Disney crowns a new princess
By Jeff Yang, Special to SF Gate
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
I'm the proud dad to two sons, so I only know about this whole princess thing secondhand. But my younger sister Christine has a three-year-old daughter, Sienna. And whenever we're over for dinner, Sienna goes through more outfits than a Chinese bride on her wedding day, showing off her entire Disney-branded princess wardrobe -- Snow White! Sleeping Beauty! Cinderella! Belle! -- in a never-ending royal rotation.
Chris says that Sienna's princess passion began with movies like "Little Mermaid" and "Beauty and the Beast," amped up after a visit to the Magic Kingdom where she saw Cinderella's Castle in real life, and became a full-blown addiction once she got her first costume, letting her step into the glass slippers of princesshood herself. "Now she wants them all," Chris tells me tiredly.
She's far from alone. Whatever qualms we may have about indoctrinating four-year-olds into a vision of femininity that's largely about wearing pretty dresses and shiny accessories, the Disney Princess brand appears unstoppable. This year, sales are expected to top $4 billion, making it far and away the most successful product-line in the company's corporate history.
This success, however, has to a certain extent become its biggest challenge. To keep up the brand's staggering growth, Disney constantly needs to engage new markets and expand its consumer audience. That, as much as social equity, was the motive behind the company's decision to develop the animated feature that opens everywhere this weekend: "The Princess and the Frog," which features Disney's first black animated heroine -- and its first-ever African American princess.
Threading the needle
Unlike every other Disney Princess tale, "Princess and the Frog" isn't rooted in a classic fairy or folktale (or, as with Pocahontas, extremely fictionalized history). It's tangentially inspired by the E.D. Baker children's book "The Frog Princess," but the protagonist of that tale is not black, and its setting is a typical fantasy setting, not Jazz Era New Orleans.
To accommodate their goals of creating something African Americans would embrace, Disney ended up rewriting and tweaking the story time and again. Early drafts of the script -- then still called "The Frog Princess" -- referred to the young heroine as a "chambermaid" named Maddy. Critics attacked the protagonist's serving-girl status and even her name as insufficiently aspirational for a princess (with some comparing it to a "slave name").
Meanwhile, a counter-backlash began to build, with critics on the right decrying Disney's decision to bow to "political correctness" and Internet commenters accusing the company of trying to "brainwash people" with "multicultural relationships" and "racial propaganda."
Without providing any spoilers, the end result is quite different from the version subject to those initial, mid-2000s reports -- and, in some senses, splits the difference between those two poles of criticism. Maddy is now Tiana, and rather than being a servant, she's the daughter of a poor but proud cook who inspires in her both a burgeoning culinary talent and the dream to own her own restaurant. The prince, rumored to be Caucasian in early drafts, has been named Naveen and is brilliantly played by Brazilian actor Bruno Campos; his hair is black and his skin is brown, reflecting either his Indian name or Latin-accented speech or both. And Tiana, voiced winningly by Tony winner Anika Noni Rose, is portrayed as strong and independent, and more than capable of making her own way in life.
"If 'Princess and the Frog' is successful, and there's every reason to believe it will be, you have the opportunity to upend the dominant cultural hierarchy you usually see in mainstream media," says Latoya Peterson, editor of Racialicious.com and a writer for leading feminist blog Jezebel. "In most films aimed at kids, African Americans are still depicted as nonessential parts of the narrative or as sidekicks, if they're even present at all."
In that sense, "Princess and the Frog" is a multicultural milestone, not quite as significant, perhaps, as last year's election of our first African American president -- but certainly an event with historic cultural implications. And commercial ones.
The Princess and the P&L
While it's true that three "multicultural" princesses -- Jasmine from "Aladdin," Pocahontas and Mulan -- preceded Tiana in integrating Disney's royal sorority (Delta Pi!), it's also apparent that the earlier trio were included simply to bring a diversity of aesthetics and traditions into the overall Princess canon. The intent wasn't to target Arab, Native and Asian American markets; multicultural outreach attempts by Disney on behalf of those films were primarily defensive in nature -- focused on stemming potential negative press from those communities, rather than actively cultivating them as consumers.
"With these other groups, I'll be blunt and say Disney was not as concerned with f***ing up," says Peterson. "Disney took the stance that, 'We're making this movie, and everyone's going to get on board because hell, we're Disney.' But with 'Princess and the Frog,' they've been extremely careful. They've taken calculated step after calculated step, and been responsive to feedback."
Peterson points out that in addition to the political consequences of offending the black community, there was a strong awareness of the commercial opportunity represented by the African American market, whose buying power is likely to pass $1 trillion by 2011.
"We're a hyperconsuming market," she says. "Every study out there shows that dime for dime, in media, clothing and accessories, personal care, electronics, toys and games, we outspend the so-called 'mainstream.'"
The less robust consumer prospects of the smaller Asian American and Native American markets have had a direct consequence on the profile of Mulan and Pocahontas; they're generally pushed to the rear of group portraits, and they're the two princesses most likely to be left out when the herd is trimmed down, appearing only in the most inclusive sets of merchandise.
Of course, that's because both Mulan and Pocahontas stretch the definition of "princess" dangerously thin, given how different their source material is from the classic European storybook template. Mulan's tale, about a girl who dresses as a boy to join the army, features more swashbuckling action than swooning romance, there isn't a castle to be seen anywhere, and the charming prince isn't a prince -- or particularly charming. Pocahontas's storyline is even more complicated, in that she, alone out of the Disney princesses, is based on a real historical character who almost certainly didn't actually hang out with talking trees and a mischievous slapstick raccoon.
Their decidedly un-fairy-tale narratives also don't offer the kind of merchandising options commonly associated with Disney princesshood: Poofy eveningwear, elaborate jewelry, fun accessories. Mulan spends most of her movie in armor; Pocahontas has one buckskin outfit to her name, and doesn't even wear shoes.
"If you get a panel of five-year-olds together and talk about it, they'll agree that Cinderella and Aurora and Snow White and Belle and even Jasmine are princesses," notes Peterson. "At the end of their movies, they get married. They have castles. They're rich. They're chillin'. But they'll say, Mulan and Pocahontas are not princesses -- they have jobs. Mulan is a soldier. Pocahontas is a diplomat. You can't be a princess if you have a job."
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