Okay, so I've seen the new Disney Princess movie, The Princess and the Frog, in theaters twice in the past two weeks, and now I feel comfortable responding to all the criticisms that havee been surrounding it.
I'll start by saying the truth: As excited as the little girl inside me was for there to finally be a princess who looked like her--note that that's not "who she could relate to", because, albeit not on the same level, I could identify with Belle the book-lover, Ariel who wanted to explore new worlds, and Jasmine who felt trapped just like me--the adult me concerned about the betterment of her race as a whole was skeptical of this film. Having a sun-kissed Princess by the name of Tiana couldn't just be making a movie--in the production of this film, Disney was making a statement, and the whole world knew it and viewed it just as such. That statement could either be the biggest step Disney as a company has ever made towards correcting the negative, racist, and stereotypical images of blackness it has promoted in the past (the hyenas in the Lion King are violent and unintelligent [and all voiced by blacks and Latinos]; the crows in Dumbo wore pimp hats; the monkeys from The Jungle Book wanted to be "real people"; and, expanding this to people of color in general, neither Pocohantas or Mulan were real princesses [meaning they didn't marry Princes]) orrrrrrrr it could go horribly wrong and be just another greivance to add to the list. And even though the movie didn't come out til last month, this New York Times article about the film came out way back in May, and really just substantiated my qualms about the progress this movie was really going to make.
But, scared as aI was, I absolutely HAD to go see the movie. I mean, I was raised on Disney--all the girls in my generation were. These movies are my childhood. So after promising my best friend that I wouldn't analyze it to death after we saw it, over Winter Break I journeyed to the theater amongst throngs of little girls clutching Princess Tiana dolls and saw the film for the first time. Andddddddd.....**drumroll please** I LOVED it! My critical eye wavered and I was just as enchanted by the film as I had been by Disney movies in my VHS player as a child. Sure, she had to go through some shit, but she got both her man and her dream in the end, and I was thrilled.
But enough about initial reactions. Once I got back to school, my Women's Center offered the opportunity to take a free trip to go see the film and discuss it afterwards, and I jumped on that as an opportunity to take a really critical view of the film since that desire failed so epically the first time around. And now, after seeing it twice, once for just pure entertainment value and once trying to analyze how good a job Disney really did, this is what I think:
The opening scene when Tiana's mother is reading the story of the Frog Prince to her charge, Charlotte, and Tiana, paints a rather interesting view of femininity differences between the races (or maybe the classses?) In my mind, at least, the upper class white girl with all the fancy dresses would be against the idea of kissing a frog, and the lower-class black girl wouldn't have such a hoity-toity attitude about it. But Disney switched these predictable roles, having Charlotte start practically drooling over the prospect of kissing a frog if it meant she'd get to marry a prince, and Tiana wrinkle her nose at the idea. This is rather obviously a ploy to get the audience to identify with Tiana, as the majority of us probably wouldn't go around kissing frogs just in case either, but the role reversal is still interesting. From the get-go, Tiana did not have a sorry beggars-can't-be-choosers attitude, and we can tell she's going to be a woman of strong values and with a very determined personality, while we are a bit concerned about Charlotte's gross materialism and the hissy fits she throws to get her way.
After a long train ride home to the decidedly poor section of town, Tiana and her mother are joined by her father--YES, YOU HEARD ME RIGHT, THIS IS A TWO PARENT BLACK HOME--to make dinner, which they share with the community, and Tiana is tucked into bed. The promotion of the idea of a stable, even if not particularly affluent, black family in the mainstream media like this is absolutely wonderful, and really made my heart just sing.
Oh, and speaking of singing, Tiana sings too. She's not that different from the strong-willed songbird princesses that come before her...
