#Princess and the Frog

[assistant-of-drama]

[He leans on the table and the table falls to the floor, the food is spilling everywhere...]

[Noah laughs softly...]

What if Alejandro loses his flirting skills when he's around someone that he actually loves?

[luckydiorxoxo]

tiana from princess and the frog inspired by this antique

[animatorroseoak]

They are stuck in my head 24/7

[a-little-ray-of-fantasy]

Brazilian hair care company Seda released a new product starring Tiana in her loose hair glory!

(The lady in the photo with Eudora and James apparently is Alcione, a very famous Brazilian singer!)

[academia-core]

princess tiana aesthetic

[masterhallmark]

Rant incoming

I feel like the problem with a lot of Disney's live action remakes (and arguably Wish) is they're trying to appeal to a crowd that no longer exists, namely the people who used to claim that the Disney Princesses were sexist.

All the interviews tend to include, "Well she's not chasing a MAN anymore" which...almost no one sees the princesses like that, anymore. Virtually NO ONE still believes the princesses are man-chasing sexist caricatures of women.

Cinderella is now hailed as an abuse victim who stayed strong long enough to get help to get out of her situation. Anyone who says she should have saved herself is basically regarded as a victim blamer. And it's very clear in the film she wasn't looking to marry the prince, she just wanted a night off. She was the only one who wasn't in line to meet him. She didn't find out she met the prince until he went looking for her!

Snow White is now hailed for her negotiation skills, ability to calm down after extreme stress (she had a moment of panic and had to cry for a bit, but who wouldn't after finding out The Queen hired someone to kill you?), and ability to take charge of a house of adult men. And again, she was an abuse victim, this time trying to escape ASSASSINATION ATTEMPTS. While she dreamed of her prince, it was secondary to her main goal of SURVIVAL. There are also entire video essays about how Snow White gave hope to people during The Great Depression.

Everyone acknowledges that Ariel wanted to be human BEFORE meeting Eric. We all know she was a nerd hyperfixating on humans, and also standing up to her prejudiced father.

We understand Sleeping Beauty wasn't the main character, the Three Good Fairies were, AND PHILLIP WOULD NEVER HAVE BEATEN MALEFICENT WITHOUT THEM! He literally depended on them! WOMEN SAVED THE DAY! But even then, is it really such a sin for a girl to fantasize about romance and fall for someone with corny pickup lines?

We all understand Jasmine just wanted someone to treat her LIKE A PERSON. She rejected every Prince before Aladdin because they treated her like a prize. So why did they need her to want to be Sultan? How did that make her more feminist when she already wanted to be treated like an equal and have a say in her future? Is it only empowering if you want a career in politics?

We admire that Belle, despite living in a judgemental village, was kind to everyone (even though she found the village life dull), and her story teaches girls that the guy everyone else loves isn't always a good guy. What's sexist about teaching girls about red flags? And she didn't start being nice to The Beast until he started treating her with respect and kindness.

Do I really NEED to defend Mulan or Tiana? I think they speak for themselves.

Rapunzel was yet another abuse victim who just needed a little help to get out of her bad situation. In this case, she also needed to learn that she was an abuse victim, and that what Mother Gothel did WASN'T normal, much like many victims of gaslighting.

And don't get me started on the non-princess animals.

Perdita had a healthy relationship with Pongo to the point she was open to express her pregnancy fears to him, and was ready to TEAR APART Cruella's goons for daring to touch her puppies as well as adopting the other puppies. Like, she was so ferocious the goons mistook her for a hyena! She's basically that "I AM THAT GIRL'S MOTHER!" scene from SpyXFamily if Yor were a dog. She and her husband were a TEAM.....but they made a Cruella live action to turn her into a girlboss?! The literal animal abuser!? THAT'S the woman you wanted to put on a pedestal when Perdita was RIGHT THERE!?

Duchess kept her kittens calm after they had been catnapped and was classy as heck. Nice to everyone regardless of social class during a time period where that was uncommon.

Lady stood up to Tramp when she believed he had abandoned her and didn't really care about her. She found out he was a heartbreaker and was like, "Nuh uh. No. You are not doing that to me! You put me through enough."

Miss Bianca from The Rescuers was IN CHARGE the whole movie, and was willing to risk life and limb to save an innocent child. THAT TINY MOUSE TOOK ON ALLIGATORS! And she picked Bernard to accompany her because he was the only one who wasn't ogling her. And then in the sequel SHE DID IT ALL AGAIN! I wish I were as brave as her.

