Response to Richard Breaux

I think Beaux makes some very good points on how Disney has been progressing from its stereotypes and how it is shown in The Princess and the Frog.  One of the most interesting points that Beaux makes in his argument is comparing Charlotte La Bouff and Tiana. Charlotte represents Disney's original princess who is sexualized, has a single parent, and wants to marry a prince.  Comparing Charlotte to Tiana, Tiana is the exact opposite. In the scene where Eudora reads the story of The Princess and the Frog, Charlotte would kiss a hundred frogs in order to get her prince while Tiana would never do anything of such a sort.  Another scene to compare Tiana and Charlotte is during the masquerade ball.  Charlotte is a desperate adult to get her prince so she sexualizes herself with make-up, beauty mark and emphasizing her cleavage.  Disney reminds us of the past princesses who are sexualized individuals with their tiny waists and cleavages, yet she is not the main character of this story.  However, Tiana's story is very different.  We see Tiana with an intact family at the beginning before her father goes off to war and is killed.  However, both of them supported her dreams and goals of owning a restaurant and cooking for everyone in town.  Tiana is ambitious, hard-working, and oriented towards a goal, which we really have not seen any other princess do before.  Tina also has very little interest in waiting for her prince to come.  Tina works two jobs to earn enough money to pay for the mill than going out and having fun.  Also, when Prince Naveen asks her as a frog to kiss him, he lies to Tiana and tells her that he is wealthy.  Tina only kissed him so that Prince Naveen will give her a payment in money for getting him out of this state.  Tiana is only focused on her long-term goal, owning a restaurant, and she will use any means possible, even if it does mean kissing a frog prince, to reach her goal.

Disney tries to make up for the fact that it has not created an African American princess until now and makes very explicit references to their culture, and the things that they believe in.  For example, the Bottle trees is part of African American communities from 1600-1800s to protect these individuals from evil spirits.  Mama Odie is a Voodoo priestess, and Vodou came to Louisiana from enslaved Africans when Louisiana was a French colony. Voodoo was repopularize in the nineteenth century as a means to attract tourists to their state.  However, in this film, Disney was trying to overemphasize that these individuals were African American and could not make a normal princess film like they have in the past, but just with an African American princess.  Disney tried to do so many things to capture the lifestyle of an African American princess, but it ended up being too much and too emphasized that this movie involved black individuals.  This point of Breaux I also agree with because there were just too many variable that overemphasized the African American princess when it really should not have.   Overall, I agree with Richard Breaux, and the points he made with The Princess and the Frog.