By Eleanor Boudreau
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wkno/local-wkno-875502.mp3
Memphis, TN – The top box-office grossers this past weekend were all films about racial transcendence. There was "Invictus" about Nelson Mandela's South Africa; "The Blind Side" a dramatization of a true story about a poor black teenager adopted by a white family; and Disney's "The Princess and the Frog" which is the story of Tiana, Disney's first-ever black princess.
Actress Anika Noni Rose is the voice of Tiana. She says race was discussed on the set, but, "We didn't spend a lot of time talking about it. We talked about it with regard to what she looks like--she's a chef and I wanted to make sure that she didn't look like a waif. I feel like we have enough waifs in the world. She has a little bootie, she has a little round nose, she has curly hair I just didn't want her to look like a cookie cutter that had been painted brown, and we all agreed on that."
"Otherwise," Rose said, "The story is not really about her ethnicity so it wasn't something that needed to be spoken about with any sort of regularity."
Disney has made more than 90 animated films. The first was "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs." That was made in 1937.
The 1930s were a very different time for race relations; and the United States has made many significant strides towards racial equality since then.
So, coming not in 1969, not in 1979, 1989, or 1999, but in 2009--is the first black Disney princess an important milestone, or a bit of an anti-climax? That's the question I put to theater-goers at the Paradiso Cinema in Memphis. The reaction was mixed. "The Princess and the Frog" would probably have gotten a very different reception 50 years ago, but it's 2009, and we're living in a different time.