect Rouge Disney went over the line with their abuse of a religion. Furthermore, his appearance, mimicking Baron Samedi, implies that certain loa are evil, rather than the people who misuse religion being bad, as occurs in all religions.
I did not have a problem with the inter-racial relationship, as I think children should be taught that love is beyond skin color, but I agree with the author, that African American boys need a role model too. If his accent is anything to go by, though, Naveen is not white. In most government forms, where it asks ethnicity there is a place to check Hispanic, and the rest specify non-Hispanic. So, in today’s age there are two groups in the govt. eye. Hispanic and other. Naveen’s Latin accent and appearance would disqualify him from checking off the “other” box.
At first I was bothered by the firefly’s appearance and demeanor, but he truly is one of the wisest characters in the film and one with the biggest heart. The “white” characters in the movie are portrayed as either greedy, selfish and annoying or toothless backwater morons. Neither being a very tenable character.
Lastly, I agree with April. Forget inter-racial couples… When will Disney be brave enough to have two princes or princesses? Talk about an under-represented group! LGBTQ characters are rarely the stars. More often they are the comic sidekicks. If we want to move towards an accepting future we need to stop grouping people into categories, support all consenting adult couples and don’t judge anything before you know everything there is to know about it. After all, if you say a movie or book is so horrible and you have never seen it or read it, how do you know it is what you think it is?
i appreciate the time you put into writing this. but, actually, the prince is not white at all. and the frog is representative of the animal-groom tale within fairy tales. the character becomes an animal to deal with its subconscious. also to counter the negative portrayal of the evil voodoo priest there also is a good voodoo witch. i think you may reading to much into this or thwarting aspects of the film to meet your agenda, but maybe not. check out my blog for different perspective:
http://hearthesiren.wordpress.com/2009/12/23/the-princess-and-the-frog-the-black-fairy-tale-that-apparently-wasnt-politically-correct-enough/
very true..
and i know that i have yet to see a latina princess, or let alone latin heroine in ANY disney movies
My kids and I just saw the movie. I have read sooo much criticism that I was already going in ready to judge, but I have to tell you . . . Prince Naveen looked pretty brown to me. I also thought his accent sounded Haitian Creole, but I’m no expert in dialects. The tone of his skin was quite darker than any white character in the movie and his hair was black and curly – a little looser than most black men, yes, but still . . . if I had not read all of these types of reviews beforehand I would have assumed we had ourselves a black prince. After the movie, I asked my kids about it, and they thought he was black as well. So, I’m walking away pleased with that aspect at least.
I was, however, troubled by the portrayal of voodoo in the movie, and felt that it was a bit too scary for the younger set.
Now that the movie is out in the theaters, I have a few questions. What was the message Disney was trying to send? To whom was this message aimed? Lastly, are they proud of themselves?
When I speak to friends who happen to be White, and give my very negative opinion they look like the deer in our headlights. Clueless. Disney/ABC, as well as most of Corporate America, cannot see why they have been raked over the coals for this one, But they have a very, very poor track record.
Lincoln Heights comes to mind, when I say this. Here is the first show produced by, or for Disney/ABC about Black life in America, and it is stained with the idea of a young Black girl with a White boy friend. Why were there no interracial relation with a young Black male dating say Hannah Montana?
Interracial relationships happen, but in life they go both ways, one of my cousins is married to a young lady from Japan, Another Cousin is married to a beautiful young White lady, and given our background no one sees anything wrong with such unions. On in Hollyweird, right.
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I’m doing my dissertation on this film right now. I was originally focusing on the race aspect of it but ended up changing that to focus on the it’s multi-culti aspects after being awash with the masses of critical writing out there on the subject of the former.
I have now seen the movie at least seven times, and every time I see it colour becomes less and less important – like Mama Odie says, it don’t matter what you look like! Sure, Ray is uglier than any other Disney animal sidekick, but he’s also the one who’s going to stay with me more than any of the others because he was so much more a real character in his own right. And it really doesn’t matter that Tiana is green for a lot of the film – she’s not even a princess til the end of it, but she still has more moral fibre than most of the previous ones, as well as focus and work ethic. Whatever colour you are, she’s a great role model.
I’ve been studying this stuff for four years now, and it’s really not as simple as black and white – to look at me I’m obviously white, but I’m also Irish, and on those grounds have been discriminated against (as well as had my good English complimented while in New York. Yeesh.). Historically, though we are the palest of the pale over here, Irish white isn’t white enough. Just because some racism isn’t as easy to see, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, and the best message we can give our kids, whatever colour they are, is that looks don’t matter – if enough people are taught this, eventually they won’t. Disney, or anyone else for that matter, is never going to be able to make a film that satisfies everyone, and every step in the right direction is a good one.
