What The Princess and the Frog has to do with binary thinking

 Disney fan or foe?  It seems there are only two choices.

Last week I showed Mickey Mouse Monopoly to an undergraduate Race, Class, and Gender course.  It was the first time I had seen it, too, and it was a rather shocking upheaval of all of my cherished childhood Disney movie favorites.  Granted, I've long since recognized that the corporate behemoth that is Disney has not had dismantling binaries as its first priority.  But it's been a long time since I've seen or thought about many of the films I loved as a child, and it's pretty horrifying to look back at them given what I know now.  I mean, Ariel gave up her voice for legs and a dude!   She was, quite literally, silenced by heterosexuality.  And sure Belle was an avid bookworm who rejected Gaston's advances, but (as a social worker in Mickey Mouse Monopoly laid out) Beauty and the Beast is essentially a domestic violence narrative.  Belle is able to see the 'tenderness' in the Beast after enduring starvation as punishment, numerous verbal assaults, and witnessing her father being dragged away and thrown out into the snow.  (If you just hold out long enough through the abuse, girls, he'll be a prince in the end!)  Mickey Mouse Monopoly goes on to document the racist depictions of Blacks (as crows and apes in The Jungle Book, as gorillas in Tarzan), Latinos (as chihuahuas in Oliver and Company), and Asians (as Siamese cats in The Lady and the Tramp).

Interestingly, the scholars depicted in the film stated that, in criticizing Disney, they ended up taking on a greater risk than they had expected.  Disney is largely accepted and believed to be wholesome fun, and those who critique it are denounced for daring to suggest otherwise.  To criticize Disney is to be branded the murderers of children's joy.

I've grown fairly distant from the Disney animated films (although I have seen most of the Pixar movies, which is pretty much the same thing), and I wondered if anything had changed in the nearly 10 years since Mickey Mouse Monopoly was released.  I decided, hey, why not?  I'm a glutton for punishment.  So I watched The Princess and the Frog.

There has been considerably controversy surrounding The Princess and the Frog because it features Disney's first black princess.  Disney notes (often and loudly) that went to atypical great lengths to not be racist misrepresent blacks.  After complaints by various folks in the black community, Disney changed the title of the film from "The Frog Princess" to "The Princess and the Frog" to avoid making it sound like Tiana was frog-like.  They also changed the lead character's name from "Maddy" (too close to "Mammy") to "Tiana."  They axed Tiana's occupation as a maid and changed it to waitressing.  The male romantic interest - Prince Naveen - was originally white, but it looks like they just tinted him to be Creole.  Disney even took on Oprah Winfrey as a technical consultant to, well, to put it plainly, check in with a famous black person about some of their plot decisions.

Despite these changes, many unfortunate stereotypes and insinuations remain.  These have been blogged about at length elsewhere, including the fact that Tiana spends more time (23 minutes versus 17 minutes) on screen as a frog than as a human and that the evil character is a Voodoo witch doctor (who looks suspiciously like Prince). 

I would also add what I think are the most predominant problems in the film.  The primary story arch is that Tiana wants to fulfill the shared wish of her and her (now deceased) father to open a restaurant.  Tiana idolizes her father, and her mother (although living) is a background character.  When she teaches Naveen to cook, marries him, and opens a restaurant with him, it looks creepily like she's filled the empty space left by her deceased father.  She is a hard-working, industrious, independent, tireless young woman, and I don't know why she couldn't have the restaurant all by herself.  Prince Naveen is spoiled and accustomed to having servants brush his teeth for him.  Why does the first black princess typify the strong black woman caricature and end up with a lazy prince?  She requires him to complete her story arch - that of a poor little (black) girl without a (black) father who will have male guidance once again when she marries a (light-skinned black) man.

The second major problem is even more insidious.  As a little girl, her father told her that wishing on a star is not enough - it "can only take you part of the way."  She must help her wish along "with some hard work of her own," and then she "can do anything you set your mind to."  (Meritocracy lives!)  She works her ass off to raise the funds to buy property for the restaurant, but must learn the lesson of the difference between what she wants and what she needs.  What she "wants" (her own restaurant) is not enough without what she "needs" (heterosexual romance with Prince Naveen).  I am not kidding.  This is the take home message of this film.  Then it ends with a song about how "dreams do come true in New Orleans."

For those of you with kids of your own these days, I have no idea what you show them. 

The point in writing all of this is to say that, when reading the message boards in response to The Princess and the Frog, I saw they were packed with perfect examples of binary thinking (see Feminist Reverberations, Scott 2002).  Those who criticize the film are Debbie-Downers and reverse-racists.  Those who support it are racist bigots and apologists for Disney.  Invectives lobbed from either party further cements factions.  Clearly I shouldn't be expecting an open dialogue on internet message boards, but the ease with which someone who expresses frustration at the portrayal of blacks in the film is told they are being "so unfair" to Disney, who valiantly "took great pains to avoid being racially insensitive" is mind-blowing.  Disney perpetuates this with its "with-us-or-against-us-plus-don't-forget-we-cleared-it-with-Oprah!" stance.

What I would add to Scott's critique of binary thinking is that, given the structures of privilege and oppression woven into all examples of binary thinking, one 'side' generally has more power and force than another.  (In her example of Palestine and Israel, we can all say quite certainly which 'side' is a less dangerous one to take in the United States).  In the case of The Princess and the Frog, it's very easy - and accepted - to claim that black people are being reverse-racists when they barely open their mouths to mention that they are being inaccurately and dangerously portrayed.  (A great blog entry about this power differential and why the black critique of the film matters can be found here).  As in the case of the scholars behind Mickey Mouse Monopoly, you can't do much critiquing when you are up against a global industry that has, more or less, dominated children's imaginations and sense of play for nearly a century. 

To critique something doesn't mean you hate it (well, at least most of the time).  It does mean you want to change it.  When we encounter binary thinking, perhaps it would serve us well to think about what it is each side wants to have changed.  In the case of Disney, the answer is not very much.

And that should be all the answer we need.