New Disney CEO Bob Iger came back to the company after former CEO Bob Chapek’s wokeism cost the company billions in value, but so far, Iger’s influence hasn’t taken hold. In fact, he’s making it worse.
The company announced that its two major theme parks — Disneyland in California and Disney World in Florida — will both close two iconic rides after determining that they just aren’t “appropriate” in today’s America.
The ride, Splash Mountain, was supposedly inspired by the 1946 Disney film “Song of the South,” depicting life on a plantation after slavery was abolished, Fox Business reported.
“I’ve felt, as long as I’ve been CEO, that ‘Song of the South’ was – even with a disclaimer – was just not appropriate in today’s world,” Iger said in 2020, the year the company announced the ride was going away, according to the outlet.
The Western Journal noted further that in 2019, a Change.org petition demanding that Disney squelch the attractions drew 21,000 signatures, but considering that Disney World alone draws about 58 million visitors a year, that is a tiny minority of people complaining.
Still, the outlet reports:
Admittedly, “Song of the South” hasn’t aged flawlessly.
The movie depicts the period of Reconstruction following the Civil War in a purely light-hearted manner, rather than as a period of American history with its own merits and negative developments.
Freed slaves who work as sharecroppers are depicted as having a jolly old time in the film, a portrayal at odds with the reality of life in the former Confederacy following emancipation.
However, the Splash Mountain ride has far greater appeal than the 1946 movie.
It’s likely that the vast majority of people who ride Splash Mountain have no idea it was inspired by an 80-year-old movie they haven’t even heard of. It’s also likely that most visitors don’t think about those days depicted in the movie or share any love for the period of time it represents. They just come to Disney to have a good time and spend money on overpriced food and tickets.
But thanks to busybody liberals who seem to spend every waking moment figuring out how to be offended or outraged by something or some event that happened a long time ago, we continue to rip ourselves apart by tearing open old wounds. It’s self-defeating and unnecessarily destructive to our cultural and societal fabric.
In any event, Splash Mountain will get a new ‘woke’ makeover, the Western Journal notes:
The ride is slated to be reopened as Tiana’s Bayou Adventure, based on the 2009 Disney movie “The Princess and the Frog.” The movie features Disney’s first black princess, according to a CNN report from 2020.