Sorry if that doesn’t make sense I’ve written 4000 words today and I’m starting to flag!
Hmm.. I started reading this article with high hopes that it would tackle both sides of the spectrum, but it went from good points to ignoring the other side of some of your arguments. For them being frogs most of the movie, wouldn’t that only add to the effect o ‘it doesn’t matter what ethnicity you are’, that they look the same and are treated the same way? If anything, the way Tiana works so hard and the prince sits there and causes problems would be a compliment to the Afican American community. Personally, when I watched this movie, I was very happy with the way they presented this. They didn’t go overboard with shoving in your face the fact that Tiana was their first black princess, but they didn’t ignore it, either. The jazzy music, cajun accents, eloquence with a certain flavor to it, and the large array of characters made me feel like a little kid again. I know people he make racial slurs all the time who saw this movie and loved it, even when it came to the gospel music that the voodoo priestess sang. Wasn’t her song about ‘it doesn’t matter what you look like, who you are, or where your from, so long as you know who you are’? There are loads of pro-African American undertones in there and zero anti-African American ones, that I could spot, anyway.
As for the prince being white, I completely disagree with that. He wasn’t white. I perceived him as black, too, but a lighter shade. Is it so bad that they made him lighter than Tiana? Does there have to be black vs white? Isn’t it a good thing that they’re not making him so dark to try and flaunt archetypes? Besides, as a European prince, he most likely wouldn’t have been as dark as they made him.
I disagree with your condemning Raymond the Firefly, too. You say that the other princesses got talented animal sidekicks whereas she got a toothless bum, but he was actually my favorite character. As opposed to the sewing mice and the dancing animals with Briar Rose, he had his own love story and beautifully sweet attitude. He was actually the cutest character there if you don’t go only by appearance, something rather hypocritical. Then, you ignore Louie, the super talented Alligator who helps them out the whole way, too.
I had to laugh when you mentioned the huns in Mulan, though. I thought I was the only one that noticed that they had /yellow eyes/. c:
All in all, I’m very, very happy with this movie. I thought it had just the right amount of ethnic flavor without going too far overboard and becoming racist, and it portrayed the African American community as hard-working, talented, nice people. Where in there, even once, did they make them look like bad people? Sure, the bad guy was black, but so were the jazz players, the admirable father, the alligator(‘s voice), the prince, and, I believe, the sweetest firefly ever (though I may be wrong there). If he was white, I’d find that /more/ racist that the white guy is the evil one and that everyone who’s good are the black ones. They already made the only really white characters either neurotic and ditzy (though very sweet, too) or a fat, evil slob who would kill others and ruin lives for good looks, money, and a wife.
This film wasn’t racist at all to me. I actually looked online for articles that said it was to laugh at the reasons people gave, though I have to say, yours was very well put and rose a lot of good points. This is the first article that didn’t have me laughing and slapping my knee in ridiculousness.
Sadly, Tiana may be the last Disney princess because of the people dead-set on trying to find reasons as to why it was “racist” or “evil”, when in reality, old school black&white cartoons were the actually racist ones. Just enjoy the movie, people. Geez. <3
[Editor's note: Maxx, I suspect you may be new here, so I want to alert you to one big "no no" in our online community. This site exists to dissect the way race is portrayed in both everyday situations and pop culture, and to guide parents in addresses race bias and racism. We believe that anti-racist parents are pro-active parents, who analyze the media that their children watch. In other words, "Just enjoy the movie. Geez!" is not in the spirit of our mission.
I am also a little disturbed about your notion that "too much" ethnic flavor would have made this movie racist or would equate with shoving blackness down viewers' throats. Make not mistake, we celebrate all cultures here and welcome chances to experience them. Displays of ethnicity do not equal racism.]
