“Holidays” for me means “movies” so here we go:
I went and watch Disney’s “The Princess and the Frog” with a friend last week (hey, what can I say? I have a soft spot for Disney). This movie starts out with Tiana and her rich friend Charlotte listening to Tiana’s mother Eudora (Oprah Winfrey) tell the story of the Princess and the Frog while Eudora is finishing one of Charlotte’s many princess dresses. Charlotte is all for the idea of kissing a frog as long as it means she gets to be a real princess, whereas Tiana is completely against the idea. Tiana and Eudora then go home, to Tiana’s father, James (Terrance Howard), where he shares his dream with Tiana to have a high-class restaurant of his own, called Tiana’s Place.
Fast forward about a decade, and you see Tiana (Anika Nori Rose) working multiple jobs, scrimping, and apparently never going out with her friends because, despite all the nay-sayers, she wants her restaurant is prepared to work really hard to get it. She has the added reason of wanting to see it fulfilled because her father died in WWI, and she wants to be able to make her dream come to fruition.
At the same time, Prince Naveen (Bruno Compos) from a fictional country comes with his servant Lawerence (Peter Bartlett). Prince Naveen, we discover, has been cut off financially from his family for basically being a lazy lay-about. Now he has to get married in order to support his habit of doing nothing but a shifty lay-about, and, judging from the look of the girls that are sighing at his feet, shouldn’t be too much of a problem.
Especially since Miss Charlotte (Jennifer Cody) is still aching for her prince, and Big Daddy LaBoff (John Goodman), the sugar baron of New Orleans, and Miss Charlotte’s father has arranged for Prince Naveen to come and stay at his guest house.
Prince Naveen’s visit is fortuitous for Tiana as well, because Charlotte in an act that is part generous and mostly curious pays Tiana quite a lot of money to make her famous desserts* which gives her just enough money to buy an abandoned sugar mill for her restaurant. She goes and tells the financiers that she wants it, and they promise to bring the paperwork at Big Daddy’s party for Tiana to sign.
Prince Naveen, on the way to the LaBoff’s, is waylaid by a voodoo priest that everyone calls “The Shadowman” (Keith David). The Shadowman makes a deal with Voodoo spirits and tricks Naveen into coming into his “lair” despite Lawerence’s warning.
At the party, Tiana is heartbroken to discover that the financiers did not bring the paperwork because someone has apparently out-bid her. She has until Wednesday to come up with the remaining money, or her dream of starting a restaurant will not come to fruition. At the same party, Miss Charlotte is going crazy because Prince Naveen has not yet showed up. Yet, she calms down enough to help Tiana into one of her millions of princess gowns after the dog, Stella, ruins Tiana’s costume.
Just after Tiana gets into her dress, Charlotte hears Prince Naveen enter and is away in a fog of squeals to waltz the night away with her beloved. Tiana is left in Charlotte’s room, and finally gives wishing on a star a try, seemingly having run out of options. A frog jumps up on the balcony and she asks it if it wants a kiss, and then completely freaks out when it answers “A kiss would be nice”. After she calms down a bit, Naveen introduces himself, and convinces her to kiss him because “His parents are very wealthy”. After much waffling, Tiana decides to pucker up and kiss him, only to become a frog herself.
The two are chased out into the bayou, and after finding a hiding place from some very hungry alligators, discover that neither is whom the other thought they were. Naveen admits that he’s broke, and Tiana says she’s not a princess- she’s a waitress. They decide to find away to get back to New Orleans, and while Tiana is rowing, Naveen decides to play a little banjo. His banjo-playing attracts the attention of Louis (Michael-Leon Wooley), a jazz-trumpet playing alligator. He wants to play in a jazz band, but his one attempt ended poorly. He tells them about Mama Odie, a good voodoo priestess who could probably help them out. He decides to take them to Mama Odie, also deciding to try and see if she would turn him into a human too.
Louis gets them hopelessly lost, so a Cajun firefly by the name of Ray (Jim Cummings) gives them a hand.
The rest gives away massive spoilers, so I’ll just let you watch it from there.
To unfortunately damn this movie with faint praise, it is not nearly as sexist and racist as I thought it would be, though, it’s portrayal of Cajuns is really, really classist.
First, the bad- it is classist. The Cajuns are portrayed as toothless and very stupid. Not only is Ray in love with a star, but three Cajun hunters are so dumb they are out-witted by two frogs (albeit, frogs that are actually human). None of the cajun-inspired people have all their teeth, and they all seem to be in poor health generally.
And, though this is Disney’s first black princess, they didn’t quite get away with no racism, the biggest part being, of course the “Voodoo” priests and priestesses. I haven’t studied vodun in any great depth, but I do know this it is an actual religion, that actual people follow, that is nothing like the stuff the portrayed on the movie. It isn’t fairy godmother crap. Tiana is in her “princess form” for all of 30 seconds- the dress you see in all the posters, and probably going to be on all the dolls isn’t, by far, the thing she’s in the most. For most of the movie, she’s a frog. I suspect it would be pretty easy to forget what color she was if you felt like identifying with her since, again, she’s a frog for most of the movie.
