Song of the South

[Dacey]

From reading comments online today, it seems most people think Uncle Remus is a slave in the movie, when he isn't.

I seem to recall that Disney was considering releasing it on disc shortly after Obama got elected with a "historical disclaimer" by someone like Jamie Foxx or something? Shame that never happened.

The closest we have to a "home video" release of SOTS in the states are two Sing-A-Long videos which included songs from it. And who knows what this means for the song "Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah"?

[Daniel]

I'm just glad I was able to ride Splash Mountain one last time before it's reimagined. Doubt I'll be able to visit anytime soon, what with money and covid... My, oh, my, what a disgraceful day. Such a shame. Many good memories. It will still be around, just not the same...

[ShyViolet]

Oh wow.


All of this racial stuff—separating things out, drawing “boarders” around every story, movie, character, concept—I realize that the people involved in doing this probably have good intentions....but it still hurts me very deeply; we’re all human beings and doing this is breathing life back into a phrase we thought we’d never hear again: “Separate but equal.”

I didn’t even know there was a cartoon with biracial characters—that’s great! . But changing the VO actors just because of race is ridiculous—how can it be WRONG to feel empathy for someone who’s different than you are, and to want to see the world through their eyes so you can understand their experiences better? So you can understand THEM better? (And, provided you do a good acting job, help others to understand them better?).


I love Princess and the Frog, and since I haven’t seen it yet, I can’t say whether or not the animal characters in SOTS are “better/worse” (I guess both artistically and progressively), but seriously....it’s quite possible that a Princess and the Frog adjustment will be protested very soon. (Because directors Clements and Musker are White. Because Disney. Because Mama Odie was a “stereotype.” A lot of these issues were brought up by the film’s critics ten years ago—why wouldn’t they be brought up now??)

I don’t know. I guess these troubled times are getting me down.

[ShyViolet]

And who knows what this means for the song "Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah"?

Yeah, maybe now they’ll have to censor that part in A Few Good Men where Tom Cruise uses that phrase while arguing with Demi Moore.

(Sorry, not trying to seem disrespectful. It’s all just so insane. )

[EricJ]

From reading comments online today, it seems most people think Uncle Remus is a slave in the movie, when he isn't.
And who knows what this means for the song "Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah"?

Demonized by people who thought Remus was singing about how "happy" he is to be a "slave", and not about how sunny the day was when Br'er Rabbit left home and went fishing.

And don't even get me started about the ancient, handed-down movie-goofs that women proudly and traditionally get wrong about "Cinderella" and "Snow White". ("Snow sings about sitting around and hoping a prince would come out of nowhere and marry her!")
All the old misdirected-anger Disney/Establishment grudges from the 70's got dug up and tossed around by a new generation in the Eisner-hating 00's, and now no one today even remembers how they first started.

and since I haven’t seen it yet, I can’t say whether or not the animal characters in SOTS are “better/worse”

Oh, that. Here ya go: https://archive.org/details/song-of-the-south
You are now ten times more informed than every fan who ever claimed Splash Mountain needed to be expunged.
(It also helps if you're an Internet old-radio fan, and can recognize Johnny Lee as Rabbit and James Baskett as Fox doing their then-recognizable signature shticks from the 40's radio "Amos & Andy". Which is hysterical, btw. )

Followed by the usual hater backup-defense of "Big deal, we don't need the movie anyway, it's too boring, with all the live-action stuff!"
If we banned Disney movies for being "boring", Bambi & Thumper would today not exist.

it’s quite possible that a Princess and the Frog adjustment will be protested very soon. (Because directors Clements and Musker were White. Because Disney. Because Mama Odie was a “stereotype.” A lot of these issues were brought up by the film’s critics ten years ago—why wouldn’t they be brought up now??)

"The Laughing Place is going to be replaced with a trip to the Other Side!"

...Oh, now, WHAT could possibly be "racist" about plunging into a dark Voodoo nether-verse with an evil jive, gap-toothed goofah-man from New Orleans?

And I remember when the only reason we still had Tiana at the parks was because Bob Iger wanted to publicly neener at all the critics saying "2D is dead! Post-Eisner Disney will never rise again!" after Frog flopped and Tangled and Ralph hadn't opened yet.
Despite Disney saying they're basing the attraction on the, quote, "All-time favorite!", it ain't no Hercules, folks.

[Figmentation]

This newest development is a lot to process. I never would have expected Disney to give into demands like this. (If we're making requests, could they give into fan demands to bring Dreamfinder back to Journey Into Imagination? Please?)


