Colorism in The Proud Family [video essay]
I’ve published another video essay, this time on colorism in the Disney Channel original series The Proud Family (2001-2005, Created By Bruce W. Smith). Pasted below is a transcript of the video as well.
This video discusses imagery that perpetuates racism; viewer discretion is advised.
The Disney Channel original animated series The Proud Family is in the news recently, as a revival of the early 2000s show is set to debut on Disney+ this month. With its announcement has also come a good deal of hype; for example, its list of guest stars is a who’s who of black entertainers currently working in media industries today. The new series has also gained attention for its more … expansive take on black representation, including a new gay couple played by Billy Porter and Zachary Quinto.
All this hype and discussion of what makes for good black representation in media also makes it a prescient time to take a candid look at the original animated series and its forms of representation. This video examines the pervasive colorism in The Proud Family.
I’m not the first person to make a video about this topic by any means. There are a number of black women and men who have talked about the limitations of The Proud Family on YouTube, and I recommend you check out some of their videos as well for their perspectives. I’ll link some of these videos below for further watching. What I want to add to the conversation in this video is how the animation of the show also works to perpetuate colorism. With this knowledge, we can evaluate Louder and Prouder and see if the series’ creatives have changed their approach to depicting blackness on screen.
Positionality
Before diving in, I want to acknowledge my positionality to this material. I’m a white settler scholar currently based in Tiohtià:ke. The series aired on the Disney Channel when I was growing up, so I have some history with the show, but it did not serve as a foundational text the way it did with others. In discussions of the show on YouTube, I find there are a lot of mixed feelings around the series. On videos critiquing The Proud Family for its colorism, there are a lot of comments caught in this tension, recognizing that the series was foundational to their youth, but also recognizing how its problematic as well.
My intention here with this video is to help share analysis of racial representation in film and media more broadly, while adding my own research on animation to the discussion. Much of the discussion on YouTube and elsewhere has been narrative based; this video will add a material analysis to the discussion as well, one attentive to the series as an animated work.
For this analysis, I will be building the work of Catherine Knight Steele, an assistant professor of communications at University of Maryland – College Park. Her article “Pride and Prejudice: Pervasiveness of Colorism and the Animated Series Proud Family” tackles the under researched topic of colorism in media, particularly children’s media.
This video will first talk about what colorism is, then examine colorism in The Proud Family by analyzing the show’s characters. It looks at how both the writing and animation of the show work in tandem to reinforce colorist ideas of beauty and wealth. The video will end with some closing thoughts on how this show can help us rethink our contemporary discussions of representation.
As an animated series, The Proud Family has a lot of flexibility in what it can depict through the medium of animation. As Steele puts it, “In an animated series, producers and animators do not face the material limitations that are often used to justify patterns of exclusion of darker skinned individuals in Hollywood and on television. …animation largely provides the possibility to construct our desired reality” (57).
Animation artists have near if not complete control in the way they approach their work, from designing characters to framing them on screen. So what kind of approaches did The Proud Family creatives choose?
Defining Colourism
To begin, we need to define some terms, namely what is colorism. Margaret L. Hunter, professor of sociology at Mills College, provides a useful definition of colorism in her book Race, Gender, and the Politics of Skin Tone (2005, Routledge):
“White racism is the fundamental building block of colorism, or skin color stratification, among Mexican Americans and African Americans. The maintenance of white supremacy in [America] is predicated on the notion that dark skin represents savagery, irrationality, ugliness, and inferiority. White skin, and thus whiteness itself, is defined by the opposite: civility, rationality, beauty, and superiority. These meanings are infused into actual body types to create the system of racism as we know it today. Skin color and features associated with whites, such as light skin, straight noses, and long, straight hair, take on the meanings that they represent: civility, rationality, and beauty. Similarly, skin colors and features associated with Africans or Indians, such as dark skin, broad noses, and kinky hair, represent savagery, irrationality, and ugliness. The values associated with physical features set the stage for skin color stratification” (Hunter 9-10).
As Steele points out, “Colorism is a worldwide phenomenon of discrimination wherein people are given certain status and privilege based on the physical features of skin color, facial features, and hair textures. Within the African American community this is a topic with a long and painful history and with lasting implications” (53). For more on this topic, I recommend Khadija Mbowe’s video on colorism.
And this is where media comes into play. Media is powerful in its ability to either disrupt or reinforce these systems of power, systems that rely on stereotypes to reproduce the building blocks of white supremacy. Mass media such as television is especially important here in its ability to reach millions of people over time, children’s television especially so.
