a black disney princess

[kala]

ITS ABOUT DAMN TIME

i recently went to go see the movie "up" with my little sister. who knew that id soon be watching a preview that would almost have me in frikken tears.

the movie is called "the princess and the frog" the princess' name, i believe [98% sure], is tiana. i was so happy to see this!! you dont know how many times growing up Ive seen all my friends got to dress up and be disney princesses, but who the hell was i ever going to be?? the closest black disney character ive ever related with [mostly not by choice b/c she was pretty much the only one] was esmeralda from the hintchback of notre dame [look her up]. she's cool, but unless you care about her you dont particularly know who she is... ANYWHO!

GO SEE THIS! its little things like this that make me feel a little bit better about our world...


the storyline is great if youve never heard of the princess and the frog. and the main character seems legit. they didnt make her "ghetto" or white-ified or anything...i dont know maybe its just me... but if you understand where im coming from please support this film! i dont even know when it comes out but im so excited!
first a black president and now a black disney princess. finally...finally.

[Mlle d. Sade]

You completely missed my point. It is: we should be telling our children of the strong African Americans and about blacks in America because we are in America and we have been in America a great deal longer than most white people who get to be called Americans while we get a misnomer. No reason to drag Africa into it when we have plenty of rich history all on our own right here in this country. We are not outsiders in America we are what made America work. Which includes the people you're pointlessly prattling on about.

rygel1 said:

Guion Bluford is African American and so was Dr. Charles Richard Drew (1904 -1950), the list of accomplished scientists, teachers, shop owners is endless. I am fed up of the parade of African-American drug dealers and dubious characters we are force fed by the media and subliminally to our teenagers. Thank goodness for the off-button and books. I am so grateful to my parents that TV was a rare treat and the media was not allowed to 'bring us up'.
I mentioned African history, because historical stories were used to spur on African and African- American freedom fighters in the West Indies, the Caroliners etc. Even querilla warfare was passed down from the original captured African warriors and their mothers. Acknowledgement of the bedrock of road to freedom does not lessen the brilliance of the present day African-American existence. But without the mettle and courage of your fore fathers 'African-American' would be a non-entity. I would be happier, if that backbone and strength was depicted more in the African-American roles of mainstream entertainment, never mind an rather historically insignificant 2D cartoon. Pride in ones heritage is honourable, but cherry-picking is somewhat myopic. It is not immature to be well versed in historical facts, and finding strength and inspiration in a wide diaspora.
Ms. Sade, you are quite and enigma, on one hand you champion "fairytales my grandmother told me- which have less to do with Africa and more to do with the Mississippi Valley, The Wild Wild West and New Orleans" and on the other "Homer's Odyssey in much the same way O Brother Where Art Thou ".
Find out the origins of the stories you grandmother used to tell you.
The stories we tell our children come from our great x 5 grandmother and believe it or not they are not too different from those my friend from Ghana tell her children.
A fairy tale about an African-American princess does not have to come from the angle of 'slumming' . If I were to be whimsical about it all, I find the premise for Cinderella far more appealing.

[Mlle d. Sade]

Okay, so it's European but since we are American and European culture seeped into American culture is it not as much ours as it is any white person's? That's what I'm really asking. Why is it we can only tell certain fairytales the majority of black Americans aren't familiar with instead of the stories they are familiar with because we are American and we have the cultural background of Americans?

You are a Disney hate machine.I didn't care for the HBO fairytales show, I didn't like how they did the fairytales. I don't think this is blackfacing a european fairytale because of what I said above. We are not segregated and only allowed to partake in "black" fairytales.

There's always been a cult of magic around childhood (kids have not yet been completely tainted by the "real world" and dream freely) it was much worse before the world got wise. Have you ever watched a Terry Gilliam film? He captures the imagination that only children have perfectly. He even makes his movies on the same principle: free dreaming. Unfettered by socio-political baggage.

