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iesika T and I just saw the Princess and the Frog. I've seen a lot of stuff about it focusing on race, but nothing much from a Louisiana perspective, so I thought I'd try my hand. Overall, let me say I liked the movie. The story is good, the music is good, the message is good, and I thought the race issues (unavoidable since the movie is set in New Orleans in the 1920s or so) were dealt with subtly and with taste - the undertones ought to go right over the heads of small children but be obvious to teens and adults, which I think is just right. There were, however, enough points that jumped out to me as a local that I started to wish I'd brought a notepad. Let's see how I do working from memory.
1) Voodoo is a religion.
2) "Cajuns talk funny (yes) and have horrible teeth (um) and they're really, really stupid (wut)"
3) We don't have fireflies. At all.
4) EvangeLINE, not EvangeLEEN.
5) Y'all is *plural*.
6) Gumbo. Ur doin' in wrong.
Things I loved:
1) Charlotte. She was the PERFECT southern belle. Just perfect. She had so many great lines. "TIA GIVE ME THOSE NAPKINS GIRL, I'M A SWEATIN' LIKE A SINNER IN CHURCH!" and whatever she says while she's trying to break down a door to get to her 'prince' - something along the lines of "YOUR SHY RETIRING BLUSHING BRIDE TO BE IS GETTING ANXIOUS DARLING" (Charlotte gets all caps for a reason). Her accent was beautiful (she sounded so much like my aunt!) and her character was great, though I wish she'd gotten a better ending. She needed a little more growth.
2) The way race was handled. The opening was great, with Charlotte and Tiana as friends but not equals, and Tiana's ride home out of the Garden District into one of the many shack-towns of the period. Despite this, there are a lot of interracial relationships shown or implied, and you have rich white people eating at black run restaurants and speaking to black business people more or less as equals - this is peculiar to the New Orleans area and probably seems strange to the rest of the South, but race relations were much better within the city than most people realize for a long time, until probably around the time this movie was set, when they started to go badly sour. Segregation failed in New Orleans for a long time. I could write (and have) a whole long thing about this topic, but I'll refrain today.
3) The music. Randy Newman in his element! ^_^ Though I wish the zydeco had been more zydeco than it was, I understand this was probably an attempt to make it more acceptable to mainstream tastes. ^_^;
1) Voodoo is a religion.
If Disney did to any other religion what it did to voodoo in that movie... Mama Odie was all right, though. Also, I bet her name is Odelle, which is hilarious, because I have a... Um. What do you call your uncle by marriage's father? I don't think there's a word. Anyway, his name is Odelle. He has fabulous hair.
2) "Cajuns talk funny (yes) and have horrible teeth (um) and they're really, really stupid (wut)"
I'm not even going to touch this one. That said, Ray got a lot of laughs from the local crowd - probably the biggest laugh the whole movie got was his "Y'ALL FROM SHREVEPORT!?!" His baby grub accordian cracked me up, and I rather liked his romance. His huge family amused and gratified me, as did his comment (paraphrase) "we stick together down here" which is basically the heart of Cajun culture. I did laugh the moment we saw the giggers, but then they opened their mouths and I felt bad about it. Until Two Fingers (the third gigger) talked. He probably got the second best laugh of the movie, because WE ALL KNOW THAT GUY.
3) We don't have fireflies. At all.
I saw them once on a trip somewhere else when I was little. Otherwise, I don't think I would have believed they existed. Our bugs are not so photogenic. Speaking of which, shut up Frog!Tiana, you eat bugs all the time - big ones that live in the water.
4) EvangeLINE, not EvangeLEEN.
Randy Newman (a local boy himself) knows this. You can tell, because whenever they say EvangeLEEN in a song, it ruins the rhyme and scansion.
5) Y'all is *plural*.
Only caught this one once, but it threw me out of the movie. I wish they'd gone for a southern or even Louisiana actor instead of Keith David for Dr. Facilier
6) Gumbo. Ur doin' in wrong.
Tabasco does not go in gumbo. Also, okra does not grow wild in the swamps. It's a yard crop initially imported from Africa. Also, peel your shirimp first. And the mushrooms go in whole - though I guess if you're a frog you'd need little bites, so I'll forgive that one.
Things I loved:
1) Charlotte. She was the PERFECT southern belle. Just perfect. She had so many great lines. "TIA GIVE ME THOSE NAPKINS GIRL, I'M A SWEATIN' LIKE A SINNER IN CHURCH!" and whatever she says while she's trying to break down a door to get to her 'prince' - something along the lines of "YOUR SHY RETIRING BLUSHING BRIDE TO BE IS GETTING ANXIOUS DARLING" (Charlotte gets all caps for a reason). Her accent was beautiful (she sounded so much like my aunt!) and her character was great, though I wish she'd gotten a better ending. She needed a little more growth.
2) The way race was handled. The opening was great, with Charlotte and Tiana as friends but not equals, and Tiana's ride home out of the Garden District into one of the many shack-towns of the period. Despite this, there are a lot of interracial relationships shown or implied, and you have rich white people eating at black run restaurants and speaking to black business people more or less as equals - this is peculiar to the New Orleans area and probably seems strange to the rest of the South, but race relations were much better within the city than most people realize for a long time, until probably around the time this movie was set, when they started to go badly sour. Segregation failed in New Orleans for a long time. I could write (and have) a whole long thing about this topic, but I'll refrain today.
3) The music. Randy Newman in his element! ^_^ Though I wish the zydeco had been more zydeco than it was, I understand this was probably an attempt to make it more acceptable to mainstream tastes. ^_^;
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Date: 2009-12-18 02:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-18 05:04 pm (UTC)If you're in Florida you probably get the joke, but for the sake of others: