The Walt Disney Company has not had a good month. Bob Chapek has not had a good month. What started as a weak response to Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill has turned into a series of protests, walkouts, back-pedals, and apologies. A fumbled response by Bob Chapek to the controversial bill culminated last week with a racist performance on Main Street USA that Disney claims caught them off guard. The spotlight continues to shine on how the Company responds to seemingly self-made controversy, which has us wondering why Disney is responding at all. Why isn’t the Company being proactive when it comes to inclusion and diversity?
Back in September 2020, Disney expanded their legendary Four Keys cornerstone teachings blueprint to include a fifth key – Inclusion. The idea is that while the Four Keys were listed in order of importance as to how they should drive Cast Member actions, inclusion would be an omnipresent key; something that oversaw all decisions and interactions. Disney would have to find a way to not only change how they would conduct business going forward but also to reexamine their nearly 100 years of history.
A year after the initial announcement that a fifth key would be added to the company culture, Disney launched Reimagine Tomorrow – a digital destination that would highlight what Disney is doing to support inclusion and diversity. The website highlights many of the things Disney is doing to improve efforts on and off-screen to further diversity and inclusion.
On-screen, most notably on the Disney+ platform, Disney includes this advisory for shows or movies that had negative depictions and/or mistreatments of people or cultures:
This program includes negative depictions and/or mistreatment of people or cultures. These stereotypes were wrong then and are wrong now. Rather than remove this content, we want to acknowledge its harmful impact, learn from it and spark conversation to create a more inclusive future together.
Disney is committed to creating stories with inspirational and aspirational themes that reflect the rich diversity of the human experience around the globe.
To learn more about how stories have impacted society, please visit www.disney.com/storiesmatter
Disney acknowledged a few movies in its catalog fall under the heading of insensitive or worthy of a content advisory. Some of the movies that include the advisory include:
- Dumbo
- Peter Pan
- The Aristocats
- Swiss Family Robinson
- The Jungle Book
- Lady and the Tramp
- Aladdin
Theme Park Attraction Changes
Of course, here at BlogMickey.com, we primarily focus on the theme parks, which have been a space where Disney’s diversity and inclusion efforts have been mixed at best and completely absent at worst.
Splash Mountain
Perhaps the highest-profile example of diversity and inclusion in the theme parks is the announced reimagining of Splash Mountain. Splash Mountain is a water ride that is based on the animated sequences from the movie Song of the South. Long before there was a Reimagine Tomorrow initiative, Disney noticed that they would have a problem with the Song of the South movie and never released it to home video in the United States. Still, Disney went ahead with an attraction that not only featured characters from the film but music as well.
On June 25, 2020, as the theme parks remained closed due to COVID-19 and as tensions rose around the country due to the murder of George Floyd, Disney announced that Splash Mountain would be completely reimagined to a Princess and the Frog attraction. Disney specifically said that “the new concept is inclusive – one that all of our guests can connect with and be inspired by, and it speaks to the diversity of the millions of people who visit our parks each year.”
The announcement was certainly divisive on social media, but it was the first big step in Disney taking a stance and making change. It’s also worth noting that this announcement predated the official announcement of Inclusion becoming the fifth “Key” – an early step in the right direction for Disney. However, as months, and now almost two years have passed, Splash Mountain remains open and unchanged. For their part, Disney says that they are working on the attraction reimagining behind the scenes, but Magic Kingdom Vice President Melissa Valiquette has acknowledged that it will “take [Disney] a bit of time”. Today, Disney still has not announced when Splash Mountain will be closed for the reimagining, and they have not provided any meaningful updates on the status of the reimagining. No visible work has taken place at the attraction.
Disney’s critics point to the timing of the announcement of the reimagining as premature. They say that it was announced as a way to bring the social temperature on Disney down a bit. With the lack of visible progress, it’s easy to see why critics would say that the Splash Mountain reimagining was more of a PR announcement than an actual substantive change within the Company.
Jungle Cruise
In contrast to the lethargic pace of the Splash Mountain reimagining, Disney was able to overhaul problematic scenes in the popular Jungle Cruise attraction in roughly 6 months. Disney identified scenes that had “negative depictions” of cultures and swapped those scenes out with diverse and inclusive scenes. Jungle Cruise changes certainly felt like more of a proactive change than a reactive change like Splash Mountain. The Jungle Cruise reimagining was an example of how Disney can act swiftly and effectively to drive change within their theme parks.
Disney didn’t go as far as retheming the entire attraction – perhaps signaling that Splash Mountain is so far removed from the ideals of The Walt Disney Company of today that there are no redeeming qualities of the attraction beyond the literal structure that it is built upon.
