Walt Disney’s first cartoon black princess is ready to jitterbug her way across the ballroom in The Princess and the Frog, set in jazz-era New Orleans. The movie won’t be released until Christmas, but what we do know is that Princess Tiana’s mother will be voiced by Oprah Winfrey and the movie will feature a Spanish prince and a toothless old firefly with a suspect Southern accent which echoes that of the ‘lazy’ Jamaican lobster from The Little Mermaid.

James C. Collier at Acting White covers the ‘black princess, tanned prince’ dilemma well (Is it that Disney thinks white girls can’t identify with Princess Tiana if the prince is black, or are they just anti black-on-black love? If the prince were say, blonde-haired and blue-eyed, white Southern wackos would surely campaign against the movie as a ‘multiculturalist’ conspiracy to breed the world brown…etc etc).

In any case, it will be interesting to watch the fireworks as the release date gets closer. And of course, the Disney reps will be close at hand flashing their gold-capped teeth and giving the old ‘Why not see the movie and make up your own mind’ line.