I'm not going to stan Song of the South but 1) despite Disney's efforts to bury it for the sake of brand sanitization it remains historically significant for its early integration of live action and animation and James Baskett's Academy Award-winning performance as Uncle Remus, and 2) the problematic aspects of the movie are completely absent from the ride, which only features animatronics of the movie's anthropomorphic cartoon animals.
The Princess and the Frog deserves the credit it gets as Disney's first (and only) animated movie with a black lead, but the accolades stop there. Not only is it a mediocre film, it's also about as progressive as the 2017 Beauty and the Beast's blink-and-you'll-miss-it gay romance.
The "first black Disney princess" spends most of the film hiding her skin color beneath the transfigured green flesh of a cartoon frog, and whatever themes of racial inequality the movie possesses are predictably minimized and sanitized, to the extent that you'd think the greatest adversity facing a black woman in 1920s Louisiana is lacking the venture capital to start a business. I'm not asking for a Spike Lee story credit here but why even set the movie in that era if your poor black characters are best friends with your rich white characters and the only prejudice your protagonist encounters is being turned down for an investment loan? The cumulative result is so tepid and soft-edged that, for the time it was made, it feels almost as racially tone-deaf as Song of the South's carefree sharecropping freedmen happily coexisting with white plantation-owners in the post-war South.
I feel bad for The Princess and the Frog. First Disney scapegoats it for the shitcanning of their 2D animation department, now it's their excuse for axing one of the most beloved rides in their parks. Fuck Disney and fuck applauding their craven business calculations masquerading as progressivism.
The Princess and the Frog deserves the credit it gets as Disney's first (and only) animated movie with a black lead, but the accolades stop there. Not only is it a mediocre film, it's also about as progressive as the 2017 Beauty and the Beast's blink-and-you'll-miss-it gay romance.
The "first black Disney princess" spends most of the film hiding her skin color beneath the transfigured green flesh of a cartoon frog, and whatever themes of racial inequality the movie possesses are predictably minimized and sanitized, to the extent that you'd think the greatest adversity facing a black woman in 1920s Louisiana is lacking the venture capital to start a business. I'm not asking for a Spike Lee story credit here but why even set the movie in that era if your poor black characters are best friends with your rich white characters and the only prejudice your protagonist encounters is being turned down for an investment loan? The cumulative result is so tepid and soft-edged that, for the time it was made, it feels almost as racially tone-deaf as Song of the South's carefree sharecropping freedmen happily coexisting with white plantation-owners in the post-war South.
I feel bad for The Princess and the Frog. First Disney scapegoats it for the shitcanning of their 2D animation department, now it's their excuse for axing one of the most beloved rides in their parks. Fuck Disney and fuck applauding their craven business calculations masquerading as progressivism.
"I'm glad [innocuous apolitical thing you
care about] is being ruined for you because an infinitesimal number of
racists will also be upset about it."
"I have no emotional attachment to or personal interest in [innocuous apolitical thing] but by God it feels good to look down my nose at people who do so I can score vacuous ideology points. XD"
Fuck off with that shit.
To be clear, The Princess and the Frog, while not great, is a better movie than Song of the South, which is boring and sucks. I'd welcome a good Princess and the Frog ride. But Splash Mountain was already a wonderful ride, irrespective of its obscure source material.
Memory-holing problematic past media is done not to protect the consumer, but to absolve the creators and license-holders of their behavior. Disney doesn't want you to believe that they've grown past Song of the South; Disney wants you to forget that they made Song of the South.
But reality doesn't care if you believe it.
"I have no emotional attachment to or personal interest in [innocuous apolitical thing] but by God it feels good to look down my nose at people who do so I can score vacuous ideology points. XD"
Fuck off with that shit.
To be clear, The Princess and the Frog, while not great, is a better movie than Song of the South, which is boring and sucks. I'd welcome a good Princess and the Frog ride. But Splash Mountain was already a wonderful ride, irrespective of its obscure source material.
Memory-holing problematic past media is done not to protect the consumer, but to absolve the creators and license-holders of their behavior. Disney doesn't want you to believe that they've grown past Song of the South; Disney wants you to forget that they made Song of the South.
But reality doesn't care if you believe it.
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