Disney's The Princess and the Frog was the first to feature a black heroine, but the film still raised some eyebrows. The studio is no stranger to controversy—here are 10 scandals from its past.
The Princess and the Frog
The Dec. 11 nationwide release of The Princess and the Frog marks the first time Disney portrays an African-American heroine on the big screen — about time. Still, the film has not escaped controversy. While studio execs agreed to use a more ethnic-sounding name (“Tiana,” instead of the originally scripted “Maddy”) and make her the head chef for an affluent white family (rather than her original job as a maid), critics had a few doubts. Why was Tiana’s prince given an ambiguous name and suspiciously light skin? Why set the film in New Orleans, home to a largely black community still reeling from Hurricane Katrina? What’s with the voodoo theme? In the end, however, the film has garnered some positive reviews: “Going into this movie, I thought the princesses in pop culture, especially Disney princesses, could exist only in stories in which helpless young women are saved by handsome young men,” Washington Post columnist Sara Sarasohn wrote about seeing the movie with her young daughter. “But Tiana is the princess I didn’t know I had been waiting for my whole life.”
Aladdin
The lyrics of Disney’s cartoon musicals aren’t generally known for their edginess, but the opening song of 1992’s Aladdin left some viewers steaming. As the movie begins, a character describes his Arabian home as a place “where they cut off your ear/ If they don’t like your face,” and concludes, “It’s barbaric, but hey, it’s home.” Arab-Americans said the line played on stereotypes and asked that it be removed. “Can an Arab-American child feel good after seeing Aladdin? The answer is no,” an official with the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee told Variety. (Critics also objected to a scene in which an Arab merchant attempts to slice off Princess Jasmine’s hand.) Disney defended the movie, calling it the first film in years to feature an Arab hero and heroine, but the company agreed to change the lyric in the home-video and CD versions (the new version: “Where it’s flat and immense/ And the heat is intense”). To the dismay of critics, however, the “barbaric” line remained. In a 1993 editorial titled “It’s Racist, But Hey, It’s Disney,” the New York Times countered, “To characterize an entire region with this sort of tongue-in-cheek bigotry, especially in a movie aimed at children, borders on barbaric.”
Song of the South
You probably haven’t seen Disney’s 1946 film Song of the South, but you’ve definitely heard it. Its signature song, “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah,” won a 1947 Academy Award, and the Br’er Rabbit animation sequences have been used in several TV spots and Disney specials over the years. But there’s no denying the fact that by today’s standards, the film is rather racist. Set in the post–Civil War South, the movie — in which a former slave named Uncle Remus regales children with amusing stories — depicts an offensively “idyllic” master-slave relationship, as the NAACP once described it. Adam Clayton Powell Jr. considered the feature’s depictions of happy slaves an “insult to American minorities.” Disney has declined to release the film on video in the U.S., fearing an outcry over the crude stereotypes.
Alice in Wonderland
When Disney first released its film adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s classic tale in 1951, moviegoers were not entirely pleased. British critics attacked the studio for “Americanizing” the story of Alice’s fall down the rabbit hole, while American viewers criticized Disney for distorting Carroll’s prose. “Mr. Disney has plunged into those works … snatched favorite characters from them, whipped them up as colorful cartoons, thrown them together willy-nilly … scattered a batch of songs throughout and brought it all forth in Technicolor,” read a review from the New York Times. (In the studio’s defense, Carroll was a pretty twisted writer whose work the Encyclopaedia Britannica calls “nonsense literature of the highest order.”) The film enjoyed a revival of sorts in the 1960s and ’70s, thanks to Jefferson Airplane’s 1967 acid-rock epic “White Rabbit” — and, no doubt, Alice‘s own inherently hallucinogenic imagery. Suddenly the Mad Hatter, the Cheshire Cat and the hookah-smoking, vowel-blowing caterpillar were icons for hippies across the country.
