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"At the Heart of Splash Mountain" the Paper's Topic Is How the Walt Disney

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At the Heart of Splash Mountain Michael Kuo - 1 - Abstract The paper's topic is how the Walt Disney Company Disney strives to occupy the middle ground of the racial debate. The project will analyze the evolution of Disney’s relationship with race through the two films, the Song of the South and The Princess and the Frog, and Splash Mountain, which binds the two movies. The paper examines existing secondary literature that engages in the discourse surrounding both the films and the ride and how they engage in racial imagery and subjects. It utilizes the two films to understand how the Walt Disney Company portrayed African American characters in the past and more recently. Splash Mountain, as an entity, is examined to understand how it fits into Disney’s handling of their history. The project also analyzes press releases to understand how Disney framed their works to the public. The paper uses newspaper articles to understand the context for which the films were released and to grasp how the public viewed them. Disney works to present uncontroversial depictions of race that fit within the context of the time of their release. The film the Song of the South failed to remain uncontroversial, which is the reason for the decades of effort by Disney to erase the racist elements of the film. The Princess and the Frog continues the pattern of cultural conformity and Disney’s efforts to erase Song of the South. These efforts to conform to cultural attitudes regarding race by the Walt Disney Company demonstrate their intention not to displease conservatives and liberals maximize their profits. Introduction Splash Mountain opened at Disneyland on Monday, July 17, 1989.1 The log flume ride brings the visitor along on the carefree and clever Brer Rabbit’s journey to the Laughing Place. It 1 "'SPLASH MOUNTAIN' OFFICIAL OPENING DEDICATION CEREMONY,” PR Newswire, July 17, 1989, Monday. - 2 - begins by showing the guest Brer Rabbit leaving home for the Laughing Place as he seeks to add some excitement and adventure to his life. The ride takes the guest down a drop into a dark cavern where they find Brer Rabbit in the Laughing Place. He finds the excitement he sought but also finds himself tricked and captured by a honey trap set by his two pursuers, Brer Fox and Brer Bear. The ride then places the visitor in the middle of a scene of despair as animal mothers sing a foreboding song alluding to the imminent demise of Brer Rabbit. However, the guest is relieved to find that Brer Rabbit outwits his captors, and the rider follows along as he falls into the briar patch below. In the end, the visitor finds Brer Rabbit content in his burrow singing along to “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah” while his captors struggle to free themselves from the briar patch. Brer Rabbit and the visitor learns the valuable lesson that “you can’t run away from trouble; there ain’t no place that far.”2 The characters depicted in the ride Splash Mountain are from the 1946 Disney film Song of the South based upon the Uncle Remus stories. The film’s story is of a black man named Uncle Remus, who tells stories to a young white boy named Johnny, who is a member of the family that owns the nearby plantation. Brer Rabbit and his friends are the animated renderings of the stories that Uncle Remus tells Johnny. The animated portions take up 1/3 of the total screen time of Song of the South, yet the make up the ride’s entirety.3 The emphasis on the animated characters is part of Disney’s ongoing effort to reform its image following the initial release of the film. 2 Jason Sperb, "Take a Frown, Turn It Upside Down": Splash Mountain, Walt Disney World, and the Cultural De-rac[e]-ination of Disney's 'Song of the South' (1946),” Journal Of Popular Culture 38, no. 5 (2005): 930. 3 Sperb, “Take a Frown,” 933. - 3 - At the heart of Splash Mountain lies a dark past. It is a ride based upon the controversial film Song of the South, yet it declines to acknowledge the characters who occupy 2/3 of the screen time. Now the ride finds itself in a transitional phase as it adapts itself around the film the Princess and the Frog. The ride embodies the changes happening to the Walt Disney Company as it adapts to the changing American society and is at the heart of how it copes with race. The Walt Disney Company strives to make its films politically correct to avoid controversies that might take away from its profits. The story of Splash Mountain and the two films attached to it characterize how Disney has handled racial themes and characters in their properties over time. The Walt Disney Company attempts to