Disney has done a frozen Nordic princess, Chinese warrior princess and many others. But a Korean princess? Not so much. Julia Riew set out to fix that.
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Disney has done the frozen Nordic princess, the Chinese warrior princess and many others in between. But a Korean princess? Not so much.
"It honestly still feels like I'm dreaming," she said recently."It's been heartwarming to see the reaction, especially among the Korean American community." Riew's musical draws on the Korean folktale"The Blind Man's Daughter," about a young woman who tries to restore her blind father's sight but ends up in the faraway Dragon Kingdom.
Disney has historically struggled to reflect the diversity of its audience, falling back on stories featuring predominantly white characters and stereotypical depictions of non-white cultures, says Jana Thomas, a media and communications professor at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas, who researches social media and has also written about representation in Disney films.
Riew says she's long toyed with the idea of a musical drawing from her Korean heritage but only seriously started working on it after the coronavirus pandemic hit and she ended up moving back home because campus was shuttered.
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