The vic? Black Man..The perp? Black Man..The prince?..Anyone else.

The vic? Black Man..The perp? Black Man..The prince?..Anyone else.
Saturday morning, over the morning paper my girlfriend slammed her section of The Times of London down on the table in response to a story about the new Disney animated picture. The Princess and the Frog, a film about a black princess, is caught in scandal yet again. This time, critics have come out against the film’s choice for lead characters.

Her argument was that outrage over the title character’s (who is black) coupling with anyone other than a black man widens the racial divide in America. Outrage over alternative relationships on film is bigotry and limits potential to change the industry. Audiences have slowly realized that seeing interracial couples, gay couples, any alternative OTHERs doing what good ol’ Christian, middle class white folks doing in entertainment won’t cause our heads to explode, Jesus to summon hellfire or the earth’s rotation to reverse.

The protesters argument was that yet again, we see that Hollywood never chooses to portray a black man as prince, morally-sound male characters in the story. Of course, my first reaction was laughter – at her response, the protest’s shortsighted claims and especially the fact that Disney was even attempting such a project. So much going on… I guess I laugh to keep from crying. Thanks Tip.

My hard-pressed point was that it wasn’t about who’s coming to dinner, but about getting some brothers up on the wall. It is yet another example of Hollywood’s refusal to make a black man a prince, couched comfortably in the notion that America just elected an African American president. While I have issue with the argument about this particular film, the protest is a healthy recognition, one that contributes to the dialogue around a studio that just waves it’s white patriarchy around and we just nibble at the bits like celebrity lint. I hope the film doesn’t get released without outrage at every turn and I echo that anger that this is a studio that makes billions of dollars pimping racist ideology into the mainstream. It paints an ugly picture of America for people around the world and it teaches young Americans how to see one another.

Finding the black man in the TomKevinCruiseHanksCostnerKlineSpacey lead role is all but impossible. And we are left wondering if these white guys at the tops of the studios are doing it on purpose, like some Skull And Bones pledge, or if racism is so embedded in American culture that its just going to take a few more Will Smiths and Tyler Perrys to make true change on the silver screen. I challenge the reader to identify ten modern, mainstream, lead black male characters of righteousness that stretch the idiom. And Will Smith doesn’t count. His characters are about as racially threatening to mainstream film as strokes to Cheney’s reign of terror. At least since his first. And P.S. Denzel got a statue for playing a corrupt cop; Forest got a nod for playing Idi Amin. Don’t even get me started on the railroading of Glover’s attempt to make a film about Toussaint L’Ouverture. Now, there’s a black prince.

Frankly, the protests tend to be more entertaining than the actual feature. I could care less if Disney make more films, much less tries their little liberal darndest to produce characters of color. I wish they would fold and give other animators a shot. I know a few with compelling stories that America would die for, instead of being cracked-out on sizzurp slurping, blinged-up coons.

As a parting shot to the day, we decided to catch a flick that night and settled on State of Play with Russell Crowe, Helen Mirren and a teary-eyed Ben Affleck. The film was an excellent thriller with cool plot twists and a relatively decent and diverse line-up. However, much to my chagrin, expectations and amusement, just after the giant Universal reminder of who’s in charge, the first action on the screen was a young black man being shot at point blank range. While integral to the film, I questioned as always, the need for the first victim to be a black male. Skull and Bones pledge or just Hollywood’s blindness? Either way, it made me cringe. And much like bad manners on a cute kid, my perspective was tainted by this irresponsible display. I guess that’s entertainment.