After watching The Princess and the Frog for the first time, I was shocked by how different it was from every other Disney princess movie. At first, it may have been due to the race difference. However after reading this last article I realized it wasn't the race that made it so different. It's the way that this movie captures the American Dream perfectly. It truly is the Horatio Alger story, as the article touches on.
It's kind of shocking to think about how much this movie actually doesn't focus on race. Sure there are parts and one or two comments that could focus on racism, but for the most part it deals with our blindness to racism. I loved the way Sarah Turner used this term in the article. She specifically mentions how Disney confronted multiple people before making final decisions for the movie from the name to the job of the main character, showing that they didn't want to step on anyone's toes unlike in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. I also noticed how most of this movie the characters aren't even in human form. They are frogs for majority of the film (around 50 minutes as the article says) which also shows how we are all equal. Anyone can live the American Dream.. anyone!
While the article starts to compare this movie to other princess films, I realized that this movie has a beginning just like The Cinderella Story (a Warner Brothers film). Both movies start with a story told by their parents about working hard and going on in life but not forgetting about the most important things. This yet again shows another example of how The Princess and the Frog is a universal and colorblind movie.
Overall I really enjoyed this article and agreed with most of the points argued. I got lost when Turner brings up the lack of historical information, but other than that it was extremely interesting and supports the success of this Disney film.
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