This is the context from which Steele approaches The Proud Family. Created by Bruce W. Smith, the series aired from 2001 to 2005 on the popular American television cable network, The Disney Channel. In her analysis, Steele identifies pervasive colorism in the series in both the design and narrative framing of its characters, finding colorism in the show’s ideas of beauty and socioeconomic status.
Beauty
When you look at all the characters of The Proud Family, how they are designed, and how they are narratively framed, it’s clear there is a division based around skin color, hair texture, and facial features. Characters with lighter skin, straightened hair, and more Eurocentric facial features are framed by the narrative and the camera as more desirable, while characters with darker skin, natural hair, and more afrocentric facial features are framed as not desirable, or even monstrous.
Examining the characters in detail, both their narrative attributes and character design, illustrates how the series perpetuates colorist beauty standards. We can start with Penny, the main character of the series, and Trudy, her mother. As Steele notes, these characters are some of the most multi-dimensional in the whole series, and we are meant to empathize with them; and notably, they are also characters with many Eurocentric features. Both women have straightened hair as opposed to natural hair; they are also lighter skinned.
By contrast, Penny’s best friend Dijonay, is darker skinned with more afrocentric features, and is framed as comic relief. She is the most overtly sexualized, with her midriff exposed. As Steel describes, “Dijonay is short with a thicker build. She has large lips and dark skin. Her hair is blonde. This subtly illustrates Dijonay’s attempt to enact the White standard of beauty, though she is unsuccessful in her efforts” (Steele 61).
A running joke of the show is Dijonay’s undesirability. She constantly flirts with Sticky, another friend, only to be turned down every time. Dijonay is routinely the butt of the joke that she is unsuccessful in love. Steele also points out that Dijonay’s personality is also stereotypical for darker skinned women. She writes that “Dijonay is depicted as loud, mean, and aggressive. Some may argue this is the reason for her lack of success with romantic partners. Yet, we must explore why the character with more Afrocentric phenotypic traits is also the character we interpret as aggressive and loud … [Ultimately], the representation of this character devalues Black women on the basis of skin color, relegating darker skinned women to supporting roles and reifying stereotypes about the deviance of Black women from traditional notions of femininity” (Steele 61).
Between these two main characters, Penny and Dijonay, we can see how colorist beauty standards manifests in the character design and narrative framing in The Proud Family.
We can see colorist beauty standards through side characters as well. One character where we see this at play is Deborah Williams, a guest character voiced by actor Vanessa Williams. Appearing in the season 2 episode “Ain’t Nothing like the Real Thingy,” Deborah has lighter skin, long, straighter hair, thin nose, lips, and body, and has large breasts. The show frames these Eurocentric features as more desirable, as the plot of the episode revolves around Penny thinking Deborah is seducing her father. Through the narrative, we are told this character who has lighter skin and more Eurocentric features, is attractive.
Through the animation and sound design, this message comes across as well, especially through camera movement when Deborah is first introduced. We the audience know from our consumption of Hollywood cinema that this vertical pan up a women’s body codes this woman as desirable. When we see the camera pans up Deborah’s body, we are told through this animated camera movement that she is attractive.
And that sound effect! I can’t get over how hard the aesthetics of the series are working to convince you this woman is attractive, literally to a cartoonish degree.
By contrast there are the gross sisters, Nubia, Olei, and Gina, a trio who are the bullies of the series. To me, the Gross Sisters are the most striking example of colorism in the series. It’s worth quoting Steele at length here to describe the characters and how their design perpetuates colorist beauty standards.
“Their skin is illustrated with a deep shade of blue, referencing the colorist pejorative phrase ‘blue black,’ used to describe the darkness of skin. Their thick hair is usually kept in braids and their body types are either much larger or much smaller than the typical European ideal. The illustrators use dark skin color as an indicator of fear and ugliness. The last name assigned to the sisters, ‘Gross,’ explains to the audience that they cannot and should not be considered physically appealing” (Steele 60).
I’ll add to Steele’s analysis here and point out that the gross sisters also have prominent overbites in their character design. Even when they aren’t speaking, their teeth constantly jut out in a visually unappealing way. Their teeth are covered in braces, which also seems a marker of their lower class status. Additionally, only one of the sisters, Nubia, speaks, the others are silent. As a marker of the monstrousness, Olei, the heaviest of the trio, is occasionally accompanied with animal growling. These animal noises frame her as other, as uncivilized and savage.
The series is upfront on what you are supposed to think of these young, dark skinned girls.
This is from the first episode of the show.
Speaking to Vogue, Dr. Yaba Blay explains the cultural context of this phrase: “Speaking as a Black woman, I know that, in the history of white supremacy, there is an investment in a particular level of presentation and performance of our value. Ash reflects that you don’t care about your appearance and/or you may not be able to care about your appearance.”