I don't buy into this "Disney magic let down poor people" because, somehow, someway there was magic in poor childrens' lives' . I noticed there was this kind of magic present in turn of the century New York for tenement children. I can't put my finger on it but they managed to do it. And that kind of thinking (freeing, led them to do things they might otherwise have not) lead a large number of that generation to be enormously successful.

Obsidian said:

The Princess and the Frog is a European tale of the brother's Grimm origin:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Frog_Prince_%28story%29

Although in said movie, it looks to a marriage between the Frog Prince and the Frog Princess, both European in origin:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Frog_Princess

It is not American. The cartoon telling of it makes the cartoon version an American fairy tale though. Think of it in a Neil Gaimen "American Gods" sort of way.

I did not intend for my words to be interpreted as "African Americans can't accept their European side and be portrayed in a European fairy tale"; although, I should have foreseen my words being interpreted as such.

To pick at the scab, the film doesn't follow the Disney trend. Disney will take a story or history from a culture and use characters representative of that culture in their animated films e.g. Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, Pocahontas, Tarzan, Snow White, Mulan, The Little Mermaid, Hunchback of Notre Dame etc ... And when Disney doesn't, the stories will involve animals or take place in modern times or the future or alternative time line (science fiction) e.g. Lilo and Stitch, Atlantis, Treasure Planet, etc ... The only time, recently, that Disney did not do this is with The Emperor's New Groove as the original story is not of South American origin but is rather a short story by Danish Hans Christian Anderson; mind you it is a story that could be applied to anywhere there are/were Emperors. I don't hate on this technique. I enjoyed it when that HBO fairy tale cartoon show did that using colored people in traditionally European fairy tales and stories. Just wondering why Disney would do that with this film, hence why I used the word "blackface", cause it's a "blackface" or coloured version of European folklore.

I am not a Disney hate machine. Disney gave me Gargoyles (and Keith David is voicing someone in said Frog film and I love it when he voice acts), Stitch, Pixar, that TGIF tv black from years ago, the score to the Hunchback, and Fantasia (even with the ninny scene). I do dislike how Disney builds up this cult of childhood and magic around it. I see them as a money making machine first and foremost like I see with just about everything in Western society. I did grow up watching their stuff and liking the animation and music along with the other kids in my generation. Did I want to be a princess? No. I saw Disney for what it is - a money making entity. I had a friend of mines break down into tears because she'd never been to disney world and I had - like her childhood was not complete until she has ventured to the childhood version of Mecca. That was very sickening because I felt that in some ways too until I actually went to the place. That's what I don't like, turning said company into something its not - a corporate Santa Claus free from criticism and placed upon a pedestal of mythology and infallibility whose actions are completely and utterly "for the children" as long as their parents are willing to pay to properly define their child's childhood.

Will I see this film. Yes as it's not the film I'm knocking, it's Disney. I may actually like this film and add it to the Disney stuff I do like. If I were a parent would I take my child? Yes, if they ask to see it., but I would hope they would be discerning enough not to buy into the whole "Disney magic" crap that i watched my peers go through (and the inevitable disappointment because they were too poor). Can you imagine if it weren't Disney but instead Nickelodeon that got the foothold in the childhood defining market?

Sigh .. scab topics ... once you pick at it, you just can't stop picking.

[Obsidian]

Well, to reiterate my point, why is it that in this film, but no other film recently than Emperor's New Groove, does Disney use traditional stories peopled with characters from that culture? I'm pointing out how this film falls away from that basic Disney trend, not about why Black people can "only have certain fairy tales." Heck we can do whatever we want. If Tyler Perry and Oprah put out The Princess and the Frog the animated movie, I'd be more supportive than for a Disney film (you'd still have people saying why couldn't they do an African story e.g. from Africa or from African Americans). My beef is that Disney has done one thing for all this time and then decides to shake things up and start a brand new trend that feels too much like "this is the best way we can market a Black princess" towards our usually target market. Yea, and my whole dislike of princesses. Bah humbug.

