I grew up watching cartoons and I wondered why so few of them looked like me.
As a girl, I idolized the Disney Princess cartoons. And I wondered why none of them looked like me.
Although most minority representations in animation are vaulted away by Disney and Merrie Melodies, I wondered what it must have been like to assign caricatures to a black body.
For my senior Animate Arts project I decided to do just that and create the history of an animated black princess.
With Storytelling in Stereo(type) I wanted to make a narrative that explained how the black animated body transformed from a vaudevillian trick to a princess.
The images and story that I created follow her caricatured life and draw on popular black animated images and history through the use of old spirituals, slave songs, and the story telling tradition.
Please explore the site and listen to the story under the “Storytelling in Stereo(type)” tab.
Cambrey
