the princess and the frog

this is the latest trailer for the new disney animation "the princess and the frog"!

and it actually doesn't look tooooo bad...

i have to admit i was skeptical. the first black disney princess, after 75years of princesses. something was going to go wrong, right? well for some audiences it already has.

prince naveen

an arabic name, with a latin american accent. i actually think he looks cute, and a little cheesy. but the problem that a lot of black commenters are having boils down to "why couldn't they give her a black prince to fall in love with?".

people are up in arms about it - but i don't get the problem. the reason that disney didn't make the prince black is simple - they don't want this to be labelled as a BLACK film. although they are enjoying the free publicity in the black community as a result of their first black princess, they still want to make bucketloads of money and that means every race needs to feel included. this isn't an altruistic move on disney's part to show black women as princesses. no, they saw a gap in the market that everyone else was studiously ignoring, and decided to fill it.

it's capitalism hard at work and if you expected anything else then you should zip up, your naivete is showing!

how sad is it, that black people are looking to disney to provide positive images of black relationships? that's not disney's job. that's YOUR job as a parent, aunty, uncle, godparent, whatever, if that is something that you feel is important.

i love seeing healthy black relationships because that is what i have been raised to see as my ideal (without any disney input, i might add - lol). but i also love seeing happy relationships FULL STOP. and if Princess Tiana and Naveen find love, more power to them! a lil more love in the world is never going to be a bad thing.

i have also decided to forgo capital letters for a while, you may have noticed, no particular reason, just trying something new.