Last week, the Walt Disney Company announced that they are redesigning Splash Mountain, which previously focused on the notorious Song of the South film. Splash Mountain will instead reflect a more recent animated film, The Princess and the Frog, in which the protagonist is a Black princess. Disney had been working on the change before declaring it official. The announcement followed a month of Black Lives Matter mobilization and progress, which hopefully will continue indefinitely. Splash Mountain’s change from Song of the South to The Princess and the Frog represents a positive step not only because of the ride itself, but also because interpretations by a company like Disney reflect broader culture and socio-politics.
The book Disney’s Most Notorious Film: Race, Convergence and the Hidden Histories of Song of the South by scholar Jason Sperb is a brilliant and readable study of Song of the South’s reception history. The term “reception history” describes a study of how broader audiences react to a person, place, or phenomenon over time. In this case, Sperb argues that “the history of media convergence” around Song of the South has “alternatingly intensified, shifted, and dissipated representations of racism and constructions of whiteness.”[1] For Sperb, “any thorough understanding of the political implications of a given film” demands “sustained attention to its many ancillary reiterations and adaptations.”[2] In terms of mirroring white American ideas, Splash Mountain was hardly outdated. The movie, which has been locked in a vault during the twenty-first century, was popular as recently as the 1980s. It played in theatres immediately post-WWII to limited success, in the 1970s as backlash against the Civil Rights movement, and then again in the 1980s aligning with President Ronald Reagan’s America. The fact that Song of the South has not resurged in 2020 represents albeit limited progress.
The Hollywood history podcast entitled You Must Remember This, narrated and produced by journalist Karina Longworth, draws on Sperb’s Disney’s Most Notorious Film in a series of episodes interpreting the reception history of Song of the South. As a podcast, You Must Remember This compiles sounds to engage broader audiences than Sperb’s academic monograph, which is not yet available as an audiobook (I checked). The podcast devotes an episode to Hattie McDaniel, whose performances in both Song of the South and the similarly racist Gone with the Wind film comprised an award-winning career. Contemporaries dubbed her an “Uncle Tom,” though the “Mammie” caricature was the only role available to a Black actress of her high caliber at the time. Using sound, the podcast likewise explores the music history behind “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah,” which likewise emerged from the racist film into popular culture.
The public history project Enchanted Archives by historian Sasha Coles uses Disney theme parks as entry points to historical thinking by critiquing Disney’s own interpretations of history for a massive audience of Disney fans. For example, Coles’s Disneyland digital history walking tour includes a stop to educate Splash Mountain riders about Song of the South and the real history of slavery in the United States. A central takeaway from Enchanted Archives is that the intersection between Disney and history actually matters and is powerful. Disney is a cultural cornerstone of American life and capitalism. Any endeavor by Disney, therefore, harnesses the potential to be transformative. The switch from Song of the South to The Princess and the Frog attracts Disney fans to the parks as soon as possible. The Walt Disney Company understands this incentive, which undoubtedly contributed to the decision.
To this point I have claimed that the new Splash Mountain change represents a small but significant step toward progress because Disney interpretations reflect broader cultural and sociopolitical trends. After the film’s original release in 1945, the NAACP decried its racism. Unfortunately, the people who analyzed the reception history of Song of the South have mostly been white. The author, podcaster, and public historian that I cited like myself are all white. I am unsure how to interpret this homogeneity and evasive whiteness. Only recently have the journalists taking on this topic in publications like Vulture been more diverse. Maybe this is another positive step, but more importantly it suggests that we need a mountain of small changes to make a real splash.
The Briar Patch at Splash Mountain in Disney Land courtesy of Sasha Coles
[1] Jason Sperb, Disney’s Most Notorious Film: Race, Convergence, and the Hidden Histories of Song of the South (Austin, TX: The University of Texas Press, 2012) 4.
[2] Sperb, 5.
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