I'm with you, Sarah Turner

I felt that Sarah E. Turner's Blackness, Bayous, and Gumbo: Encoding and Decoding Race in a Colorblind World was a well-crafted article on The Princess and the Frog and its portrayal of race. The essay was well written and brought up some good points from the movie. However, my biggest take away was that Sarah Turner, like myself and many other viewers of the film, had one unresolved question: "is [Tiana] too Black or not Black enough?" There really is no definitive answer to this question. The main reason, in my opinion, for this paradox is that Disney is trying to appeal to as wide of an audience as possible. In order to do this, Disney needs to somehow manage to have Tiana represent black culture the best way possible, while at the same time not expressing too much black culture to the point where white audiences would not be as interested in the film. Because Disney was trying to appeal to such a broad audience, of course there will be critics who view the film to lie on either end of the race-portrayal spectrum.

On a different note, I thought that Turner brought up a great point that Kurrti's book (deliberately?) leaves out descriptions of Tiana's physical appearance. This is definitely something I hadn't thought of, but it does make me question a lot about race. Is Tiana's appearance not a point of discussion due to her race? I strongly doubt it. In Princess and the Frog, Niveen is a character of color and his appearance is discussed. Similarly, the other previous princesses of colors–Pocahontas, Mulan, Esmeralda– are discussed in regards to their physical appearances as well. Specifically, since I am analyzing gender roles in Pocahontas, I've seen numerous articles that discuss Pocahontas' beauty. However, in the two films, Pocahontas' appearance is MUCH more emphasized that Tiana's. Turner discussed that Tiana dresses far more conservatively than, say, Pocahontas. Perhaps this is because of the difference in time period, but perhaps it has more to do with race than I would have thought.