Tags: disney | tiana | ride | splash | mountain | film | racism

Disney Replaces Southern-Themed Ride With 1st Black Princess

Disney Replaces Southern-Themed Ride With 1st Black Princess
Actors dressed as Princess Tiana and Prince Naveen from The Princess and the Frog perform on a float during the Festival of Fantasy Parade at Magic Kingdom Park at Walt Disney World Resort in Lake Buena Vista, Florida. A new attraction starring the first African American princess is opening at the company's theme parks in Florida and California. (Ted Shaffrey/AP/2022 file)

Tuesday, 11 June 2024 08:14 AM EDT

A new attraction starring the first Black Disney princess is opening at the company’s U.S. theme park resorts, and some Disney followers see it as a fitting replacement to a former ride based on a movie that contained what some believed to be outdated, racist references to the South.

The new theme park attraction updates Tiana's storyline from the 2009 animated film “The Princess and the Frog” and is opening this year in the space previously occupied by Splash Mountain. The water ride had been themed to “Song of the South,” a 1946 Disney movie about African Americans and plantation life.

Tiana's Bayou Adventure keeps Splash Mountain's DNA as a log-flume ride, but it's infused with music, scenery and animatronic characters inspired by “Princess,” set in 1920s New Orleans. It opens to the public later this month at Walt Disney World in Florida and at Disneyland in California later this year.

“For little Black girls, Tiana has meant a lot. When a little child can see somebody who looks like them, that matters,” said Neal Lester, an English professor at Arizona State University, who has written about Tiana.

Disney’s announcement that it would transform its longstanding Splash Mountain ride into Tiana’s Bayou Adventure was made in June 2020 following the social justice protests sparked by the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody. At the time, Disney said the change had already been in the works. But it came as companies across the U.S. were reconsidering or renaming decades-old brands amid worldwide protests.

The “Song of the South” film is a mix of live action, cartoons and music featuring an older Black man who works at a plantation and tells fables about talking animals to a white city boy. The film has been criticized for its racist stereotypes, hasn’t been released in theaters in decades and isn’t available on the company’s streaming service Disney+.

Disney has been criticized for racist references in films made in earlier decades. The crow characters from the 1941 film “Dumbo” and the King Louie character from 1967’s “The Jungle Book” were viewed as African American caricatures. The depiction of Native Americans in the 1953 movie “Peter Pan” and the Siamese cats — often deemed as Asian stereotypes — from the 1955 film “Lady and the Tramp” also have been derided.

Not everyone is sold on the belief that opening a ride based on Tiana’s story solves Disney’s past problematic racial depictions.

By refurbishing Splash Mountain into Tiana’s Bayou Adventure instead of dismantling the attraction completely, Disney has linked “Song of the South” with “The Princess and the Frog.” Both are fantasies that are silent, for the most part, on the racial realities of the segregated eras they depict, said Katie Kapurch, an English professor at Texas State University who has written widely about Disney.

“We might see the impulse to replace rather than dismantle or build anew as a metaphor for structural racism, too,” Kapurch said. “Again, this is unintentional on Disney’s part, but the observation gets to the heart of how Disney reflects America back to itself.”

Imagineers who design the Disney rides are always attempting to look at the attractions with fresh eyes and ways to tell new stories “so that everybody feels included,” said Carmen Smith, a senior vice president for creative development at Walt Disney Imagineering.

“We never want to perpetuate stereotypes or misconceptions,” Smith said Monday. “Our intention is to tell great stories.”

It’s also important for the Imagineers to tell a variety of stories for its global audience, said Charita Carter, an executive creative producer at Walt Disney Imagineering who oversaw the development of the attraction.

“Society does change, and we develop different sensibilities,” Carter said. “We focus our stories differently depending what our society needs.”

The transformation from Splash Mountain to Tiana's Bayou Adventure is one of several recalibrations at the entertainment giant's theme parks for rides whose storylines are considered antiquated or offensive.

In 2021, Disney announced it would remodel Jungle Cruise, one of the original Disney parks’ rides, which had been been criticized in years past for being racially insensitive because of its depiction of animatronic Indigenous people as savages or headhunters. Three years before that, Disney eliminated a “Bride Auction” scene, deemed offensive since it depicted women lining up for auction, from its “Pirates of the Caribbean” ride.

It's a positive step for Disney to have a ride based on a character from a background not seen in previous versions of Disney princesses replacing an attraction from a film steeped in racist tropes since “representation matters,” Lester said.

“Disney is first and foremost about money and getting people into the park, and you can make money, still have representation and be aware of social justice history and make everyone feel like they belong there,” Lester said.

Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.


StreetTalk
A new attraction starring the first Black Disney princess is opening at the company's U.S. theme park resorts, and some Disney followers see it as a fitting replacement to a former ride based on a movie that contained what some believed to be outdated, racist references to...
disney, tiana, ride, splash, mountain, film, racism
800
2024-14-11
Tuesday, 11 June 2024 08:14 AM
Newsmax Media, Inc.

Sign up for Newsmax’s Daily Newsletter

Receive breaking news and original analysis - sent right to your inbox.

(Optional for Local News)
Privacy: We never share your email address.
Join the Newsmax Community
Read and Post Comments
Please review Community Guidelines before posting a comment.
 
Get Newsmax Text Alerts
TOP

Newsmax, Moneynews, Newsmax Health, and Independent. American. are registered trademarks of Newsmax Media, Inc. Newsmax TV, and Newsmax World are trademarks of Newsmax Media, Inc.

NEWSMAX.COM
MONEYNEWS.COM
© Newsmax Media, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
NEWSMAX.COM
MONEYNEWS.COM
© Newsmax Media, Inc.
All Rights Reserved