I feel extremely mixed. I love Splash Mountain. I think that Song of the South is a better...(? I'm not sure if that'e even the word I'm looking for.) film than people give it credit for. I feel like Song of the South is the friendship between Uncle Remus and Johnny, which transcended both race and age. And the animation, of course, was the most memorable part of the movie. It's an outdated film for sure and one that would need some sort of historical context if it were to ever come out of the vault in any fashion, but I think sweeping it under the rug has only heightened the forbidden fruit aspect of it. But the film is full of outdated cultural depictions. These are complex issues and it is awkward to put it lightly.

I feel like The Princess and the Frog is an underrated gem. Not perfect, but one I enjoy nonetheless and wished it received more popularity when it was initially released. And though I haven't searched around on the topic, it makes me sad to imagine the backlash this film may get (and probably has already gotten) from people who never gave it a chance in the first place since it is replacing one of the most beloved rides that many people have deep nostalgia for.

I'm not opposed to a Princess and the Frog ride, but I am HORRIFIED at the thought of it being done on a shoestring budget. This is an E-Ticket attraction. If they end up cutting corners, it's going to make people's feelings towards the change even worse. If they're going to do this, they need to do it right or Disney will divide their fanbase.

If done right, I there could be potential for expansion or retheming. In the very least, a stand that sells beignets or on a larger scale, a character dining restaurant based on Tiana's restaurant from the film. But whether or not the attraction itself will be done in a way that doesn't seem like a tiny green band aid on a gaping flesh wound remains to be seen.

[Ben]

This is just infuriatingly dumb.

[droosan]

Well .. I said a week or so ago that I thought this was a good idea. And I will only say now (despite all the hooplah above, and elsewhere online) that I still think it is a good idea.

I also have faith that Imagineering can create a Princess and the Frog-themed experience for Splash Mountain that goes far beyond a 'band-aid' redesign. Have you ever seen the special Nightmare Before Christmas version of The Haunted Mansion..? It's a completely different experience .. and that's just a 'semi-annual' temporary makeover for the ride.

Will I miss the Song of the South theming..? Of course I will. But I'll still miss the 20,000 Leagues-themed submarines in Florida even more.

[Dacey]

I should clarify that I don't think there's anything wrong with a Princess & the Frog ride (my comment about any "controversy" surrounding the change was simply me trying to make a point about the "standards" at play here). And I'm sure the revamp will be fine and fun in its own right (also, Tiana wasn't a part of the parks "just because Bob was stubborn" since all of the members of the Princess Collection do regular meet and greets, but I digress).

However this "burn" I got on Twitter today pretty much demonstrates how many people are commenting on this movie who know nothing about it...

Imagine if they had a ride about Hitler but the ride contained no reference to antisemitism. You wouldn’t tell a Jewish person that they should be fine with the ride because the ride it self isn’t antisemitic. It’s about giving appreciation to something that doesn’t deserve it.

[ShyViolet]

There’s just no amount of words that can express the sheer amount of STUPID that’s in that Twitter post....

[EricJ]

I'm not opposed to a Princess and the Frog ride, but I am HORRIFIED at the thought of it being done on a shoestring budget. This is an E-Ticket attraction. If they end up cutting corners, it's going to make people's feelings towards the change even worse. If they're going to do this, they need to do it right or Disney will divide their fanbase.

It's also that bending over backwards to the protest is making them RUSH in on a half-baked Armchair Imagineer fanboy idea:
Oh, they may say "We don't accept unsolicited fan ideas", but when a couple thousand neato-fans who all independently hit on the idea of "Hey, wouldn't it be neato if they turned Epcot Norway's ride into a Frozen ride?" suddenly throw a trending-and-petition party on Twitter...we get one. Somehow, they mistake overenthusiastic fanboyism for actual guest demand.
(And remember, with the fans, it's ALWAYS "A new dark ride", "A new E-ticket coaster!", "A whole new land area!", and always, always, always "Let's rehab some stupid old attraction!")

Case in point: In retrospect, might it have been better if they had, say, waited a year before redesigning California Adventure's coaster into an "Incredibles 2" ride?...'Nuff said.
And they've still got fans' demand for "Heyyy, why didn't WE get China's Tron:Legacy lightcycle ride, instead of Autopia?" to finish building, after the lockdown.

also, Tiana wasn't a part of the parks "just because Bob was stubborn" since all of the members of the Princess Collection do regular meet and greets, but I digress).

