Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah’...
Say
it loud,
I’m Black, and I’m Proud!
Disney,
and
no I don’t need to
attach “Walt,” “land” or “world” to it
because
Disney is
one of those
entities which doesn’t require any
clarification. Why? It’s yet
another 20th-century creation that has
“shaken up the world.”
“American Exceptionalism” epitomized. Right
there with GE, IBM,
Standard Oil, and Ford…. The “iconic”
company, the
quintessential blueprint of capital “C”
“Capitalism,” has
long last succumbed to common economic sense
and basic human decency,
and is, finally, erasing all traces of the
extremely popular theme
park ride,
“Splash
Mountain” and
the
detached-from-reality, 1940s movie it is
based on,
“Song of the South.”
As
I
pen this small piece of my little mind,
people, reacting to the
official closing of the ride last week on
January 22, are selling
Splash Mountain
bottled
water they allegedly gathered from the ride
before it was shut down.
$150.00 a bottle. You bet millions are sad
because they loved the
ride in an innocent and ignorant manner – we
did, my family did,
I’ve ridden the ride say 75 times over the
last 30 years we’ve
gone as a Black family. I took it as an
opportunity for a learning
moment and broke down the background on
every vacation.
Please
note, I’ve been enlightened all my life. I
understand complex
issues, I can separate and decipher the
utter truth.
Now
millions
of others will shed crimson and gray tears
because they look
at the closing of the ride in the same light
one looks at the closing
and rebranding of a Robert
E.
Lee State
Park.
They’ll blame it on “Uppity” Negroes at work
again.
Ah,
isn’t it beautiful? “Black Power” in action!
Splash
Mountain,
which debuted
in 1989 in Disneyland and 1992 in Disney
World, featured characters
from the 1946 movie “Song of the South.” The
ride and, to a
lesser extent, the surrounding “Land
of Dixie,”
in essence,
promoted the stereotypical glamorization of
the American South
post-civil war/“War of Northern Aggression”
and sabotaged
Reconstruction years as a place where
“happiness” and contentment
rule the land.
Instead
of
praising the post-civil war Confederacy’s
version of life for
newly freed Black slaves trapped in the
“Land of Cotton,” Splash
Mountain
and New
Orleans
Square will
get a
significant overhaul and will be rebranded
as Tiana’s
Bayou
Adventure, based
on
the 2009 movie
Princess
and the Frog.
It’s
scheduled to open in late 2024.
If
you’re
paying any attention, at all, you realize
“Splash Mountain”
is
but another cultural battlefield in
America’s centuries-old “cold”
race/civil war. If you’re not hip to “Splash
Mountain” and its
symbolic standing, you need to read more,
diversify your reading and
“read between the lines,” to decipher all
the little
White lies.
At
the
time, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., the iconic
congressman from
Harlem, decried the film as an “insult
to American minorities [and] everything
that America as a whole
stands for,”
while a
journalist at The Afro-American slammed the
movie as “a
piece of propaganda for white supremacy as
Hollywood ever produced:
their point – the movie ignored,
marginalized, sanitized and
trivialized the barbarities and atrocities
of American slavery.
Walter
White,
the former executive secretary of the NAACP,
said the film
“helps to perpetuate a dangerously
glorified picture of slavery.”
Of
course, White America disingenuously
disagreed, and couldn’t care
less; it fit their collective
detached-from-reality narrative of
events.
Additionally,
at
the time of the making and release of the Song
of the South, it
is said
the Disney brain trust realized how very
simple and yet complicated
the combustible issue was: “The
negro
situation is a dangerous one. Between the
negro haters and the
negro lovers, there are many chances to
run afoul of situations that
could run the gamut all the way from the
nasty to the controversial.”
This
is
still the situation corporate America finds
itself in, no? Trying
to appease the polar opposite love/hate
Black people perspectives
their WASP customers maintain. Because now,
low and behold, White
America is still split among
Negro haters and
Negro
Lovers,
I’d argue it’s
not a 50/50 split, but rather more like 65%
haters, 15% tolerators,
and about 10% lovers. There’s not a lot of
“love” held for
Black folks in this hostile land.
The
reaction, over-reaction to this evolutionary
move to recreate the
ride is going to be unbelievable. The day
this ride opens, Trump’s
troops are going to commence the attacks.
The Conservative-minded
Caucasian folks are going to equate this to
another example of
“Woke-ism” run amok.
Disney
has
also transformed the animated red-haired
Mermaid princess Ariel
into
a real-life Black
girl for the movie, and of course, this
ignites a blue flame under
the red behinds of Trump’s klan – of course,
all animated
mermaids must be White…. Disney’s efforts to
diversify and craft
a more inclusive imaginary world are
ridiculously regarded as a prime
example of “The Replacement Theory” at work.
Hell,
we
got White folks complaining about Black
Gnomes
and Black elves
moving in on their exclusive make-believe
front lawn territory. If
mainstream White America had its druthers,
we’d all be celebrating
St.
Patrick's Day while
they
outlaw
MLK Day and
Black
History Month.
And
may
I note: Grand Pooh-Pah DeSantis will attack
the upcoming
Black History Month in
order
to appease and please his supporters,
because his supporters,
the 75 million strong GOP “base” is
inherently racist, elitist
and sexist – xenophobic
–
in
every aspect of
the word.
Lord
DeSantis is simply giving the people, White
people, what they want –
Apartheid and eternal minority rule.
Unquestionably,
there
will be White folks who’ll boycott the ride,
if not the park.
It’s why DeSantis’s anti-Disney positions
are playing so well
below the
Mason-Dixon
Line, down
in the Land
of
Dixie.
The
Rednecks, hillbillies, and
good old boys n’ gals view
themselves
as fighting for their country and way of
life. They are
taking back their country and making it,
alas, keeping it, as 1946
White as possible.
Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah’...
Say
it loud, I’m
Black, and I’m Proud!
