form as well. Further examination of unambiguously positive and negative
characters indicates that a full 43.4 percent of 90 characters in human
form show negative actions and motivations while only 18.6 percent of the
156 animal characters are negative.
This correlation of African American to animal held true until
Atlantis:The Lost Empire (Trousdale and Wise 2001, directors) and the
character of Dr. Joshua Strongbear Sweet. Dr. Strongbear Sweet is
presented in human form, clearly African American in appearance. Like
Mufasa, Dry Strongbear Sweet doesn’t use AAVE features so that another
correlation is maintained: powerful, educated = *SAE.
Following Atlantis, Disney made some progress away from these
stereotypes with Lilo & Stitch and the 2009 film The Princess and the
Frog. Lilo & Stitch stands apart for its sensitive portrayal of Hawai’i,
Hawai’ian culture and people of color. The difference here had to do with
the way the film was made: Chris Sanders and Dean DeBois were given
“near-complete creative control as co-writers, storyboard artists and
directors – a first for a Disney film” (Davis 2002). Lilo, her older sister
and her sister’s boyfriend have features that are not Anglicized, and their
lives are neither romanticized nor trivialized; they all speak with Hawai’i
Creole (HC) intonation and rhythms, and HC is heard now and then in the
background. The one African American character is Cobra Bubbles, a
social worker who looks a great deal like a professional weight lifter. His
looks are frightening and his voice – distinctly African American – is
imposing, but this character is in fact one of the good guys, sincere in his
concern for the orphaned sisters. Unfortunately Disney did not repeat this
unusual arrangement, and the usual style of production oversight was
restored for The Princess and the Frog,
The story is set in New Orleans in the 1920s, and features a young
African-American woman as the main character, one who has both father
and mother as the story opens.^17