Word from the Post:
The Washington Post on Sunday printed a largely complementary article in its style and leisure section about The Princess and the Frog. Here are some of the highlights (Please note that the portions not in quotes are my additions):
- Some scholars have very high hopes for Tiana: “Princess Tiana might well become the symbol of a culture-changing standard of feminine beauty. ‘If this figure takes off, you’re looking at 30 or 40 years of repetition and resonance,’ says Tricia Rose, a Brown University professor.”
- Apparently, it is based on a European tale : “It draws inspiration from an 18th-century fairy tale from the British Isles, and The Frog Princess, a 2002 teen novel from Maryland writer E.D. Baker.”
- Tiana is not a chambermaid; instead, she will be “a young waitress and talented chef who dreams, like her father, of owning her own restaurant.”
- Much to my chagrin, the voodoo queen is still part of the film at this point: “She must journey into the dark bayou to get a magical cure from a good voodoo queen.” (Fairy godmother — how hard is that?)
- Disney has touched based with “leaders in the African American community all across the nation, to make sure [they are] doing something African American families will be proud of.” (So if you don’t like what they’re doing with the film — shove it! Disney’s talking to the black people who represent the other black people! Booyah!)
- “The criticisms the film got over the character’s name in early drafts (“Maddy,” short for Madeline, was perceived by some to sound like a “slave name”) were only hiccups on the way to a finished product,” according to John Lasseter, Disney Animation’s Head Mouse In Charge. He notes “that one of his most popular creations, Buzz Lightyear in ‘Toy Story,’ was named ‘Tempest’ at one point,” offending toy astronauts the world over.
- The moral of the film “is that balance is important in life.” As a “Jazz Age” woman, “Tiana needs both love and a career to find happiness.”
- Then, there’s this gem from Spellman College English professor Tarchia Stanley: “[Disney] might as well make [Tiana's hair] straight so little girls can comb it when the doll comes out.” Because, really, what kid wants to have to comb out naps and lint and stuff? She continues: ”We as African American women haven’t fully dealt with how sensitive the subject of our hair can be, so” please, give the girl a perm!
- Prince Naveen “is neither white nor black.”
The article also touches on the fact that “minority” princesses are portrayed differently in Disney films than white princesses. Specifically, the “princesses of color” tend to be more self-reliant. Pocahontas and Mulan, in particular, “had mixed receptions among their real-life ethnic groups.” And even Lasseter admits that, perhaps, films such as “‘The Little Mermaid,’ ‘Aladdin,’ ‘Beauty’…have more staying power,” in part, because they “are considered a little bit more of a fairy tale than the others.”
Meanwhile, Lasseter promises, “The story line of ‘The Princess and the Frog’” will lend “itself more to the traditional, romantic fairy tale.”
