Since posting I have experienced Bolos and O'Connor's TV Tokenism presentation (available here) and i have also watched this new animated film.
Within seconds of beginning the movie stereotypical characters as well as tokens were apparent everywhere. The film is complete with poor, sassy, superstitious and stereotypical blacks who serve whites who are both well dressed, pompous, spoiled and wealthy. Tiana's mother is a seamstress, Tiana is working multiple low-grade jobs, and despite being black spends more than 90% of the movie as a frog!
Token characters such as a "mystical minority" are also present in the character of Mama Odie (seen below)
Mama Odie acts as Tiana's fairy godmother and has a thick accent, and a knack for voodoo (something often associated with African Americans). A second 'mystical minority' is seen in Dr. Facilier, the evil 'shadow man' who transforms the prince (Naveen) into a frog.
Overall, I believe that stereotypes are enforced through this new fairytale. It is true that Tiana is indeed colored, however she is merely a token. Despite all the hype regarding a "black princess", Tiana ends up marrying a prince who is extremely white-looking.
Carolyn,
ReplyDeleteI agree with you. Especially after seeing the movie and pointing out all of the tokens present this movie is quite the example. I almost look at The Princess and the Frog as Disney's form of a 'two-for-one'. A 'two-for-one' is a double minority character. I believe that Disney used this movie in order to get all of their tokens out in one easy package, so they didn't have to keep making movies with tokens to say that they have.