Thoughts to share, anyone? Should a Latina princess be more overtly ethnic? And what should a Latina princess look like, anyway? Please post your comments below.Disney Sofia The First Talking Magical Amulet Sofia the First Talking Magical Amulet is all your little girls needs to learn how to be a princess! The interactive Talking Magical Amulet features the voice of Sofia, and brings her world to life by teaching little girls valuable princess lessons about kindness, sharing, manners and more. Señor conejo? No wait, that would be a rabbit on "Dora the Explorer." Helping Sofia in her journey are the three headmistresses of Royal Prep Academy - Fauna, Flora and Merryweather (the beloved fairies seen in Disney's classic "Sleeping Beauty") and royal steward, Baileywick, as well as a group of cute woodland creatures led by a wise-talking rabbit, Clover. Sofia's royal adventure begins as she prepares to move into the castle with her mom, starting a new family with her step-father, King Roland II, and step-siblings, Amber and James. Sofia will be voiced by teen actress Ariel Winter of "Modern Family." Here's a little more on the film and the character from a Disney press release: mom meets dad from somewhere other than Latin America and they settle in Los Angeles, or something like that. Sort of like Mexican/Puerto Rican/Salvadoran/etc. Miranda met Sofia’s father, Birk Balthazar, who hailed from the kingdom of Freezenberg, and together they moved to Enchancia, where Sofia was born. In the story, Sofia’s mother, Queen Miranda, was born in a fictitious land, Galdiz, a place with Latin influences. So will there be any way of conveying in the film that Princess Sofia is indeed Latina? Will the denizens of Enchancia speak Spanish or have accents? A Disney spokeperson emailed this explanation: The range of characters in ‘Sofia the First’ - and the actors who play them - are a reflection of Disney’s commitment to diverse, multicultural and inclusive storytelling, and the wonderful early reaction to ‘Sofia’ affirms that commitment. Yes, we do come in all colors, but the majority of us are brown." He added, "Her mother is Latina, but the chid is white. "Why call her a Latina and not say anything about it?" said Alex Nogales, president of the National Hispanic Media Coalition, a Pasadena-based media advocacy group. (Who, by the way, also happens to look like many Latinas.) Sofia herself has medium-brown hair and blue eyes - again, there are Latinas who look like this.īut she'd not representative of the darker-skinned, darker-eyed majority, say some critics, who also don't understand why Disney isn't more overt about her ethnicity, like in the case of Princess Tiana of "The Princess and the Frog," a black princess from New Orleans. Viewers will know that Sofia's mother's name is Miranda, and that Miranda has a darker complexion than her daughter, nothing out of the ordinary in multi-hued Latino families. “When we go into schools, what I find fascinating is that every girl thinks that they’re Sofia.”Īn executive producer added, “It’s sort of a matter-of-fact situation rather than an overt thing.” “We never actually call it out,” said Joe D’Ambrosia, vice president of Disney Junior original programming. Here's what one of them told Entertainment Weekly: First, while the character is supposed to be Latina, Disney execs say they don't plan to make a point of her ethnicity. Sofia is adorable, but there's a two-folded flap evolving over her introduction. 18 on the Disney Channel in an animated television film titled "Sofia the First: Once Upon A Princess," in which she navigates the commoner-turned-princess life.
The new character is Sofia, a young girl whose mother marries the king of a place called Enchancia, making her a princess. And, not surprisingly, people are already at odds over whether she's, well, Latina enough. In the spirit of Tiana and Mulan, there's a new princess joining Disney's ethnic princess roster: a Latina.