Nick Pitera

I am a big fan of YouTube famous singer Nick Pitera. His vocal range is unbelievable and he sings many sorts of songs including Disney! (he actually works with Disney to create some of his videos) In many of his videos he does multiple recordings of himself, so the song is made up of a bunch of him singing different parts. Below are the links to two disney songs taken from his YouTube channel. Check him out!

"Part of Your World" from The Little Mermaid. Really shows off how high he can sing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAPlmEHo9QQ

"One-Man Tribute to Aladdin" - Contains many songs from Aladdin

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rzcuyn2kTFs

Disney owns everything!

http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/6626ef4292/disney-owns-everything-the-disney-synergy-song?_cc=__d___&_ccid=hyokoy.nxzr79


The link above contains a short song outlining the shocking reach of Disney's empire. The song is funny and upbeat, but it conveys a very important message of the size and power of the Disney Company. It is interesting to look at how different branches of Disney interact with each other, and how they help make each other stronger. Even now, the Disney corporation continues to grow and thrive. Financially, Disney is also continuously growing, with its stock value increasing by 6.39 times since January 1st 2009! The video ends by asserting that Disney owns it all, which raises several questions. Will Disney continue to grow? How much bigger can the company get?

Richard Breaux: The Princess and the Frog

Summary: In his article “After 75 Years of Magic: Disney Answers Its Critics, Rewrites African American History, and Cashes In on Its Racist Past,” Richard M. Breaux analyzes The Princess and the Frog and argues exactly what the title suggest. The article is divided into three major sections. First, Breaux focuses on how the film responds to many critical complaints regarding the lack of African American protagonists, the absence of mothers, and the depiction of weak and helpless princesses, entirely dependent on their prince. Overall, Breaux believes that The Princess and the Frog successfully addresses many of these critics. Breaux claims the “Princess Tiana is Disney’s most firm answer to its critics for the absence of non-white characters in its line of princesses” (400). More so than Aladdin, Pocahontas, or Mulan, Breaux believes that the film directly addresses race, and that it is much more progressive and politically correct than some Disney’s earlier works. Breaux observes that the film is also unique in its depiction of family, as it is rare for Disney to create a complete nuclear family, and have a mother present for the entirety of the film. As far as creating a more independent and strong female character, Breaux believes that Tiana sets forth a completely new image for what a princess can be. Breaux’s second argument looks at the representations of animated black women in films throughout history. After investigating the portrayal of any animated black women, Breaux focus’s on Disney’s specific portrayals. Breaux looks at most all of Disney’s black female characters in its early films, as well as black voice actors, and live action depictions. In Breaux’s third argument, he looks at the corporate side of Disney, and how the film is used for both its image and its profit. Breaux believes that the film used a black princess to help increase sales on merchandise from the black consumer market.

Response: There are several reasons I chose to read Breaux’s article over Ajay Gehlawat’s “The Strange Case of The Princess and the Frog: Passing and the Elision of Race.” Firstly, I felt as though Breaux’s writing was more organized and easier to follow. As for the content, in Gehlawat’s introduction, I was not impressed nor compelled by his arguments. After having read an article on how The Princess and the Frog is whitewashed, I did not feel the need to read more about “the Elision of Race” (417). Additionally, Gehlawats’s claim that Tiana being a frog is a metaphor for blacks being animals seemed like a flimsy argument to me. Also, after having read mostly negative criticism about The Princess and the Frog, I wanted to read a more positive interpretations about the films depiction of race.

            I found Breaux’s article to be organized, well written and compelling. Breaux successfully sets up a roadmap for his arguments, and the various sections of the article make it very easy to follow. Breaux’s use of quotes is effective, allowing him to enter the conversation of the film, and to better place his argument into a broader context. What I found most effective about the article was how Breaux was able to transition back and forth between the movie and the context surrounding the movie (both in 2009 and 1920’s New Orleans). By incorporating critical interpretations of the film and discussing racial climate within the real world, Breaux was able to convey the larger importance of his argument, the “so-what.” Overall, I found myself agreeing with everything Breaux argued, and I was particularly interested by his discussion of economic implications of having a black princess, something I had entirely overlooked.

