“I Got Voodoo, I Got Hoodoo”: Ethnography and Its Objects in Disney’s the Princess and the Frog

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; sever...

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Auteur principal: Pérez, Elizabeth 1975- (Auteur)
Type de support: Électronique Article
Langue:Anglais
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Publié: Taylor & Francis 2021
Dans: Material religion
Année: 2021, Volume: 17, Numéro: 1, Pages: 56-80
Sujets / Chaînes de mots-clés standardisés:B The Princess and the Frog / Syncrétisme afro-américain / Vaudou / Santeria / Objet rituel / Le mal
Classifications IxTheo:AZ Nouveau mouvement religieux
CC Christianisme et religions non-chrétiennes; relations interreligieuses
CE Art chrétien
KBQ Amérique du Nord
ZG Sociologie des médias; médias numériques; Sciences de l'information et de la communication
Sujets non-standardisés:B Ethnography
B Disney
B Afro-Diasporic religions
B Film
B Race
B Protestant normative bias
B Santeria
B the fetish
B Vodou
B (B)lack magic
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Résumé: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.
ISSN:1751-8342
Contient:Enthalten in: Material religion
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1080/17432200.2021.1877954