What I Liked Least:

What I liked least about The Princess and the Frog has nothing to do with the film. But rather all the lies, false stories and half baked conspiracies on the Web about the film. After I got done reporting on the big E3 Expo in June 2009, I turned my full attention to The Princess and the Frog and I was amazed at how many bloggers, mainly urban or Black bloggers, were going nuts over why Prince Naveen was not African-American? Why Tiana was turned into a frog for half the film? Or why it took Disney so long to make a Black Princess in the first place? Like 72 years ago Disney was gonna make Snow White and then a few years later make an African-American Princess animated film before Blacks could go to non-segregated schools, ride in the front of public buses in the South or live anywhere they wanted in America. We did not even make interracial marriage legal nationwide until 1967.

Now Disney could have made The Princess and the Frog in the late 50’s or early 60’s with Dorothy Dandridge as Tiana, Harry Belafonte as Prince Naveen and Louis Armstrong as  Louis. But someone would have had to sit down and ask Floyd Norman, Disney’s first and lone Black animator during the 50’s and 60’s, how realistic that scenario would be at the time. Floyd, who worked on Sleeping Beauty, The Jungle Book, Monsters, Inc., Toy Story 2, Mulan, etc., has been quoted saying in a 2007 www.jimhillmedia.com essay that “overly sensitive people see racial or ethnic slights in every image and in their zeal to sanitize and pasteurize everything–they’ve taken all the fun out of cartoon making.”

There were many academics and social critics weighing in on the New York Times about the social and racial aspects of Disney creating an African-American Princess. Or there are offbeat, bitter social media critics, like Armond White, who stupidly asked why Disney did not deal with overt racism of 1930’s Southern Jim Crow laws in a Grated cartoon film. Armond, writing for the New York Press, even suggests at the end of his angry tirade against Disney that the Song of the South was actually a better film because it’s racially tinged Southern animal characters “were historically, authentically, enlighteningly black, but this disingenuous Princess is a toad.” Armond is just a big Princess Tiana hater! But I do think Disney should release Song of the South on DVD.

And there was extra scrutiny put on The Princess and the Frog because it was being released in the shadow of the world’s greatest act of diversity—the election of Barack Obama as President of the United States. This was now truly historic times and groundbreaking multiracial film deserved better than snide gossip blogs spreading false rumors because–they never considered for a moment that maybe the film was going to be better than expected. Good news is always in short supply on urban blogs—even if it occurs 72 years too late for some Disney skeptics in the African-American community.