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    Disney's Got Jungle Fever?

    Posted Wednesday, March 18, 2009 3:41 PM | By Nina Shen Rastogi
    Disney's newest animated film won't be released for another nine months, but The Princess and the Frog—Disney's first to feature an African-American princess—is already being scrutinized. First it got knocked because the heroine was a black chambermaid working for a rich white woman, then because one of the animal sidekicks was a toothless, seemingly redneck Cajun firefly. Plus there were plenty of people who were peeved that it took Disney so long to feature an African-American princess in the first place. (Dodai at Jezebel has been tracking the fracas; scroll down to see more links.)

    Now, according to the U.K.'s Daily Mail, bloggers are up in arms because Princess Tiana— reimagined as a young woman living in Jazz Age New Orleans—falls in love with a guy who isn't black. Prince Naveen (an Indian name, I'll note) is heir to the throne of "Maldonia," and is voiced by a Brazilian actor. I'm not quite sure he's white, let alone "the whitest frat boy dickhead you can find," as one commenter put it, but he's definitely much lighter-skinned than Tiana. I think he looks sort of Mediterranean, myself.

    I'm not surprised that people are pre-emptively monitoring this film's sensitivity levels, but I honestly can't tell if this tweaks my sensors. On one hand, it sucks that little African-American boys won't get to see a black prince, and I don't like the equation of lighter skin with desirability, either. But on the other hand, I'm all for seeing more mixed-race couples in the popular media—how annoying is it that, in most movies and TV shows, minorities are always getting paired with partners of the same race? I've been watching old episodes of Firefly lately, and the Gina Torres/Alan Tudyk pairing still seems really fresh to me. I'm going to try to reserve judgment till I actually see the film, but what do you ladies think?
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