As you may know, Disney has a movie coming out later this year called “The Princess and the Frog,” a retelling of the story of the princess who kisses a frog that then helpfully turns into a handsome prince for her to marry. The noteworthy aspect of this film, aimed at a mainstream audience, is that the female protagonist is African American. We’ve seen Disney films with non-White protagonists before–“Mulan” and “Pocahontas,” for instance–but to my knowledge there haven’t been any with a Black main character, unless I guess you count the Uncle Remus stuff, and that’s just a whole lot of ick.

While many people have eagerly awaited “The Princess and the Frog,” Disney’s long history of negative or stereotypical portrayals of non-White characters (i.e., “Fantasia“) meant many were concerned about what the final product might be, expressing concerns based on the trailer and other promotional materials that have emerged so far. Margaret Lyons at EW.com says,

Disney’s track record with racism and racist caricature makes me a little nervous when I see stuff like that toothless firefly.

According to Jezebel, “…Tiana was originally a maid named Maddy (to0 close to mammy?)…” And Leontine says,

…based on this trailer, the other things that Black people get to do are voodoo shit, playing jazz and dancing, and making jokes about their butts.  Charming.

For the record, the protagonist is only African American for part of the movie; for a good chunk of it she’s a green frog. But then, doesn’t the princess turn into an ogre in at least some of the “Shrek” movies? I can’t quite recall.

The movie website has a video game. In the game (from io9),

…Tiana, is sent on a mission to retrieve the rich white girl’s tiara, so she can borrow it, but along the way she’s asked to fetch some hot sauce for the gumbo before she has permission to get to the rich girl’s bedroom.

A screenshot of the hot sauce part:

Rebekah R. pointed out a deck of promotional cards handed out at Comic-Con (also at io9). There are some interesting gender and racial elements. Here are Tiana’s parents; note that her mother is “nurturing” while her father is “inspirational”:

Dr. Facilier is a “witch doctor,” practices voodoo, and looks a bit like cartoonish images of pimps I’ve seen now and then:

I did notice that the valet (is that the same as a butler?) for the prince is White rather than Black:

The text for one of the cards says “It’s not in yo’ cards”:

Here’s Mama Odie, the godmother figure, is a “seer” with a snake:

These images and objections are interesting by themselves, but they also bring up some of the difficulties in portraying groups that have historically been stereotyped negatively and occupied a subordinate social status. For instance, the fact that Tiana was originally going to be a maid wouldn’t, on the surface, necessarily be that different from “Cinderella,” in which the (White) protagonist is basically a maid. And there’s nothing wrong with playing jazz or, for that matter, practicing voodoo (which could be seen as very similar to the magic that is so common in kids’ films).

But of course, an image of a Black woman as a maid carries different connotations than that of a White woman doing the same job. There have certainly been large numbers of White maids  in the U.S. as well as other countries; in the late 1800s many female Irish immigrants to the U.S. took jobs as domestic servants. But they fairly quickly transitioned, as a group, into other types of work. African American women were stuck with jobs as maids a lot longer because of job discrimination. The “Mammy” figure, a happy-go-lucky servant pleased to take care of the White family she worked for, was applied exclusively to Black women.

Depicting Cinderella as a maid doesn’t play into pre-existing stereotypes of White women; it’s just an individual portrayal. A Black character cast as a maid, to many people, reproduces an image of Black women that goes beyond the individual–whether the creators intend to or not, such images bring with them associations to the Mammy character and real oppression of African American women in a culture that saw them primarily as servants for more privileged groups.

Disney may have intentionally tapped into those cultural images when Tiana was originally imagined as a maid for a White character (as well as including other stereotypical elements). Or the creators may have unthinkingly reproduced stereotypes because, when thinking about characters to use in a movie set in New Orleans with a Black protagonist, they drew on existing cultural imagery. In the absence of a concerted, thoughtful effort to avoid reproducing them, it’s not surprising that problematic elements show up in TV shows, movies, and so on.

Anyway, this should be an interesting situation to watch unfold when the movie is finally released.

UPDATE: Commenter John Lewis says,

This movie’s worth analyzing, but Gwen’s commentary here is not among the most insightful I’ve read on this blog. From my viewing of the trailer, without knowing much else about the film, I think she’s really reaching.

