An attraction featuring Disney’s first black princess replaces a ride based on a movie that many consider racist

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) – A brand new attraction starring Disney’s first Black princess is opening at the corporate’s U.S. theme parks, and a few Disney supporters see it as a suitable substitute for a previous ride based on a film with racist tropes.

The latest theme park attraction continues the story of Tiana from the 2009 animated film “The Princess and the Frog” and can open this yr within the space previously occupied by Splash Mountain. The fundamental theme of the water ride was “Song of the South,” a 1946 Disney film filled with racist stereotypes about African Americans and plantation life.

Tiana’s Bayou Adventure retains Splash Mountain’s log ride DNA, but is infused with music, scenery and animatronic characters inspired by “The Princess,” set in Twenties New Orleans. It will open to the general public later this month at Walt Disney World in Florida and at Disneyland in California later this yr.

“Tiana meant a lot to little Black girls. When a young child sees someone who looks like them, it matters,” said Neal Lester, an English professor at Arizona State University who has written about Tiana.

Disney’s announcement that it could transform its long-running Splash Mountain ride into Tiana’s Bayou Adventure was announced in June 2020 within the wake of social justice protests sparked by the murder of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis. Disney said on the time that the change was already within the works. But it happened as corporations across the United States, within the face of worldwide protests, reconsidered or modified their names to decades-old brands.

The film “Song of the South” is a mixture of live motion, cartoons and music, starring an elderly black man who works on a plantation and tells a white town boy fairy tales about talking animals. The film has been criticized for its racist stereotypes, has not been released in theaters for many years and is just not available on the corporate’s Disney+ streaming service.

Disney was criticized for racist themes in movies made in earlier many years. The crow characters from the 1941 film “Dumbo” and the character of King Louie from the 1967 “Jungle Book” were seen as caricatures of African Americans. Also ridiculed were depictions of Native Americans within the 1953 film “Peter Pan” and Siamese cats – often considered Asian stereotypes – within the 1955 film “Lady and the Tramp.”

Not everyone believes that opening a ride based on Tiana’s story solves Disney’s problematic racial representations.

In rebuilding Splash Mountain into Bayou Adventure Tiana, quite than completely dismantling the attraction, Disney combined “Song of the South” with “The Princess and the Frog.” Both are fantasies that are largely silent on the racial realities of the segregated eras they depict, said Katie Kapurch, an English professor at Texas State University who has written extensively about Disney.

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

The imagineers who design Disney attractions are at all times trying to take a look at attractions with fresh eyes and explore ways to inform latest stories “so that everyone feels included,” said Carmen Smith, senior vice chairman of 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 necessary for Imagineers to inform diverse stories to their global audiences, said Charita Carter, executive creative producer at Walt Disney Imagineering, who oversaw the attraction’s development.

“Society is actually changing and we are developing different sensibilities,” Carter said. “We focus our stories differently depending on the needs of our society.”

The transformation of Splash Mountain into Tiana’s Bayou Adventure is certainly one of several recalibrations on the amusement giant’s theme parks for rides whose storylines are considered outdated or offensive.

In 2021, Disney announced that it could be revamping Jungle Cruise, certainly one of the unique attractions at Disney Parks that has been criticized prior to now for being racially insensitive because of its portrayal of animatronic indigenous people as savages or bounty hunters. Three years earlier, Disney had eliminated a “Bride Auction” scene from its “Pirates of the Caribbean” ride that was deemed offensive since it showed women lining up for an auction.

It’s a positive step for Disney that a ride based on a past character not seen in previous iterations of Disney princesses replaced an attraction from a movie steeped in racist tropes because “representation matters,” Lester said.

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