Bob wasn't "stubborn", it was that the '09 post-Shrek press was so determined to prove their crackpot industry analyses were correct, take Disney down once and for all with their grudges over the departed Eisner, and to follow the script that Animation Was Dying, they were writing Frog's obituary AND Disney's a month before the movie opened:
John Lasseter was too inexperienced to manage the studio by himself. The Pixar merger would crush the finances. Everyone knew 2-D Was Dead, and they'd never raise it. Fans were sick of the 90's musicals, and they'd never come back ten years later. Nobody liked Princesses anymore, and boys wouldn't come. The very appearance of a black princess would cause Southern theater boycotts and Disney race riots among white fans.

Now, even if the movie did flop, we know the reasons (Avatar, no plot, Naveen was a feminist-agenda jerk, Charlotte was a shrill feminist-agenda kicking-target, Tiana talks about nothing but her flippin' restaurant for an hour and a half, and did anyone even like that butt-ugly firefly??) were none of the ones the press was wishfully concocting.
Disney fans were doing their best to defend it, and Iger made a big show of Tiana's protected-species treatment to show that they weren't wrong. And nowadays, we have fans somehow convinced they actually like the darn thing, just because Tiana was stuck in with the "real" princesses for an entire generation...Just like Merida and "Brave".

(And it wasn't the first time Bob deliberately thumbed his neener-nose at the press's Disney Death-Wish: How do you think we got "Cars 2"?
"Because the first one was a hit"?--Uh, that wasn't quite the way the press was spinning it...)

[Ben]

So, what about that Splash Mountain ride!?

I, for one, never really got how it fit into SOTS's storyline...there is no mountain nor much water in the entire film, so the ride itself was never a really tailored thing to the film itself, but the *really* weird thing is how they are apparently transforming it from a ride based on one potentially problematic movie title...to a ride based on another potentially problematic movie title...!?

I mean, there’s no mountain in P&TF, and they only float down the river for a moment. I just love, ironically, that they are following the fanboy lead that demonstrates why fanboys shouldn’t be left to run creative things, because they don’t think outside the box: let’s change a ride (which really has little to do with the actual movie anyway) from one thing to something else that still has a similar connection.

But...why? Why not use this opportunity, if anything, to tie the concept of Splash Mountain into a title that would actually give the ride a proper movie tie-in identity? Appealing to the classic Disney fan, and maybe giving the franchise a boost for any upcoming reboots, Davy Crockett comes to mind, though that itself may be a hot potato thesedays! Or really go mental and go for a Wreck-It Ralph thing, where you "escape" the video game right at the end by plunging back out into the real world through the water?

It just seems so incredibly lazy to change this whole thing for two incredibly dumb reasons (the thought that the movie is racist, the fact that the ride has little to do with said movie anyway) and then just base it on another property only because it’s Disney's "other black movie" that itself has potentially problematic connotations.

Best, if anything, to get away from the whole thing and reconceptualise the entire ride, no?

[Daniel]

Pocahontas would make more sense.

[EricJ]

So, what about that Splash Mountain ride!?
I mean, there’s no mountain in P&TF, and they only float down the river for a moment. I just love, ironically, that they are following the fanboy lead that demonstrates why fanboys shouldn’t be left to run creative things, because they don’t think outside the box: let’s change a ride (which really has little to do with the actual movie anyway) from one thing to something else that still has a similar connection.

And their idea that the park should be a Peter Pan-like dark-story-ride "Hall of Fame" for every fan-beloved movie, including those that just opened, rather than an amusement park that just happens to use movie tie-ins as a clever overlay for standard theme park attractions.
(So Walt wanted to build Mr. Toad's Wild Ride because the movie was so popular??)

And besides, our characters floated down the river on a riverboat, which the parks ALREADY use as an excuse to add Tiana, Naveen and Louis to the Mark Twain Steamboat.

But...why? Why not use this opportunity, if anything, to tie the concept of Splash Mountain into a title that would actually give the ride a proper movie tie-in identity? Appealing to the classic Disney fan, and maybe giving the franchise a boost for any upcoming reboots, Davy Crockett comes to mind, though that itself may be a hot potato thesedays!

Especially since Disneyland retired Davy's Indian Canoes (with actual native guides) years ago.

Which I guess would pretty well deep-six any hopes of Pocahontas's River-Bend Waterfall for Splash Mountain, even though, yes, it would make more story sense, and was even less of a flop in the theaters than Frog was.

[Dacey]

I do love how Eric assumes that Disney just makes attractions out of movies regardless of popularity. That's why we had those Atlantis and Treasure Planet thrill rides, right?

(And not that it will matter to him, but Pocahontas was the fourth highest grossing movie of 1995, so there is that)