Willmark
Well-Known Member
Impossible to like this post enough.
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Splash Mountain re-theme announced
- Thread starter DCBaker
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Musical Mermaid
Well-Known Member
Disney should retheme Peter Pan’s Flight if their logic for closing Splash Mountain is that Song of the South has some issues. Splash Mountain already had its so called problematic elements from the movie removed before it was open to the public. People could say, “Well, let’s just remove the issues from the Peter Pan ride?” Why? That reasoning wasn’t good enough for Splash Mountain. What if people get upset from riding Peter Pan’s Flight because they can’t enjoy the ride for what it is and only think of the racial insensitivity in the film? It may sound ridiculous, but apparently people were crying about Splash Mountain over things that weren’t in that ride either.
LittleBuford
Well-Known Member
The difference is that Peter Pan is a much-loved film that contains only a few problematic scenes. One’s main association with the movie isn’t the historical treatment of Native Americans (leaving aside the fact that the Indians of Neverland are fantastical anyway). Song of the South, by contrast, is much more difficult to disentangle from the historical and ideological issues that render it problematic in many people’s eyes, which is why Disney has essentially disowned the film these past thirty years (at least in the US).
Sue_Vongello
Well-Known Member
The key phrase in your sentence is "in many people's eyes" ... which does not correlate to what is, to quote Splash Mountain, "actual, factual, and satisfactual." Song of the South has a bad legacy, that is a fact. But does it deserve that legacy? You can argue that if Disney hadn't buried it for so long, most likely the fervor against it wouldn't be what is is today. There's no way of knowing. Does it have a bad legacy? Yes. Does the actual film and intent of the film merit that legacy? Probably not.
But Disney already disentangled SotS from Splash Mountain. It's ostensibly about animated woodland creatures, nothing more. So to say that Splash Mountain is too tied to SotS is inaccurate, because the vast majority of people would never even know that. I'd be willing to bet that more people know of the "red man" in Pan (because its in the ride) than of Splash Mountain's origins (of which aren't in the ride).
Perception is everything but again I go back to where do we draw the line? It's fair to mention Pan and all the other examples because they happened, they have things that could make people offended. I mean take for instance, your user name, its taken from a song that advocates child abuse or child murder, right? Where do we draw the line?
Model3 McQueen
Well-Known Member
- In the Parks
- No
On change.org there's now 65k signatures to save Splash, compared to the 21k to change it. The poll started by @TJ Vazquez almost shows the same result in that 2 of 3 voters don't necessarily approve of the change.
eliza61nyc
Well-Known Member
lol, I don't know they have always been showing GWTW and it's still a racist piece of dog poo
. time has definitely not warmed it up to the hearts of black folks.now I didn't want splash mtn changed because I don't think it was necessary but as a black person I definitely do not see a story about "friendship" between a boy and a man when I watch SotS.
Sue_Vongello
Well-Known Member
lol, I don't know they have always been showing GWTW and it's still a racist piece of dog poo
Yeah but GwtW is waaaaaaaaaay worse than SotS. My point is if people actually saw it and it was available and contextualized and people weren't feeding off other people's opinions ... then maybe it would be viewed differently.
eliza61nyc
Well-Known Member
lol
you aren't wrong about that.
LittleBuford
Well-Known Member
The bolded is an opinion. I don’t agree with it. (And it’s fine that we disagree.)
My post was specifically about the films, not the rides derived from them. I too feel (or at least felt) that Splash Mountain is sufficiently divorced from Song of the South to pass muster, but I can see why some feel differently and am trying to understand rather than simply dismiss their concerns.
If I had feedback from posters here (and I mean sincere feedback rather than trolling) telling me that my username was upsetting to them, I would change it. I regard the song from which it’s taken as so plainly comical and absurd as to be inoffensive, but I’m willing to hear others out if I’m mistaken in my belief.
LittleBuford
Well-Known Member
As I mentioned upthread, Gone with the Wind is generally deemed a great film, whereas Song of the South isn’t, which is why efforts have been made to contextualise it for modern audiences.
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Not so fast. You exist today because your ancestors were racist. Think back to earlier times, if you happened to look one way and wandered into a neighboring tribes area that looked completely different you could be in a world of hurt if you weren't somewhat racist and tried to avoid the humans that didn't look like you. Nature gave an advantage to humans that were racist and preferred sticking to similar humans, the humans that were happy to go hug every human they saw even when they looked completely different probably ended up being dinner that night.
