(Hey guys, I'm going to return to our discussion of The Senator's Wife this Wednesday.)
What’s in a name?
According to a recent article on Jim Hill Media, Disney is doing quite a bit of damage control in response to a number of angry editorials lately about a film that won’t even be released for another 2 ½ years – Disney’s The Frog Princess.
This new film will have the first “African American Disney Princess.”
What’s in a name?
According to a recent article on Jim Hill Media, Disney is doing quite a bit of damage control in response to a number of angry editorials lately about a film that won’t even be released for another 2 ½ years – Disney’s The Frog Princess.
This new film will have the first “African American Disney Princess.”
At a Disney Shareholder meeting not too long ago, John Lasseter stood on the stage of the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans and said this about the new film:
"The Frog Princess is being written and directed by John Musker and Ron Clements, who did The Little Mermaid and Aladdin, among other great movies…
"The movie is completely set in New Orleans, with the fabulous French Quarter, the beautiful Garden District, the mystic bayou, the mighty Mississippi. It's full of what this city has that's so wonderful that I love so much. It's got the jazz, the Mardi Gras; it's got the voodoo spells. In fact, it even has a soulful, singing alligator, and it's great.
"The main character of the story, our hero, is named Maddy. And I am very, very proud to announce that she is the very first African American Disney princess. We're really proud and excited about this. This is a fantastic story, this movie is going to be classic Disney, yet you've never seen one like it before."
Then came postings (like this article on Wikipedia) that gave more details about the story and characters. For example, Maddy will be a “19-year-old chambermaid” to Charlotte La Bouff, “an 18-year-old spoiled southern debutante and diva” and the villian will be, Dr. Duvalier, “an African American Voodoo magician/fortune teller.” We will also see Mama Odie, “an elderly, 200-year-old Voodoo priestess/fairy godmother,” and Maddy’s love interest will apparently be the (white) Prince Harry, “a gregarious, fun-loving European Prince.”
Let the bitching and moaning begin.
Beyond the interracial relationship, here were the other big complaints:
* The name "Maddy" sounded too much like "Mammy" and/or "Addy" (which are both supposedly slave names).
* Maddy starts off working as a chamber maid for Charlotte, a rich, white, spoiled Southern debutante, which also smacked of slavery.
* The film's original title, The Frog Princess, was interpreted by some to be insulting toward France. Or a slur on French royalty.
And thus, Disney had to release the following statement:
"While it is a Studio policy that we do not comment on our animated films while they are in the early stages of production due to the nature of our evolving development process, it has come to our attention that there is incorrect information being circulated about Disney’s 2009 motion picture ‘The Princess and the Frog’ (whose previous working title was ‘The Frog Princess’).
“The central character is a young girl named Princess Tiana. The story takes place in the charming elegance and grandeur of New Orleans’ fabled French Quarter during the Jazz Age. She is the newest addition to the Studio’s royal family of ‘Disney Princesses.’ Princess Tiana will be a heroine in the great tradition of Disney’s rich animated fairy tale legacy, and all other characters and aspects of the story will be treated with the greatest respect and sensitivity.
“This American fairy tale is several years away from completion and the creative process is ongoing. No other details regarding the film have been released at this point, and unfortunately much of the information that has surfaced, including the casting breakdown...is inaccurate. When we do casting calls we frequently use substitute information as we don't want details out about the movies. Therefore that information you have is incorrect."
(Notice how they changed the title and the name of their princess.)
A few questions:
What’s in a name?
The French still have royalty?
I don’t recall French people bitching and moaning when E.D. Baker released all those wonderful Frog Princess books.
So what if Maddy’s a chambermaid to a spoiled debutante? Does anyone actually think that Disney’s going to make the point that slavery is good? This is a part of our history, is it not? Are we going to hide our own past from our children? Who says that a rich, fulfilling story could not come out of a plot about an African American chambermaid who became a princess? Besides, didn’t Cinderella go through some pretty rough circumstances before she made it to the ball and met the prince?
Just because there are aspects of our history in which we are not proud, does that mean that those aspects are off limits to all writers? Are we so sensitive about our pasts that we aren’t emotionally stable enough to look at it objectively? And talk about it?
What’s in a name?
