Hello & welcome back to A Look at Disney. Just recently, Disney made a major announcement of their first Latina princess. However, she will not be appearing in her own movie. Rather, the character Elena will debut on an episode of the Disney Junior show, Sofia The First and then be spun off into her own titular show. Disney describes her as bold, fun and caring.
The role of 16 year-old Princess Elena, the bold, caring, funny and clever ascendant to the throne in the fairytale kingdom of Avalor, will be voiced by Aimee Carrero (ABC Family’sYoung & Hungry).
The announcement of this new princess has been met with mixed reception. Some are happy at the prospect of a Latina princess for young girls and I get that why not? But some Disney fans are a little disappointed that she is being relegated to the preschool block and that Disney is not actually making a movie featuring a Latina princess. Which is understandable and Disney Junior Senior Vice President, Nancy Kanter did not help by implying that Elena is not actually Latina but rather inspired by Latin cultures. Which this ties back into something that happened around the time that Sofia was premiering three years ago because originally, Sofia was supposed to be a Hispanic princess but Disney quickly recanted on that statement, when they were getting complaints that Sofia was not Hispanic enough. Show creator, Craig Gerber still stands by Sofia being of this ethnicity.
As for my personal feelings on Elena, I am interested to see what Disney can do with her and this could be a good to expose young girls to another culture that they may not know much about. Sure, Dora has had this turf but the main Dora show has ended and now Nick is airing a new show with her a ten year old. My view is that I do not believe that Disney is looking for a Dora clone here. I do believe that this show will teach children about Elena's culture but it will not talk down to children like Dora does. And with Elena being older than Dora at 16, that could lead to some interesting storytelling opportunities because as I've read as one of the big themes of the show will be Elena learning how to rule her kingdom.
At the end of the day, I feel I need to see more of this new princess before I can make a judgement but I do feel that Disney is trying to do a good thing and I hope it works out for them. What are your thoughts on Elena? Tell me in the comments. Peace!
I'm actually looking forward to this show. Elena herself does sound interesting. Besides, with how Sofia the First gets to act like a real show , unlike most other preschool shows, I'm sure we will get more of that from Elena of Avalor. From the people I've talked to, they're actually looking forward to the show. But of course, we can't count our chickens before they hatch. Let's see what happens.
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