Princess and the Frog Reading Response

In the novel Diversity in Disney Films: Critical Essays on Race, Ethnicity, Gender, Sexuality and Disability, the chapter called “Blackness, Bayous and Gumbo: Encoding and Decoding Race in a Colorblind World” written by Sarah E. Turner explores the ways in which "Disney and its audiences negotiate the complexities inherent within the readings of [The Princess and the Frog] by drawing, in part, upon the theories of encoding and decoding as articulated by Stuart Hall in his seminal 1973 study" (83). When I first watched the film The Princess and the Frog, I never put much thought into whether I felt like it was conveying a racist message or not. I obviously realized the fact that Tiana, the princess, was the first black Disney Princess, but I did not believe there was any ulterior motive or reasoning behind this decision. I think because I watched it a long time ago I did not remember many of the details of the plot until I re-watched it for class. After reading Turner’s essay, she also helped jog my memory because she pointed out aspects of the film that I still did not pick up on after watching it. When I watch movies I guess I don’t really put much thought into and instead get carried away in the plot and the characters. I never think to analyze below the surface, but this essay does, and manages to make some solid points. I think the reason behind much of the controversial response to the film was fact that Tiana was not only Disney’s first black princess, but she was also the first princess whose life started in poverty. In comparison to the other Disney princess films, the princesses are born into royalty and grow up living in extravagant palaces. Tiana had to work hard to get the life she wanted to have. I think this was a mistake on Disney’s part to make Tiana this first black princess and also the first princess to start her life living in poverty. This can serve as proof that this film is racist since she is black and she is poor. It would have made a huge difference if Tiana was born into royalty like the rest of the princesses. Another aspect of the film that I think can support the claim that the film is racist is the face that the majority of the time in the movie, Tiana is a frog. Turner states in her essay that “human Tiana is only on the screen for the first twenty-nine minutes; frog Tiana takes up the next fifty-nine minutes, leaving only the final three and a half minutes for Tiana and Naveen to reappear in human form” (90). I did not even realize this while watching the film, but I cannot believe that it is true. These two points made by Turner helped convince me that there is a slight chance the Disney film The Princess and the Frog is in fact racist. A small part of me though still thinks that Disney did not mean anything of it and was just trying to create another one of their brilliant children’s movies.