I will never not be grateful to whoever decided we needed a Disney Princess movie set in 1920s New Orleans, even if I’m still not sure we deserved all the drop-dead gorgeous imagery in this film.
Okay guys I’m going to talk about something sensitive here that’s been brought up on other blogs but no one has really wrote a long extensive post about it, so here it goes.
First and furthermost, I most sincerely appreciate and care for both Lottie and her friendship with Tiana, yet constructive criticism must be done.
Lottie is an interesting character, she’s your typical girly, over the top, princess loving rich girl. She’s your typical southern belle,too. Lottie is that adorable character from Princess and The Frog. She’s funny, humorous, and most importantly, one of the most, if not MOST popular character from Princess and The Frog.
The greatest problem is even though this is suppose to be Tiana’s movie and Disney’s answer to their past white princess films. However Disney deliberately decides to put in a white princess-like character who is ‘VERY HISTORICALLY INACCURATE’ (to quote my HISTORICALLY ACCURATE friends) Tiana’s bff.
The greatest problem is that she ends up taking more space than Tiana and as of right now and since the movie came out,gets alot more love than Tiana.
Disney choice to make Tiana best friend a white rich girl is the best displays of Disney’s blatant racism and whitecentricism.
They didn’t feel the African-American girl could lead a movie by herself, you see she needed to be a frog for the whole movie and have a white best friend in order to audiences to feel comfortable and ‘identify’ with her.
Here’s our two arguments in defense of Tia/Lottie’s relationship 1)“Its the first time the princess has a female best friend! THAT’S LIKE GOOD AND FEMINIST!” and of course the typical 2) “lottie and tiana being best friends SHOWS EQUALITY!!!”
Nope nope.
1.) Tiana’s friend could of been easily a PoC like herself, in fact it would of been refreshing to see Tiana have a friend of same background whom she related to and could confide on. This ties with the problem that Tiana feels alienated by the kids in her race and age, and the fact that Lottie, a white girl, is only ‘real’ friend is super problematic as hell. A good change would of been to have Tiana have a friend of her race that enjoyed Princesses as much of Lottie! It would of still been the same fun character, minus the white.
2.) Tiana’s and Lottie’s friendship is more historically inaccurate than people turning into bears or not having in PoC in Scotland. It does not show ‘equality’ because Tiana is still subservient to Lottie. She’s a lower class and economic status, she serves Lottie and accepts Lottie as more rich/successful than she is. The worst part Tiana shows not to be bothered by it or any other type of discrimination that shows up PaTF. If your argument is “WELL THAT WAS THE 20s! Duh!” Think again, Disney choice that time period with those perimeters and that economic/race distinction (Think were Tiana lives versus where Lottie lives).
In fact Disney could of perfectly created an alternate 1920s or fantasyland (seen in Tangled) where Tiana and Lottie are both equals,etc. But they didn’t.
Tiana and Lottie is a nice friendship but it is framed by racism and white ideals.
When you look at the earlier scene with Tiana at her job you see that Tiana does have black friends. However, Disney decided to portray her black friends and “party kids” who make fun of Tiana for working hard. It literally burns me up because there was no point in having that scene and we never saw those characters again. That’s one of my biggest criticism of the film.
