The Princess and the Frog
Disney Begins the Push on a Risky Gamble
2009-05-13
Eric Easter

This week, in a flurry of e-mails to publishers, websites and TV stations, Disney publicly unveiled the results of years of planning, protests and criticism and launched a national campaign promoting The Frog and the Princess, hailed as the first major Disney animated film featuring an African American heroine as the lead.

Since the announcement of the project, there has been steady criticism. The original working title, The Frog Princess (the name of book that inspired it) was considered insensitive for fear that it might suggest the heroine was not as beautiful as other female Disney characters. There was the choice of (solid Disney winner) Randy Newman as the soundtrack’s composer. Since the tale is based in New Orleans, could Disney not have chosen say, Wynton Marsalis?

The initial leaked name of the character “Maddy,” was criticized as being too slave-like. It’s replacement, “Tiana”, too ethnic. Even in the one-minute of trailer footage, critics have found things not to like from voicing to artwork?

Not all of the criticism was without merit. There was certainly a reason to be at least suspicious. Any Black parent who has innocently picked up Dumbo only to be stunned by the crow scene can be forgiven for having their cultural radar up.

Having introduced Disney films to my small children over the last five years, I have been both offended and amused at the obvious racial and cultural insensitivity in the studio’s earlier films, but frankly I am more alarmed by the “parents get killed, orphan becomes hero after evil person threatens to kill child” formula that Disney seems to sell so well. I don’t know about you but I find a jive- talking crow much easier to explain to a five year old than sudden tragic death.

With all the potential criticism in the balance, it seems a particularly brave act that Disney chose to move forward with the project and likewise invest in aggressive promotion. In many ways it's a can't win situation. An African American lead character will seen by some as an extension of Obama-style progress, and by others as catering to a racial targeting strategy that is no longer relevant because of Obama. For some it will be too Black, for others not Black enough. If only for the guts it took to finish the film and the confidence Disney has in the product evidenced by the marketing campaign, the movie deserves a fair hearing without all that cultural baggage.

But if the recent spate of animated films are any judge, the most serious challenge facing Disney will be culture but quality. So much focus has been put on computer generated images and toy spinoffs that studios seem to have forgotten the basic idea that a story should be well told first, drawn second. And the worse criticism Disney could get is not that the first film featuring an African American character lead is race conscious, or off-key or culturally sensitive but is in fact,  terrible.

Art by committee is almost never satisfying, and only a full viewing of The Princess and the Frog will tell whether or not the company’s desire to be culturally correct diluted the art of telling the tale.  Great fairy tales are not very pretty things,  there are evil and ugly people and tragedy and monsters and broad stereotypical behaviors that help spark the imagination. How comfortable will Black folk be when those evil monsters and wart-nosed witches are in Blackface?

In the end let’s hope The Princess and the Frog will be judged by the content of its characters, not the color of the pencils.

View the Preview Trailer of  Disney’s The Princess and the Frog