The movie goes through how Tiana grows up to work two jobs trying to save enough money to build the restaurant she and her father always dreamed of. Her peers tease her for working too hard, and it is evident that she doesn't have very friends. At first glance this social ostricization seems very troublesome, but going back through Disney history, we see the same thing happening to Belle for liking to read, and it could even be argued to be present in films where the heroine is banished or her only friends are woodland creatures, such as Sleeping Beauty. Also, there is no one in Tiana's life who truly supports her following this dream of hers, but again, this is not new: Mulan's father does not believe she can go to war in his place, Cinderella's stepmother does not believe she can go to the ball, King Triton does not believe Ariel should have any desire to go to the world above, and just like Tiana's mother, The Sultan believes Jasmine should be concerned with nothing more than getting married, and this is the main concern of Mulan's matchmakers, who believe that a good marriage is the only way a woman can honor her family.
And then, **fanfare** Prince Naveen arrives! Now I've heard two major complaints about him. First off, he isn't "black enough". He's too light-skinned to be a brotha and too dark to be a white man, voiced by a Brazillian...this is a man of ambiguous race. But my question is: what person of African descent in this country ISN'T of ambiguous descent?! Our family histories get lost when you go back before the Emancipation Proclamation, so how do any of us know "how black" we areally are, as ridiculous a concept as this measurement of blackness may be? Some people ask, well, why couldn't he have been an African prince? Why does he have to be from this made up land of Maldonia? To these people, I say, well, check your history, honey. Sure, Naveen is from nowhere recognizable, but you'd be pretty hard-pressed to find a Prince from a known land. This isn't the first time Disney has made up a location for a movie to be set or a Prince to be from: Aladdin's Agrabah doesn't actually exist, and even in that movie when he arrives in town with all the fanfare the Genie has provided him and is pretending to be a Prince, he makes up a kingdom name to please Jafar off the top of his head; the land of Genovia that the Princess Diaries both I and II are set in was made up, Ariel hails from the mythical land of Atlantica, and Prince Eric's kingodom goes unnamed, as do the kingdoms in Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and Beauty and the Beast, among others. In fact, the only Disney films I can come up with that do feature real locations don't involves Princes or Princesses: Pocohantas, Mulan, and the Hunchback of Notre Dame. Thus, I have decided that this is a classic Disney trope, and this movie cannot be faulted for it. I hold that Naveen is meant to represent an everyman, as opposed to being nothing at all.
Many people also pick at the rampant use of dialect in this film, claiming that it makes the characters seem less intelligent. I think the critics must just be grasping at straws here, because Ray the firefly, arguably the most Cajun of all the characters, also speaks French and writes out his name--he is obviously an intelligent character. Mama Odie has a much more common, wise, aged knowledge of the workings of the world, and passes that knowledge on to Tiana, Naveen, and Louis, rather than simply giving them the answers because she knows the most valueable form of knowledge is that which you learn yourself.
And people complain about the voodoo that runs wild in this film as well. In response to them, I say that most of the classic Disney Princess movies have magical villians. For a film set in New Orleans, a "Shadow Man" is kin to Sleeping Beauty's Maleficent, Aladdin's Jafar, or the Little Mermaid's Ursula. Voodoo is historically the magic of choice in New Orleans. The fact that Mama Odie is also a practicer of voodoo is also matched by the Genie in Aladdin, the Fairy Godmother in Cinderlla, and the Blue Fairy in Pinnochio.
There's only one real criticism that I can see basis for: the fact that Tiana seems to change Naveen for the better simply by the force of him loving her. This could send very negative ideas into young girls' minds that they could change a man in the same way. But I argue a) that this is not the first time Disney has propulgated this idea (note how Belle softens the Beast's rough attitude and Nala tames Simba's carefree attitude to get him to come back and save his pride), and b) it is just as possible that simply being out in the real world for the first time, entirely changing his setting and way of life, is what changed Naveen's perspective on life, falling in love with Tiana just being something that happened along the way.
By the end of the movie, we are even left with a positive image of Charlotte, who would postpone her dream of marrying a prince in order to salvage her friend's (but are they really friends?) happiness, and left with the very positive image of Tiana paying for the restaurant with her own money and having her dream and her man all of her own accord.
I say kudos, Disney--this is an epic win. But I'm interested in hearing what other people think, soooo let me know! Agreements? Arguments for the other side?
-Dada Chiku
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