Summary
[...] for all its superficial innocuousness- It's only a kids' movie! you may already have exclaimed before reading this far- The Princess and the Frogis the most insidious of the lot precisely because it comes packaged as an all-ages entertainment bearing the imprimatur of the very studio that has branded the imaginations of several generations of the world's children Not that Disney is entirely at fault The PC watchdogs who scrutinized this movie since it was first announced, and who reportedly succeeded at persuading studio bigwigs to change the title (originally The Frog Princess), the name of the protagonist (originally Maddy, feared to sound too much like Mammy), and her profession (originally a maid), seem to have entirely missed the forest for the trees- namely, that Disney's first black princess lives in a world where the ceiling on black ambition is firmly set at the service industries, and Tiana and her neighbors seem downright zip-a-dee-doodah happy about that Rich people, poor people, they all got dreams/And dreams do come true in New Orleans goes one lyric from the film's boisterous opening number, a far cry from Newman's own Louisiana 1927- the unofficial anthem of Hurricane Katrina- with its prescient lament 'They're tryin' to wash us away.
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Whitewash
Whitewash
Some fairy tale! Disney's first black princess can't escape the ghetto.The Princess and the FrogDirected by Ron Clements and John MuskerDisneyOpens November 25Six decades after unleashing persistent NAACP bugaboo Song of the South (1946), and two after firmty suppressing...See the full content of this document
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