I don’t think the characters are terribly popular, but the animated sections of the film (at least some of them) have had a life outside the film as a whole, being excerpted and released in other Disney product. “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah” was on a VHS dedicated to musical numbers (probably with subs so everyone could sing a long) and other excerpts made it onto the Disney TV show, in episodes which I think may have been re-run late at night back when the Disney Channel used to run retro items in “Vault Disney.”
So, the animated characters may not be completely unknown to aficionados and/or children, even if not widely beloved.
ETA: Hmmm… what minor point I had was already covered above. C’est la vie.
If they’re in a Disney park, it’s hard to walk five feet without getting Walt’s face or his voice somewhere around you, it seems. But it’s true, people can be pretty oblivious.
I’m not actually concerned for tourists on a flume ride, just finding it a fascinating, unique situation, where there’s a piece of extremely well known popular culture that’s totally and successfully removed from its offensive source material.
its really weird that they chose to make a ride based on a movie they were embarrassed by. that said, i dont buy that people are necessarily confused. i think people at the park just accept it as a ride. many rides at disneyland have no film inspiration. pirates of the caribbean, the haunted mansion, big thunder, space mountain, the jungle cruise. (although some of those have been made into films). I still question the concept if the ride, but as long as its there i think people are fine just accepting it as a ride without seeking out the film.
The film was still being shown on Disney channel when the ride was built. I suspect that they were less responsive in those days on issues such as this.
Aha, you’re talking about the Pirates! Or the cowboys?
You’re right that it’s interesting what culture the whole park is built on, and Disney is usually thought of as the ur-sanitizer.
They’ve re-branded so many of their earlier rides, I think it’s also fascinating they didn’t quietly re-imagine Splash mountain the way they quietly did a lot of the other bits of the park that went stale.
(and if you are wondering just where in the hell those characters came from, there was a long running series known as “The Black and White Minstrel show.” So far as I’m aware, the BBC has not been clueless enough to release the thing on DVD.)
And to be completely clear;
I mean the Disney characters in that specific movie, not the traditional African folk tale characters like B’rer Rabbit and B’rer Fox, which Disney appropriated for their film.
Without looking it up, name oneaside from “Zippity…”
SotS is not one of Disney’s historically beloved productions.
I mean in the context of the Disney parks, where they walk around to meet people and there’s entire stores dedicated to selling shirts, toys, and housewares with them on it.
“Everybody’s Got a Laughing Place”, which plays throughout the Splash Mountain ride and the whole area outside the ride.
I’m actually not sure if there’s other songs – that’s how unmemorable they are.
That’s a really tiny microcosm, compared to your initial overgeneralized statement which seemed to indicate general popularity… like say, how the characters Goofy or Captain Jack are considered popular, their relationships to the Disney franchise notwithstanding.
Outside of Disney’s own theme parks, (which the vast majority of the entire world populace will never have the ‘privilege’ of visiting) to whom are those specific characters “popular?”
Yeah, I saw it in a theater in 1980 (according to Wikipedia, that release coincided with the 100th year after Harris’s birth). I was 9 at the time, enjoyed the animation, but knew that what they were portraying wasn’t right. (I felt the same way a year later, visiting Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage.) This was on the heels of moving from Long Island to Arlington, TX so I was already in culture shock. (FWIW, in DFW they also showed what I quickly figured out were unedited Tom and Jerry cartoons.)
Sorry for the misunderstanding – my comments to tuhu were specifically about the ride at the Disney parks (Disneyland, WDW, and Tokyo Disney) so I was referring to how much the characters appear there.
Outside of those very popular vacation spots, these days, not so much. Back in the 80s, Brer Rabbit audiobooks were a pretty common sight, but I don’t think they really do anything with those characters anymore. As I had said before, it seems like the legacy of the movie is basically just a kid’s song and a flume ride, and those characters are really only popular in connection with the ride these days.
I wouldn’t put it past anyone to do this, the only question is which tradition. We all are fallible. But where does the re-acting come into play? I think we are discussing why Disney isn’t releasing Song of the South and not stereotypes in general?
Those, and others with Tom or Jerry in blackface, such as “The Little Orphan” (which, come to think of it, also has Tom in redface, but I’d never seen that excised). (On a related note, I also recall watching “Saturday Evening Puss” and they had replaced the Mammy character onscreen with a white woman, but kept the voice.)
Though, some of us can remember how different the tv show seemed when Disney stopped doing the intros. He had been doing it for a lifetime, my full six or seven years. And yes, the show did include an announcement that he’d died, or something so we knew why there was a change.
