The Princess and The Frog: Behind the First African-American PrincessThe Cannon

Over six decades after M artin Luther King and the racial segregation in the United States, and a year after the first African-American president was elected, The Walt Disney Company took a major - but delayed - step and introduced, in the 2009 movie The Princess and The Frog, the first African- American Disney princess: Tiana. Finally, after the princesses have been portrayed mainly as white or representing other minorities, African-American children could look up to a princess that, having the same characteristic personality and behavior, referred to their own nationality and culture. The problem is that, even during a time when equality has been long integrated in our society, Tiana couldn’t have been more different than her fellow princesses.

In The Frog Prince, the Brother Grimms tale that inspired the movie, a young princess, having dropped her gold ball into a spring, agreed to share her castle, plate and bed with a frog that offered to get it back, thinking he wouldn’t be able to fulfill his part of the deal. Once the item was retrieved, she ran away and refused to pay her dues, but was forced to by her father, the king. On the fourth day, she found not a frog on the pillow, but a handsome prince standing by her bed: “‘You’, said the prince, ‘have broken this cruel charm, and now I have nothing to wish for, but that you should go with me into my father’s kingdom, where I will m arry you, and love you as long as you live’. ... They then took leave... for the princes’ kingdom, which they reached safely; and there they lived happily a great many years.”

The Princess and The Frog transported the story to a New Orleans in the Jazz Era, marked by dark magic (a complicated attempt to incorporate the African-American culture, present in the characters of Mr. Facilier and Mama Odie) and race differences (other African-Americans are portrayed as a newspaper boy, a cook, Mr. Facilier and Mama Odie, and a group of friends eating at the diner where Tiana works, the only representation that is neither working nor black arts practitioners). There, Tiana grew up and lives not in the suburbs, where she spent most of the time at her friend Lottie’s mansion, but in a much simpler and essentially African- American community. In fact, Tiana’s m other was Lottie’s dressmaker, making as many princess outfits as the spoiled and stereotyped blond-hair-blue-eyes asked for.

Later on throughout the movie, a hardworking Tiana is found. Prince Naveen, of Maldonia, is coming to town and, to attract him into a marriage, Lottie throws a party and money at Tiana, who she asked to cater. There, Tiana finally puts together all the money she needs to buy the restaurant her deceased father - and her - always dreamed of buying: Tiana’s Palace. At the party, the real-estate agents deny her completely: someone with more money has made an offer and someone from “her background” would have her “hands full”. Soon enough, she kisses a frog that was, in reality, Prince Naveen transformed amphibiously by the voodoo of Mr. Facilier and replaced by his employee. Since she was not a princess, she got transformed into a frog too. For the rest of the movie the two frogs seek for Mama Odie, the voodoo “fairy Godm other”, and a way to go back to being human.

The Princess and The Frog breaks ground in many aspects. It’s no surprise that, in the movie, Lottie represents not only the princess in the tale The Frog Prince, but also the Disney ones (she eventually ends up being a princess for a day, since

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her dad was the Mardi Gras king). Even though her image was also used almost as a critic to the princess look - she gets everything she wants only by wishing on a star, her whole life revolves around m arrying a prince and she does already have a princess life, not because of royalty, but m oney—Prince Naveen had in mind to m arry and her whole existence shows, in every scene she and Tiana are present, how incredibly different their lives actually were. For one, Tiana does not have her wishes granted by the same star, so her achievements rely on her very hard work.

Finally, Disney seems to be introducing real life to princesses, and that is the biggest step taken in the movie: she works, she’s independent, she wants more than a marriage; she actually teaches the prince how to work. Somehow, and to some extent, Tiana represents the American dream. Tiana seems to fit into Disney’s current efforts to change, enrich and popularize the image of what a princess is. In the series of ads called I Am a Princess, young girls doing the most various activities, from studying to driving go-karts, and actresses from the Disney channel talk about leadership and values such as compassion, kindness, standing up for others, family and trying hard and following your dreams.It is im portant to say that most of the Disney princess’ movies are dated from a time and tales that did not appreciate different characteristics in women and that their image has evolved during the years - also when it comes to race: “In the last 20 years, Disney has made huge strides in depicting race. In 1997, the company’s television division presented a live-action version of “Cinderella” with a black actress, the singer Brandy, playing the lead. In 1998, “Mulan” was celebrated as a rare animated feature that depicted Chinese characters with realistic - looking eyes; most animated films (even those from Japan) “had Westernized versions of Asian people until that time”, according to the New York Times.