I don’t know that I’m “reaching,” exactly–we know quite a bit of other stuff about the film, such as the fact that Disney originally had Tiana cast as a maid, and that many people who want this to be a good film are very frightened about how it might turn out, which I think is fascinating in and of itself–but he’s right about it not being the best commentary ever. Meh. It’s free content, people, and this is the first week of classes. My brain works better at putting together a coherent argument some days than others. Taking the post down b/c it’s not my best, or b/c people say I’m off-base, seems sort of intellectually dishonest, like I’m trying to hide anything that gets criticized, so I guess I’ll just leave it up and people can read the critical comments.

And in my defense, it also turns out Disney has recut the trailer and some of the scenes that were in it when I first started writing up some commentary aren’t in it any more. I didn’t realize when I found a link to the trailer after the original link disappeared that it had been changed to leave out some things I found odd in the first one.

See also this post that includes a discussion of concerns that the movie “Up” wouldn’t be popular because it had an Asian lead character as well as our post on gender in Pixar films, gender roles in “Bee Movie,”

Gwen Sharp is an associate professor of sociology at Nevada State College. You can follow her on Twitter at @gwensharpnv.

Reading Resist Racism, I found a link to an article in this Sunday’s Washington Post by a journalist by the name of Amit Paley who chronicled her exploration of “tribes” in Thailand.  The article is a study in class privilege, with a global twist.  It begins with the sentence: “You can see almost anything in the world if you pay enough.”

She wanted to see women of the Padaung (or Kayan), who are from Burma but now live in Thailand as refugees.  The Kayan women are famous for wearing brass rings around their necks, leading to the illusion of an elongated neck created by the depression of their collarbone. Paley writes:

Ever since I glimpsed the Padaung as a child in my grandfather’s National Geographics, I had wanted to see these curious women, who suffer painful disfigurement to emerge as graceful beauties.

Her description of human beings, indirectly, as curiosities, combined with the comment that you can see “anything… if you pay enough” (my emphasis) is an excellent example of the objectification of ethnic others.

Paley’s desire to see these women is almost thwarted by the majority of tourist companies in Thailand who describe her effort as exploitative and immoral.  They even suggest that the women are “prisoners held captive in the villages by businessmen” making money off of tourism.  This is confirmed by Wikipedia, for what it’s worth.

This doesn’t stop Paley, who keeps asking until she finds a company that will take her to one of the remote villages in which Kayan women live.

The women she meets confirm that they wear traditional garb, continue traditional practices (such as the brass rings), and are even forced to remain in the villages, in order to attract tourists.  Men, largely, appear to be exempted from earning their keep in this way.

Paley says that one powerful male village member said that the women “must wear the dress because of tradition” and “spoke excitedly about its appeal to tourists and noted that half of the village’s income of $30,000 a year comes from tourism.”

A woman in brass rings told her “We do it to put on a show for the foreigners and tourists!”

Paley finishes with this lackluster reflection:

So is it unethical to visit the long-necked women? It is clearly true that money spent to visit them supports an artificial village from which they essentially cannot leave. On the other hand, many of them appeared to prefer living in virtual confinement as long as they are paid and safe. According to what they told me, their situation beats the alternative of living in a repressive country plagued by abject poverty and hunger.

I don’t feel guilty about visiting the Padaung, but my feelings might be different if I had traveled solely as a tourist rather than as a journalist. And I certainly don’t like their lot in life:  Shouldn’t everyone have the freedom to live and travel wherever they want?

Well, Paley has shown that she certainly does have that freedom.  And she is apparently willing to use her “journalist” identity to justify just about any advantage that her privilege affords her.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Ann S. sent us this promotional photograph of Beyonce.  In it, I think, she is wearing something which is supposed to be a motorcyle that she is then riding.  !?

So she is a motorcycle and she is riding herself?  This is such a mess of objectification that I cannot bring it into focus:

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Here’s another collection of images about gender and marketing of various techy things, particularly video games. You can see my other jumbled post of such images here (check out the links at the bottom of that post–I’m not going to reproduce them here).

Danielle F. found a post at bitmob that includes this old ad for Game Boy:

Notice that the presumed user is either a heterosexual male (or, I suppose, a lesbian…but I doubt it). And as we see, the Game Boy is so awesome it’s better than having sex with a woman tied up waiting for you. I hope the unhappy look on her face is because her partner is distracted and not because she doesn’t really want to be tied up.

