Pixar’s making a movie about a girl! The animation company announced its schedule through 2012 and not one, but two of their films will feature females. Harping on Pixar for not having made a movie with a female heroine sooner, especially when I’m still high on Up! (just as Meghan is), feels a little like ragging on Jackson Pollack for not painting straight lines. Still, it’s exciting news.

The first film, Newt, out in 2011, imagines “What happens when the last remaining male and female blue-footed newts on the planet are forced together by science to save the species, and they can’t stand each other?” This sounds like the animated version of It Happened One Night (plus a few action sequences), so, you know, sign me up. The second film, The Bear and The Bow, will be even more girlcentric, telling the tale of “the impetuous, tangle-haired Merida, [who] though a daughter of royalty, would prefer to make her mark as a great archer.” It’s also set to come out 2011 and will be voiced by Reese Witherspoon.

Not to harsh on Pixar too harshly, especially since I have all the faith in the world that The Bear and The Bow will be fantastic, but it's slightly puzzling that Merida, their first female protagonist, is a princess. As Linda Holmes at NPR puts it, “I have nothing against princesses. I have nothing against movies with princesses. But don't the Disney princesses pretty much have us covered? [Pixar parent company Disney even has two more princess films, the controversial The Princess and The Frog and Rapunzel, coming out in the next year] If we had to wait for your thirteenth movie for you to make one with a girl at the center, couldn't you have chosen something for her to be that could compete with plucky robots and adventurous space toys?” In other words, little girls already have lots of role models who wear tiaras and shiny pink dresses. Hopefully the new Pixar movies will show them a heroine who does other things. too.

Tags: Dinsey Princess, movies, Newt, Pixar, The Bear and The Bow, the princess and the frog

As Nina pointed out last week, and the Times pointed out over the weekend, Disney's The Princess and The Frog, its first animated feature to star a black heroine, Tiana, is already controversial, and it doesn't come out until December. Watching the trailer for it on the big screen over the weekend (it's playing before Pixar's totally awesome Up!) got me thinking about another potential source of contention: Tiana's voice.

There are currently eight Disney Princesses (Tiana will be the ninth), and whatever the other princesses' ethnicity—five are white, and Jasmine, Mulan, and Pocahontas are Persian, Chinese and Native American respectively—they all speak in clearly enunciated, accentless, standard American English. Tiana does not. She has a Southern-Cajun drawl, which, in Disney's defense, is probably what a girl born and raised in New Orleans, as Tiana supposedly has been, would sound like. That said, what constitutes a "black voice" versus a "white voice"—not to mention the stereotypes attached to Southern accents in particular—is hugely fraught: It's not just a meaningless character quirk that the black princess is the only princess who sounds different from all the rest. It can't be.

It's vaguely plausible to me that Disney didn't think about this, that giving their first black princess a Southern accent signifies something more than just geographical accuracy. After all, this is the company that had to scrap the initial version of the film because they didn't realize that having their first African American princess be a maid named Maddy was boneheaded to the point of ignorance. Perhaps they only intended Tiana's voice to be "sweet" and "different"—and maybe to some viewers that's all it will be. Maybe if Tiana had sounded like the other princesses, some viewers would have been incensed that Disney had chosen to white-wash her. Am I making too much of this?

It seems to me that when it comes to the princesses, there's good in difference—every little girl, of every race, deserves to feel represented—and also good in sameness. Whatever the various princesses' races or cultural backgrounds (and certainly, Disney could have more variety in this regard), they're all similar: resourceful, plucky, kind-hearted, and Kewpie eyed, with some adorable animal friends, a habit of bursting into song, and luck with the princes. The more different kinds of princesses that there are available, the more similar little girls' experiences of the princesses become. Every little kid who has a princess that she feels connected to, represented by, akin to will know what it feels like to want to be a princess, dress like a princess, and beg her parents to buy all the tons and tons of schlocky merchandise branded with a princess' face. Belle and Pocahontas are different, and may appeal to different children, but adoring Belle or adoring Pocahontas probably feels pretty much the same. So, to bring it back to Tiana, does her voice add to the good difference, subtract from the good sameness, or change nothing at all?

Tags: Disney, Disney Princess, Princess Tiana, the princess and the frog