The Princess and the Frog (and their races)

Ajay Gehlawat’s article on the “elision of race” in Disney’s The Princess and the Frog initially seemed like it was heading in a direction I could understand and might potentially agree with. The abstract talks mostly about the “dual contexts” of the movie’s New Orleans setting and 21^st century America release, which I agree is crucial in any interpretation or critique of the movie. I was also interested in his idea about how Disney deals with race by essentially avoiding it through the transformation of the two protagonists (both of whom are ‘brown’) into frogs. Despite my initial thoughts about Gehlawat’s article, it pretty much went downhill for me after the abstract. Many of his arguments and evidence are tenuous and questionable, and it almost seems like his use of flowery and sometimes pretentious language serves to mask this weakness in substance.

In his paragraph about the “conflation of blackness with bestiality” (a pretty ridiculous argument to begin with) Gehlawat uses cloudy language that makes his point impossible to understand. It’s as if he hopes the use of big words will lure his audience into simply assuming his argument is worth believing since he is capable of using such vocabulary (he has a PhD so he is obviously very intelligent but it also seems like he’s pretty good at using a thesaurus). For example, his topic sentence reads, “The regressive form, then, belies the salutary content, even as, again, it is the conflation of the two that makes the film so laudatory, i.e., the first animated black princess.” There are way too many commas and impossibly large words for me to even make sense of what his argument might be, making this sentence essentially useless to me, no matter what idea he is attempting to get across to his audience.

Underneath the unnecessarily complicated vocabulary and syntax, many of Gehlawat’s arguments are simply absurd and not really supported by any kind of substantial evidence. For instance, he argues that the restaurant in which Tiana works, Duke’s Café, is a reference to David Duke, a white nationalist and member of the KKK. While I applaud his historical knowledge, there is absolutely no proof that this connection is what the animators intended, and to say so is ridiculous. I feel like I could just as easily argue that the restaurant’s name is a reference to Duke University and its racially diverse population, which would imply a meaning entirely opposite from what Gehlawat suggests. I also feel like a lot of the questions he poses as to the exact political inner workings of the movie’s plot are unwarranted. No Disney movie ever explains what the “happily ever after” truly entails, nor do they explain the exact basis or process through which the couple are wed. To expect this particular movie to do so seems both unfair and even a little silly. It makes me wonder if he’s seen any other Disney movie ever made; there are always holes in the plot, but the movies are made for kids so it really doesn’t matter.

Basically I just feel like Gehlawat is trying way too hard to tear into the movie to prove that it portrays race inaccurately or unfairly. I actually can’t really say for sure what he was trying to prove because his language made it really difficult to understand what he was trying to say, but whatever his argument was, he didn’t convince me. In spite of this, there was one part of his article that I agreed with. He quotes Anika Noni Rose, the actress who voices Tiana, when she says, “I really hope we get to a point where Black characters in mainstream roles is not something we think about.” Even though these aren’t actually Gehlawat’s words, I give him credit for at least showing this side of the argument, even though it comes at the very end of his article. It should be a goal to reach a point where having a black protagonist isn’t the huge deal that it’s made into now, but rather just an element of the story. Race will always play a role, but it should never steal the show.