Most people are to some degree racist, consider you were attracted to your significant other in part because you found them attractive. Race plays a big part in how humans look and if you had a soft spot for darker skin you would probably not be attracted to the folks from Scandinavia... just like if you liked blue eyed blondes you would probably not be going gaga over the typical person from China. That preference is because you think that those traits are preferable to the other traits which is racist. Nothing wrong with it in and of itself. The only problem is when you decide to treat someone worse because of their race. To me that is when you cross a line that is a problem. But I don't think you can say racism is a horrible thing across the board, only when it starts impacting how you treat someone.
LittleBuford
Well-Known Member
Sue_Vongello
Well-Known Member
I appreciate the civil back and forth with you and the way you have approached our discussion. So thank you for that, and yes its okay we disagree on some issues ... but please don't change your username, ever. At some point we have to force people to think critically rather than us changing our lives based on personal whims that have no bearing on reality.
Bosley Crowther never wrote a review of a movie he didn't see. He was a cousin of mine and I had the pleasure of going to many movies with him and his wife during Summers at Martha's Vineyard. He taught me a great deal about early movies. He knew there were problems with Song of the South and many other movies from that time.
LittleBuford
Well-Known Member
I liked your comment because I too appreciate your civil approach. I don’t agree with the assumptions underlying your last sentence, but that’s OK too.
LittleBuford
Well-Known Member
Fascinating—thanks for sharing!
I’m not sure if your opening sentence was directed at me, but just to be clear, I wasn’t suggesting he hadn’t seen the film (that suggestion came from another poster).
Chi84
Premium Member
People don't care as much about signing a petition after they've won.
MickeyLuv'r
Well-Known Member
Original MK harkens back to time when children engaged in playacting. The lands of MK pretty closely fit with the popular playacting games children often played. Sometimes they pretended to be astronauts, or jungle explorers, or pirates.
Back then, children were simply told to go play outside most of the time, and were otherwise mostly left to their own devices. If you were over the age of like ten, and had some minimal campfire-safety training, you were even allowed to light off firecrackers and bottle rockets. Boys had jackknives and cap guns. You just weren't supposed to actually stab each other with them.
I think most people nowadays have no clue, because most children don't playact. They don't roam as the once did, and they have more access to much better virtual games, and FAR more plastic toys than children did in the past.
Generally, the game of playing astronaut was you pretended your play area was outer space. Kids would pretend the floor was lava. So the game was that you'd try to walk/climb around your play area without ever touching the ground. We literally had a red carpet in our house, so it was easy to imagine the floor was lava. Much of the game revolved around debating which objects would 'melt' and which ones wouldn't and how long you could use each object before it melted. Couches didn't melt, but pillow sank quickly into the imaginary lava, usually faster than anyone could step on them! It also often ended in a debate whether women would ever be allowed in space.
Another game was to play 'princess,' Princess was mostly for girls. It involved getting into your mother's costume jewelry, make-up and dresses. It often ended when you realized your mom was going to kill you for spilling nail polish or breaking one of her lipsticks. Though boys also liked to pretend to be knights.
Another game was to pretend you were the characters of Tom Sawyer, but mostly just Tom and Huck. Much of the game involved setting up your fort. During recess, you maybe spent time deciding which part of the playground was what. Even better, you made your own fort out of blankets indoors or, if you were lucky, you made a real fort in the woods! Making a lean-to fort in the woods was the best!
Cowboys and Indians was another game. (I don't think the term "Native Americans" existed back then, or maybe it just wasn't well-known.) Pretending to be a Native American meant you wanted to be free, as in you wanted to be liberated from your parents and teachers. Both roles were generally respectable, but the cowboys were slightly less respected. Firing a gun was fun, but prowess with a bow was more respected. If nobody wanted to be the cowboy, then you could also pretend to be same/different tribes. Again, this could be played on a playground, but playing in the woods was best. This game was sometimes started when someone found a big feather, because a nice feather = a headdress. Often though, the game involved some kind of battle between the two sides.
In 2020, I'd say the depictions in the Peter Pan ride are an overt concern. When children pretended to be Native Americans they actually tried to be 'authentic.' Of course kids were far too naïve and uninformed to be authentic though, so the pretend version of Native American's is clearly based on stereotypes of real people.
Mind, I'm old enough to remember when Frontierland sold fake fur racoon hats and cap guns that actually looked like guns and rifles, and get this - the guns didn't even have bright orange plastic on the end.
It was a very different time. In some ways, today is much better. On the other hand, it feels like people have forgotten how to use their imagination.
That said, I'm uncomfortable with the idea of ranking anyone's unhappiness, discomfort, or pain against someone else's.
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No, it wasn't directed at you but your post was more interesting. Thanks to Bosley both my sisters wedding announcements were in the NY Times and my sister Sharon's was in the Sunday Edition. Since she was married at the Vineyard, we had friends get up easrly and buy out all the stores copies. I am sure there were some unhappy vacationers.
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