The Princess and The Frog (2009)
This movie is set in 1920’s New Orleans, where the main character, Tiana, grew up with her family. Her dream is to own her own restaurant, and works as a waitress, hard everyday to get there. But after Tiana kisses a prince who has been magically turned into a frog, she turns herself into a frog. Together the two frogs are on a mission to find a way to turn back into humans before time runs out. Of course, along the journey the two fall in love and live happily ever after.
Overall, while watching this movie, I feel that It was nice try on accurate portrayal of life in New Orleans during this time. I feel that this was good at attempting to be culturally diverse, but essentially it was not enough. With that being said, there was a lot of controversy regarding this movie when it first came out. Tiana became Disney's first African American Princess, (and if that is not already a problem in itself, I don't know what is)(Thesocietypages.org, 2014) What I really find shocking is how long it actually took for Disney to realize they were lacking in multi-cultural princesses. Disney's first princess, Snow White, was created in 1937 and between then and now there have been 11 princess created. So essentially, it took 72 years and 11 princesses for Disney to realize that they were completely missing an entire portion of the American society.
This movie attempts to depict 1920's era of New Orleans in a positive and fun way. However, what is really shown is that all African American people do is play jazz music, make gumbo and practice voodoo. These simple stereotypical images could make children confused about people's roles in society being determined by their race.
In another case, when this film was in the first stages of development, the title was called The Frog Princess the main characters name was previously called Maddy and she was to work as a maid in a rich, well-to-do white household. This raised concern for many groups; first, because the title of The Frog Princess was seen as a racial slur, which is why the name became what it is today. Second, some people felt that the name Maddy was too close to "Mammy" which is a negetive stereotype of African American house maids. Finally, Disney changed her position as a maid to a waitress. (Racebending.com,. (2009))
Further more, second main character, Prince Naveen, was originally supposed to be prince Harry, from Europe but since darkened his skin and changed his name. What is most troublesome about this prince is that he is made to be in all ways foreign and ethnic looking, which is is in the movie as well, but specifically made to not be African American. I can recall almost all other Disney Princesses falling in love with and thus marrying within their same race, why not Tiana? Having her marry outside of her race implies that she could not have her same happy ending if she married an African American. (Racebending.com,. (2009)).
Along with this, for being the first of her kind, Tiana was only a princess as human at the very end of the movie for about a minute- the entirety of the movie she is a frog. Personally, I saw this as a very negative depiction whether from a racial standpoint or gender stereotypes, I thought it was very unfair that she did not get to be seen more as a princess instead of a frog.
Overall, I feel that this film had good intentions of trying to be diverse and culturally reflective, they forgot to consider the culturaly senstivitiy of others within the group be potrayed.
Resources:
- Racebending.com,. (2009). "The Princess and the Frog" & Racial Stereotypes: Fans Make a Difference. Retrieved 1 December 2014, from http://www.racebending.com/v4/current-diversity-highlights/out-of-sight-and-mind-racial-stereotypes-in-the-princess-and-the-frog/
- Thesocietypages.org,. (2014). Race and Gender in “The Princess and the Frog” » Sociological Images. Retrieved 1 December 2014, from http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2009/08/27/race-and-gender-in-the-princess-and-the-frog/