Ultimately, Tiana is a role model, and she is a self-made woman. She fully understands that her dreams depend only on her effort and she’s more than willing to sacrifice and work as hard as she can to independently open her restaurant, at last. And that’s why she is an almost-self-made woman: she needed a m an—and his money—to seal the deal, which is odd. She was so excited with the restaurant that love was not even on her plans: everything revolved around Tiana’s Palace. And that is fine and makes sense, since people of different races pursue and possess different things at different times of their lives. She was not there yet and her marriage felt like an intrusion, an imposition over her dreams and plans - something she was maybe not even ready for.

Tiana is a minority for many reasons. The Disney princesses usually revolve around ten movies: Sleeping Beauty, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Aladdin, Brave, The Little Mermaid, The Beauty and The Beast, Cinderella, Mulan, Pocahontas and The Princess and The Frog. From those ten movies, four categories are set: royalty, racial background, lifestyle and time frame. Primarily, Tiana is not born royal, along with The Beauty and The Beast, Cinderella and Mulan (Pocahontas is technically a princess, since her father is the chief). Tiana represents a racial minority, what only happens in other three movies, Aladdin, Mulan and Pocahontas. Tiana not only works, put together with Snow White and Cinderella, but she works for money, standing alone in that category. Finally, The Princess and The Frog

takes place in a specific time frame, uncomm on in a Disney movie and preceded only by Pocahontas— the film, Enchanted is also set in a time, but Giselle is not a princess. Translated into numbers, 60% of Disney princesses are born royal, 60% represent European/Caucasian physical characteristics, 70% do not engage in any type of work; of the 30% that do, 66.66% do not get paid for it, and 80% are set in an unspecified time period, making it very imaginative and current. A category that suits most of the princesses, including Tiana, is the fact that these Disney princess movies are inspired by tales, also the case of Sleeping Beauty, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Aladdin, The Little Mermaid and Cinderella, representing a total of 60%.

Disney’s choice to set the movie in a specific time period has to be held accountable. The New York Times said it best in an article, which states, “Is The Princess and the Frog, set in New Orleans in the 1920s, about to vaporize stereotypes or promote them?”. The New Orleans choice is understandable and refers to their culture, but why choose to make it in the past, in a time that was not completely favorable to African-Americans? Also, the fact that the first African-American princess spends most of the movie in a frog form has an impact in the whole picture. Even Prince Naveen is different per se: he is the first prince to have a partying lifestyle, the first to come from an imaginary place, the first to ever go broke, and he is not an African-American, characterizing their union as interracial and, to the African-American viewers, impossible. It is not clear in the movie if his parents only cut him out until a wedding, which is apparently what ended up happening.

W hat is remarkable, however, is the fact that Disney decided to make so many change precisely in the movie that introduced the first African- American princess, and what the message is that those facts represent to the young African-American children the movie wanted to captivate. Perhaps that white people are rich and African-American people are poor? Is it that white people don’t have to work hard, but African-American people do? Or that even though you are a poor African-American woman, that worked her entire life to save money to pursue her dreams, you will only fulfill them when you get m arried—even though it wasn’t even in the plans yet? “Not all black people are poor anymore. We are accomplishing our goals and living our dreams. Surely, Disney could have come up with a better representation of blacks for their first-ever black princess movie. These are not the lessons we want to give our children, either black or white. Change is definitely needed,” says Eboni Harmon of Yahoo! Voices.

Overall, the Disney princess image still prevails in The Princess and the Frog and Tiana’s story was fun and entertaining to watch. Her example of hard work is indispensable for all generations and, even though her path was covered by a thin layer of subjective statements, she stands as an example and as a beginning to other princesses and movies in general. However, all of that could have been inserted in different scenarios: not making Tiana as unique would have made more justice to their goal. If their goal was to show that African-Americans are “normal” people that can be princesses, their good intention ended up making her stand out not because of her hard work or personality, but because of the categories, that discriminated her and made her far more different than the other princesses.