I personally had a big problem with this film. Not only was the trailer misleading, but the opening scene was filled with a lot of subconscious crap that a lot of people cared to ignore. And I read a lot of the comments from some of the black readers to this writer who I think is black as well and it’s sad to see how quickly black people are to critique each other. This is why white people after centuries of social injustice are on top while black people are at the bottom. Instead of supporting this detailed and well structured argument the writer has made, some commenter referred to this piece as overly critical and something “a person of this race does”. Well I’m Hispanic and I know for a fact the “Princess and the Frog” is garbage. Not only is Tiana not even a human for 2/3 of the film, she’s not even a princess until the end when she marries the white prince. The whole plot itself was inconsistent and only stuck to reality when concerning the place of Tiana. Her name, the way she got her “dream” restaurant was not achieved through mindless hard work, but through the magic of Disney. She got married then got her wish, but ignore the fact that there was a scene where Naveen was the asking the “real” princess, her blonde haired blue eyed best friend to kiss him because white girls are the only ones who can dream that dream. You know what I saw when I saw this movie, subconscious supremacist behavior and indirect reaffirmation that I’m a dark skinned girl who has no right to be a princess. That no matter how hard I work, I’ll just be able to save pennies in cans underneath my dresser drawer. That the white girl next to me will be Queen while I have to shine her shoes. That’s what I get from this movie. I don’t understand why they couldn’t use Obama’s girls as inspiration for Tiana. They are real princesses and they are dark skinned with dark eyes. As for the gift Disney bestowed upon black people with this film, it was like giving them coal for Christmas. Trust me, I would rather get nothing than be utterly, painfully disappointed.
And to the dumbass people who think this is a step forward for black people and that you should just “enjoy the movie” it was not a good movie to begin with. The plot had many inconsistencies, a character died for crying out loud, and the title of the story and plot line were pretty much non existent in the film. This is the only Disney movie that I’ve seen that doesn’t follow the fairy tale! People keep saying she was a princess, Tiana WAS A WAITRESS UNTIL THE END OF THE MOVIE. HER FRIEND WAS DESCRIBED AS THE TRUE PRINCESS WHO WAS BLONDE AND BLUE EYED. If you’re really going to argue about just enjoying the movie, there’s nothing to enjoy about it. The jive talking and the lackluster performances led me to believe otherwise. And it’s so sad that this is how America views the black princess. How would they view a Hispanic one? As a Mexican maid with a chihuhua or donkey as a side kick? Will she have a thick latin accent and a sexy, hip shaking dance number? Will she have blue eyes with somewhat tanned skin and tacos for breakfast? Did you see how hard Tiana worked and for what? She didn’t have hardly any tips lol just pennies and people tell me this is a great film. I swear I think people, specifically white people want to say its a great film to seem pc or because they like the stereotypes reinforced and black people say it’s a great film because they don’t want to seem ungrateful. Because the real key to success is not working hard, it’s working smart. There were plenty of blacks going to college around that time. Why couldn’t she have gone to school to be a chef or apprenticed at a restaurant. That in itself could have been a great plot line. Instead she was a fucking waitress who got stuck in the bayou for 60 min. Please tell me people see how awful and one dimensional this film is because trust me, I can go further.
This is my last message, this goes to that Irish woman named Cat. I appreciate her altruistic view but the movie never followed what Cat explained. Tiana was put in a racially charged setting: 1920′s new Orleans. Why, I do not know. People now are a little more equal so why they couldn’t put her, especially her modern name, in 2010 NYC is a mystery. Because if you really think about it, there was nothing but black cliches in the film.
#1 Tiana being a server, because black people were slaves, then indentured farmers, then maids and seamstresses, then eventually thanks to Oprah, media moguls and Obama, political figures. (Why couldn’t the film focus on the later aspect instead of the beginning one? why does she have to serve and not be served? Aren’t princesses supposed to be served?)
#2 Tiana’s father died before ever realizing his dream. (Now people can say oh well that adds an element to the plot, no it just makes people think hard work doesn’t pay off, and it doesn’t. You think migrant workers who labor 14hr a day 7 days a week can retire and relax after all that hard work? No, they can’t, they get shipped back to Mexico.)
#3 Tiana’s southern culture wasn’t at all expressed but rather exaggerated. (If you’re going to do a place like New Orleans, at least make the characters reminiscent of the vibrant culture that existed there. They felt very “Gone with the Wind” when I saw them and that is just wrong.)
So Cat, if you ever read this, please, let me send you a story about an Irish princess and see how offended you get. Because for decades white princesses, even a story like Mulan which I was surprised by how good it was, has gotten respectable or decent plot lines and heroines. Why is it too much to ask for possibly the only black princess to at least be human in more than 30 min of the film? Or to have the firefly look like a firefly? I know Mulan wasn’t about a princess, but it had a level of finesse that this film was lacking. Why couldn’t Tiana get the same treatment as any other princess? You know why, because she’s black. And America is just too racist to ever see it. Ignorance is bliss, and white, black, everyone will fail to see anything wrong with the Princess and the Frog because they just want to “enjoy the movie”. I guarantee you, you know you were happy seeing the little black girl be the waitress, you loved that she was never a princess. Seven times you watched this film and seven times you were reaffirmed that this country isn’t for someone like me, but it will always be for someone like you.