Like, the public haven't accused these ladies of being sexist caricatures since 2014 (Actresses and actors don't count, they're out of touch like the rest of Hollywood) yet Disney is operating under the assumption that the public still thinks that way, hence all the "sHe'S nOt AfTeR a MaN iN ThIs VeRsIOn" talk.

The live action remakes are trying to attract an audience that doesn't really exist much, anymore, and back when it did exist, was comprised mainly of people who didn't actually watch the films. The Disney princesses are no longer seen as sexist, and feminine qualities are no longer seen as weak or undesirable.

[sunhealings]

People gonna come here from everywhere and I'm almost there

[fizzy-elf]

[riddlerosehearts]

💚 For the way you're something that I'd never choose, but at the same time something I don't wanna lose and never wanna be without ever again. You're the best thing I never knew I needed. So now it's so clear, I need you here always.

[luxmoogle]

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* You're in my world now, not your world, and I've got friends on the other side... ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*‧͙⁺˚*･༓☾

[paper-swirls]

Some lil froggie princes, and my fingertips to show just how lil they are

[takem46]

[semi-important]

Kingdom hearts is my best chance to see Remy interact with Tianna and to see that little rat swoon over how good Tianna's beignets are. Even if I had no other reason to pursue the series, that alone would be enough.

[animatorroseoak]

More Disney thoughts… what if as a permanent effect from the magic/shapeshifting, tiana and naveen’s frog markings don’t go away

[lackadaisycats]

I tried to answer this succinctly, but it turned into an essay. (Sorry.)

The Princess and the Frog was not accurate, strictly speaking, but dinging it for that would be like criticizing the Lion King for not being a realistic wildlife documentary. Accuracy wasn't really the point. Given the fantastical elements and fictional nations like “Maldonia”, I suppose we're meant to understand this as a bit removed from the real New Orleans. It's more a a jazz-flavored fairy tale than a historical fiction.

But for discussion's sake....

Is it fashion-accurate to its 1926 timeframe? Ehhh, sort of. It pays homage to 20s fashion trends with cloche hats, furs and feathery headpieces, but without fully committing to it. The waistline on almost all of Tiana's clothing is too high for the 20s, and the the shapes of her fancier costumes take a lot of liberties, or deviate wildly from the style of the period.

In the 20s, dresses (including workaday stuff) tended to have a straight up-and-down shape to it - kind of a low-waisted rectangle that de-emphasized curves instead of highlighting them. There are valid reasons to play fast and loose with that, though (something I’m definitely guilty of as well). One of those reasons is communication. 

For instance, speculatively, the filmmakers wrote Tiana as a hard-working waitress and wanted her to look the part, so they made the choice to clothe her in something familiar - that gingham dress of mid-century shape that we broadly associate with diner waitresses. Actual waitress uniforms of the 20s had a fair bit of overlap with maid uniforms at the time too, and I can see why they wouldn't want to risk the confusion. It's more important to communicate clearly with the larger audience than to appease a small faction of fashion nerds who'd notice or care about the precision.

I don't think it's a case of the designers failing to do their research - I'm sure they had piles of references, and maybe even consultants - but they also had to have priorities.

With her hat and coat on, she looks a lot more 1920s-shaped.

Pretty consistently, the indication of the characteristic 1920s drop waist is there, but the approach otherwise ignores the 20s silhouette. The clothes hug the body too much. This may be about appealing to a 2000s audience, visually speaking, but also could be an animation thing. Maybe both. For practical reasons, clothes in 2d animation are usually more a sort of second skin than something that wears or behaves like realistic fabric.

These are not in the 1920s ballpark at all. Tiana's blue gown looks like your basic Disney brand invention. Strapless things would have been extremely unusual and the overall shape is far out of step. Excusable, I guess, because it's a costume in context. Charlotte looks like she’s heading for a mimosa brunch in a modern maxi dress.

Charlotte's princess dress did seem to be calling back to the ultra-wide pannier side hoops of the 18th century - something that made a reappearance for part of the 20s, albeit in much milder form called robe de style. I'm not sure if the filmmakers were alluding to that at all, really, but either way, her dress is hilarious.