NEW! Nov ’09 Another vintage example (well, 1987):

A reader who prefers to remain anonymous sent in this image he was forwarded that someone created equating different browsers with women. Again we see that the assumed user is male:

The reader says,

…notice how all the women are described primarily or entirely in terms of sexual attributes, and criticized for whatever ways they fail to be ideal sex partners…Unquestioned assumptions here…that “women” means “people whose purpose in life is to provide you with sex”.  Male gaze much?

I find the Chrome image particularly icky. The equating of IE with “easy” women, who are of course the “first woman [users] tried” (because she’s not relationship material, just for getting started), and the connection to STDs is also classy.

The sender-inner continues,

Like most software companies, mine has an extremely imbalanced male-to-female ratio, maybe something around 90% male, and most of the women are in the marketing and HR departments so the balance is even further skewed among the people who engineer the software.  (Full disclosure: I’m a man.)  I have no way of knowing how prevalent e-mail forwards like this one are among engineers in the software industry, since most of them get passed around under the table.  It makes me wonder what role they might play in perpetuating or reinforcing a “boys-only-club” kind of culture that makes women feel unwelcome, or whether that has an influence on the extreme gender imbalance of my industry.

We got several more submissions of gendered marketing of techy items. Stephanie G. sent us a link to her post at Mother Jones about Sony Ericsson’s attempt to market cell phones to women by making them “diamond” shaped:

The company claims that “structured forms, intricate corners, hidden depths” are trendy. Stephanie points out,

…”depth” refers to a “variety of different shine and matt [sic] finishes,” not tech specs.

The phone has some features that clearly illustrate stereotypes about what women (should) care about:

“The two inch screen’s clever design means that at the touch of a button the screen becomes a mirror, offering a discreet way to make sure you look as good as your mobile phone. It is also the first Sony Ericsson to feature Walk Mate step counter, to help you stay in shape wherever you go. It also has an exclusive fashion interface which automatically updates with zodiac signs and special events throughout the year.”

Liz noted the following about Ubisoft’s series of Nintendo games aimed at girls:

…includes stuff like ‘Imagine Makeup Artist’ and ‘Imagine Wedding Planner.’ Without exception every game is about physical appearance, performance for the purpose of looking pretty, or nurturing/childrearing.

If you haven’t gotten enough yet, Kate M. sent in these examples of “time management games” (what?!?) at Shockwave:

I don’t know what to make of this one:

UPDATE: Reader Shodan says, about Virtual Families and Virtual Villagers,

…in those games, male and female characters can take on dozens of roles, with males able to take on tasks that have been often portrayed as the role of women traditionally (house cleaning, child rearing) and women taking on tasks that are often portrayed as masculine masculine (research, construction).

On the other hand, I found this tip (here):

Stay at Home Moms- Nursing mothers focus all their attention on the baby for two years of game time. They won’t do any other tasks while caring for the baby.

Also this at Codeblower:

Job: Breeder
If you want (once things are progressing and you’ve got a steady food-supply, a hut or two built, and you’re working on unplugging the lagoon) you can task a couple villagers to be “Breeders”. Be advised that this is only a good idea for females. This was another accidental-discovery. I had everybody but “The Runner” set to Breeder (to get the population moving) and shut the game down for a while. I came back to discover that one of the males had decided that Runner would be a good mate — food-production had halted. Needless to say, the two men in the village were immediately tasked with Runner’s duties while the females nursed the infants.

So maybe I’m totally offbase on those two. Or maybe not.

You can also play Create a Mall, Posh Boutique 2, Diaper Dash, or a variety of games about diners, salons, and boutiques. Kate says,

Even the ones that involve you having a successful career (and saving the community!  What a hero!  Nurturing all of us!) don’t start off with you wanting a career – you fall into it by accident, on account of your love for your family/community/cooking/fashion.

Also see: the Sony OMG Lilac Play Station Portable, mom/daughter domesticity in a Nintendo ad, targeting the new Risk to men, and Miss Bimbo.

NEW! (July ’10): Bri A. sent in another example of gendering technology. This is an image from TeamViewer, a program that lets people remotely access your computer. Notice what it says under Info: “This number identifies you. Tell your partner so he can connect to you.” Because only guys would be using this, obviously.

Gwen Sharp is an associate professor of sociology at Nevada State College. You can follow her on Twitter at @gwensharpnv.

The “Got Milk” campaign is funded by the California Milk Processor Board, a marketing organization funded collectively by California dairies.  In a recent comment thread, Adam linked to the clip below in which ABC does a segment about the awesomeness of milk.  It’s a great example of the way that the news media in not independent of business.

