By: A.C.
Disney's Wreck It Ralph 2: Ralph Breaks The Internet will be opening in theaters on the 21st next month and , honestly, I am excited for it! Despite my own feelings of uncertainty regarding the final trailer due few seconds of cringe I've seen in the video like Ralph trying to do the floss, I feel like this movie will actually be a pretty fun movie. Not as good as the first but still enjoyable to watch like Incredibles 2 was.
Now, I know that I said in my first post that I was only going to post new content every Friday and Saturday, but there's something about the upcoming movie that has been getting backlash and hard for me to even ignore. Given that I am part of the demographic that was affected by it in some way, I decided to give my own two cents on the topic as well. That topic is the issue surrounding Princess Tiana from The Princess And The Frog and how Disney animators previously lightened her skin for the movie's second trailer. I have to admit, when I first saw that trailer months ago, I had not been as bothered by it as other black girls were. Not because I don't have a problem with a well-known black character getting her skinned lightened, I do, but because I thought her skin just looked lighter due to the amount of light in the bedroom she was sitting in.
It wasn't until I looked at her skin a little closer that I realized that it wasn't just the lighting but an actual mishandling of her appearance. Tiana's skin had indeed been lightened, and she no longer resembled darker black women like me or others I knew that aren't seen enough on modern television or in film. It was hurtful, because she was already beautiful and looked great, but they changed her skin tone enough for her to be near Rihanna's shade.
When Disney came to their senses and actually decided to change Tiana's skin tone, I was pretty happy. It seemed like, after all these years, those working at the company were finally listening to a part of their fan base and actually stepping up to do the right thing. Regardless of how some people feel about Disney's decision to reverse Tiana's skin tone to its original dark tone, the company was taking responsibility for their actions and acknowledging that they made a mistake, and that's all that matters to me.
But there is one thing about it that did bug me regarding the process it took to get to that point. That thing is the meeting executives had with Tiana's original voice actress, Anika Noni Rose, and their meeting with black activists that they had so they can get advice on how to present their first and only black princess accurately. I have to ask, honestly. Why is it that hard to just change her skin tone to a darker shade in the first place? Why did it even take having a black person on your team and advising you on how to do it correctly when there are plenty of images out there on the internet available if one wanted to see what the princess even looks like? Why was it even hard to just widen her nose in the first place?
All they had to do was look at the majority of black people on the internet featured on Google Images, or look up Tiana's name by using the search bar and they could get a full understanding of what they'd have to do! Instead, it was treated like some big thing that would take time to do and involve a few discussions about when the solution was simple. Disney, it's not that hard! Just change her skin to a darker shade; that's it!
When it comes to dark skin black girls, is it that hard to do the work of making her look like the average black girl? I hope not, because most of the cartoons I grew up with had plenty of dark skin black girls available on the TV screen for our viewing. You can tell that the animators had no issues deciding whether to make them look a certain way or give them nice dark brown skin to let us know that they were black little girls. Also, if they started with a certain shade, it was never lightened for no reason.
This is why I believe Disney animators should take a good look at how black girls have been portrayed on other animated shows on different networks like Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon, not set up a bunch of meetings to solve one problem. Those channels never had an issue portraying darker brown African-American girls on their TV shows, and probably wouldn't make a fuss over changing a character's skin color to an accurate shade, nonetheless.
Disney has shown dark skin girls in their media before. Maybe in only one cartoon and couple of their live-action shows, but they still did it. Heck, one of the biggest blockbusters of the year, Black Panther, featured a plethora of beautiful dark skin women in that movie. Sure, people can say that all that casting and planning was done by people who worked for Marvel. But, Marvel is owned by Disney and, however, you slice it, Disney's going to be raking in all the dough at the end of the day.
If Disney truly cares about continuing to make good money and get even more fans than it already has (We know they do), they need to stop doing stuff like this and overlooking a part of the Disney-loving demographic. Young black girls are looking to have a role model just as much as every girl from every other race. They are just as deserving to be represented appropriately as everyone else is, especially those with a darker complexion. Because, as we have seen before, people love to be represented and seen in the most positive way when it comes to media.
I doubt that Disney will never make this type of mistake again. But if I was on their team of consultants, I would warn them that if they ever carelessly make this error again, they will definitely receive heightened backlash and that may result in them losing a lot of potential customers in the future.