Sticky’s use of the phrase here indicates undesirability, a perceived lack of attention to appearance, and perhaps also points to the gross sisters lower socioeconomic status.
One thing that strikes me in how these characters are designed is that they are literally characters with blue skin, a non-human skin color. This visually marks them as other, as no one else in the show has unrealistic skin tone, just them. It’s worth pointing out that The Proud Family is a series that’s relatively down to earth …relatively. The series takes place in the real world. Penny doesn’t have magic fairies or superpowers; she’s just a young girl who goes to middle school and whose problems mostly stem from her overbearing father obsessed with protecting Penny from her adolescence. While the setting of the show is ostensibly the real world, the Gross sisters are blue, which seems to imply that the racist, colourist idea of “blue black” skin is also real, merely a fact of life, and not one of fiction.
The season 1 episode “Makeover” serves as a capstone for The Proud Family’s colorist beauty standards. Penny and her friends give Olay a makeover; her hair is straightened, her braces seemingly removed, and her body is shaped more like an hourglass shape, just like Deborah Williams.
29) Looking at these characters, we see how The Proud Family produces colourist ideas on what makes someone beautiful. Characters with lighter skin tone and more Eurocentric features, in other words, characters with traits closer to whiteness, are discursively framed as more desirable, while those with darker skin tones and more afrocentric features are not. This discursive framing is not just narrative, but aesthetic as well, through the animation’s character design and camera movement.
Socioeconomic Status
While colorism manifests in beauty standards in the show, it also manifests through wealth as well. Characters with lighter skin and more Eurocentric features are more successful in their businesses, or more wealthy in general.
This dynamic is particularly present between Penny’s parents, Trudy and Oscar. Trudy has a stable career as a veterinarian. She also has a lighter skin tone than Oscar, and is typically framed as the more civil and rational one.
Oscar, by contrast, is a struggling pork rinds manufacturer who is comically terrible in his career, namely, that his pork rinds make everyone sick. Oscar is framed as more irrational or overly emotional. His calling card in the series, in fact, is yelling for his wife. Oscar is so prone to outbursts and yelling, a super cut of his yelling is 37 minutes long. He is constantly mocked by others around him, including his mother. As Steele points out, while he owns a business (which presumably means he has some business smarts), he is usually framed as less intelligent, and in one episode from season 2, “Behind Enemy Lines,” is constantly mocked for his lack of wealth.
This link between darker skin tone and lower socioeconomic status is also seen with Dijonay. As Steele points out, “Dijonay is both darkest and has the lowest socioeconomic status. This is demonstrated by constant references to her apartment, which is too small to hold her many brothers and sisters and her inability to afford many of the luxuries in Penny’s home” (Steele 62).
As a final example of colorism’s socioeconomic dimension, we can look at LaCienega Boulevardez and her family.
So… LaCienega is the worst. She is self-absorbed and constantly manipulates people around her. She also constantly bullies Penny whenever she can get away with it. The creators of the show label her a frenemy, but she’s really just a bully.
As Steele points out, LaCienega has the lightest skin, the thinnest nose, and the longest straight hair of all of Penny’s friends. She and her family are also the richest characters, and LaCienega uses her class status as a means to dismiss Penny throughout the show. LaCienega has access to a significant amount of wealth that Penny and her friends just don’t.
Also, Her mother is a cop.
In sum, The Proud Family aligns the divide between lighter and darker skin tones with wealth, illustrating that the series relies on colourist notions of not only beauty, but socioeconomic status as well.
Watching episodes of this series, there is so much I found I wanted to talk about; its weird take on the matrix which completely subverts the revolutionary politics of the film in a heavy handed screed against piracya and the way the series is often cruel to Penny to a point where it’s honestly unsettling. But I will take time to point to one scene from season 1 episode “Strike” that’s quite revealing of the show’s politics. What’s striking about this scene (no pun intended) are two things : first, it misses the obvious joke to make here, which is for Penny to say, “I don’t need to do my taxes, I don’t have a job!” After all, she’s 14 and in middle school. And second and more importantly, this is not a joke. It’s a statement of fact. It serves as an important index to the actual politics that guide the series as a whole.
Conclusion: Plastic Representation
With contemporary movements in Hollywood such as #oscarssowhite, we’ve seen a recent focused effort to increase opportunities for people of colour on and off screen. This important work is often summarized with the phrase and hashtag “representationmatters.” This phrase, however, often flattens this discussion of representation onscreen to merely a number.
