Another look at the New Orleans-Style Blackened Princess - Tiana

"This is a train-wreck waiting to happen...and the locomotive is getting up to speed now.  People, please go to your local library and ask them to give you or acquire the documentary, "Mickey Mouse Monopoly" or the book, "The Mouse That Roared", by Giroux.  These two sources will explain some of the complexities of consumption of the disney stories.  There ARE definite problems with the standard disney formula of depicting non-European characters, women (and, therefore, men) and historical content.  In short, much of disney's work has been negatively stereotypical, sexist and anti-historical, the latter of which is not a problem if the society that consumes the work is already firmly grounded in historical reality and perspective, which the USAmerica is NOT.

I am concerned most for the patently uncritical, fawning, thank-god-for-disney, talk that I've been reading on the blogosphere.  If this were just another of disney's all-too-thinly drawn and sexist princesses, we'd have enough to tackle with the self-esteem of young girls already suffering due to the sexualization of overly-thin and physically-impossible models.  The disney princesses are a disempowered bunch of "women" who are all patiently awaiting their princes to come and save them, validate them and sweep them off into some imagineered fantasy that doesn't, of course, exist.  Again, THIS would be no problem if we didn't already live in a world full of sexist practice and media messages that accompany constant male violence against women, unequal pay, unequal social access and power and a narrowing of the feminine experience into a quicksand pit of consumerism.  Since when was any disney princess at the center of any women's movements' imagery or discourse, if only to negatively critique them?  Now add the element of Tiana's Africanity and what do we get?...a New Orleans-style blackened princess who, as stated by another respondent on another site, spends a bulk of her on-screen time as a frog.  Interesting. Then we can question - EASILY - why voodoo/vodou/vodun is yet again demonized as a criminal context like in so many movies and books in this culture when it would have been a powerful spiritual cultural element if the stories had been told by conscious African(-American) writers.  Voodoo is an African religion/spiritual system, not a foil for euro-christian exploitation and devaluation.  Consider for a moment if we reduced Roman Catholics to a bunch of raging lunatics who preyed upon helpless soles [with] bread hexed with demonic energies and spells.  I am sure the vatican would begin its lawsuits at the first hint and its public outcry.

Are we to assume that Tiana will hold more and deeper cultural space for Africans (and others)in USAmerica than Yaa Asantewa, Queen Tiye,and Queen Nzingha?  These were/are REAL women!  And we're salivating at the thought of a disney-fied African(-American) princess?

Yes, we could back away from the discussion of race altogether, the discussion of sustained and current degradation of African and other indigenous lifeways in this culture, but we'd be sliding yet deeper down the slope of ignorance and myopia as we deny the presence of the very social ills we say we're so far beyond.  

You tell a woman with a husband-blackened eye sitting on her safe-house bed that a character like Belle is just harmless entertainment.  You tell a woman whose father (and/or mother) silenced her spirit and voice from her early childhood days (I know too many with this experience) that Arielle's sacrifice at the end of her story is just fantasy.  You tell an African woman who has met and bested the challenges of holding life, family and spirit together in the face of the legacy of slavery, emotional and historical assault and economic marginalization that a faux-princess that just happens to share her skin color is going to be some liberating messiah of cultural ascendancy, lifting her pain, her wounds and bestowing upon her a renewed sense of self just because some multi-billion-dollar corporation decided to appropriate her image and make a sad, but successful attempt to capitalize upon her vulnerability, selling it back to her as "fantasy", "fun" and "diversity".

"Mickey Mouse Monopoly" reported the statement by disney's past CEO, Michael Eisner, that they had no duty to educate or teach or enlighten, only to make money.  This is what disney does to this day...and they will use any means to do so.  They don't do this to make us feel good about ourselves...and if we do, we are doing so with the curtain pulled securely around the wizard...never looking beyond the veil of "fantasy" and "wonder" and technical acumen behind which disney ignorantly and arrogantly spins tale after tale about culture and history and masculinity/femininity...

Part of the problem here is that we ARE believing the hype.  disney is very good at that.  We'll probably consume Tiana at record levels right on the heels of every other sad carbon-copied disney female character, only this time with greater energy, fueled by ideas of "finally, a black disney princess" and "oh, I just can't wait!" and other such blind grasps at honoring the diversity that is this USAmerican culture...albeit at odds with itself.

This movie, no matter how technically wonderful, as it will be, is bound to be full of historical, cultural and gender potholes, if the trailer is in any way representative of the full-length movie.  But don't believe me, just because I'm saying it, or have studied these elements for years any more than you should simply eat everything that disney dishes out on its pretty plates.  Please, doing your daughters and sons an important favor and service and duty, check out the documentary and/or book as suggested, in essence...check the list of ingredients of your media before you consume it.  Or do we just feed our children food without really knowing what's in it?   Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm....."

I guess I can't get the concept of "train-wreck" out of my head on this one.  Somebody tell me I'm really off on this one....please...I'd love to relax into my summer haze and eat corn dogs and buy unrecyclable foam coolers for $1.99......land of the almost-free, baby.

This one was snagged from the following page/URL

http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=40873