Breaux, Richard M. "After 75 Years of Magic: Disney Answers Its Critics, Rewrites African American History, and Cashes In on Its Racist Past."Journal of African American Studies J Afr Am St 14.4 (2010): 398-416. Web.

Disney's Positive and Negative Messages

Like all texts, Disney movies have been interpreted in countless ways from countless perspectives. Even in the most positive movie can be construed as negative, and the reverse applies as well. Here are two articles from Buzzfeed the illustrates some of the positive and negative lessons Disney films teach us:

Positive
http://www.buzzfeed.com/jonmichaelpoff/invaluable-life-lessons-we-learned-from-disney-movies#.baXwdggMJ

Negative
http://www.buzzfeed.com/mlew15/21-absolutely-awful-life-lessons-disney-films-taug-h0se#.bgwAjee3b

Sarah Turner: The Princess and the Frog

Summary: In her article, “Blackness, Bayous and Gumbo: Encoding and Decoding Race in a Colorblind World,” Sarah E Turner discusses the depiction of race in The Princess and the Frog. Given Disney’s delicate task of portraying its first black heroine, Turner argues that Disney’s approach to handling race is to remove any influence race has on the film. Turner labels this phenomenon as “colorblindness,” describing how Tiana’s race plays no part in the development of the movie (83). Turner believes that, “while Princess Tiana is clearly black, that is not the point of the text – she is simply a princess who “happens” to have black skin but is not representational of blackness” (84). Through this colorblind approach, Turner believes Disney was better able to avoid being potentially racist; however, Turner seems to indicate that this approach is a bit cowardly by avoiding to address race head on. Turner explains how the film was very aware of the delicateness of race, and how Disney consulted many sources such as representatives of the NAACP and Oprah to avoid sending the wrong message. Turner thinks that rather than attempting to depict Tiana as a black character highly influenced by her culture, the film focused more on “who she is than what she is” (84). In the middle of the article, Turner shifts her focus to the film itself, summarizing the film and analyzing the films themes and how they relate to race. Turner believes the film successfully creates a progressive princess who attains success through hard work and motivation, sending a positive message to many viewers. Turner concludes her argument by again focusing on race, describing the difficulty of addressing race in animation. Turner believes that it is impossible for the film to be politically correct while appealing to its entire audience, labeling it a “can’t win situation” (94). While Turner does not love the approach that the film takes, she concludes that Disney deserves credit for at least attempting to deal with the complex issue of race.

Response: I think that Turner did an excellent job entering the conversation of race with respect to The Princess and the Frog. Turner makes sure to incorporate the opinions of many other critics, giving me solid understanding of how many various people received the film. I enjoyed how Turner also incorporated evidence beyond just the movie, such as deleted scenes, interviews with film writers, and the portrayal of the movie at the Oscars.

However, I think that early on in the article, Turner’s frequent quoting was excessive and somewhat detracted from her argument. The use of some many people’s opinions made me lose sight of what Turner was trying to argue. As far as clarity goes, I felt that Turner’s explanation of Stuart Hall’s articulation of encoding and decoding was a bit convoluted and hard to follow. I think that that constant use of quotes as well as several block quotes made the article a bit choppy and disconnected at times for me. Later into the article Turner focused more on her own ideas and I found this more effective.

Overall, I don’t fully agree with Turners argument. I don’t think that the film is colorblind as there are quite a few displays of black culture especially with the soundtrack of the film. Turner seems to criticize Disney’s colorblind approach, but I fail to see what a good alternative would be. To make Tiana “more black,” the film may rely on offensive stereotypes. What characteristics would Disney have had to give Tiana for the Turner to not consider the film colorblind?

