The Princess and the Frog

[Dangerosa]

And Disney had never really been bothered by sticking to the source material. They COULD have made Ariel older than 16 and made her and her Prince acquainted before she went through her transformation. They could have made the Beast merely ugly and terrifying. After all, they changed the end of The Little Mermaid - along with its moral. Changing the little details they created wouldn’t have been hard.

For that matter, The Princess and the Frog is not true to the original fairy tale, or the book by E.D. Baker off which it is based.

[Freudian_Slit]

@Dangerosa

And Disney had never really been bothered by sticking to the source material. They COULD have made Ariel older than 16 and made her and her Prince acquainted before she went through her transformation. They could have made the Beast merely ugly and terrifying. After all, they changed the end of The Little Mermaid - along with its moral. Changing the little details they created wouldn’t have been hard.

I’m not sure how I feel about changing the story to make it more comfortable for a modern audience–I mean, just because things are a certain way doesn’t mean it’s an endorsement. The original story of the Little Mermaid isn’t exactly PC or uber feminist but I think it’s a way better overall plot than the drivel Disney gave us.

Also, I thought the point of Beauty and the Beast was that the beast was ugly and terrifying on the outside but that deep down, even though he could be cruel, he was kind and genuinely cared about Belle. The Disney beast wasn’t all that beastly–nowhere near as animalistic as the Cocteau version.

[RachelChristine]

Well I know I’m nobody <G>, but I loved it! I’ve taken my 4 year old twice, and wish I could go again. I guess I don’t read into it as deeply as other people, but I did think it was a lot of fun. Sure, there are parts here and there that aren’t perfect, but what movie is perfect! I actually find my self having random bits from the movie pop into my head all the time.

[Leaper]

@Freudian_Slit

I’m not sure how I feel about changing the story to make it more comfortable for a modern audience–I mean, just because things are a certain way doesn’t mean it’s an endorsement. The original story of the Little Mermaid isn’t exactly PC or uber feminist but I think it’s a way better overall plot than the drivel Disney gave us.

Sorry, but I think that any version without the blatant (even more blatant than the complaints already here) Christian moralizing ending (be good or the mermaids won’t get their souls!) is better.

[Skylark]

@CalMeacham

We saw it a week ago and liked it, but I can’t help but notice the similarities. The Prince, with his French accent and “of course I’m great and romantic” attitude, seems so much like Pepe le Pew in a Frog Suit. And an oversized bayou alligator that doesn’t want to eat people, but wants to perform New Orleans Jazz? Didn’t they have that in Cats Don’t Dance?

Cats Don't Dance (1997) - IMDb

He seems like that movie’s Loyal Retainer (warning: PDF). Just like Little John, which was basically the same creature as Baloo. For some reason Disney likes its sidekicks to be gentle giants.

[Yookeroo]

@Leaper

Sorry, but I think that any version without the blatant (even more blatant than the complaints already here) Christian moralizing ending (be good or the mermaids won’t get their souls!) is better.

Yes. Much better.

[Ukulele_Ike1]

This film has been coming up in discussions of the new live action Little Mermaid, because Tiana is still the only African-American Disney Princess.

One remark I’ve seen is “Howcum no Black PRINCES?” I’ve only seen Princess and the Frog in bloody chunks, because I’ve watched it with my 2 year old grandson and he likes to switch around in the middle of movies, but I was under the impression that Prince Naveen and his family (who appear at the end) were Black, possibly from somewhere in Africa.

Is it ever explained in the film just where the Prince is from?

(Sorry to bring back a zombie thread, but I didn’t think a new thread was necessary for a simple question)

[Darren_Garrison]

@CalMeacham

And an oversized bayou alligator that doesn’t want to eat people, but wants to perform New Orleans Jazz? Didn’t they have that in Cats Don’t Dance?

There is something similar in All Dogs Go to Heaven, birthing a trope:

Big-Lipped Alligator Moment - TV Tropes

[steronz]

@Ukulele_Ike1

Is it ever explained in the film just where the Prince is from?

(Sorry to bring back a zombie thread, but I didn’t think a new thread was necessary for a simple question)

He’s from Maldonia, which was made up for the film. Anything beyond that is conjecture.

[Kimstu]

But the setup seems to be deliberately based on the genuine historical phenomenon of “exotic” dark-complexioned “Oriental” or European people, and some African-Americans who dressed like them, often being able to dodge the Jim Crow-era color bar in the US.

How Turbans Helped Some Blacks Go Incognito In The Jim Crow Era […]

In mid-20th century America, the turban was a tool that people of color used for “confounding the color lines,” writes Manan Desai, board member of the South Asian American Digital Archive.

At the time, ideas of race in America were quite literally black and white. In some places, if you could pass yourself off as something other than black, you could circumvent some amount of discrimination. People of color — both foreigners and African-Americans — employed this to their advantage. […]

I spoke with Paul Kramer, a historian and professor at Vanderbilt University, who found that the turban was also used by African-Americans. They sometimes added robes, accents and carefully cultivated personas to bypass segregation laws and other kinds of discrimination.

He’s written about a black Lutheran minister, the Rev. Jesse Routté, who pulled off what Kramer calls the “turban trick.”

Routté had traveled to Alabama in a turban and robes, put on an accent, and quickly realized that it was quite easy to fool everyone there into thinking he was a foreign dignitary — and to be received as one.

“Then it kind of goes viral in 1940s terms,” says Kramer, “where the press picks it up, it becomes this colorful story that people are talking about.” When an article appeared in The New York Times , he says, people started pulling up examples of other cases.

The joke on white Southern society in PatF is that Prince Naveen is in fact no lighter-complexioned than many of the Black people who would not be welcome there, and he himself seems to have no color-bar constraints on his philandering (or indeed, on his eventual marriage). But because he’s a foreign Prince!, his skin color automatically becomes irrelevant and effectively invisible to the white elites of New Orleans.