Princess and Frog

The Princess and Frog is Disney's first black princess.  In 2009 this movie was released and it made a lot of people proud to see that Disney had finally made a movie centered on a black princess.  I can speak for myself, that I was happy to see this as well.  However, through all of the excitement there are still some downfalls and stereotypes to this movie.
In this section in class of Race and T.V. I choose to focus on the movie the princess and frog.  From the documentary "Color Adjustments", and the book from this class, I was able to still pull out the negativity that is portrayed amongst blacks from this movie that was so exciting.  First from color adjustments, it talks about how there are three stereotypes that are portrayed which are, slave/maid, native, and clown.  From these three two were used in the movie Princess and Frog.  I am going to start with the obvious first which is the struggle to survive.  In the book Gender, Race , and Class they state how blacks work for middle working class whites.  In this movie, the mother does work for a white family as a seamstress.  This family that she works for, they are really close as families, but never the less she is still working for them.  The father also worked, until he died in the beginning of the movie, which is another way they portray blacks which is not having both parents around.  From the little time that he was in the movie, he was hardworking man that helped to provide for his family, but he still was absent for majority of the movie.  So from her tween years on up, Princess Tiana was raised by only her mother who worked for the white man which is stereotype number one, maid.  The other stereotype that they use is the clown image.  One of the old ladies that is helping them through voodoo has this clown appearance.
So, as I watch this movie, I can still see how they are not pulling away from the stereotypes of blacks in television, but still find a way to incorporate it in a lot of things.

Refrences

Riggs, M. "Color Adjustments". (1991).

Coleman, R. (2003). Black Sitcom Portrayals. Dines, G. & Humez, J. (Eds.), Gender, Race and Class in Media 2(79-88). Location: Thousand Oaks,CA: Sage.