Turner spent almost the entirety of the article discussing the depiction of Tiana, and I think in a movie where the majority of the characters are black, it would have made sense to incorporate those other characters in her discussion of colorblindness. Lastly, I think turner should have done a better job establishing her stance on her argument. It is clear that Turner believes the film tries to circumvent the race issue, but I never felt that she explicitly said how she felt about this approach. It seemed like she wasn’t entirely happy about the depiction, but I am not sure what she would have liked to see changed, especially given her belief that the depiction of race is a lose-lose situation.

Cheu, Johnson. "Blackness, Bayous and Gumbo: Encoding and Decoding Race in a Colorblind World." Diversity in Disney Films: Critical Essays on Race, Ethnicity, Gender, Sexuality and Disability. Jefferson: McFarland, 2013. 83-98. Print.

http://everything-pr.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Tiana-Black-Disney-Princess.jpg

http://www.clickhole.com/article/5-disney-princesses-reimagined-caucasian-698

Recycled Scenes in Disney

I stumbled upon a couple interesting YouTube videos showing how Disney sometimes reuses scenes from earlier movies to reduce the time and cost to animate scenes from scratch, especially in the days of early animation when technology was limited. I am not faulting Disney for doing this, but I definitely think it is noteworthy and funny to watch. The links to two of these videos are posted below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbjVjZrrE3w

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmOo_pYMG1U&feature=youtu.be

Princess and the Frog Review

• Today I watch Disney’s Princess and the Frog for the first time. Upon announcing that I was going to watch the film, everyone I was with spoke highly of the movie and decided to watch it with me.  Here are some of my initial takeaways from the film:

• Princess movie
• Given the title of the film, this movie is considered to be a princess movie. The film had a classic fairy tale styled approach and focusing on the relationship between a princess and a prince. However, this princess movie is very atypical, because the “princess” is not even a princess until the end of the film. Perhaps this is used to show viewers that anyone can be a princess.
• The ending
• I was pleased with the ending of the film. The characters all had to prove their worth and the characters developed greatly over the course of the movie. At the end of the movie I was happy to find that the prince and princess would have a happily ever after regardless if they were humans or not. I was quite surprised by the brutal death of Ray, even though he did have a happy ending of sorts.
• Family 
• I was interested to see how the film included both of Tiana’s parents. Disney princesses and protagonists generally are without parental figures but Tiana has both. Although her father dies early on in the movie, he has a great impact shaping her life even after he is gone. Additionally, Tiana has a living mother throughout the entire film who is able to give her daughter guidance and support. 
• Real world setting
• Unlike most Disney films, The Princess and the Frog is set within our world in 1920’s New Orleans. Without doing any research, I am unsure why this time and place were chosen for the film, and I would be interested to learn the reasoning behind it.
• Maturity
• Like most of Disney’s more recent films, the film connected with viewers across many different age groups. As one of the more mature viewers, I was intrigued by the movie’s contrast between human “wants” and human “needs.” I was also interested by Tiana’s conflict in fulfilling her dream to create a new life for herself. I also appreciated the film’s message that wishing is not enough to realize dreams; it requires a lot of hard work.
• Villain

• I was surprised by the darkness and power of evil in the film. I have found that Disney often focuses its evil into a single villain, who uses his evil powers against the protagonist. In this film, I felt as though the dark magic was a power much greater than the Shadow Man; evil “controlled” the villain instead of the villain harnessing evil. The Shadow Man himself was ultimately destroyed by this evil magic, and this made the darkness more frightening as it is never destroyed at the end of the film.
• Race
• Tiana is Disney’s first black protagonist and princess, and this makes race a very important topic within the film. Personally, I think the film did a very good job of portraying African American characters, certainly much better than many of the early Disney films did. The film integrated black culture through many musical numbers, accents and dialects, but I never saw the film as racially offensive. I think that a key to this success was that a majority of the characters in the film were black. This made it so that race was not represented by a single character; rather, it showed the many different forms a race could take. From Tiana’s virtuous father, to the evil Shadow Man, to Tiana and Prince Naveen, blacks are not represented in a single way.

