A few minutes ago, I looked at my phone and smiled! At the stroke of midnight on Friday, February 12, “Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella” aka our Black Cinderella will begin streaming exclusively on Disney Plus.
The beloved televised movie musical stars Brandy in the title role and Whitney Houston as “Fairy Godmother” alongside Whoopi Goldberg, Victor Garber, Natalie Desselle Reid, Bernadette Peters, Paolo Montalban, Jason Alexander, and Veanne Cox.
But y’all already knew that!
However, after sharing the news on Twitter and IG, I realized that it’s Black History Month!
Folks have been begging Disney to add our Black Cinderella movie to Disney Plus for about a year now? Basically since Disney Plus dropped! And after seeing what happened to Pixar Soul’s Disney Plus release, I’m not sure if I’m extremely happy right now.
Why wait until Black History Month?
Why are we treating Black History Month like a sales promotion! Are they planning on dropping it and then removing it later, like they’ve done quite a few other films on the platform? Are they pretending that they’re doing us a favor in Black History Month by dropping a film that would have already gotten tons of streams? Or was the Disney Plus distribution plan all along to make us wait for the things we really want so they could make sure we had a reason to keep paying our subscription fees?
I know, I know, I always sound like the angry Black girl who’s never satisfied (you can blame Hamilton for that one), but sometimes I get excited and then remember how we’re still treated as an after thought. Our art, our movies, our music, they’re only celebrated once a month, to “appease” us, so we’ll hopefully “shut up” and “stop complaining” about things like police brutality, and racism!
Sometimes I wonder if Disney really gives a sh*t or if they just see their Black consumers as a great way to make money! Look, we CAN do both! You can care about your consumers AND want them to spend big bucks! I don’t mind spending on companies who CARE.
But for me to start believing that these Brands care about us, about our community, I need to see us, our art, highlighted even when it’s not Black History Month, or after yet another BLM protest! If Black Lives Matter, if Black Art Matters, if Black Movies Matter, then please treat our stories like they do! Share them ALL year long! Get Black creatives on screen and behind the screen! Hire more Black workers! And then listen to them! So when decisions like these are made, or films like Pixar Soul are made, they can help you serve our community!
“Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella” will join the “Celebrate Black Stories” collection on Disney+ alongside “Soul,” “Black Is King,” “Black Panther,” “Hidden Figures,” and more on Feb 12th.
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