RT Article
T1 “I Got Voodoo, I Got Hoodoo”: Ethnography and Its Objects in Disney’s the Princess and the Frog
JF Material religion
VO 17
IS 1
SP 56
OP 80
A1 Pérez, Elizabeth 1975-
LA English
PB Taylor & Francis
YR 2021
UL https://www.ixtheo.de/Record/1752718666
AB Since the 2009 release of Disney’s The Princess and the Frog, critiques from within religious studies have focused on the role of its villain, Dr. Facilier, and its stereotypical distortions of Haitian Vodou. These are but a fraction of the allusions made to Black Atlantic traditions, however; several scenes contain artifacts pulled from the material cultures of Afro-Brazilian Umbanda and Quimbanda, as well as Afro-Cuban Abakuá, Palo Mayombe, and Lucumí. I demonstrate that filmmakers not only accessed a broader range of ethnographically-informed sources than has been acknowledged, but also engaged in their own ethnographic data collection with Vodou and “Yorùbá” priestess Ava Kay Jones. As a result, the film reproduces an extensively-documented discourse promulgated by practitioners of Afro-Diasporic religions concerning the (im)morality of magic. The film even follows Jones and the foundational scholarly literature on Black Atlantic traditions in furnishing characters with ethnically differentiated props and dwellings, coded as either proximate (Black and West African) or Other (Caribbean and Central African). I argue that filmmakers erred primarily in harboring a Protestant normative bias and depicting things endowed with agency according to the logic of the fetish. I conclude by proposing strategies for more ethically viable future representation of Black Atlantic traditions.
K1 Disney
K1 Film
K1 the fetish
K1 Protestant normative bias
K1 Race
K1 Santería
K1 Vodou
K1 (B)lack magic
K1 Ethnography
K1 Afro-Diasporic religions
DO 10.1080/17432200.2021.1877954