Walt Disney Introduces Its First Black Princess

11 Responses to “Walt Disney Introduces Its First Black Princess”

1. jonah84 on March 10th, 2007 7:34 pm

   That is funny…
   I am not sure the Lion King is about racism.. I mean people could say it is about color preference.

   But the Aladdin one is and not surprising to me. The story takes place in Baghdad or some middle-east city but everyone has american accent except the Evil guy or arch-enemy has an arab accent. That is surprising but knowing hollywood nothing surprises me.

   Hollywood is reflection or representation of some americans point view. In hollywood history it was usually the minority groups that usually had the demeaning or evil roles.

   The African-american community used to suffer from the usual gangster, pimp, drug dealer representation until recently where the community has gotten vocal enough and started boycotting movies.
   Other minority community groups have also restarted question their representation in popular media.

   However, hollywood needs bad characters.. before you had the russian or soviet, nazi, and now it is the arab terrorist…
   who next it will be the chinese or back to fu manchu

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fu_Manchu

2. The Raccoon on March 10th, 2007 8:52 pm

   Heh. The funny bit is that Walter Disney was apparently a Nazi supporter and a virulent anti-Semite.

   Which is why I usually avoid watching Disney movies. It’s not quite to the level of Leni Riefenstahl… but chafes like Wagner.

3. howie on March 11th, 2007 4:22 am

   Isn’t that a picture of Snow White?

   Oh…and I think it would have been cool if, in Alladin..they gave the bad Arab Shrek’s accent.

4. Mark on March 11th, 2007 7:19 am

   I think you guys are tilting at windmills. Alladin was produced with an American audience in mind primarily. Of course everyone is going to speak English. Also, because it is aimed at children, it requires obtuse uses of foreshadowing, i.e. make the bad guy sound different than everyone else. I suppose they could have given all the protaganists British accents and the bad guy an American accent, but that would have been even more confusing for American kids.

   In the Lion King, it is important to remember that all the characters are animals. Albeit, highly anthropomorphized ones, but still animals. This requires more drastic changes to the characters so that differentiation is readily ascertainable. One cannot just alter the faces somewhat, because they are animal faces, which humans are not naturally set to distinguish by face. This means make one bulky and fair, and make the other lanky and dark. The fact that the bad lion was dark is only happenstance. As I remember it, the warthog and baboon shamman were dark and they were good characters.

   As far as Walt Disney being a virulent Anti-Semite, lets face it, the Jews have had it coming for years. [/Sarcasm]. But seriously I doubt the Disney company has standing orders started with Walt, that asks all employees to create bad images of all groups of people who do not fit the American WASP profile.

5. Mark on March 11th, 2007 7:25 am

   Speaking of Disney, I believe that their movie, the lIttle mermaid, raises an important question for all men. If forced to sleep with a creature that is half woman half fish, would you rather sleep with one where the top half is human and the bottom half is fish or vice versa? I personally do not believe that there is one answer. I think that it changes with regard to how much one has drank. If you can’t tell I have drank alot before posting this.

6. Roman Kalik on March 11th, 2007 12:22 pm

   *shrug* Lion King was heavily built on a Light vs. Darkness struggle. It’s quite apparent from various scenes, from Simba’s dad showing him the hyena’s territory when he’s young (the sun doesn’t shine there) to Scar’s dark, thin, and pestilent look, to the whole land being dark and dead when Scar ruled.

   In the second Lion King movie Scar’s son wasn’t evil, yet he looked much like Scar in his appearance. And yet his mother, who was the true villain in the movie, looked as white and as fair as any. This one focused on internal struggle between Light and Darkness rather than external, showed that we each make our own choices rather than having someone else make them for us etc. The lions that followed Zira were always showed in darkness, again showing a clear Light vs. Darkness struggle, but they were shown in light when they stopped following Zira and so forth.

   As cartoons go, these were actually were good.

   As for Jafar, he didn’t have an Arab accent. He had a British Evil Mastermind accent. And even the British part was barely noticeable, mostly the way he drew out certain words in a silky, tempting kind of manner. I think only some of the side-characters (a few merchants, guards etc.) had a “Arab” accent, which was fake to the extreme.

7. aaron on March 11th, 2007 12:40 pm

   Damn you Roman you stole mine! It’s true, almost every villian in an American movie is going to have a British accent, I’m not really sure why that is.

8. Roman Kalik on March 11th, 2007 1:18 pm

   “Damn you Roman you stole mine!”

   *bows*

9. howie on March 11th, 2007 3:37 pm

   I think Anime is racist because it protrays Japanese as cartoon characters and also they don’t even look Asian. How about THAT!!!

   And Zelvin pitted blacks mobsters against Jewish mobsters…which is racist against Italians..no?

10. Finnpundit on March 12th, 2007 2:19 am

    That black princess seems to draw on some of that classic Josephine Baker kind of iconographic African beauty.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephine_Baker

    Kudos to Disney for coming up with this, late as it may be.

11. KHR on March 13th, 2007 5:28 pm

    Thanks Disney for coming around ( ehmm), but thank GOD for Fat Albert and the Black Chick on JC and the Pussycats. There are two AA Fathers out of philly who because they did not feel there was enough positive programming out there for black youth, created an awesome hip, witty and educational animated series titled Teddy P Brains ( it is this generation’s Fat Albert!!) it will make history! Saying all this to say, thanks disney for sprinkling hershey’s chocolate cocoa powder fairydust on one of your princesses but lets support the little guys who are making a difference www.teddypbrainstv.com !

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