With a Black Princess, Disney Hopes to Revive Box Office Magic

The princess Tiana is the latest in a long line of beautiful, animated female characters who can sing, and she is Disney's first African-American princess. While heroines in "Aladdin," "Pocahontas" and "Mulan" featured non-white princesses, Disney has often been criticized for avoiding the potential scrutiny that could come with its handling of an African-American female lead.

Set in New Orleans in the 1920s, Tiana, a waitress, is saving up to start her own restaurant. Her plans are thwarted, however, when she turns into a frog after kissing an enchanted prince disguised as one.

Disney's first African-American princess

	The character of Tiana works as a waitress in 1920s New Orleans.

For years, black commentators have worried about how Disney would approach the portrayal of Tiana and the question of racial prejudice in the film. "The Princess and the Frog" rarely addresses race directly, except when Tiana is denied a lease on her restaurant because the landlords doubt a woman of her "background" could run her own business.

Yet for many women who grew up without a Disney princess who looked like them, Tiana and "The Princess and the Frog" are long overdue.

"I'm probably more excited about this than my daughter because she doesn't realize the history of it," Shalaun Newton told the Washington Post.

"How wonderful that children are able to see people who look like their friends, their family, their neighbors represented in a way of beauty and intelligence," actress Anika Noni Rose, who voices Tiana, told the San Francisco Chronicle. "I think it's important to have representation in the world of fantasy for everyone because that's where children live."

Critics of the film, however, question why Disney's first African-American princess remains a frog throughout most of the movie, and why the hero, Prince Naveen, is ethnically ambiguous rather than black.

Is Disney attempting to make up for past missteps?

	Snow White was the first "Disney Princess."

Although "The Princess and the Frog" features a multiracial cast and a hard-working, independent heroine, Disney has taken hits for its past treatments of race and gender.

Feminist critiques of Disney films questioned why characters like Snow White and Cinderella should seek only marriage as their path to live "happily ever after."

Representations of race or ethnicity in Disney films have also been criticized as culturally insensitive -- from the sneaky Siamese cats in "The Lady and the Tramp" to the heavily accented hyenas in "The Lion King" made to sound like minority stereotypes.

In 1992, Disney changed the lyrics in the song "Arabian Nights" after the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee protested its offensive opening lines: "Oh, I come from a land, from a faraway place, where the caravan camels roam, where they cut off your ear, if they don't like your face. It's barbaric, but hey, it's home." 

Disney hopes to revisit past glories

	Disney first began making animated feature films in 1934.

Disney's animated feature films were once an integral part of American pop-culture, ruling at the box office and once garnering an Academy Award nomination for the Best Picture with "Beauty and the Beast."

But technology and special effects have changed movie making, and Disney's last hand-drawn film, "Home on the Range," opened in 2004 with a paltry $13.9 million.

"The Princess and the Frog" was hand-drawn using the same 2-D animation techniques that Walt Disney Studios employed successfully for years, before the 3-D technologies used to make recent animated films such as "Shrek" and "Wall-E."

"The Princess and the Frog" co-producer John Musker, one-half of the duo responsible for the hand-drawn hits "The Little Mermaid" and "Aladdin," told the Wall Street Journal that he relished the opportunity to revisit his old style. 

"There’s a whole generation of children who have never seen a film animated in this style up on the big screen. It’s a first for a lot of kids who have seen these kinds of film—but only on DVD," Musker said.