I’m assuming most of you have seen Disney’s newest movie, Frozen. And if you haven’t, then you must have heard about it. So many articles have been written on it and by people like PolicyMic, Entertainment Weekly, and The Huffington Post.
It’s about time we have a Disney animated film with more than one main female character. And it’s actually about love for someone other than a prince charming! And don’t even get me started on the songs. “Let It Go” has been stuck in my head for the past month. Seriously, the movie is all kinds of fantastic.
The only thing that sort of stinks is the fact that progress has to come in single categories. If movies ever take big steps in women’s rights and providing more female voices, then it’s always in the form of Caucasian females. Imagine if they had set the fictional town of Arendelle in China or Spain or even somewhere near the Andes, which is in Latin America. (We still don’t have a Hispanic disney “princess,” by the way. Just FYI.)
I know I know. It sounds like I’m just trying to detract from the awesomeness of the movie by bringing in that stupid topic of race. Gosh. But I’m just thinking about the majority of little girls in the world who are not Caucasian would probably love to see more characters on screen who look like them. Because…
The woman on the left is supposed to be Nichelle Nichols who played Uhura on the TV show, “Star Trek,” from 1966-1969. It was one of the first times an African American woman portrayed a non-stereotypical character on screen.
I understand that Frozen was set in a place similar to Denmark in honor of Danish author Hans Christian Anderson whose story, “The Snow Queen,” was the inspiration for this movie. Sure that’s fair. But what about Tangled ? That totally could have been set anywhere else in the world.
I know that we have our token minority Disney characters. We got the Chinese covered (Mulan), the African Americans (Tiana), the Arab/brown people (Jasmine and Aladdin), heck we even have the Native Americans (Pocahontas), and like a gypsy too (Esmerelda)!
Sidenote: The setting of Aladdin is pretty weird if you think about it. It’s set in an “Arabian” land and yet the Sultan’s palace looks like the Taj Mahal, which is in India. The Arab world and South Asia are VERY different. But let’s not even get into that.
The point I’m trying to make is…I don’t want the rest of the world to be tokens anymore. Isn’t that a fair request too? I know I’m not the only person who feels this way.
On a slightly different note, have you heard this brilliant version of “Let It Go” in 25 different languages? It gave me chills!
And then I noticed that there was no Arabic. Or Hindi or Bangla or Urdu… But come on at least put in some Arabic! It’s like they skipped over the brown portion of Asia. And the entire Middle East. Oh Disney.
LENA SHAREEF 
You’re right about the setting of Aladdin. I never noticed all the inconsistencies there!
I wrote a very similar post about Frozen the other day, but the only thing I have to disagree on is Tangled being set anywhere. Disney has always placed it’s films in settings that are appropriate to the origin of the story. Rapunzel is a German fairy tale by the Brother’s Grimm. I think it would have been a shame if they set it in a non-European setting.
That’s very true! I wasn’t thinking about the origins of Rapunzel. But it would be great if Disney could get inspired by more stories that originate from other countries 🙂 I’m sure there are so many cool ones out there