Did Disney Bow to Pressure to Change it's First Black Princess ?

So Disney finally decides to give us a Black princess who just happens to find her white Prince Charming, but suddenly it’s all too “stereotypical” and they have to go back to the drawing board. Uhmm….ok, what part of this is stereotypical again; because I must have missed the part where there were millions of Black girls with white Princes. *insert eye roll*

According to the Independent, this is the original storyline of The Princess and The Frog: An American Fairy Tale:

A musical set in 1920s New Orleans, the film was supposed to feature Maddy, a black chambermaid working for a spoilt, white Southern debutante. Maddy was to be helped by a voodoo priestess fairy godmother to win the heart of a white prince, after he rescued her from the clutches of a voodoo magician.
Disney's original storyboard is believed to have been torn up after criticism that the lead character was a clichéd subservient role with echoes of slavery, and whose name sounded too much like "Mammy" – an unwelcome reminder of America's Deep South before the civil rights movement swept away segregation.

The story has been changed to this:

The heroine has been recast as Tiana, a 19-year-old in a country that has never had a monarchy. She is now slated to live "happily ever after" with a handsome fellow who is not black – with leaks suggesting that he will be of Middle Eastern heritage and called Naveen. The race of the villain in the cartoon is reported to have also been revised.
The film studio began making changes a year ago, first to its title, The Frog Princess, which some had interpreted as a slur. Amendments to the plot followed.
Disney commented: "The story takes place in the charming elegance and grandeur of New Orleans' fabled French Quarter during the Jazz Age... Princess Tiana will be a heroine in the great tradition of Disney's rich animated fairy tale legacy, and all other characters and aspects of the story will be treated with the greatest respect and sensitivity."

I’ll just let folks read between the lines as to the “other characters” that must be treated with kid gloves. At this rate, perhaps we will see Princess Tiana sometime in 2009.

Thanks to Jezebel for the story.

Source

Related articles by Zemanta

• Disney's first black princess leads to race row