I have a love-hate relationship with Disney. I love Disney because I love stories about whimsical and spontaneous worlds. A world without a little magic and mystery is stale and unexciting. In our dull, 9–5 world, I crave thrilling adventures and passionate romances, like the ones I would create as a child. On the other hand, Disney didn’t include me in those magical adventures. There wasn’t a single Disney character I could say, “Yup, that’s me.” The closest character with my experience was Esmerelda from The Hunchback of Notre Dame (phenomenal movie by-the-way, best from the Disney Renaissance era), and I’ve watched The Princess and the Frog a dozen times to satisfy my inner little girl. I just wish she existed when I was growing up. Don’t get me wrong. I acknowledge movies like Aladdin, Pocahontas, Brave, Mulan, etc. However, there are too many people on this planet with beautiful stories worth telling, so where are there stories?
Let’s cut straight to the point, Walt Elias Disney wasn’t a saint. He was born in 1901 in Chicago, Illinois, and died at the age of 65. Societal norms were exceptionally different in comparison to now. Aladdin debuted in 1992, Pocahontas debuted in 1995, The Hunchback of Notre Dame debuted in 1996, Mulan debuted in 1998, the first black Disney Princess debuted in 2009. Do you see the trend? Firstly, let me applaud the team that worked tirelessly to pump out these fantastic movies in the 1990s. I see you, I appreciate you, and I thank you!
However, why’d it take so long for the black girl to get her princess, and her romantic story, and her ballgown? I’m a little salty us black girls missed the Disney Renaissance period. Jafar didn’t need to return, Pocahontas didn’t need to meet another John…am I wrong!?!
“The page had a girl who mayhaps be a queen or princess sleeping in a big bed and a white boy standing over her who mayhaps be a king or prince or duke or any hoity-toity white man. The white boy look at the white girl like she be the beautifullest, preciousest thing.” — The Book of Night Women, Marlon James
I can recall a Halloween school day in 1st grade. I wanted to dress up as a princess, and I did my best with what my mom could provide me. At recess, a girl came up to me and said, there are no black Disney princesses, so how can I be a Disney princess for Halloween? She wasn’t wrong. She hit the bullseye, regardless it still hurt. If I’m not a princess, then what can I be? Where do I belong? What’s a black girl’s magical and beautiful story? Does that mean I can’t be the “beautifullest, preciousest thing”?
Representation allows others to see you in roles that deviate from the norm, but our society conceptualizes characters to be, think, and look a certain way. For example, James Bond can’t be black because he’s “supposed” to be a European man. Sleeping Beauty cannot be a man because the original story’s character is a woman. A knight in shining armor cannot be a woman because only men were knights. More often than not, our reasonings aren’t factual.
So you may be asking, why should the role deviate from the story we’ve come to know? Great question! In some instances, it shouldn’t, and in other cases, it wouldn’t hurt. Disney’s The Princess and The Frog took place in New Orleans, did that bother people? Apparently not. Yet, if Mulan were a white woman, people on the internet might go to war with each other (I know what you’re thinking, “That’s cultural appropriation!” Hear me out and keep reading). It’s clear we have tolerance for some change, because Disney adjusts stories all the time, so it’s not entirely out of the question to fill roles by another race or gender. We want representation, yet we value authenticity. We want to avoid cultural appropriation, yet we want to hear other cultures compelling stories. We’re at odds with what we want, and it’s a delicate line to walk, but it doesn’t mean it’s not worth walking.
Representation in the media can sometimes come off as disingenuous. We’ve all seen films and shows where a character doesn’t belong in the storyline, and regardless, they exist to meet a socially acceptable quota. Fixing representation boils down to understanding who you want to represent and how to retell those stories in a meaningful and impactful way. Although we’ve come so far from the 19th century, we haven’t come far enough to understand different cultures and different people stories. With the billions of people on this planet, there’s an assortment of stories to be told. So why not tell those stories and embark on those adventures? Disney has come a far way, but we have even further to go.
Hey Disney, we’re waiting to hear more stories, and we’re waiting to see our stories.