They only went about halfway with the cloche hats. The 1920s cloche really encapsulated the cranium, almost entirely covered bobbed hair, and obscured much of the face from certain angles, so it's easy to see why they've been somewhat reined in for the film. Still, it ends up looking more 1930s, where the hats started to recede away from the face, evolving in the direction of the pillbox.

Similarly, Tiana's hair is not very reminiscent of the bobbed, close-to-the-cranium style of the period, but I think that could legitimately be written off as characterization. She's not at all the type of person who'd fuss about going à la mode. Not everyone bobbed and finger-waved their hair.

The clothes Prince Naveen is introduced in are very 1920s collegiate in spirit - the wide-leg oxford bags, the sleeveless pullover sweater, the flat cap, and high, stiff collar. The ukulele and banjolele were pretty trendy instruments at the time too.

Definitely some Josephine Baker vibes here. Also, the look of this whole fantasy sequence was reportedly inspired by the works of Aaron Douglas, a luminary painter of the Harlem Renaissance known for his depictions of the lives of African-Americans. (The mural is in Topeka, Kansas.)

They pretty much nailed the Art Deco. It's gorgeous. Looks somewhat inspired by the interiors of some of the Ralph Walker-designed NYC architecture, plus some French Quarter balcony flair for the final manifestation of Tiana's Place. Her dress here does resemble some gauzy mid-1920s looks, too.

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Culturally speaking...

New Orleans is an unusual place. Because some of the colonial Spanish and French laws and conventions that New Orleans evolved under persisted even after its inception into the United States; because it was such a heterogeneous hub of indigenous and immigrant peoples; and because it had a considerable population of free people of color (mostly Creole), it did not function quite like the rest of the South leading up to the Civil War, nor for a while after. Its particular coalescence of cultures made it its own unique sort of culture within the country, within the region, within the state of Louisiana even. By the early 20th century, though, regardless of the not-very-binary nature of New Orleans, Jim Crow laws were enforcing a literal black-and-white distinction, and not an evenhanded one, by far. In that aspect, the city had begun to resemble the rest of the South.

The film nods at the wealth disparity, but goes on to paint a pretty rosy picture of race and class relations at the time. Still it's not unbelievable that some people were exceptions to the rules. You could probably find a few compartments of old New Orleans society that resisted segregation or certain prejudicial norms, preferring to do things their own way. That aside, the film wasn't trying to confront these topics. Not every piece of media should have to. Sometimes breaking away from miserable period piece stereotypes is refreshing. I'm not sure it could have handled that meaningfully given the running time, narrow story focus, and intended audience, anyhow. (But you could perhaps also make a case that family films habitually underestimate younger audiences in this way.)

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Raymond the firefly I guess is the film's Cajun representation. There's not much to say about it, except perhaps to note that Evangeline is a reference to the heroine of a Longfellow poem of the same name. The poem is an epic romance set during the expulsion of the Acadians from the eastern provinces of Canada and the northernmost reaches of the American colonies (now Maine) by the British in the mid-1700s. Many exiled Acadians gradually migrated south to francophone-friendly Louisiana, settling into the prairies and bayous, where 'Acadian' truncated into the pronunciation 'Cajun'. Evangeline - who is only finally reunited with her love when he’s on his deathbed - has become an emblem of the heartbreak, separation and faithful hope of that cultural history, and there are parishes, statues and other landmarks named after the her throughout Louisiana.

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Voodoo does have a very historical presence in New Orleans, having arrived both directly from West Africa and by way of the Haitian diaspora (where it would more properly be called Vodou). While I don't think Disney's treatment of it was especially sensitive or serious, it also wasn't the grotesquely off-base sort of thing that media of the past has been known to do. It was largely whittled down to a magical plot component, but it wasn't so fully repurposed that it didn't resemble Voodoo at all either - and that's mostly owing to the characters, because it does appear the writers pulled from history there.

It’s apparently widely held that Dr. Facilier is a Baron Samedi caricature - and likely that's true, in part - but I have the impression he's also influenced by Doctor John. Not the 20th century funk musician, but the antebellum “Voodoo King” of New Orleans. Doctor John (also called Bayou John, Jean La Ficelle, and other aliases) claimed to be a Senegalese prince. He became well known as a potion man and romance-focused prognosticator to people from all corners of society. Though highly celebrated and financially successful at his peak, he seems ultimately remembered as an exploitative villain.