remain neutral when it comes to the topic of race. This paper uses the films Song of the South and The Princess and the Frog as well as the ride Splash Mountain to demonstrate Disney’s efforts to remain neutral. The film Song of the South showcases Disney’s strategy by showing what happens when they fail to remain uncontroversial. The story begins with the production of the film that began in the mid-1900s. Background of Song of the South Walt Disney had long been a fan of Joel Chandler Harris’ Uncle Remus stories before he brought them to film. Disney said: “Ever since I had anything to do with the making of motion pictures I have wanted to bring them to the screen.”4 Disney laid the groundwork for the film by securing the rights to the stories from the Harris family in 1939.5 Disney would have to pause the making of the film due to financial constraints and the arrival of World War II. The studio continued to struggle financially following World War II but learned during the war that hybrid 4 M. Thomas Inge, "Walt Disney's Song of the South and the Politics of Animation,” The Journal of American Culture 35, no. 3 (2012): 219. 5 Inge, “Walt Disney’s,” 220. - 4 - films that utilized both live-action and animated segments were cheaper to produce.6 Walt Disney revisited the Uncle Remus stories knowing they would work as a hybrid film.7 Song of the South was the studio’s first feature-length film and was to guide the studio out of the financial instability it found itself.8 However, Disney encountered a significant problem that complicated the production of Song of the South. The post-World War II United States saw the beginnings of the Civil Rights Movements, and the country was more conscious of racism in society. By the time Disney began to film Song of the South, the Uncle Remus characters and stories were already considered racist by different organizations and activists, including the NAACP.9 Walter White of the NAACP fought since the 1930s to eliminate both stereotyped black characters and romanticized antebellum films from Hollywood.10 Thanks to White’s work, plantation films filled with “absurd black characters” like Song of the South fell out of style by the 1940s.11 The target of these activists’ criticism was the main character Uncle Remus. The figure of Uncle Remus sustained the “Uncle Tom” stereotype that had plagued American culture since Harriet Beecher Stowe first put him into print.12 Uncle Remus is a black male who indulges the white boy Johnny and appears happy with his lower- class standing. Uncle Remus is smiling and cheerful throughout the film and seems at his happiest when he is attending to Johnny’s needs. Despite the withstanding controversies surrounding the Uncle Remus tales, Disney insisted on bringing them to life. 6 Inge, “Walt Disney’s,” 219. 7 Inge, “Walt Disney’s,” 219. 8 Inge, “Walt Disney’s,” 219. 9 Sperb,” Take a Frown,” 930. 10 Thomas Cripps, Making Movies Black: The Hollywood Message Movie from World War II to the Civil Rights Era, (Cary: Oxford University Press, Incorporated, 1993): 11. 11 Cripps, Making Movies Black, 43. 12 Inge, “Walt Disney’s,” 221. - 5 - Walt Disney was aware of the potentially controversial nature of an Uncle Remus movie, and that was the reason for choosing the name Song of the South to “distance the film from potential criticism from African-Americans concerned about the use of the of the ‘Uncle Remus’ tales.”13 The stories were well known by the 1940s and already associated with the promotion of the romanticized plantation that Walter White and the NAACP took so many steps to steer Hollywood away from for over a decade.14 Disney took other steps to reduce the reasons critics may label the film as racist, including hiring a liberal writer Maurice Rapf whom Disney hoped would help steer the film clear from offensive imagery and themes.15 Rapf warned Disney to stay away from the Uncle Remus tales, but Disney insisted that Remus was not a derogatory figure: “I think Remus is a great character, a strong character. He is the dominant force in the story. There is no reason for Negroes to take offense.”16 Disney’s assertion that Uncle Remus is an unoffensive character is simply false, and his comments display the fact that he underestimated how far racial politics had changed since 1939. Uncle Remus is not a strong character and is a subordinate to Johnny’s family. Disney also solicited the advice of prominent African American figures, including Alain Locke and Paul Robeson.17 Walt recruited Robeson to play the role of Uncle Remus, but nothing ever materialized, leaving Disney to settle for James Baskett, a former vaudeville actor.18 Unfortunately for Walt Disney, all of his efforts to avoid any potential criticisms were in vain.
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