UPDATE! Abby, in the comments thread, linked to another great example:

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Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Hellman’s Mayonnaise, a brand owned by the multinational corporation Unilever, currently has an “eat local” campaign in Canada. As part of it, they put out this video (found at BrandFreak) highlighting how much food Canada imports:

Hellmann’s – It’s Time for Real from CRUSH on Vimeo.

What I find odd here is that Unilever owns a large number of food brands (as well as non-food ones), including Hellman’s, Wishbone, Ben & Jerry’s, Bertolli, Lipton, Knorr, and Slim-Fast (check here for some images of organic brands owned by Unilever). The Lipton web page notes that Lipton is “…making a big splash in the global beverages market…” The main Unilever food page announces,

We have the heritage and knowledge to move effortlessly between cuisines and countries.

So on the one hand, according to wikipedia,

The company promotes sustainability and started a sustainable agriculture programme in 1998.[7] In May 2007 it became the first tea company to commit to sourcing all its tea in a sustainable manner, employing the Rainforest Alliance, an international environmental NGO, to certify its tea estates in East Africa, as well as third-party suppliers in Africa and other parts of the world. It declared its aim to have all Lipton Yellow Label and PG Tips tea bags sold in Western Europe certified by 2010, followed by all Lipton tea bags globally by 2015.

Covalence, an ethical reputation ranking agency, placed Unilever at the top of its ranking based on positive versus negative news coverage for 2007.

Those are admirable goals by any standard, and food/globalization activists often push for that type of responsible corporate citizenship.

On the other hand…Unilever owns 400+ brands, many of which are dependent upon global sourcing and distribution; they in no way contribute to or encourage local eating, and if people really began eating locally, Unilever’s market share would suffer dramatically. And there are questions about how well it lives up to its sustainability goals.

We’ve seen these contradictions from Unilever before: the company owns both Axe and Dove, brands that are often marketed in ways that conflict with one another.

One way to look at this is that Unilever is making efforts to encourage sustainability and other policies that many critics would appreciate, within a global marketplace that constrains their efforts. The more cynical view is that such contradictory messages in effect allow corporations to “have it all.” Don’t care about sustainability, working conditions, and so on? Chances are you’re buying Unilever brands by default. But if you do care about such issues, you can feel good about buying at least some Unilever brands–those that have a marketing strategy designed to appeal to you. And doing so in no way threatens Unilever’s overall profitability.

So, readers, whatcha think?

Dmitriy T.M. sent us a link to an AdWeek post reporting that Miller Beer began advertising in Vietnam last week with this commercial:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KG9H5_oKVd0[/youtube]

Some sociologists who study international relations apply the idea of the brand to nations.  Nations, they argue, can be seen as a product in a global marketplace. Australia, for example, is marketed as a rough and tumble place where we can get back to nature and find our true selves. Insofar as they can can control their brand, countries can draw tourism and increase demand for their exports (see here and here for Australian examples).

The ad above is an excellent example of Miller capitalizing on the American brand: “It’s American Time. It’s Miller Time.” Notice also that the ad is in English and doesn’t feature anyone that looks Vietnamese. The whiteness of the ad is purposeful. Miller is selling a specific version of “America” characterized by white people, urban life, sex-mixed socializing and, also, really bad music.

UPDATE!  In the comments, Adam linked to this ad which ran in the Phillipines:

You can also think of the California happy cows commercials as a form of state branding.

See here, here, and herefor posts showing the social construction of America as white.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

We’ve posted in the past about how cigarettes have been marketed to women: as ways to lose weight, a form of personal liberation (more examples of this marketing theme here and here) as a way to calm down stressed moms, and doctor-approved methods of clearing up skin problems.

A while back Emily M. sent us a link to an article at the Onion A.V. Club that shows how men have been portrayed in cigarette ads. They provide a nice comparison to female-oriented marketing campaigns.

A recurring theme is that of a men as rugged individualists who go out and explore wild, remote, presumably dangerous places on their own. The Marlboro Man is the most familiar example, but Camel’s “where a man belongs” campaign also stressed this image:

Another major theme we see is cigarettes as facilitators of male bonding:

Other times we see men smoking as they do Really Intense Work:

Also see our post on Tiparillo cigarettes as a way to get hot women and Skoal use as male bonding that will get you out of a speeding ticket.

Gwen Sharp is an associate professor of sociology at Nevada State College. You can follow her on Twitter at @gwensharpnv.