Almost all of us are familiar with the Disney princesses and their tales. Cinderella the poor girl with an evil stepmother and stepsisters who gets her wish to go to the ball and meet her prince charming, Ariel the mermaid who just wants to abandon her life as a mermaid and live happily ever after with her prince...just to name a few. One of the things that I noticed when thinking about the princesses is how racially undiverse they are. The majority of them are white while Jasmine, Mulan, Pocahontas, and much more recently, Tiana are the ones that are of different ethnicities. I must clear up the fact that many of these princesses were not created by Americans (or in that case Disney as well) but were adapted from fairy tales by Grimms or Hans Christian Anderson, or others too. The last princesses that were added to the "Disney Clan" were the ones mentioned before, the non-white ones. The first one added was Jasmine in 1992 while the first princess, Snow White was shown in feature film in 1937. After the release of Snow White, four more were to follow before a different ethnicity was added. Why did it take so long to add princesses of different ethnicities? Right now, there is a pretty solid ratio of white to non white princesses but this makes me wonder if Disney would have thought something like this would happen back in 1932.
I think that it could be linked to the current American views towards Latinos. Many Americans are uneducated about different types of people and are quick to make assumptions and judgements. The other racially diverse princesses were not introduced when there was a direct discrimination towards that ethnicity. Sofia, on the other hand, is trying to be a representative for the growing number of latinos in the country. All in all, I feel that Disney is trying to do good by introducing a Latina princess but I am disappointed in how poorly they are portraying the different ethnicity. What do you think this shows about American attitudes toward equality and inclusion?
I think you raise a good point, and I think it's odd that Disney isn't portraying Sofia as "latino enough". When I first looked at the picture of Sofia on this post after you talked about how more princess of different ethnicities were added, I was wondering why they were adding new white princess? But she's not supposed to be white. Even though I feel like Disney is trying to do a good thing my introducing different ehtnicities to younger age groups, I think Disney is also imprinting and image in our minds of what a princess "should" look like. And what is a princess supposed to look like? And why does the Latino princess have to be pale and look white?
ReplyDeleteBesides the seemingly innacurate representation of the new Disney Princess, I think it is interesting to look at the fact that it seems like Disney is only coming up with this new character to make them look more inclusive. If you think about it, the first (and only) African American princess, Tiana, was created in 2009. It seems like Disney has recently been trying to be more inclusive when it comes to creating new characters. While I do truly believe this is a good thing, I still wonder what Disney's motive is: Are they creating these characters because they earnestly want to have more diverse characters, or do they just feel pressure to "appear" more diverse?
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