The Little Mermaid
Hollywood doesn’t get much more G-rated than 1989’s tale of perky Princess Ariel and her animated adventures under the sea. But the movie’s home-video cover deserved an adults-only rating, at least in the eyes of many scandalized parents. One of the tall, thin castle spires depicted in the cover’s artwork (also used in posters and other promotional materials) bore an uncanny resemblance to the kind of protuberance that men generally cover up with bathing suits. Disney was flooded with complaints once word of the similarity spread and strenuously denied rumors that the suggestive edifice was a work of sabotage by a disgruntled artist. “This is the Walt Disney Company,” a beleaguered spokesman was quoted in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch as saying. “Why would we do something like this?” Intentional or not, Disney had no interest in being perceived as smut peddlers — a phallus-free version of Ariel’s castle graced the cover of the movie’s LaserDisc version.
Dumbo
For a movie that’s still respected as one of Disney’s classics, elements of Dumbo have sure aged poorly. Case in point: the movie’s band of crows — a jive-talking (“Been done seen about everything when you see an elephant fly”) group of friendly deadbeats. And in case the stereotype isn’t blatant enough, the lead crow’s name? Jim. As in Jim Crow, the series of laws that mandated segregation for blacks prior to the civil rights movement.
Bambi
Death is a fact of life; the question is when it’s appropriate to clue kids in on this information. Disney has occasionally come under fire for plot points that are perhaps too grim for children. Tears beyond number have been spilled by impressionable tots when Bambi’s mother is gunned down by a hunter and when Simba is orphaned during a stampede in The Lion King. These gruesome scenes have caused some outrage: a bill proposed by a British industry-watchdog group in 2004 could have banned Bambi for causing children “psychological harm,” and when The Lion King was released, the New York Times‘ Janet Maslin pondered whether Mufasa’s “disturbing on-screen death” precluded it from receiving a G rating. It’s true that in both films, the death of a parent forces the protagonist to master the requisite life skill of overcoming adversity — but some question whether many typical Disney viewers are too young to be exposed to the theme.
Lady and the Tramp
The crafty cats in Lady and the Tramp are, as they say, Siamese whether you do or don’t please. Critics, however, remain largely displeased by the various Asian stereotypes embodied by the cats in the 1955 movie.
The havoc-wreaking twins first appear as floating, slanty eyes peeking out from inside a basket; they prance around to a distinctly Asian soundtrack, tormenting the Lady with their sinister and manipulative behavior — not to mention their pidgin English. The movie was released shortly after the end of the Korean War, when Asian stereotypes were rampant in the U.S. — a connection that analysts have used to explain the deeper significance of the Siamese antagonists.
Pocahontas
Disney thought it deserved a pat on the back when it released Pocahontas in 1995. Not only was it the studio’s first historically based animated film, but it also helped diversify a rather homogeneous group of past protagonists with its Native American lead — the second nonwhite Disney leading lady, after Aladdin‘s Princess Jasmine. But Native American groups complained that the studio strayed too far from history in the name of entertainment. For starters, there was no love story à la Romeo and Juliet between the real Captain John Smith and Pocahontas — a major theme in Disney’s version. In reality, Pocahontas was only about 10 years old when Smith arrived with the Virginia Company in 1607; she later considered him somewhat of a father figure but never a romantic interest. She did go on to save his life once, when Powhatan Indians wanted his head, which was how she earned the respect of the settlers. But there was no teary-eyed goodbye when Smith returned to England, as the Disney film depicts. Around 1613, Pocahontas was abducted by English colonists and taken to another part of Virginia; she was baptized as a Christian, married tobacco magnate John Rolfe and changed her name to Rebecca.
The Problem with Princesses
The Disney princess has become one of the most iconic symbols of Walt’s ever growing empire — and one of its all-time greatest brands. From dress-up dolls to bedding to silverware, the heroines are everywhere, and kids love them. But do the princesses really make good role models? A lot of parents — and feminists — would say no. The most prevalent characteristic of Disney’s three original princesses (Snow White, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty) is that they spend much of their movies as damsels in distress, waiting to be saved by men. It wasn’t until 1989 that Disney debuted The Little Mermaid‘s Ariel, a princess less passive and more defiant. But Ariel also gave up her beautiful voice for a pair of legs just so she could be with a man — who, of course, is a prince who rescues her in the end.
Source: TIME
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