Disney's Attempt at Political Correctness Is Awkward

I am a lifelong lover of all things Disney. I regularly watch Hannah Montana, I supported the High School Musical phenomenon, and for most of my youth I planned on living inside the Enchanted Castle at the Magic kingdom. As this last detail implies, I have a special place in my heart for the Disney princesses; in fact,

However, while most reviews felt the animation was fresh and the score (courtesy of musical stalwart Randy Newman) was full of toe-tappers, there was a general consensus that there was something just a little "off-color" about the film itself. I happen to agree. The entire concept screams of political correctness in a way that is almost too awkward to bear. The story in and of itself is so utterly contrived that one cannot avoid the fact that Disney was going out of its way to create a situation in which there could be a black princess.

Where The Lion King had previously failed to coronate an African American princess (and indeed used all of Disney's continental African mojo in the process), the producers of The Princess and the Frog were driven to succeed. Tiana (originally named Maddie, but renamed in 2007 because Maddie was too racially charged) is a waitress aspiring to be a chef in New Orleans in the 1920s. While attending a costume ball at her friend Charlotte's mansion, she is mistaken for a princess by Naveen, the jazz-obsessed Prince who has been transformed into a frog by evil villain and voodoo doctor Facilier.

Firstly, using New Orleans for the setting is not only desperately cloying for the nationalistic pride vote, but showing just how hard the producers had to try to find a setting in which this story could feasibly take place. Clearly this was a stretch or they wouldn't have had to make the villain be a sinister witch doctor; James Bond barely pulled that off in Live and Let Die, and in that case it was only because the real bad guy was Dr. Kananga.

The idea here that an ordinary girl has to dress up to be a princess is not new (take Cinderella, Belle, etc.), but the idea that the setting would need to import a prince from a made-up country is: there were no princes in 1920s New Orleans (or in America at all) which makes an unfeasible story even more of a stretch.

Secondly, what is the likelihood that an African American girl would be best friends with a rich white one in the Bayou in the 1920s? The film's creators made the prince white, so technically they already have their inter-racial relationships bases covered. Thinking about the movie from a child's perspective (or rather that of a parent prospectively showing it to his or her child), it seems savvy to show how people from diverse backgrounds can be friends in spite of their differences. However, while there's no reason why a child's film should be a lesson in civil rights, it shouldn't rewrite history either (or attempt to make up for movies like Dumbo and Song of the South).

Thus we enter the murky gray territory of political correctness. With terms coming in and out of fashion as often as computer technology, it's easy to get one's hand caught in the "racist" cookie jar for saying something offensive which had been correct the day before. So what is politically correct? Is it politically correct for Disney to set out to blatantly make a movie about a black princess, and then flagrantly pretend that that's not what they're doing? Is it better to acknowledge that they contrived a story to fit their quota or better to ignore it?

It's hard to know what is acceptable when the rules keep changing. For this specific situation, it would seem almost impossible to avoid some sort of political incorrectness, when, even in attempting to make the film as P.C. as possible, the producers end up being just as (if not more) offensive by trying to ignore the issues at hand. It is not possible to make something that is inherently not politically correct into something that is; making a film about a black princess in order to have a film about a black princess will always seem like a film made for the sake of having a film about a black princess.

In a way I pity Disney: even if they made a film which just so happened to feature an African-American princess, to a certain extent the character's race would be an issue no matter what. However, The Princess and the Frog is just a little too disingenuous to pass for that; the story seems to be hinging on the feasibility of a character of a particular race being a princess, not about a princess who happens to be black.

This is a general paradox: the harder we try to be P.C., the harder we fail. P.C. terminology changes every 10 years because it never seems quite right; no term will ever be quite right because as long as we separate people into groups, names will always be pejorative to a certain extent. Maybe if we didn't try as hard to make the differences okay, we wouldn't be forced to try to mask the fact that we're still emphasizing differences.

Emma Brodie is a junior Writing Seminars major from New Canaan, Conn.