The Princess and the frog

The only thing I knew about the Disney version of “The princess and the Frog” before watching it was that this would the first time that the princess in a Disney Movie would be black. An idea I really liked as minorities are often misrepresented (as being different and therefore often in whatever way bad) or not represented at all in most Disney movies. The more I was surprised that multiple articles described it as a work of discrimination. Not wanting not to go anymore in detail about that (even though I really understood most of the points some critics made), I also noticed that this is not the only difference between the other classic Walt Disney fairy tales movies like Cinderella or Snow White. Another really great shift is the introduction of a setting that really exists: New Orleans. Most other Disney classics take place in undetermined settings, or most usually also at undetermined points of time in history. But most usually one could still argue that it is somewhere in Europe a long time ago - certainly also a time when almost no blacks existed in Europe or at least racial issues were not really existent. Thus, Walt Disney did not only change the color of the princess but also one of the most distinctive features of fairy tales - a change that was somehow also necessary to give blacks the chance to play a role in a fairy tale.