Abstract
Both in Mulan and Princess and the Frog, Disney eschews a traditional fairytale ending involving palatial opulence by substituting an alternative narrative for women of color. Mulan disguises herself as a male soldier in order to serve in her father’s place. After sharing victory with male companions, she willingly returns home to domesticity and the confines imposed by her gender. Tiana spends two thirds of the movie as a frog, substantially limiting her on-screen time as an African American female. Like Mulan, she is driven to please her father. She fulfills his dream of owning a high-end restaurant, ironically named Tiana’s Palace, the closest she comes to a royal lifestyle. Although protagonists with more realistic lives could potentially enhance viewers’ connection with them and model a work ethic or commitment to home life, the standard and more financially successful Disney narrative immerses viewers in a fantasy world of endless prospects including a life of royalty. These nonwhite heroines instead display a willingness to settle for more modest aspirations in stories replete with stereotypical gender and race-bound tropes. This divergent narrative suggests that protagonists of color are not entitled to a life of leisure and privilege that white Disney princesses enjoy.
Highlights
The Disney Princess franchise is a powerful force in the lives of young girls [1,2,3,4,5,6], especially girls of color seeking same-race role models in the public eye [7,8]
The fact that Tiana becomes a princess by virtue of her marriage to an inferior prince detracts from her standing. While both Mulan and Tiana provide relief from tropes of past princesses who often passively wait for their prince to fall for or save them, their storylines differentiate them from most white princesses in ways that could help explain the movies’ limited financial success and resonance
While Mulan is immersed in a military environment serving as a soldier in her father’s stead, she adapts to a male-dominated culture that reinforces stereotypical masculinity
Summary
The Disney Princess franchise is a powerful force in the lives of young girls [1,2,3,4,5,6], especially girls of color seeking same-race role models in the public eye [7,8]. Tiana spends two thirds of the film as a frog, watches while stereotypical voodoo spirits dispatch the black male villain, and ends the movie rejoicing in her relatively mundane aspiration of restaurant ownership Both movies seem to tout female strength, but in the end, each depicts the heroine happily embracing tradition and reverting to ordinary gender roles. Societies 2016, 6, 35 and Tiana, limitless dreams appear off limits, seemingly the domain of white princesses who harness magical power to live beyond the bounds of even the top of the social hierarchy These portrayals of nonwhite “princesses” distance Mulan and Tiana from the usual narrative celebrating royal life, a course of action with implications for the financial success of these movies as well as the perpetuation of racial and gender stereotypes
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