To my recollection, the film sort of gingerly avoids referring to Facilier as a Voodoo practitioner directly (I think he's more generically called a witch doctor in the script?) but it does seem to imply his 'friends on the other side' are a consortium of loa. It's mostly abbreviated into nebulously evil-seeming special FX, glazing over any specificity or dimensionality, but it does also loop back around as a vehicle of moral justice. Loa are all very individualistic and multi-faceted, but they do have reciprocal rules for asking favors of them.

There's also the benevolent counterpart in Mama Odie's character. Her wearing ritual whites has a definite basis in Voodoo/Vodou practice, and her depiction as a fairy godmother-like figure isn't entirely out of step with how a mambo may have been perceived...in a very general sense. They were/are ceremonial leaders and community bastions who people would seek out for help, advice and spiritual guidance. More than just emanating matronly good vibes, though, some have wielded considerable political and economic power.

(Just my opinions here. I've done a lot of reading on the subject for research but I'm no authority with any special insider understanding of Voodoo, and I really shouldn't be relied upon as an arbiter of who has or hasn't done it justice in fiction.)

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In summary--

Culturally, I think the film is respectably informed but paints a superficially genteel picture. The set pieces are gorgeous, but the story mostly delivers a sort of veneer of New Orleanishness. And as for fashion, well, it’s the 1920s run through a Disney filter. It’s very pretty, but it’s only as proximally accurate as seemed practical.

I don’t know that any of that really matters so much as whether or not it achieved what it intended, though. As a charming yarn and as a tribute to New Orleans and the Jazz age, I think it’s mostly successful. It’s also really beautifully animated!

[artist-issues]

You know what’s great about Dr. Facilier?

He’s the perfect villain opposite both Tiana and Naveen.

He’s not exactly like Jafar or Ursula, who know they’re evil and delight in it as like, a lifestyle. He’s more like Scar. He’s introduced getting money on the street through cons and feeling satisfied…until Big Daddy LeBouf drives by with all his money and makes him feel insignificant.

You get the idea that something in life made him this way—there was a beginning to his villainy. You don’t get that sense from like, Clayton or Gaston.

So he’s a relatable character with flaws, to an extent.

But those flaws specifically play off of Tiana and Naveen’s characterizations.

Tiana has no real respect from her peers—she is in a position to be jealous of Lottie the same way Facilier is jealous of the Cotton King. But where Tiana simply works hard and refuses to let others make her bitter, Facilier has clearly taken shortcuts. Or…”the easy way.”

Then there’s Naveen.

Naveen has no thought beyond the present; he thinks they’re “on this earth to have some fun,” and frequently jumps without looking at the consequences. Leaps without looking! Doesn’t stop to find out if the girl he’s kissing is a real princess even though he knew his original invitation was to a costume party, forgets that he’s supposed to be getting married and plans on continuing his playboy lifestyle, wanders into a shadow-man’s shop. But eventually he learns to open his eyes to what’s important, and what will last, in Tiana. And he takes that seriously; if he marries her instead of Charlotte, he has to get three jobs.

Facilier, on the other hand? He not only does the opposite of Tiana and has taken shortcuts to get where he is—but he also suffers from Naveen’s flaw; he keeps making what are basically get-rich-quick schemes with his “friends on the other side.” When we meet him, he’s stressed and certainly on edge about failing—but that doesn’t stop him from asking for more and more debt from the demons, and he basically goes to his grave still making promises he can’t keep…like Naveen’s promise he couldn’t keep to pay Tiana for kissing him.

He’s got Tiana’s focus and Naveen’s charisma. He’s got Tiana’s lofty goals and Naveen’s dependence on others to do his dirty work.

He’s exactly like Tiana and Naveen put together, aged about twenty years, but with none of their good qualities. Perfect villain for those two main characters.

But he’s also the opposite of Mama Odie.

He entices innocents with what they want while she lights their way by explaining what they need.

He wants total control, while she’s satisfied with simply giving advice and sending people on their way.

He directly transforms his victims, while Mama Odie shows Tiana and Naveen how to work toward their transformation on their own. I mean, you guys noticed that she could have done it for them, right?

But she doesn’t, because she’s the symbol of that Disney Faith-Based morals: you act on what you know is true instead of taking the easy way to what you want. Facilier does the opposite: he promises to give you the easy way to what you want, and tries to tell you why you should accept his deals—but his reasons are all lies.

That’s how you write a villain, ladies and gentlemen.