• http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/disney/images/0/0c/283_louis_art.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20111122220235
• https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/73/ce/88/73ce8891b57e79287037cfda2650a8b6.jpg
• http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Observer/Pix/pictures/2010/1/28/1264698571923/The-Princess-And-The-Frog-001.jpg

Racin' Cars (and Oliver and Company)

        


        One way in which animators anthropomorphize their characters is by giving them human stereotypes to allow viewers to better relate with the characters. A critical and obvious drawback of stereotypes is that it can lead to a race, gender, religion, etc., being negatively depicted by a film. Another difficulty with stereotypes is how an animated film can depict a race or culture without using stereotypes. There is a hazy line between what is part of a culture, and what could be seen as an offensive stereotype of a culture.
        Having just watched clips from Cars and Oliver and Company with a focus on race, it is very apparent that the writers certainly emphasize race when creating their characters. In Oliver and Company, the various dogs represent distinctive races, most noticeably Francis the English bulldog and Tito the Latino Chihuahua. Physically, the shades of the dogs’ coats represent the races of the dogs, from white to black to something in between. The film establishes the characters’ races with their accents, and perpetuates the stereotypes with the character’s actions. Even Disney Wiki says, “(Tito) speaks with a thick American Mexican accent,” and Francis “has an upper-class London accent.” These characters fulfill their racial stereotypes given by society, as Francis is a very proper and dramatic Englishman, while Tito is a scrappy Mexican who so happens to know how to rewire the electrical system in a car. These stereotypes are effective in that they help distinguish one dog from another, and viewers feel that they can better understand and relate to the characters; however, these stereotypes may send negative messages to viewers about how certain races are meant to act. It is worth considering how the film would change if the dogs acted in the same way but were stripped of their accents. Cars similarly uses very deliberate stereotypes with its characters, particularly the redneck Mater, the African American Flo, and Luigi/Guido the Italians. Once again these characters are given accents and they speak and act in ways one might expect them to given their race. These depictions are particularly offensive when depicting the stupidity of Mater, and through him, southerners/country folk. A particular line that stuck out to me was when Lighting McQueen says, “I’m in hillbilly hell! My IQ is dropping by the second, I’m becoming one of them!” I think it would be difficult for a southerner with an accent similar to that of Mater to not be offended by this.

     
        Following Henry Giroux’s belief that films are crucial teachers for children, we must be far more careful about the ways in which we depict race. It is worth noting that these stereotypes certainly extend beyond race into areas such as gender and class. Although a younger version of myself may not have explicitly noticed these racial developments, certainly they were subconsciously shaping my perception of race. Portraying a race or culture in animation is a very difficult task, and there’s always going to be someone who disagrees with the depiction. Some argue the Pocahontas depicts Pocahontas as white, but to make her not white, the writers may have to enforce certain stereotypes; it is a lose-lose situation. Having just seen Mulan for the first time I am curious to see how the film’s portrayal of Chinese culture was perceived. There is a lot of emphasis on the importance of honor, but I am not sure if that is a stereotype or simply an accepted part of the culture; the line is hazy.

http://disney.wikia.com/wiki/Tito

http://www.cornel1801.com/disney/Cars-2006/2/part.html

http://www.cornel1801.com/disney/Oliver-Company-1988/movie-film.html

http://img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20121231205945/disney/images/8/8b/Oliver-Company-oliver-and-company-movie-5872334-768-432.jpg

http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/the-mystery-case-files/images/e/ec/Mater_cars_Cars_2.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20131010063248

http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/p__/images/c/c1/2249-14080.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20120121012650&path-prefix=protagonist