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Credit: DisneySplash Mountain closed at Disneyland Resort and Walt Disney World Resort last year to make room for Tiana’s Bayou Adventure. Princess Tiana is set to take Disney Park guests on a culinary journey through New Orleans this summer, transforming the controversial log flume ride into a tribute to the first Black Disney Princess.
Discussion about Splash Mountain’s inspiration, Song of the South (1946), picked up in 2020 alongside the nationwide Black Lives Matter protests. The mixed animation-live-action film was protested when it premiered for its historically inaccurate and sanitized depiction of post-Civil War life for Black Americans. It was so contentious that Disney locked the film away in the vault, never officially releasing it to home video.
While the conversation about Splash Mountain picked up four years ago, a newly-Disney-owned television show was way ahead of the curve. In 2009, FOX’s Glee directly called Song of the South and its theme park attraction counterparts racist.
The Walt Disney Company didn’t own Ryan Murphy’s Glee in 2009. In 2019, Disney CEO Bob Iger struck a $52 billion deal to purchase 21st Century FOX’s entire movie and television catalog. The Mouse now owns Marvel competitors like Daredevil and projects that previously mocked its very existence, like The Simpsons. The beloved Anastasia (1997) joined the lineup of official Disney Princess films.
The Walt Disney Company’s streaming service, Disney+, debuted later in 2019. It started with classic Disney movies, Disney Channel shows, and all-new exclusives but expanded to include much of the 21st Century FOX back catalog. Viewers can now marathon Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and Avatar (2009).
Of course, the expanded catalog includes Glee. Disney officially owns the show that mocked its most controversial attraction more than a decade before it shut down at Magic Kingdom Park and Disneyland Park.
The joke appears in season one, episode 22, “Journey to Regionals.” Cheerleading coach and arch nemesis of the arts Sue Sylvester (Jane Lynch) argues with Glee club coach Will Schuester (Matthew Morrison) after he finds out she plans to judge their upcoming show choir competition. As the teacher pleads for Sue to reconsider, she delivers a dry insult as only she could.
“I have to be honest, Will. I’m having a really difficult time hearing anything you have to say today because your hair looks like a briar patch,” Sue said. “I keep expecting racist animated Disney characters to pop up and start singing songs about living on the bayou.”
Most Song of the South criticism focuses on the film’s live-action characters, especially Uncle Remus (James Baskett). But the animated Br’er animals have their own sordid history. Br’er Rabbit runs away from his home but meets dangers, like Br’er Fox and Br’er Bear, and decides that he belongs back where his story began.
Beyond the animated character’s questionable dialect, Br’er Rabbit’s journey parallels Uncle Remus’s. The film depicts the formerly enslaved person as happy on the plantation that pays him pennies. It emphasizes that Remus and the animated bunny would rather be content in the places they know than find better in a potentially dangerous world.
Glee didn’t start the criticism of Song of the South; that began while the 1946 movie was still in early production. But its reference to a more subtle criticism of Splash Mountain reveals that despite what some defenders of the ride argue, discontent has always been simmering in the background.
Walt Disney Imagineering is hard at work on Tiana’s Bayou Adventure at Disneyland Resort and Walt Disney World Resort. They haven’t announced plans to retheme Splash Mountain at Tokyo Disneyland, the only Disney park with an operating version of the water ride.
Are you excited about Splash Mountain’s Princess and the Frog (2009) makeover? Share your hopes for the ride with Inside the Magic in the comments.