The conflicting message of The Princess and the Frog

The Princess and the Frog was the last big traditionally animated feature to come out of Disney before they switched to 3D animation and had their successes with Tangled and Frozen. At the time the movie sort of went ignored, with the traditional hand-drawn animation being overshadowed by other, higher-tech 3D and stop-motion animation (Coraline, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and Up were released the same year, so…ouch).

The story itself is basic as can be. A prince is turned into a frog, and attempts to get a kiss from a princess to turn back. She turns out to not be a princess (she was just going to a fancy dress-up party), so she gets turned into a frog too and the two of them now need to find a way to turn human while falling in love on the way. Pretty standard stuff, with a lot of boring, uninteresting characters and forgettable music numbers (it’s scored by Randy Newman so that’s understandable). But what gets me is the film’s conflicting message.

The movie’s moral message at the end is confusingly contradictory, with the film constantly flip flopping from one message to the next, even when they directly contradict each other. This is a movie that says that hard work and determination are the key to fulfilling your goals and dreams…but you should also just wish upon a star because that works too. It also says that you should follow your dreams…unless you find love, in which case you should abandon your dreams entirely. Being a strong, determined individual and fulfilling your dreams comes second fiddle to getting married according to Frog Princess.

More than anything it has a weird message teaching young girls that if you have a dream that you want to achieve, don’t use hard work just marry a rich guy and everything will work out. Because of love and stuff.

So let’s take a look at how this came to be, with a quick synopsis of the film.

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The first (possibly only) black Disney princess starts off as a poor waitress working in New Orleans. Tiana spends her time working several jobs to earn money to buy a restaurant, which is a dream she shares with her dead daddy. He worked hard his entire life but never achieved it, and Tiana is determined to make that dream come true.  Compared to other Disney princesses, most of who suffered from inertia (Ariel’s and Jasmine’s adventures started because they just got bored), Tiana is a refreshing change because she understands that hard work and determination are needed to reach a goal, something Disney then undermines by beating it out of her over the film.

She works super hard and earns the money, but is still unable to attain her dream. In comes the ‘wishing upon a star’ thing. She gets dressed up as a princess for a costume party and wishes on that star for her restaurant. In comes the frog prince.

Prince Naveen is a lazy, talentless loser who has no money and has been disinherited from his parents since he doesn’t know or do anything. He goes to an evil witch doctor for help (because witchcraft obviously beats out effort) who tells him the easiest way to solve his problems is to marry a rich girl. Witch doctor betrays Naveen and turns him into a frog, and the prince runs off to find a princess to break the curse.

Assuming that she’s a real princess (mostly because she’s wearing a dress it seems) Naveen convinces the grossed out Tiana to kiss him by bribing her with non-existent funds for her restaurant dream. She kisses him, but the curse goes haywire because she’s just a lowly waitress and she gets turned into a frog too. The two argue and whatever, then form a truce as they try and find a way to return to being humans by consulting an old voodoo lady in the swamp.

The two frogs reach the voodoo lady after some more terrible music numbers and misadventures where they start to fall in love because it’s Disney. Tiana asks to be turned back into human, and tells voodoo lady about her dream of opening a restaurant. Old voodoo lady responds by singing an upbeat, toe-tapping musical number… where she tells Tiana to abandon her dream. Voodoo lady sees that the two frogs are falling in love, and because it’s Disney love trumps everything else. So give up on your dream girl, you’ve got yourself a man.

Tiana utilises selective healing and ignores the voodoo lady, instead feeling that she just needs to try harder. Voodoo lady is disappointed, gives them (on retrospect, mis)information and they go on a stupid fairytale ‘before the clock strikes twelve’ task to work everything out.

At the end the two stay as frogs and end up getting married in the swamp with all the colourful, boring, vapid, empty animal characters we’ve met during the film. But of course at the frog marriage they turn back into humans because this is a Disney movie. Then they have a real, expensive wedding (without their swamp ‘friends’), the prince is re-inherited by his parents (who are seemingly just happy he married somebody), so they become rich and now Tiana is a real princess. And of course she gets her restaurant as well.

So in the end Tiana got her dream…by abandoning hard work and instead marrying a rich guy who could buy her dream for her. Fuck you Disney.

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There are a ton of problems here, obviously, but a weird one is that while the hard-working Tiana got her dream by dubious means, the lazy, talentless moron Naveen got his dream as well (his princely fortune) by being lazy, talentless and moronic, and just marrying some girl. Naveen got what he wanted by following exactly what the villain told him to do. The evil witch doctor’s evil, underhanded plan was the one that actually made everything work out in the end. What the hell Disney?

Another major concern is the movie’s odd determination at suggesting that hard work isn’t going to help you get your goal, but rather luck and wishing on stars is what will get you there. Initially Tiana seems like a change of pace for Disney princesses – she works her ass off trying to reach her goal, and it’s a real, tangible, achievable goal not some vague ‘quest for something more’ that most Disney gals go off on. Tiana is the most hard-working, determined and individually capable Disney princess, and then Disney spends the entire movie teaching her to give all that crap up. She gets her dream by abandoning hard work, wishing on stars and marrying a dude. Good job Disney.

Now I’d understand the whole ‘fairytale love overcoming obstacles’ thing if the obstacle was something obstacle-like or adversarial like death (Snow White) or the other person being ugly (Beauty and the Beast). But in Frog Princess the obstacle is her dream, the one she’s trying to attain. And she abandons it because she meets a guy. It’s a bizarre ‘choose one or the other’ scenario that gives the wrong answer because Disney, at the time at least, still traded on the ill-conceived, dated notions of whatever the hell ‘true love’ meant.

So that was the oddly contradictory, conflicting and dubious message of The Princess and the Frog, a movie whose failure lead Disney to take up 3D animation and beat Pixar at their own game with two hits, Tangled and Frozen. Frozen itself has a fun message, where ice-powered Elsa, tired of being told to be prim and proper (and to not use her deadly ice powers) reacts by running away from home, building a castle and also dressing sexily. Seriously, the big Oscar-winning music number ‘Let it Go’ has her letting her hair down, tearing off her princess clothes, garbing herself in figure-hugging silk and putting on some lippy and eye shadow and becoming sassy, which is just fine by me.