I don’t deny that it’s a slippery slope. But updating a 30-year old ride to include a beloved princess by millions of people isn’t “canceling” anything. In fact, it’s opening up important conversations, if only some would listen.
The American Adventure does make for a pretty fascinating case study here, at least if we're discussing how presentation matters in cases like this.
Both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson owned slaves; both harmed their slaves; Jefferson, in particular, went beyond that by never freeing his slaves (Washington at least did that upon his death), and by his fathering a family with Sally Hemings. The American Adventure does not touch on those facts; it does not engage with those figures in that specific area, and instead their roles as commander in chief of the Continental army and as author of the Declaration are emphasized as a means of telling the story the show wishes to convey.
Pivotally, however, the show, via Mark Twain, then goes out of its way to bring up the inherent shortcoming of the American Revolution and the Constitution: "...turns out 'We the People' didn't yet mean
all the people", at which point we are then introduced to Frederick Douglass, who speaks passionately about the injustice of slavery. The implication is clear: Washington and Jefferson played pivotal roles in the creation of the new nation, which should be recognized, but they fell short of the ideals they espoused, which also must be recognized.
The show repeats this by seemingly glorifying westward expansion, only for Chief Joseph to powerfully interject "ENOUGH!" and speak of the genocide of his people. We are not being told to ignore the warts of American history, even if the show does sand away numerous rough edges or downplays the many problematic aspects of numerous figures presented (e.g. Teddy Roosevelt and John Muir: GREAT that they preserved America's natural beauty, and thank you Teddy for the FDA! But Muir's feelings on Natives and Roosevelt's views of "eugenically inferior" peoples? Uhh...). This is ultimately also shown in the finale montage, where numerous American figures of varying political stripes are shown, the message being "we take pride in our nation, but it's a nation forged in disagreement, conflict, and it's one that still needs to be made better for all its people through words, acts, and deeds." Powerful stuff.
However, If there's one moment in the show that I think could stand to be changed, it'd be the deifying of Charles Lindbergh. Recognizing the feat of the Spirit of St. Louis's flight isn't inherently terrible, but Lindbergh is fully glorified in his depiction in the show; there is no call to recognize where he fell short, and his ability to fly a plane supersedes all other considerations of him as a person. This is, well, a bit of a problem; as a kid I never would have known it, but upon growing up, learning, and talking with friends of different backgrounds than my own, I came to learn how many Jewish people tend to view Charles Lindbergh: as a full-throated anti-Semite who was one of the public faces of the "America First" movement, which sought not only to keep the US out of the growing European conflict during the 1930s, but did so while also voicing varying levels of support for Hitler's regime, in large part due to its overt anti-Semitism. This is dramatized in the book and HBO miniseries
The Plot Against America, which reimagines an America where Lindbergh is elected president during the 1930s; while that is obviously speculative fiction, it's not something made up out of whole cloth, either.
So, say a group of Jewish people and allies asked Disney to make a change with Lindbergh's presence in the show; I'm hard pressed to say they wouldn't have some justification for their view, given how his depiction stands out against the others. I think the point I keep landing on here is "history, people, societies, and the entire world are complicated; don't expect easy answers." Works here, too.
