La famiglia Proud

I began watching this show a good while back and I found it to be quite good. I look forward to watching this cartoon everyday. I love the characters, especially Dijoney (Karen Malina White) and Sticky (Orlando Brown). It's a great show for viewers of all ages I think. I get quite a few laughs out of watching this show. It's not one of the best shows Disney has produced but it's definitely gonna be around for a long time.

This show is like every African-American stereotype rolled in to one offensive digestible quantity. The dialogue is more laden with slang then Trainspotting (the book not the movie) and this is...

Well, it reminds me of a minstrel show, I am just waiting for the episode where they reveal it to be exactly that. I love Recess and Fillmore and a lot of Disney cartoons but this one is just terrible.

Yeah, and a couple years later and I still feel the same way. And my African-American roommate says the exact same thing so I feel somewhat vindicated. He even actually tried to contact the NAACP about the show.

And to be honest, on top of all the stereotypes, the show itself is really pretty bad.

An original production from the Disney Channel, "The Proud Family" isn't far removed from live-action sitcoms like "Moesha" - in fact, with all the stock characters present and correct (stable mum, slightly silly dad, energetic grandma, bratty youngsters, stuck-up rich girl, clique of friends, etc) and de rigeur plotlines about finding out who your real friends are, staying true to yourself etc., etc., once you take away the cartoon element you're left with a watchable but unsurprising family show.

But Penny, the teenage girl around whom most of the action revolves, is quite appealing (unlike Brandy Norwood); and though it does come with the message baggage it's less oppressive than some - mainly because it's funny enough to make the morals bearable. (And Destiny's Child fans note the terrific trio doing backup on the title song - sung by Beyonce's sister Solange.) It won't change your life, but this is more proof that the Mouse has moved beyond repackaging their old characters.

The only reason I can fathom for this show being on The Disney Channel is that Rich Ross is being blackmailed by the NAACP. It's fine that Disney wants to take on some ethnic diversity (no, guys, token ethnic friends in the original movies don't count), but I think they're just taking the notion and sitting on it. While The Color of Friendship, from a year or two ago, was a wonderful and moving (at least, for Disney) story about racial diversity, recent attempts seem more lackadaisical and haphazard, as if someone up there said "Alright, we have a show and it's about black people. We can package that, right?" Previous shows in The Proud Family's demographic, Smart Guy and The Famous Jett Jackson, at least had more of a premise. Even compared to other Disney Channel animated series, this show falls flat in terms of concept. Unlike Kim Possible, which revels in its own absurdity, The Proud Family tries to be a down-to-earth family show with wacky elements, but instead presents a jumbled mess of stereotypes and current-event harping. The main problem with this show is that the characters are too busy trying to be colorful and upbeat that they come off as annoying. Penny is not inherently as likeable as her contemporaries: Lizzie McGuire, Fiona Phillips, Annie Thelen, Kim Possible, and Ren Stevens, because she's brattier than all of them combined, and her redeeming factors are limited. Oscar is more vibrant than Wood Jackson (Famous Jett Jackson) and Floyd Henderson (Smart Guy) but he is less a father figure than a clown, because, once again, he fails to capture the essence of fatherhood among all his immature "manly" activity. Mrs. Proud, I can't even remember her name, is the most likeable character in the show, if only because her main purpose is to shut her husband up. We've seen the Suga Mama character presented before, as Montrose Hagins' Miz Coretta (Famous Jett Jackson), and it was on that show that the character embodied all the wisdom that The Proud Family would like you to think that Suga Mama has. The friends aren't even worth more of a mention than they are all ethnic stereotypes (except for LaCienega, who is just ridiculous). So the show pales compared to Disney's other African-American sitcoms through lack of premise, Disney's other Teen Girl sitcoms through unlikeable characters, and Disney's other animation by, well, being bland. Hopefully this show will be canned and written off as a bridge between The Famous Jett Jackson and whatever star vehicle they're trying to give Raven-Symone.

But, hey, at least it's not The Jersey.

The New Disney continues to get more and more calculated with its material by the minute.

Honestly, the only new animated television show they've managed to produce during the past several years that is genuinely good is "House of Mouse". Other than that, the "marketeers" and ridiculous focus groups are getting more and more out of hand. Now to be fair, this is pretty much the case with all of Hollywood and not just the current Disney studio: the current contempt for audiences is producing more pap here in the United States than ever before. I keep hoping that maybe things will eventually turn back around, but the marketers in this country have simply too firm a vice-grip on creators.

But unfortunately, Disney's new animated stuff is also showing just how calculated and out-of-touch the studio really is, as "The Proud Family" is a show which looks, feels and is written like something out of the eighties instead of something current.

Despite its good intentions, there is precious little to be said for this show, which comprises of a ton of wildly cubist limited/abstract designs that were all the rage back during the eighties and were already greviously worn out way back when "Hammerman" and "A Pup Named Scooby Doo" had ripped them off from Bakshi's "Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures", and major major references to trend-following and clothing styles also out of said long-past era, each and every single one of them audience-appeal-programmed to the max. Adding to the problem is the fact that all of the voice acting is wildly overplayed in the "Just The Ten Of Us" mode; only "Sugar Mama" provides any respite. Now and again, the plots will actually begin to write something remarkably tender for a show so determined to be cool, but unfortunately Disney smothers everything with too much political correctness (and by that, I mean a strong "Let's not show TOO MUCH emotion between friends here, otherwise it will be uncool and nerdy!" bias) before you can savour the show's sentiments for very long.

I actually found the TV station's advertising for the show far more entertaining that the show itself. One ad which featured a brief interview with the voice for "Sugar Mama", for example, is a delight and fun to watch all on its own.

All in all, though, "The Proud Family" is about nothing more than the current Disney quest for trend-following, audience-hopes and lots of money money money. Virtually every laugh, every gag, every loud shriek of "Party over HERE!" and jagged design line and abstract character creation and rap music guest seems calculated to induce tweens everywhere to stare in rapture and go, "HOOOO, YEAH!" ...and to spend more money on Proud Family merchandising and videotapes. In other words, "The Proud Family" is "Rainbow Brite" with funky illusions to style and a hip-hop soundtrack.