Now, I don't know if this was real or just the product of someone's amazing imagination, but it sounds so believable. I mean, let's not play the game, Disney has a horrible, horendous, atrocious history of blatantly racist cartoons.
I mean you can not understand how my face fell when I sat down to watch Peter Pan with my niece Sierra and had to snatch the dvd out of the machine because of the red Indians with big noses ready to scalp somebody! My niece was disturbed at first but you know, she was three, she got over it when I put Cinderella in.
I wish I could say that was the end of the whole situation but it wasn't. Sierra has an intense love of all things Disney princess, which grosses me out (it's all so pink! and frilly!) but we indulge because I believe that if she can make a decision on her own she should be allowed that freedom (within reason). So when she started school and her mother asked her what backpack she wanted, she chose the princess bag. That night however, I got a phone call from my sister-in-law telling me that Jasmine was gone! She has a sister named Jasmine so I was momentarily confused but eventually caught onto the fact that she meant Princess Jasmine (from Aladdin fame, best Disney soundtrack ever! Peabo is that you?). Somehow, overnight it seemed, Disney had taken Jasmine off of the Disney princess merchandise which left Cinderella, Ariel, Snow White, Belle and Aurora (that's her name?) from Sleeping Beauty.
We were confused to put it midly, not least because not all of those chicks weren't princesses, or at least they weren't before they married the dude who saved them from some generic misadventure (god I hate these movies now). In fact, as far as I can reckon, the only one of them that was a princess was Ariel. So why these princesses and not... say... Jasmine, Mulan and Pocahontas...
Let's not play, we know what it was, even if that's not the official reason. Right from the beginning Pocahontas (a real princess) was only ever sometimes on the merch. Mulan also got the short shrift. And Jasmine (a princess as well) had been unceremoniously axed. This was all about 4 years ago and, to be honest, my 3 year old niece didn't care not one bit, if she even noticed. But we did (we being the adults meant to take care of her physically and emotionally). We realized how problematic it was for a little girl to crave white dolls, especially if she ONLY wanted the white dolls. So my sister became obsessed with finding Black dolls for her daughters and even branched out to those few Asian and Latina dolls (that's another post) so that the girls could have as many positive models of beauty as possible, because let's deal in the real, these are where our girls get their understandings of beauty from and for little girls of color that almost always, on some level, means that they understand beauty (outside of their family) to be white. (I realize this situation is immensely complex and not just about race but, like I said, another post.)
So a couple of years ago, I believe right after Katrina, Disney announced that there was going to be a new Disney movie, after a hiatus on Princess movies of about ten years if Mulan was the last movie (not counting craptastic, straight to dvd sequels and shorts). And Black folk were happy... and then really damn angry!
In the earliest drafts the first Black Disney princess was going to be a chambermaid named Mammy... I mean Maddy. hahahaha (again, it's hurts). And the first I heard the movie was going to be called The Frog Princess. People raised all kinds of hell! And thank god they did, because seriously Disney, wtf! I hope someone lost their job on that one, because that is no way to build a better relationship with the Black community! People who probably don't even care about this issue should have been ashamed on the company's behalf. Pathetic.
So Disney did an about face and has since changed the film's title to The Princess and the Frog and the princess is named Tiana (did they strike down Kameelah, cause I would have accepted that as well...)
Now I'm not following the whole issue, but the next controversy I heard about was that the prince was not going to be Black and it seems that no amount of hullabaloo would change this one. When the movie is released this fall/winter, Princess Tiana will be courted by Prince Naveen of the ambiguously raced, brown/sort of tan people with a name that I just can't place so he could be from anywhere just as long as you know that he's not white... and not Black... I guess...
At first glance I was like, whatever, what's the big deal. It's not like Disney hasn't gone interracial before (what's up Pocahontas and John Smith from the completely inaccurate and problematic 1995 movie). Besides, I've got my own issues with the way that interracial couples are (not) shown on tv, especially those concerning Black women, so at first I was all for it. But then, while googling the controversy for this post I came across a yahoo answers question about the situation. (Seriously, I don't know if you needed to post a question about it, just get some friends and take them out for coffee!) And some lady, who I assume was white based on her avatar, made a really great point. Just as there's never been a Black Disney princess there's never been a Black prince. Damn! That lady messed my whole analysis up, because she's right. So I wondered, why is no one as upset about Naveen's ambiguous, but not Black-ness as they were about Mammy... uh Maddy (oops)?
I think the answer is clear and sad all at the same time. I would imagine that most of the people complaining about this are the mothers (or aunts!) of little girls who love these movies. Little boys are not the intended audience, even if they will, whether they want to or not, see this film. (My nephew's the baby, he will probably have watched all of the Disney princess line by the time he's 5!) Does the muted outrage about Naveen mean that we don't care that our boys have positive role models in children's films? To be honest I can't even name an animated movie with a Black male lead (but again, I've got nieces who can be really girly, so it could be my blind spot covering most things male). It seems clear to me that if we're going to be outraged at Disney let's not stop halfway, let's take it there. Just as Nala aint good enough to represent Black women, neither is Simba, both of whom were, to my intense irritation, voiced by white actors! (Moira Kelly, Matthew Broderick and Jonathan Taylor Thomas) Seriously! yall got Ming Na-Wen but couldn't think of two Black/African actors to voice the leads in your most popular movie? (to be fair though, Niketa Calame voiced young Nala and she's Black). But still, whatever...
to be continued...
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