In her article for Film Quarterly, film professor Kristen J. Warner outlines what she calls plastic representation: “plastic representation can be understood as a combination of synthetic elements put together and shaped to look like meaningful imagery, but which can only approximate depth and substance because ultimately it is hollow and cannot survive close scrutiny.” Warner notes she uses the phrase plastic here, as it refers to both shallowness and malleability.
Plastic representation frequently occurs when the conversation around diversity begins and ends in the casting stage. In an interview with the Chicago Tribune, Warner notes that when discussions of representation only happen at the casting level, that’s a form of plastic representation.
The Proud Family, and Disney’s promotion around the series for Disney+, serves as a great example of Warner’s concept of plastic representation. In the online series Disney+ Deets, hosts Kenneth Brown and Marcellus Kidd fondly remember The Proud Family for its representation.
While these hosts mention one off episodes the show did, such as an episode on Kwanzaa, the focus of such representation seems to be quantitative, the sheer number of black and other people of color characters on screen. But as I’ve demonstrated throughout this video, the issue with this series is qualitative, the actual form and function the representation takes. And this issue of qualitative representation extends to the latest continuation of the series. In regards to the announcement of a same sex couple, black critics have questioned why a Black gay man needs to be paired with Whiteness. As Torrey Deuce puts it, “Not every Black queer person has to be paired up with the House of Colonization.” Dr. Alfred Martin, who studies gay Black representation on television, points out that this couple in informed by what audiences the creators think will be watching the show.
Steele surmises that “The Proud Family is a children’s show that celebrates the African American family and offers diverse views of the Black community. Yet it still relies heavily on colorist notions when dealing with both beauty and socioeconomic status” (63). While Disney+’s promotional content frames this show as a win for representation, I don’t think that’s fully the case. As Catherine Knight Steele writes, and as I hope I’ve demonstrated here, the original Proud Family is a clear example of colourism in television, and is a particularly useful example for thinking about how animation as a medium can reproduce colourism as well.
Since The Proud Family originally aired, there’s been a bevy of animation that illustrates the medium’s ability to capture nuanced and beautiful black representation in film and television. There is even animation that illustrates you can use non-realistic color for humans without falling into the trap of colourism. All these examples show that The Proud Family didn’t have to look this way.
Just in terms of visual appeal, the animation in The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder, seems much improved that the original. The original series was produced by a lot of people who were new to animation, and, yeah, it shows; aesthetically The Proud Family has aged rather poorly, colourism and otherwise. Louder and Prouder is certainly a much needed revamp, with saturated hues, detailed textures, and expansive lighting. I think the big question is if a visual upgrade is enough to avoid repeating its past history of colourism.
As of this writing, only a few trailers have dropped for the new series. For me, a strong index of whether the series has grappled with its past colourism is whether the Gross Sisters are still included, and if they still look the same. After all, their visual treatment throughout the original series was rather shocking in how these young girls with darker skin tones were persistently othered by the series. If they are included with the same character design, I think it would throw into question Louder and Prouder’s claim towards bringing good black representation. Welp, I guess we’ll see.
That’s for watching this video. There is so much to say about The Proud Family, so I tried to just keep my discussion to colourism for today. One idea I want to examine in the future is children’s tv that examines labor strikes, such as The Proud Family and Hey Arnold. Leave a comment in the chat if that’s something you’d be interested in, and let me know your thoughts on The Proud Family overall. Until next time!
Sources:
Margaret L. Hunter. Race, Gender, and the Politics of Skin Tone. Routledge, 2013.
Nina Metz, “Representation matters. But for TV and film, the conversation should be about more than casting,” Chicago Tribune, DEC 30, 2021, https://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/what-to-watch/ct-ent-how-to-talk-about-representation-tv-film-20211230-nhcxmcuvvjhvlgjxsp4zinolmm-story.html
Andre Plaid, “More Than Just Dry Skin: The Cultural Significance of Ashiness,” Vogue, March 8, 2021, https://www.vogue.com/article/more-than-just-dry-skin-the-cultural-significance-of-ashiness
April Reign, “#OscarsSoWhite Creator on Academy’s “Tepid” Inclusion Requirements” The Hollywood Reporter, September 16, 2020, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/oscarssowhite-creator-on-academys-tepid-inclusion-requirements-guest-column-4061146
Catherine Knight Steele, “Pride and prejudice: Pervasiveness of colorism and the animated series proud family.” Howard Journal of Communications 27, no. 1 (2016): 53-67.
Kristen J. Warner, “In the Time of Plastic Representation,” Film Quarterly Winter 2017, Volume 71, Number 2, https://filmquarterly.org/2017/12/04/in-the-time-of-plastic-representation.