This movie seems cheesy
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Many of our family and friends bought Princess Tiana items for our daughter. We are trans racial adoptive parents who are aiming to be anti-racist parents and to honor her heritage, her race…we sincerely, are trying but when we watched this movie- a gift- she loved it! My husband and I noticed its many faults but she saw a princess with her skin colour. She patted her baby Tiana doll’s arm and her own and sighed happily…So, we discussed it and thought that as she gets older we can use it as a tool for discussion- ie) do you think this is fair? Our baby is already hooked on Tiana so using it as a tool to discuss racism later was the only thing we could think of….thoughts????
“The vivid aquamarine shade of Esmeralda’s eyes jarred distractingly with her skin. As a child watching the film I was struck by how my sister and I would have had a heroine, or at least a hero’s love interest, with exactly our features if only Esmeralda’s eyes had been brown. So many girls, whether they were Romani, black, Pacific Islanders, or South Asians, could have finally seen themselves reflected in a Disney leading lady if that one small detail had been changed.”
Yes, but most young Latinas know that Esmeralda means “Emerald” in Spanish, and therefore see her green eyes as fitting.
Zira,
I’m not following… how does Esmeralda meaning “emerald” help Latina girls with brown eyes identify with the character?
Thankfully some bloggers can write. My thanks for this piece of writing..
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I have two concerns here.
The first is your concern of Esmeralda’s eye color. My grandmother, who is Cherokee Indian with only the vaguest hint of white in her blood, has startlingly hazel/green eyes. You may describe them as “jarring” and “distracting,” but I see them as beautiful, and not because brown is an ugly eye color (my own are almost black, and I have ridiculously pale skin, so that is “jarring” in itself), but unique in that it is uncommon for non-beige-skinned people to have eyes a color other than brown. There are Roma people who exhibit this trait, as well as the entire ethnic group of Pashtuns, of which Sharbat Gula is a member. Pashtuns, actually, are classified as white, intriguingly. Regardless, I felt your concern was close-minded.
Also, to the commenter above who mentioned her discontent with Tiana being not becoming a princess until the end of the movie, I urge you to consider that that is the most common fairy tale theme. Cinderella?
On a different note, I actually quite dislike that Disney chose “Tiana” as the character’s name. I probably would have hated “Maddy,” as well. It would have served them better to not use such a turn-of-the-21st-century, made-up name (yes, I’ve done my research on that) for a turn-of-the-20th-century character. It’s not historically accurate, and it bothered me to no end.
I agree with what you said completely. I liked Facilier because Voodoo interests me, but that’s the only thing I liked about the movie. I don’t care what race the Prince was, he should have been black. And in the 1920′s? Interracial couples? LOL. Amerikkka was racist as hell back in the 1920′s.
As an American of South Asian ethnicity (Indian), I love Esmeralda.
Her eyes were green, so what? Her name is “Esmeralda” and it’s a Disney movie- of course they’re going to give her vivid green eyes! Ariel’s red hair is pretty darn vivid if you think about it. Besides, I actually loved how that made her different, and made her not “normal”.
People say that Disney doesn’t have any interracial couples… well, Esmeralda and Phoebus are good enough for me.
Esmeralda is different- she defies the norm. She’s not your stereotypical princess. And that’s why I love her.
Race shouldn’t be what makes you identify to a character. It doesn’t matter if the character looks just like you- if her personality isn’t the same, there’s no real connection.
I think you hit the nail on the head here perfectly! I actually enjoy this movie but see the immense problems with it – which is pretty much how I feel about most disney princess films. however… I love the firefly… he was my favorite part :/
@April, if you feel the urge to criticize on a person of color’s use of “white,” and say that things like that “reinforce dichotomies,” you are not an ally to people of color and you have not checked your white privilege.
And to the other posters, being “blind to race” is passive racism. Researchers have found that by “not seeing race, just people,” you erase a person’s identities and oppression. Interracial couples are a fabulous thing, yes, but like Tami notes, why not the other white princesses?
Anyway, this is a very amazing article. I was always hesitant because every Disney movie with women of color have had very different tropes and stories than white princesses; while white princesses have been worthy of love the whole time, the women of color must “earn” their access to love with hard work (Mulan must save China, Pocahontas must stand up to her father); meanwhile, there’s Belle (she in fact, is above love), Aurora (her love is worth fighting for), etc. While this brings up a lot of other images (the weak female, etc)., the racial issues are WORTH DISCUSSION.
Your article brought a lot more perspective to my understanding of Princess and the Frog. I wish you had discussed more that Tiana’s happily-ever-after has her still working her ass off, which is admirable in a way, but for serious? She still gotta serve? Ugh.