Nice to know someone has me perfectly summed up - I am a Disney hate machine because criticizing Disney for doing something different than what they usually do and saying I dislike them instantly turns me into a hate machine. I can just feel my robotic parts setting in. Ah yes, my new imperative in life as per my programming is to go around spreading the hate. I will teach future children to hate Disney and setup a Nazi Germany style Disney concentration camp to gas followers and send out Disney hate terrorist to the premier of Disney movies to blow shit up. And since you seem to be against me, you are an agent of the devil, Disney!! Must ... destroy ... as I am a machine ... Kill!!!! KILLL!!! Sorry, but you have as much validity calling me a Disney hate machine as I do calling you a Disney love machine. No wait, you are a Disney love machine. We must battle to the death or until at least one of us cries uncle, which will be me because the second you flash Gargoyles in front of my face and instantly turn into a ball of crunchy metal as that's a Disney thing I like. Here's a truth though - I am a princess hate machine. Burning pretty pink effigies with crowns at an alter to B'aal makes me orgasm.

And how does me disliking the whole "Disney magic" become me arguing against the concept of "childhood magic". I'm all for childhood magic, just not the Disney brand. I smoke childhood magic like weed.

I'm cashing in meh chips as I find myself participating in a type of back and force banter I usually don't like to engage when it's not constructive (and I have to start using humor). It has definitely lost its constructiveness and I knew this a while back, but scabs! Damn these scabs! Picking at them activates pleasure circuits in my Disney hating machine-like mind! Gah! Purging! Purging! *blip*

[kifaru]

I suggest you delete the part of you post about the nazi concentration camp...gas....stuff if you are planning on a writing career assuming you don't intend to self publish. Internet stuff has a way of coming back on folks. I'm just saying I get your point but I know that there are folks looking for a fight who would misinterpret those lines.

Obsidian said:

Well, to reiterate my point, why is it that in this film, but no other film recently than Emperor's New Groove, does Disney use traditional stories peopled with characters from that culture? I'm pointing out how this film falls away from that basic Disney trend, not about why Black people can "only have certain fairy tales." Heck we can do whatever we want. If Tyler Perry and Oprah put out The Princess and the Frog the animated movie, I'd be more supportive than for a Disney film (you'd still have people saying why couldn't they do an African story e.g. from Africa or from African Americans). My beef is that Disney has done one thing for all this time and then decides to shake things up and start a brand new trend that feels too much like "this is the best way we can market a Black princess" towards our usually target market. Yea, and my whole dislike of princesses. Bah humbug.

Nice to know someone has me perfectly summed up - I am a Disney hate machine because criticizing Disney for doing something different than what they usually do and saying I dislike them instantly turns me into a hate machine. I can just feel my robotic parts setting in. Ah yes, my new imperative in life as per my programming is to go around spreading the hate. I will teach future children to hate Disney and setup a Nazi Germany style Disney concentration camp to gas followers and send out Disney hate terrorist to the premier of Disney movies to blow shit up. And since you seem to be against me, you are an agent of the devil, Disney!! Must ... destroy ... as I am a machine ... Kill!!!! KILLL!!! Sorry, but you have as much validity calling me a Disney hate machine as I do calling you a Disney love machine. No wait, you are a Disney love machine. We must battle to the death or until at least one of us cries uncle, which will be me because the second you flash Gargoyles in front of my face and instantly turn into a ball of crunchy metal as that's a Disney thing I like. Here's a truth though - I am a princess hate machine. Burning pretty pink effigies with crowns at an alter to B'aal makes me orgasm.

And how does me disliking the whole "Disney magic" become me arguing against the concept of "childhood magic". I'm all for childhood magic, just not the Disney brand. I smoke childhood magic like weed.

I'm cashing in meh chips as I find myself participating in a type of back and force banter I usually don't like to engage when it's not constructive (and I have to start using humor). It has definitely lost its constructiveness and I knew this a while back, but scabs! Damn these scabs! Picking at them activates pleasure circuits in my Disney hating machine-like mind! Gah! Purging! Purging! *blip*

[kala]

i saw the movie last saturday and it was amazingly well done. minus race stuff and all....even tho it was a plus. :] if you have doubts, go see it, i truly think its worth your time. yay princess and the frog!!