“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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主要作者: Pérez, Elizabeth 1975- (Author)
格式: 電子 Article
語言:English
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出版: Taylor & Francis 2021
In: Material religion
Year: 2021, 卷: 17, 發布: 1, Pages: 56-80
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains:B The Princess and the Frog / 洲裔美國人的融合 / 伏都教 / 薩泰里阿教 / Kultgegenstand / 罪惡
IxTheo Classification:AZ New religious movements
CC Christianity and Non-Christian religion; Inter-religious relations
CE Christian art
KBQ North America
ZG Media studies; Digital media; Communication studies
Further subjects:B 薩泰里阿教
B Ethnography
B Disney
B Afro-Diasporic religions
B 電影
B Race
B Protestant normative bias
B the fetish
B Vodou
B (B)lack magic
在線閱讀: Presumably Free Access
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總結: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
Contains:Enthalten in: Material religion
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1080/17432200.2021.1877954