Disney Cashing In? Surely not!

I read today that Disney is releasing their first princess movie in over a decade and it will be making history by featuring their very first black princess.

How very shrewd of them, and how timely.

It is called The Princess and the Frog (a reworking of the classic fairy tale The Frog Prince )*, set in New Orleans in the 1920’s.  

Here’s the plot:
A prince named Naveen from the land of Maldonia,is transformed into a frog by the evil scheming voodoo magician Dr. Facilier. The frog prince asks a waitress named Tiana to break the spell by kissing him. However, the kiss doesn’t break the spell but rather makes Tiana a frog, as well. Together the two of them must reach the good voodoo priestess of the Bayou, Mama Odie, while befriending a trumpet-playing alligator and a hopelessly romantic firefly along the way.  

Warning!! SPOILER ALERT!!

Apparently, in the end Tiana will get to have both her career and her handsome prince.
Hurrah for progress, you CAN have it all!

My first thought is to wonder, anxiously,  if she’s set to lose at least one of them following the crash of ’29 and the subsequent depression, but probably not, because this is a fairy tale and they are going to live happily ever after despite racial discrimination, the terrible floods of ’37 and no breath of a civil rights movement for nearly forty years.

*I would like to point out that in the original Frog Prince, the heroine throws the frog against the wall with great force, she doesn’t kiss him, and it is that action causes him to turn into a prince. I WISH I had got that memo when I was a child, it would have saved me quite a few skanky boyfriends, but I digress..

I am trying very hard not to be hugely cynical about this post Obama move (surely no coincidence that this is also the year that black Barbie comes out?) and not see it merely as a giant KERCHIIINGGG! opportunity for Walt and co. to bring millions of people of colour the world over into the Disney marketing fold.

Yes, trying, but largely failing.

I am sure that it is hugely meaningful for African American girls to have some kind of fantasy princess representation out there in the mainstream culture where they have been sidelined for so long. However I so loathe the genre and all they stand for that I am wondering why this was the gift we had to give to this generation of children?

I don’t believe that a Disney film has the primary motive of teaching our little girls morality and ragtime, nor do I think that it’s from a noble place of historic significance that they decided to make Tiana African American.  You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to work out that the Obamas did their free market research for them..

“Why yes, I think the American public might be ready to accept a black princess, now and spend some coin on it.. What do you think, guys, now that every woman in the country is having secret fantasies about sex with Barack and Michelle is on the cover of People Magazine and Vogue and all..?”

The Frog Princess is undoubtedly going to be a box office smash, as all the princess films are, but far more importantly for the Disney cash registers it is going to sell untold billions in related merchandise to a market that will suddenly feel related to and embraced for the first time by Uncle Walt (who may be perceived by now to be more All-American than Uncle Sam himself.)

So, that will be several billion tons of Tiana sippy cups, acrylic ballgowns, plastic crowns, talking frogs,  t-shirts, bikes, balls, stickers, colouring books, pencils, chicken noodle soup, beach towels, earrings, crackers, fruit roll ups, knickers, diapers, etc. which will spend a short time with another little princess before it becomes landfill in a kingdom far away.

But that part is not Disney’s problem.

That part will be our little princesses’ problem when they are bigger and not living so happily ever after.