"This Is a Mistake"

"THIS IS A MISTAKE"

I have heard that in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement and the recent protests against police brutality, Disney Parks have decided to change the theme of its Splash Mountain attraction in all of its theme parks. Instead of an attraction based on the 1949 animated film, "SONG OF THE SOUTH" and the Uncle Remus stories by Joel Chandler Harris, Disney Parks has decided to change the attraction’s theme to one based on the 2009 animated film, "THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG". And I believe this is a big mistake.

First of all, why can Disney Parks not consider the idea of maintaining the present theme of Splash Mountain and create a new one based on "THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG"? What is the point of erasing the "SONG OF THE SOUTH" theme from its Splash Mountain attraction? "THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG" theme . . . with a mountain setting? That does not make any sense to me, considering the 2009 movie was set in late 1920s New Orleans and the swamps of Southern Louisiana. "SONG OF THE SOUTH" was set near the region of Stone Mountain, somewhere between Northern and Central Georgia.

If Disney thinks it is being politically correct in the wake of the Black Lives Matters movement, they are mistaken. The Brer Rabbit stories are basically AFRICAN-AMERICAN folklore,which served as a metaphor for the struggles of African-American slaves before and immediately after the Civil War. Three African-Americans on a Georgia plantation had told these stories to Joel Chandler Harris, a white teenager they had befriended during and after the Civil War. Harris had worked for their owner and later, employer. When he later became a journalist and a writer, Harris took those stories and had them published under the "Uncle Remus Tales" title between 1880 and 1907. The character of Uncle Remus served as a metaphor for those three slaves-turned-freedmen, whom Harris had befriended. What Disney Parks is doing is misguided lip service to the Black Lives Matter movement. If Disney Parks really want to pay tribute to the movement, it would maintain Splash Mountain’s original theme and create a new attraction based on "THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG".

Now that I think about it, what is really racist about "SONG OF THE SOUTH"? The Uncle Remus character? The fact that he is a former slave? Or that he was friendly with two white kids? Or that he still lived on a plantation after the Civil War? Uncle Remus was based on the three slaves that Joel Harris had befriended on a plantation. How else does anyone thinks Harris had found out about the Brer Rabbit stories? By eavesdropping on the plantation workers? Are people upset that Uncle Remus had served as a narrator, telling these stories to white kids? I also noticed two other aspects of this situation. The 1946 movie was set during the post-Civil War era. One of the film's main protagonists, a young Georgian white boy named Johnny, who happened to be the son of an Atlanta newspaper journalist in post-Civil War Georgia. Aside from Uncle Remus, Johnny had befriended a poor white girl and the son of a black sharecropper during his family's visit to his grandmother's plantation. The movie has nothing to do with reinforcing the so-called "glories" of the pre-Civil War Old South. None of the live-action characters in "SONG OF THE SOUTH" - including Uncle Remus - or the film's actual plantation setting is featured inside Splash Mountain. So again . . . why does Disney Parks feel it needs to change the attraction’s theme?

The Brer Rabbit stories are metaphors about how generations black Americans had SURVIVED the horrors of American slavery, after they and their ancestors had been dragged to North American and to different parts of the South and forced to work for nothing against their will. Do many people have a problem that comedy was an element in the stories? That is how the original stories were framed. At least "SONG OF THE SOUTH" is actually based on African-American culture or folklore. Despite having an African-American woman as its leading character, "THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG" is not. It is a movie based on "The Frog Princess", a 2002 novel written by E.D. Baker, a white American woman. She had based her novel on who based her story on "The Frog Prince", the 1812 novel written by the Brothers Grimm . . . two white European men.

By replacing the "SONG OF THE SOUTH" theme inside Splash Mountain attraction at the Disney theme parks with one from "THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG", Disney Parks is erasing one theme based on African-American culture and replacing it with one based on European culture. Replacing "THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG" lead character from a white European woman to an African-American woman does not change that fact.