Song of the South

[Ben]

Vi, I ALWAYS mention that James Baskett won a special Oscar. The sad thing is that he couldn’t go to collect it in person because no hotel would give him a room. (You can’t really say he paved the way for Hattie, though...she won her Oscar seven years before SOTS.)

[EricJ]

The only reason SOTS isn't available is because of the family-friendly Disney name. Any other studio would've been able to release it by now (and what a shame that people were "complaining" about Disney not censoring Dumbo for Disney+ after all).

There was a lot of in-office enthusiasm for releasing it, but it came up against:
A) Maya Angelou, who was enjoying the "push" of her friendship with the Clintons, and Disney board member Sidney Poitier making a big righteous deal out of cancelling the 50th-anniversary '96 theatrical reissue (with VHS, the true reason for all mid-90's Disney theatrical reissues)--Even though Disney had planned to present it as "Black History Month", and created the "John Henry" animated short to precede it,
and
B) Bob Iger, who believes the "Remus was a slave" story, and he's sticking to it. The "It'll never be on D+" comment was made back during the debate when the service opened, and hasn't been updated for Iger's sudden departure/replacement announcement for '21.

Fans know that Iger's been basically the last single obstacle, and have been keeping a "retirement deathwatch" for years ever since Iger announced his plans...And then kept pushing back the date, to annoy us.

[Ben]

They did not make John Henry in any connection with SOTS.

[ShyViolet]

Vi, I ALWAYS mention that James Baskett won a special Oscar.

Oh no, I know you and other capable film scholars have certainly mentioned it; I guess I meant others in academia who paint this film as starkly racist and only racist. I think not only have 98% of them never actually seen this movie, (as well as other Disney animated content), but, judging from what I’ve read of their scholarship, very few seem to even know the historical facts of its production/reception/recognition. (Namely Baskett’s Special Oscar.)

[EricJ]

They did not make John Henry in any connection with SOTS.

And no James Earl Jones intro about Joel Chandler Harris, neither?

[Ben]

I think there was talk of that, but I’m unaware that it actually happened.

[Ben]

SOTS is awesome. I’ve spoken to people on both sides of the racial aspect, and all are agreed that there’s no reason the film remains hidden. One of my schooldays friends, who was black, loved Remus and viewed him as a hero. The film has less to object to than the actually very similar Gone With The Wind, and yet that continues to be lauded, even if it hasn’t gone completely unnoticed that even this didn’t get the big 80th anniversary treatment that Oz did just before Christmas, so one wonders if GWTW will also, slowly, be blown away by the winds of time...? How silly.

And...it’s official. On HBOM, at least for now, Gone With The Wind has, er, gone with the wind...

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/ ... nd-1297806

[Dacey]

Yes, because THAT’S the reason we have racial injustice today. A movie from 80 years ago. Amazingly—and this might shock some idiots out there—I can find slavery morally repulsive AND still love GOTW. Imagine that? Seriously, this is why people need to hold onto their hard copies.

[droosan]

I love both movies, myself .. but -- even back in the 1980s & 90s -- I always thought it was really weird that SotS had this (wildly undeserved) 'bad' reputation, while GWtW was practically on a pedestal, by comparison.

TBS and TNT used to broadcast GWtW on a 'semi-regular' basis, back then .. and they promoted the heck out of it, whenever they did .. sometimes up to a couple weeks, beforehand.

Even if GWtW gets pulled from streaming services completely, there's still 40+ years' worth of legit 'hard copies' out there, on every format from VHS to Blu-ray. Too bad the same isn't true for SotS.

[James]

Now Splash Mountain is facing criticism.

https://www.orlandosentinel.com/travel/ ... story.html

[droosan]

I rather like the suggestion in that article, of 'rebranding' Splash Mountain as a The Princess And The Frog-themed log flume ride.

I mean; the ride is in New Orleans Square, anyway .. at least, in Disneyland .. not sure about the area nomenclature at Walt Disney World .. (I've just looked it up; looks like WDW Splash Mountain is part of FrontierLand, instead).

[Dacey]

Except that for legal reasons, Disney can't do something like that based off of a Change.Org petition. If they did, the person who wrote it might be able to claim they owed him for "using his idea."

This is all getting so, so, so, so, so, so, so stupid. It's no longer a "Song of the South" ride, at this point. It's a "Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah" ride as far as the general public is concerned. And guess what? Literally no one on the entire planet has become a racist because they rode Splash Mountain!

[droosan]

Fair point .. but Disney has been known to 'rebrand' rides, before.

The Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse is now the Tarzan Treehouse .. the Submarines are now Finding Nemo-themed ..

Since Disney refuses to make SotS available on home video, I've never really understood why they'd based an entire park ride around it, in the first place .. let alone starting in 1987.

[Randall]

I wish SOTS would be released just so that folks could make up their own mind about its alleged racism. I think most would be amazed at how innocuous it really is.

That said, Splash Mountain's continued existence is pretty weird, given the circumstances, though I love it.

[EricJ]

Fair point .. but Disney has been known to 'rebrand' rides, before.
The Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse is now the Tarzan Treehouse .. the Submarines are now Finding Nemo-themed ..

Well, at least you can blame the Treehouse on legendary 90's-00's park boogeyman Paul Pressler--Whose neurotic passive-hostility toward the parks was so legendary, every old Walt-era attraction that wasn't pulling its weight was blamed on "Audiences don't like it anymore!", and immediately either converted into a gift shop, or revamped with a new current Eisner-era movie theme.
You west coast folk, consider yourself lucky you got Tarzan...WE WDW fans ended up with twelve years of the infamous Enchanted Tiki Room: Under New Management.
(But thankfully, karma destroyed it in a fire, and the park managed to put the glorious original back in again.)

As to Tiana Mountain petitions, to use the Murphy Brown-ism, "People, it's Change.org...Forget about it!"
But that's a little blindly optimistic, since Armchair Imagineer fanboys on the Internet park-fan circuit get obnoxious once they think they've "organized" themselves around a single idea (and that idea nearly always being "Change a stupid old attraction!" instead building a new one), and long stories short, that's how we got "Stitch's Great Escape", "Monsters Inc. Laugh Floor", and "Frozen Ever After". Happy now, guys?
(Oh, and did we mention this only started because of the Gone With the Wind thing?)

Except that for legal reasons, Disney can't do something like that based off of a Change.Org petition. If they did, the person who wrote it might be able to claim they owed him for "using his idea."

Technically, that's true--
But in the case of fan-crazes, it's often mistaken for "demand", and we somehow either get one anyway, or somebody in Imagineering says "Hey, it says here on this rumor site we've started building it!...Welp, better get to work!"

Since Disney refuses to make SotS available on home video, I've never really understood why they'd based an entire park ride around it, in the first place .. let alone starting in 1987.

Because SotS had a moderately successful reissue in 1986, so there was still identification for the Br'ers. It was only in '96 that everything went down.