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Colorized Disney Classics

Black Princesses!
  (+2, -5)
(+2, -5)
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The Disney Princesses are very popular. Disney has abstracted the female characters from their various movies and amalgamated them as "Princesses". With the inclusion of Mulan, Jasmin and Pocahontas, they are a racially mixed lot - except there are no black princesses. Disney's Afrocentric movie is the Lion King, which features animals. I am sure Disney has its reasons for not producing a movie with a black female lead. But they can step around these problems!

Computer colorization technology could be applied to the Disney classics like Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty to change the complexions of all the characters to various chocolate and coffee tones. It would be as simple as that. Just as there exist dark skinned iterations of Santa, Barbie and Jesus, the newly black princesses could stand shoulder to shoulder with their lighter counterparts, and thus round out the Disney pantheon.

bungston, Nov 23 2006

Disney Princesses! http://disney.go.co...ml/main_iframe.html
Here they are! With music! [bungston, Nov 23 2006]

Blacula ! http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068284/
you just have to laugh [xenzag, Nov 24 2006]

Song of the South http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038969/
[DrBob, Nov 24 2006]

Coonskin http://en.wikipedia...Coonskin_%28film%29
animals again... [calum, Nov 24 2006]

[link]






       There was already a live-action version of Cinderella with a black woman. Seems too, as boysparks put it, tokenistic, to me. I've seen cartoons intended to be more black-oriented, but the problem is that they spend so much effort trying to make it "black-friendly" and educational they neglect the plot and the show sucks. If they could make a movie with a good plot and *not* focus on education at all (that's not what most movies are about) and have black characters, then I fully support it. But a token gesture like this is likely to just piss people off. I'm not going to watch a movie that's trying to teach me a lesson that I personally already know. It's a bore-fest.   

       Edit: that's not my fishbone, btw. I'm neutral.
21 Quest, Nov 23 2006
  

       worth making the stills if nothing else.... could merge The Seven Dwarfs with that other film gem "Freaks" +
xenzag, Nov 24 2006
  

       Perhaps Disney needs a few new black female leads, but digitally changing past ones to make them more racially balanced, is little more than political correctness, and as [21 Q] said, would likely annoy people.
hidden truths, Nov 24 2006
  

       Hey, I'm not the only one who remembers Song of the South? Hell yeah! Who could forget Brer Rabbit's crazy antics? Again though, that was animal-based.
21 Quest, Nov 24 2006
  

       The race or colour of the characters is no reason to produce any movie, TV show or book. Story should be the driving force behind any of these. Big fishbone from me!
DrBob, Nov 24 2006
  

       I still love the crows in Dumbo, but it would be hard to find a more racist expression - these are literally Jim Crows.
DrCurry, Nov 24 2006
  

       //The race or colour of the characters is no reason to produce any movie, TV show or book.// so let's re-make "Memoirs of a Geisha", for example, without paying any attention to Japanese ethnicity. Denial of race and colour is the worst form of racism.
xenzag, Nov 24 2006
  

       xenzag, Memoires of a Geisha was made because that is a unique part of Japanese culture, and therefore had a unique plot. The character's race was essential to the storyline. The movie was based on Geishas and needed Japanese characters for authenticity. In 'Sleeping Beauty', the character's race was not central to the storyline, so remaking it with a skin-tone difference is a hollow gesture and nobody who's seen the original will have any interest in seeing it because they already know the story.   

       Another possible reason there are no black princesses is historical authenticity. Most disney movies are set in Europe. I've never heard of black royalty before, there may be black royal families, but none that I've heard or read about. And, just so everyone's clear, the famed Black Prince was not black, to my knowledge.   

       edit: I've never heard of black royalty in *europe*. Sorry if that caused any confusion.
21 Quest, Nov 24 2006
  

       //The character's race was essential to the storyline.//
I think that xenzag's point, if I may be so bold as to make it for him, is that the actors in MoaG were all Chinese, which went down just brilliantly with the Japanese. And with the Chinese, too. Shades of Mickey "Fucking" Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's.
calum, Nov 24 2006
  

       //if I may be so bold as to make it for him//   

       Uh... I think xenzag's a 'her'.
21 Quest, Nov 24 2006
  

       I disagree - you guys are mistaking "race" for "culture".   

       And the Black Prince had black hair, as well as a black disposition. Plenty of black, brown and khaki princesses in the world, and Disney has indeed done some of them. But either way, whenever one culture portrays another, it usually gets many fine points wrong, generally laughably so to the natives.
DrCurry, Nov 24 2006
  

       21 Quest, as a lawyer, my use of the masculine pronoun always automatically encompasses the feminine.   

       boysparks, van Dyke's got nothing on Brigadoon, Monarch of the Glen, Harry Lauder, Braveheart...
calum, Nov 24 2006
  

       //Then xenzag's point was either fudged or unclear.// I was careful to select MoaG, and the point was not lost on Calum. I like a bit of confusion. A black Snow White would be a gem.... actually I'd put her in a niqab and convert those seven dwarfs into pygmy lesbians.
xenzag, Nov 24 2006
  

       You know, I've never seen MoaG. Been meaning to, though. I thought the eyes looked a little weird for a Japanese girl in the commercial. But the girl was wearing make-up in every scene so it was hard to tell.
21 Quest, Nov 24 2006
  

       Wasnt the princess in Atlantis Black?
jhomrighaus, Nov 24 2006
  

       Actually... I think you're right! In fact I know you are because I just saw it yesterday. Was that a Disney flick?
21 Quest, Nov 25 2006
  

       yes it was. Also Lilo and Stich was heavily populated by Hawian Characters who had very dark skin.
jhomrighaus, Nov 26 2006
  

       Then I guess we could call this baked.
21 Quest, Nov 26 2006
  

       Although not by Disney, HBO's "Happily Ever After -Farie Tails for every child" did a nice job of putting the well known stories into various settings all over the world. They didn't have any toy, or other merchendise connected to them, though.   

       I loved the Rosie Perez "Thumbelina".
-wess, Nov 27 2006
  
      
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