Co-written by Epiphany Jones
I stopped watching the Disney Channel a long time ago. After everything became live action (the acting makes me cringe) and all the old shows went off the air, I just didn’t see a reason to watch it anymore. However, this weekend the Disney Channel is playing all of the old movies of our youth, and this morning I caught one of my favorite cartoon movies ever: The Proud Family Movie.
If you were a little black kid that was born in the 90s you probably watched the Proud Family when you were little. It aired on the Disney Channel from 2001-2005 and was the one of only children’s cartoon to feature an entire black family as the stars of the show and not just an accessory for diversity. The Proud family consisted of Oscar (the father), Penny (the oldest daughter), Trudy (the mother), Suga Mama (the grandmother), and BeBe & CeCe (the two youngest children). The show followed the family as they went through several misadventures and family moments, allowing black children everywhere to see what they experienced in their daily lives, mirrored on television.
The movie follows the Prouds as Oscar and the family are invited to an island by a great grandson of George Washington Carver (someone that as a black child, you probably knew a lot about) who wishes to steal the multiplying formula for that Oscar created for his snack product which he claims has no expiration date. After the family finds that he is only a clone of the real Dr. Carver they then try to stop the evil clone’s plot to take over the world.
The movie itself isn’t anything spectacular, it’s more or less just a longer episode of the show, but the essence of what made the show so popular amongst black youth is still there. When Penny was finally able to get a phone, black kids everywhere were excited for her because they too had to wait until they were sixteen to get one. When 15 Cent told Penny his Mama would rip him a new one if he didn’t get that car back to his Grandmama, we all laughed because we knew how crazy (but amazing) black mothers are. As Oscar told Penny her entire birthday was canceled we looked at our dads and said, “Thats something you would do”. We saw our own families in Penny’s, we saw ourselves in Penny’s shoes when she tried to sneak out of the house only took to have her Mama right there waiting. In a sense, we were the Proud family.
With the Proud family, it wasn’t about the Prouds living in the slums or in dire economic straights; it showed them as being happy and intelligent. It showed them as being accepting and eager to learn and grow. It showcased something that black people knew to be true about ourselves; that we solve and conquer our problems with family and love.
At the time when the show came out there was no real cartoon that represented black kids, families, or black people in general. Most shows featured almost an entirely white set of characters and any black character that was present in these shows only had a minor role. The Proud Family allowed black kids to finally have an opportunity to relate to the characters that they were watching, as opposed to just simply watching a cartoon. It did a good job of teaching black kids to be more open-minded, more accepting of the unknown even when people weren’t always going to be accepting of us. Penny went to a school that was mostly black and her friend group included a poor white girl, a wealthy Hispanic girl, a black boy with musical talent, and a “ghetto” black girl who was still crazy smart and fun. She met a homeless family and learned not to judge them, a Muslim family and learned the woes of being Muslim in America, she learned that money wasn’t everything from her friend LaCienega, and she helped us to learn those same lessons. The Proud Family touched on all types of subjects but what it touched most were the minds and hearts of young black kids everywhere.
