Stupid reaction to Disney princess industry

As the stepparent of a 6-year-old, the Disney princess marketing machine is old news to me. This article by the always-behind-the-times Newsweek pisses me off, though. Here's part of the concluding paragraph:

Considering that "What's Love Got to Do With It" attitude, it's no wonder that Disney is modernizing its princess formulas.

( Newsweek is full of shit. )

 
P.S. For bonus nausea [and possibly VOMITING!!!!!], note that the 2009 Princess and the Frog is set in New Orleans. Cue the sassy Southern mammy stereotype, the comic and subhuman speaker of Cajun creole, not to mention the stupid, ignorant, stereotyped jokes about voodoo [more properly called Voudon, I think]. Extra bingo points for gratuitous depiction of New Orleans as some sort of swingin' place full of cheerful Stepin Fetchits just groovin' to the wild rhythms of that racy, "uncivilized," "wild" jazz. 

P.P.S. For a bonus bonus, read Deborah Siegl's review of Enchanted, which uses the movie as a case study to argue many of the points I bring up here.

"What made the red man red?"

In her comment on my previous entry, katranna notes that Disney actively avoids black characters. This is true, but they used to be a little less avoidant. For example, the original version of the animated Fantasia had a little black centaur girl in the Beethoven's Pastoral section. The little black centaur girl, Sunflower, was being a sycophantic slave to the white centaur girls. Sunflower has since been cropped out, denied and otherwise suppressed during Fantasia theatrical and DVD re-releases. See here for a still of Sunflower and even a clip! The rest of the article [about Disney's most racist characters] is worth reading as well. 

The subject line comes from the #3 most racist characters, the Indians in Disney's Peter Pan [admittedly based on J.M. Barrie's stereotyped Pickanninny tribe, which, in a confusing stew of racism, are named after a derogatory term for African-Americans]. They sing a song with that title.

P.S . The list at Cracked.com forgot Stromboli, the fat yelling Italian stereotype in Pinnochio, as well as the eeeeevil slanty-eyed suck-uppy Siamese cats in The Lady and the Tramp who don't speak grammatically ["Now we looking over our new domicile / If we like, we stay for maybe quite a while"].

Medusa de la Mer, or, Distracted musings of a therianthropophile

I just discovered that I have a free octopus model and a free mertail model. I should make a merperson with tentacular [yes, that's the adjectival form of "tentacle" -- I made it up] hair. Hmmm, now I'm thinking of that picture I did, combining a person and all the non-human animals I could think of. It was like a woman with horns and wings and claws on her hands, a centaur front half and some sort of fish tail. Oh yeah...and feline eyes. It was quite silly. However, I'm sure that somewhere someone has created a detailed world and culture for such beings.

Medusa de la Mer, or, Distracted musings of a therianthropophile

I just discovered that I have a free octopus model and a free mertail model. I should make a merperson with tentacular [yes, that's the adjectival form of "tentacle" -- I made it up] hair. Hmmm, now I'm thinking of that picture I did, combining a person and all the non-human animals I could think of. It was like a woman with horns and wings and claws on her hands, a centaur front half and some sort of fish tail. Oh yeah...and feline eyes. It was quite silly. However, I'm sure that somewhere someone has created a detailed world and culture for such beings.

Medusa de la Mer draft

Okay, she was going to be a mermaid with head tentacles, but she informed me that her tentacles actually go on the lower half of her body, so I had to oblige. You don't contradict someone with teeth [and muscles] like that. I need to work on making her octopus parts less plastic and more like shiny wet skin.

She is dancing happily because I constructed her with her tentacles in the appropriate place [on her hips, not on her head]. Please don't ask how she goes to the bathroom or reproduces. It's magic.

( Awesomeness, including bare boobies and bare tentacles. )