There was recently some, wailing and gnashing of teeth over the fact that Disney Parks had caved to the will of the Woke Mob and will be reskinning the Splash Mountain ride.
Right now, it’s themed with characters from the film Song of the South.
It is nearly the only evidence in existence, for that movie’s existence in North America. Otherwise, it has been banished from the world of light by the hand of Mickey the Great and Terrible.
I have seen that movie twice in my life. The first time I was seven and was bored to tears by the fact that there was way more live-action than animation. The second time was more recently, in my middle age and I was bored to tears by the fact that there was way more live-action than animation.
Song of the South really is not a good movie by modern standards. It’s no more entertaining than Disney’s 1940s version of Treasure Island. And if that is a monotonous movie than SOS is positively turgid. It’s filled with child actors who can’t act. Characters you can’t care about and a plot that is uninteresting. It’s dull, boring, and tedious.
Even the racism wasn’t engaging. Mostly, because it wasn’t all that racist. At least not by 1940s Disney standards.
As far as I can tell the real objection to Song of South is that it presents the Southron racial caste system in a positive light. Admittedly, it wasn’t a realistic historical portrayal but neither is the whip ’em all day and rape ’em all night tropes that are required today.
On the flip slide, Uncle Remus was (as far as I know) the first mainstream black character who WASN’T an amusing sub-human in the Stepin Fetchit mold. It was pretty groundbreaking stuff in it’s day.
Regardless, Song of the South went into the memory hole in the late 1970s when Disney ran into objections to the idea of another theater re-run of it.
And the weird thing is, that it was already in internal exile when Splash Mountain was built. Song of the South occasionally exited the Euro-Disney vault but it sure as hell didn’t in America. Not by 1983 when the ride went up.
So, why build a ride around the problematic Song of the South? Answer: they had just torn down another ride and had animatronics available that were the right size.
Yeah, that was basically it, no matter what Disney’s official story is. That was how it pretty much happened.
Animatronics are expensive. They are custom designed and built to last through decades of constant daily use. Reskinning them is a no-brainer from the budget side of things. It happens all the time. But the Imagineers are limited by the individual robot’s physical footprint.
Having the right sized robots on hand, created a path of least resistance for one of the development plans that was already on the table.
Question: But what about Disney Parks’ recent proud virtue-signaling declaration? That having received a whopping 20,000 signatures on a petition, Mickey the Great and Terrible decided to suddenly spend millions reskinning Splash Mountain?
Answer: they were going to do it anyway.
There was a much bigger outcry when the Redhead was replaced with Red the Pirate on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. That petition got 40,000 signatures and Disney didn’t even notice… No… Wait… They did notice. They started selling “We wants the Redhead” tee-shirts in the Pirates giftshop. They replaced an unwoke robot with a woke robot but immediately started pushing merch featuring the banished Redhead. That almost says it all about how much Disney cares about Wokenss.
My point is this. Disney doesn’t care about the Woketards any more than they do anyone else. What Mickey the Great and Terrible is mostly concerned about is, are you able to give him lots and lots of money?
The reason they are reskinning Splash Mountain is that they were already planning to reskin it.
Those are some very old robots and although they were built as well as they could be, they have finally hit the end of their service life. They can’t be repaired anymore. They have to be replaced.
As for the plan selected? That was SOP for Disney. Whenever something of their’s gets declared racist, they immediately slap the Princess and the Frog on it.
In conclusion: true evil isn’t sadism, it is not sexual perversion, it is not rolling around in naked in a pile of money yelling, “wheeeeeeee!”
True evil is simply emptiness. A vacuum of the soul. Hollowness.
Disney will feign a love for Lefty politics because they have to keep idiot virtue-signaling actors happy but the truth is…
Disney is too evil to care about Woke.
Okay, I’m done here.
The Dark Herald 
I could have sworn I saw Song of the South in a theater in the Eighties. Must’ve been at the beginning of them. The movie itself was a slog, but Uncle Reemus was a good character. There wasn’t anything racist in the movie, but because the black characters spoke with 19th Century Southern accents, I guess it was considered racist. I even saw YouTube take down a Louisiana beekeeper’s video because he was talking to a black man local to that area, and the black man spoke with a strong rural accent. I guess genuine Southern black accents are considered racist now….
LikeLike
For those of us desiring Devil Mouse lose money, this is great news. I can only hope the song “I’ve Got Friends on the Other Side” is front and center. Complete with imagery that frightens children and horrifies adults into going to Dollywood next year instead.
In honor of Black Lives Matter, I suggest friendly placards throughout the line that request non-minority children offer to let BLM children to advance to the head of the line. And/or suggest that BLM children take it upon themselves to step up. Anything less would be racist.
LikeLike