It also doesn’t entirely miss the sexism- this is Disney *SPOILER ALERT* Tiana has to marry the Prince, even though it makes no god-damned sense for her to do so.
That being said, there is a lot of good in the movie. I think it shows the difference between the black and white community without making it to obvious of a statement (this is for children, after all). In the story, Tiana and Charlotte may be friends as little kids, and even as adults, but they are not in the same social strata at all. Charlotte has a room bigger than Tiana’s house, Charlotte has millions of princess dresses that Tiana’s mom has made, but Tiana only has nice-ish dresses. Charlotte, as an older girl, plays at being a debutante whereas Tiana works multiple jobs as a waitress. Tiana is snubbed by the financiers who don’t seem to care about how much she worked to get the place, and it could be inferred that they just didn’t want to give it to someone “with her background”. The movie passes the Bendel Test (Tiana and Eudora when talking about opening the restaurant), and Tiana is just generally a hardworking character. None of the black characters in the movie are implied at being lazy- Tiana’s father works multiple jobs as well.
One thing I really liked about it is sort of odd, but in a way kind of heartwarming. Charlotte is not a bad person, nor is Big Daddy. Charlotte is a generous and kind person, if really flighty and self-involved. Big Daddy loves his daughter; though he does spoil her a bit. I thought it was an interesting parallel to show Charlotte and her father, and how sweet and devoted they were to each other; and then to shift to Tiana leaving the mansion to go with her mother back to the poor side of town and how Tiana and her father share the same sort of love and devotion. It was sort of “We love just as much with less money over here as well”.
The movie does drag a bit. I think half as many songs would have done it. I enjoyed quite a few of them, but it just ruined the pacing to have so many of them. The artwork was gorgeous- very Jazz 20′s.
Prognosis: Fun- watch it with a kid (or a kid at heart).
The reason I have Pinocchio** as a bonus is after I watched The Princess and the Frog, I went home and watched Pinocchio (I told you I had a thing for Disney movie). I hadn’t seen that movie in forever, but something made me want to watch it again that night. Suddenly, it made me realize how far Disney had come in terms of racial sensitivity and sexism. What on earth ever qualified Jiminy Cricket as a conscience? He was a skirt-chaser, his first act in the movie is to break-and-enter, he looses his temper at the drop of a hat, and he’s way too proud for his own good. Strombolli is about the most racist portrayal of a Roma that I have ever seen. As for women- well, what women, exactly? We have the Blue Fairy, and, theoretically, Cleo, a fish. Not exactly passing the Bendel Test here. ***
Disney always warms my heart. In an area that is increasingly cynical and bitter, I’m happy to watch a light-hearted flick with a climatic plot structure and happy songs. This doesn’t mean that Disney gets a pass, but it means that they get nostalgia glasses. But seriously, I’m glad to see them actually making progress with the characters.
*Mea culpa- I didn’t actually catch the name of the desert. It had jam and powdered sugar and was fried and sort of resembled a square doughnut. They looked tasty.
** If you haven’t seen the movie- puppet gets turned into a golem, has a cricket for a conscience, nose grows when he lies, has adventures because his guardians all suck, turns into a real boy, the end.
***Also, this has never bothered me until just now, but what exactly do the “bad boys” do that justifies them getting turned into jackasses and sold to do heavy toiling? They smoke and drink, but they were allowed to do that. They fought, but only in the areas that said “fight here”. They destroyed property, but again, they were told they could destroy this property. Other than that, they played pool and played on carnival rides. I’d probably be pretty mad at the parents for not taking care of the kids, but really, what they didn’t wasn’t even terribly immoral.
Psst… it’s the Bechdel test.
I can never, for the life of me, spell that name. *sigh*
I like to pretend it is spelled Bechamel.
@Tree — There are so many wrong things I could say here, I’m just going to enjoy the silence.
We saw Princess and the Frog a few weeks ago, actually. And I enjoyed quite a bit of it, particularly the portrayal of race relations and the subtle satire of both every previous Disney movie, their fans, and the whole Disney princess phenomena.
And then they went and fucked it up by having her marry the prince.
I mean, I get that it’s kindof a lose-lose situation here. If she didn’t marry the prince, the response would be, “Oh, I see, Disney’s first and thus far only black princess doesn’t bag the dude. Classy!” But she does get the prince, of course, continuing Disney’s long and infuriating tradition of writing heroines so heteronormative that they have post-marital sex on the first date.
I suppose they could have tried actually building the relationship, narratively. Alas, that would probably have required a different tact than “I hate you! I meant love!,” since a single day is barely enough time for the “hate you!” to settle in, let alone the love.
I don’t understand why they couldn’t have been made human by Charlotte, and then done the restraunt montage, and then got married. If you did the restraunt montage first, you could pretend that they’d been doing stuff together for a long while, and it would have made more sense.
I think them getting together later might feel a bit too last minute hookup-ey, though it basically does anyway. Also, you’d have to find something else to drive Act III (not that they couldn’t, mind).
You did miss that the Cajun guy ends up married to the star … and as her lesser half. That is an interesting twist.
The voudon is folk voodoo, not Santeria. Interesting approach, that. Kind of like the evil witch step-mothers in other Disney stories.