Krystn Palmer Photography
Disney’s most recent animated film, “The Princess and the Frog,” attracted attention in part because it featured, in the familiar “Disney princess” role, an African-American. In one sense, this is evidence of increasing acceptance of diversity in our society. The Disney corporation is not going to risk the bottom line, and obviously the folks in charge were confident that white audiences would not stay away from the film because they could not identify with a black heroine. That is, it is probably true that our society has moved far enough from the prejudices of the past that many whites no longer see a black person as “inherently different from me.”
But there is other news from the movie that is less encouraging. The film is set in New Orleans, and various aspects of this environment are rendered in Disney-esque stereotypes—the food, the music, the Cajun population. This stereotyping can be relatively benign, but it can also be virulent, as occurs in the way the film depicts the “Vodoo” religion. For some reason, it remains acceptable to depict certain African-American (and Afro-Caribbean) religious practices in overtly racist and offensive terms.
Vodou is a religion based both in Catholicism and West-African religious traditions. It is no less worthy of respect than any other religion; like most varieties of Christianity and Islam ( for example) Vodou is deeply concerned with promoting moral uprightness among its adherents. Yet for some reason it remains acceptable, in Disney movies and other contemporary media, to depict Vodou as a practice of conjuring with evil spirits, as essentially a form of devil worship.
Yes, Vodou does accept the possibility that people may be possessed by spirits. That possibility is also embraced by millions of Christians in the United States—the Catholic church still trains exorcists, by the way. So it can’t be the belief in spirit possession that makes it okay to portray Vodou in stereotypes that echo—for example—extreme anti-Semitism. No, it is acceptable to portray Vodou as evil for the simple reason that people regard it as African and primitive. In other words, this is an example of good old fashioned racism, right there in a family-friendly Disney movie.
This situation alerts us to something about entertainment in general. Entertainment, by its very nature, presents stereotypes of people. Some high quality entertainment can make us think about things, but that’s not its basic purpose. The basic purpose of entertainment is to provide fun. The stories of entertainment are usually fun because they confirm the things we most want to believe. The use of stereotypes in stories is a time honored way of engaging people’s emotions and creating a meaningful imaginary world in which the troubling ambiguities of real life are absent.
The problem is that emotional stories that confirm our expectations and prejudices about the world may be satisfying, but they can also be dangerous. Entertainment has a cousin named propaganda, and sometimes it’s hard to tell the two apart.
