I lived overseas for a couple years in the early 70s (Navy brat). Song of the South was in heavy rotation for weekend kids matinee showings at the base theater. I saw it many times.
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I still like the Br’er Rabbit and Br’er Fox and Bear stories from when I was a kid. They are an amalgamate of African and Native American folk tales (I think with some European fables mixed in). I still refer to the briar patch when I fake not wanting to do something. It really is something they could clean up and represent, as it is part of African-American heritage and a mix of American and African folklore.
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Wow, I remember riding Splash Mountain as a kid, and never could figure out which Disney story it was about. I had guessed that they had made it up for the ride. Crazy it’s actually connected to this piece of crap.
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I’m assuming you’re joking, but it’s a lot closer to the truth than most people know:
“Tony, Bruce, and John had come up with possible names ,including “Song of the South Log Flume Ride”, “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah”, and “Zip-a-Dee River Run.”
Eisner didn’t care for any of them and suggested the name “Splash” to tie in with the successful Disney live action film (a film that Eisner loved so much that he planned for a nightclub around the theme at Pleasure Island and put into production a television sequel to the film called Splash Too , the first movie to be filmed at the Disney-MGM Studios in Florida). Eisner said they should even include a mermaid in the attraction.”
A few years back I saw Tony Baxter speak about his history with Disney and he still brings up how Eisner wanted to put a Darryl Hannah mermaid in the finale of that ride. Corporate synergy.
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Same here.
Can confirm that early Disney Channel is where I saw SotS.
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The songs were a standard, packaged portion of Elementary School music curriculums into the 90’s too. I remember having to learn a bunch of the songs in 1st or 2nd grade and wondered what the hell that even was pretty much till innernets happened.
I had pretty much no clue it was even connected to Br’er Rabbit. Those sections had been sort of diced out as cartoon shorts and run heavily when we had a hot cable box in the 80’s, so we had a bunch of them on the back ends of taped copies of Disney animated features. I guess they used to run multiple movies intercut with the old cartoons back then. And that was the only time we ever had the Disney Channel. So I legit thought Br’er Rabbit was just another Disney cartoon character from back in the day like Donald Duck until I hit highschool.
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Air Force brat here. Can corroborate.
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I had a VHS with edited songs from movies as sing-a-longs, i’m preeeetty sure “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah” was on there. Not 100% but i’m fairly sure it must’ve been, it also had Dumbo which is pretty much of the same things/problems.
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Went to Disneyland when I was 5 in 1973. Br’er Fox absconded with my baby brother in a stroller as a joke. My Mom wasn’t pleased.
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SotS is worse, IMO.
The crows in Dumbo are caricatures of racist stereotypes of Black people, and that’s shitty enough as it is. But the former simultaneously sugar-coated, whitewashed and marginalized the insidious institution of slavery.
It’s revisionist propaganda.
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That’s exactly what the Lost Cause mythology was, an attempt to whitewash and revise history in favor of the white supremacy. The confederacy lost the war, but the Daughters of the Confederacy won the peace for decades after this. Historians are STILL working to undo the very considerable damage they did on our national historical memory.
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Oh, you know I’m hip to the game.
What so many people who think that film is ‘no big deal’ fail to understand is that such works were an intentional attempt to indoctrinate children with misinformation.
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Absolutely! And a very muted take on slavery and the causes of the civil war continued in public education until very recently, especially in the south.
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But… state rights!!
/sarcasm
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Welcome to Boing Boing; where the snark and cynicism are strong, and the in-jokes are dark and constant…
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At least when they built Splash Mountain someone had the good sense to replace the movie’s tar baby with a honey-filled beehive.
https://www.talkdisney.com/news/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/tar-baby.jpg
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I assume you’re familiar with the story that is being referenced? If not, it’s a story (I’m assuming it was in SotS, but I remember it from a book).
Why Cory chose it as the URL is anyone’s guess? I am assuming to highlight some of the absurdity.
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Considering trying to talk about this film on the internet is about as messy as trying to wrangle the object referred to… probably spot on.
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