One of the most popular attractions at either Magic Kingdom in the States is Splash Mountain. (My company actually did engineering work on the one in Anaheim. Could I tell you some wild stories. But I digress.)
Anyway, while Splash Mountain is popular because it’s a fun flume ride, the window dressing on the ride is the tale of Br’er Rabbit (though somewhere in the translation to the Disneyverse the apostrophe was dropped).
The Disney connection there is with the Disney film you will never see on VHS, let alone on DVD. Song of the South was an early (1946) Disney foray into mixing live action and animation, based on the book by Joel Chandler Harris with the tales of Uncle Remus. It also has, so I am led to believe, some portrayals of blacks and race relations that are quite un-PC. Not in a mean way or a violent way — this is Disney, after all — but condescending, paternalistic, insulting to modern sensibilities.
I don’t know for sure, because I’ve never seen it. And likely never will in this country. Though evidently the tape is available in the UK and Germany.
So standing I line for the ride Sunday, I see one kid asking his mom what “brer” means. She doesn’t know. I also hear a couple discussing how it’s all based on, uh, the Oz books.
Disney has a valuable property here, and they can’t do anything with it. Heck, they couldn’t even re-edit and PCize the movie, because half the vocal populace would yell at them for knuckling under, the other half for not going far enough.
It is a puzzlement. It is a shame. And it is a fun (bowdlerized) ride, too.
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