By Emmanuel Gundran
Although Disney has been well known for its partnership with Pixar to create computer-generated, animated films, they have also recently revitalized their feature animation branch that has been the source of many classic and new films. In 2006, when Disney purchased Pixar, there was fear within the Walt Disney Animation branch that the company would drop their classic animation branch in favor of Pixar. This was not helped by the studio’s layoffs and failed projects such as Chicken Little (Dindal 2005) and Home on the Range (Finn and Sanford 2004). (Barnes 2014) However, Bob Iger, CEO of Disney, allowed John Lasseter and Edwin E. Camull of Pixar to revitalize the branch and out came movies that would bring it back into the limelight.
Although Disney has been well known for its partnership with Pixar to create computer-generated, animated films, they have also recently revitalized their feature animation branch that has been the source of many classic and new films. In 2006, when Disney purchased Pixar, there was fear within the Walt Disney Animation branch that the company would drop their classic animation branch in favor of Pixar. This was not helped by the studio’s layoffs and failed projects such as Chicken Little (Dindal 2005) and Home on the Range (Finn and Sanford 2004). (Barnes 2014) However, Bob Iger, CEO of Disney, allowed John Lasseter and Edwin E. Camull of Pixar to revitalize the branch and out came movies that would bring it back into the limelight.
Chicken Little is an adaptation of the classic fable of the same name.
One of the first films that started what Walt Disney Studios calls the “Present Era” of Disney Animation from 2009 to today was Princess and the Frog (Clements and Musker 2009), Disney’s first hand-drawn animated film in five years since Home on the Range. The film is a retelling of the classic fairytale of The Frog Prince set in 1950’s Louisiana. A nineteen-year old girl named Tiana (Anika Noni Rose) works day and night as a waitress at two diners in New Orleans to pursue her dream of opening her own restaurant. She eventually crosses paths with Prince Naveen (Bruno Campos) from a kingdom across the sea who is turned into a frog after making a deal with a voodoo doctor named Dr. Facilier (Keith David). When Tiana, believing in the fairy tale about the frog prince, kisses the the prince-turned-frog Naveen, she too is turned into a frog. Now, the two must find a way to break the curse.
Tiana is praised as an inspirational character for people regardless of their race and age.
Even though the film only made over $786 thousand on opening weekend and didn’t make enough to support its estimated $105 million budget, the film was received very well by critics and made history as starring the first African-American Disney princess. Tom Huddleston of TimeOut admired it for daring to recreate the animation style of Disney’s earlier films from the 90’s and succeeding (“The Princess and the Frog”). Candice Frederick of Reel Talk Online praised it for inspiring audiences no matter their age or color to pursue their dreams (“The Princess and the Frog”). Although the film does not directly touch on the issue of race, it is seemingly implied with Tiana, an African-American woman who works to get what she wants, and her best friend Charlotte, a White noblewoman who is privileged to have anything that she wants. As Manohla Dargis of The New York Times points out, putting these two characters together will inevitably create parallels to the conflict of race and class in the real world. (“That Old Bayou Magic…”) However, for the sake of not risking losing money, the film does not engage the issue directly. Nevertheless, this subtle social commentary would show up in later Disney animated films.
While other Disney-animated films that premiered after Princess and the Frog such as Tangled (Greno and Howard, 2010) and Wreck-it Ralph (Moore, 2012) had as much, if not more, success with critics and the box office, it was Frozen (Buck and Lee, 2013) that became a cultural phenomenon and put Disney Animation on the map once again. It follows the story of Elsa (Idina Menzel) who runs away from her kingdom to create an ice palace in the mountains to hide her ice powers from the world. However, her sister Anna (Kristen Bell) will go the distance to find her and bring her back home. The film made over $1 billion worldwide, won two Oscars at the Academy Awards, launched a short film, a sequel, a Broadway musical, and countless pieces of merchandise. The film’s most iconic song “Let it Go” has over 1.1 billion views on Disney UK’s YouTube channel.
Frozen is easily one of Disney's most popular and successful films of recent history, and Let it Go is one of their most popular songs.
How did this Frozen frenzy happen? For one, there is the hero’s journey story structure that people can easily latch onto. Lucinda Everett of The Guardian cites a six-year old that she talked to, who told her that the film has the familiar story structure of characters you know and love who solve a problem and have a happy ending (“Why is Frozen so popular?…”). Another reason here is that the film came at just the right time for its audiences. By 2013, social media had been a major part of the younger generations’ lives. The film’s praises were sung all across YouTube with users’ covers of “Let it Go”, and friends and family could share their enjoyable experiences watching the film and encourage others to watch it as well. Third, despite the familiarity of its story structure, Frozen also happens to subvert many of the tropes that are commonly associated with classic Disney movies. For one, there are two princesses in the film rather than one. One princess, Anna, is the hero of the story who travels the country to find the other princess, Elsa, her sister. The film even goes as far to subvert the typical romantic tropes of Disney princess films. The male lead, Kristoff (Jonathan Groff), who follows Anna on her journey is a rugged loner who finds that even reindeer are better than people. Though he eventually becomes Anna’s love interest, it does not happen without conflict. Meanwhile, Elsa becomes a Disney princess whose personal arc does not end with her falling in love with a man. Perhaps this style of subverting tropes and providing social commentary would inform later Disney Animation features such as Zootopia (Howard and Moore, 2016), which deals with racism and classism using anthropomorphic animals, and Moana (Clements, Musker, et. al, 2016), which continues Princess and the Frog’s tradition of creating a strong, female lead and focusing on the culture of ethnic minorities.
Moana carries on the modern Disney tradition of creating strong female protagonists.
Walt Disney Animation is here to stay, and hopefully bring more films that offer great stories, characters, and even some insightful commentary.
Sources Cited:
Dargis, Manohla. “That Old Bayou Magic: Kiss and Ribbit (and Sing).” The New York Times, 24 Nov. 2009. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/25/movies/25frog.html?mcubz=0.
Everett, Lucinda. “Why is Frozen so popular? You asked Google - here’s the answer.” The Guardian, 20 Dec. 2016. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/dec/20/google-autocomplete-why-frozen-film-so-popular.
Frederick, Candice. “The Princess and the Frog.” Reel Talk Online, 19 Dec. 2009. http://www.reeltalkonline.org/2009/12/princess-and-frog.html.
Huddleston, Tom. “The Princess and the Frog. TimeOut, 26 Jan. 2010. https://www.timeout.com/london/film/the-princess-and-the-frog.
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