Mental Slavery

Disney Princesses

By

Ward Minnis

Thought I would share this from the March 18th Metro, Ottawa edition. This from the director of the movie Enchanted, which is not a bad flick by the way. The director of the film Kevin Lima is talking about the moment he first met Amy Adams. Listen to this:

She looked like a Disney Princess to begin with — she had the big round eyes, the fair skin, the little perky nose.

Isn’t that just down right white and dandy. If you check it he’s right though. Disney has been making animated films since 1937 and they haven’t ever thought to include a black heroine. Should we count Jasmine from Aladdin? Or did the Anti-Arab sentiment of that movie cancel her out? Hmm.

But wait! There’s a big fuss about Disney’s newest traditionally animated film coming out in 2009. It’s called the Frog Princess and guess what? It includes their very first African-American princess character. It’s set in New Orleans and …

Don’t you already know?

The main villain is a voodoo priest. I really didn’t see that coming.

Comments

3 responses to “Disney Princesses”

  1. Erica Avatar
    Erica

    As a mother of a four-year-old girl, I am incredibly sick of the Disney Princesses. They are on EVERYTHING. And even though I refuse to buy them, they have still snuck into my house via gifts from friends and relatives. My daughter knows their stories by heart without even seeing the movies. I am mostly bothered at the commercialism (“we can sell you any piece of junk just by slapping Cinderella on the package”) but the warping of traditional fairy tales and the sheer whiteness of everything just makes it all the more infuriating.

    We have a board game in which the princesses are trying to get to the “ball”; they have to collect magic slippers as they go along a path, then they will be able to dance with their prince. Jasmine’s in the game, but in the picture on the board she is the only princess who isn’t dancing with her prince. Pocahontas and Mu-Lan have shown up only in Disney Princess Memory and never on Disney Princess bedsheets, sneakers, books about the Princesses… whereas Ariel, who is a freakin’ fish-human hybrid, is included fairly often.

  2. main slave Avatar
    main slave

    @ Erica. Amen to that. Checked out your site too btw. Very nice. 🙂

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