Right Hand, Meet Left
While it seems like Disney was able to manage some of the most obvious examples of negative depictions of cultures in their theme parks, their efforts have been far from perfect. For example, at Hong Kong Disneyland, the Jungle Cruise remains unchanged and the Disney name is still stamped on an attraction that the Company itself determined to be misaligned with its values. At Tokyo Disneyland, Disney has failed to persuade the Oriental Land Company to change their version of Splash Mountain.
If we go back to a movie that has a content advisory on Disney+, we can’t help but notice a seemingly disjointed effort to represent Dumbo in an inclusive manner at the Disney theme parks. At Disneyland Paris, a new Gardens of Wonder art installation that celebrates the park’s 30th Anniversary features crows flying around Dumbo. These same crows, and what they negatively depict, are part of the reason that the film received a content advisory on Disney+. How, or why, is this happening in the theme parks years after Disney added content advisories to Disney+?
To further illustrate that Disney knows that Dumbo is a problem, they removed lyrics from “When I See An Elephant Fly” in the recently returned Disney Festival of Fantasy Parade. That song is sung by the same crows that exist in a newly installed art piece at Disneyland Paris.
Another problematic movie that Disney has seemingly identified as an issue within its theme parks is Peter Pan. In this ride-through video posted by Disneyland Paris in February 2021 (months after the Inclusion Key was added), Disney goes out of their way to edit out Tiger Lily – a Native American in the movie and attraction. Here’s a screenshot of the video.
However, Tiger Lily is still in the attraction today, in the mouth of the skull-shaped rock. She was only edited out of the ride-through video, perhaps a move that will allow the video to have some longevity should changes take place in the attraction. In the same video, Disney edits out a scene with more Native Americans. Here’s a look at where Tiger Lily would be, thanks to a video by DLP Welcome.
At Walt Disney World, there have been no changes to any scenes within the Peter Pan’s Flight attraction – including the Native American scene.
Heading back to the Walt Disney World Resort for a minute, we have to wonder how “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah” and “Laughing Place” continue to play outside of the Magic Kingdom entrance while the same songs were removed from the Downtown Disney background music loop almost two years ago. Going further, it’s a moral conflict to identify Splash Mountain as being an attraction that is misaligned with Company values in the summer of 2020 and keep it open for years after deeming it problematic.
Digging more into the concept of the right hand not talking to the left, we have to look no further than the removal of “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah” from the Festival of Fantasy Parade. The song was obviously problematic enough to be removed from Disney World’s signature daytime parade, but it still plays outside of the entrance to the most visited theme park in the world.
If inclusion is at the core of Disney’s teachings to Cast Members, why is there such a disjointed representation of the Inclusion Key in the theme parks? How is it possible that Disney allowed a drill team called the Indianettes to march down Main Street USA after knowing the history of the marching band? The Indianettes have been coming to Disney World for years, yet, Disney invited the Indianettes, and the possibility of controversy, back to Disney World in 2022. Disney claims to have been caught off guard by the Indianettes performance, but just an ounce of proactivity could’ve flagged the headdress-wearing drill team ahead of time. While a single Disney employee was able to prevent the Indianattes from wearing the headdresses in their 2022 performance, the drill team was not told to leave the headdresses at home by Disney ahead of time. It seems like a last-minute decision by a single employee was able to prevent a scene in 2022 that would resemble what Disney allowed in the March 2020 photo below.
As Disney continues to create inclusive and diverse spaces within their theme parks, using Disney+ content advisories as a starting point could prove useful. For example, Disney World has a quick-service eatery in Frontierland at Magic Kingdom called Pecos Bill Tall Tale Inn and Cafe. This restaurant is named after Pecos Bill, a character first introduced in a short from “Melody Time” – content that Disney+ has flagged as being problematic. In the short, Pecos Bill is responsible for the creation of many landmarks within the United States. In a particularly striking scene, the colorful mountains of the desert are explained by Pecos Bill shooting at Native Americans wearing war paint. As Pecos Bill shoots at the Native Americans for fun, they run away and “paint” the mountains of the desert. This content has been part of the Disney library long before the creation of Disney World, yet the Company decided to create a restaurant based on the character. Perhaps a reexamination of the underlying content and character is in order here like Disney did for the nearby Splash Mountain attraction. Changing the restaurant name is a much easier “fix” than the Splash Mountain overhaul and could be completed virtually overnight.
Other problematic Frontierland spaces that Disney has changed recently include the painting over of offensive raft names such as “Injun Joe” and removing signage for a cave of the same name on Tom Sawyers Island.
Circling back to the movie studios, we have a report from Variety that perfectly highlights the current status of inclusion within The Walt Disney Company and how they react versus lead. Following staff uproar over Chapek’s lackadaisical response to Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill, a same-sex kiss has reportedly been restored to the upcoming animated film “Lightyear”. This is another example of Disney not being proactive, and perhaps even outright being against diversity and inclusion at its studios.
The Walt Disney Company can be a powerful entity for change, and they are uniquely positioned to create a more inclusive and diverse future, but only if everyone is on the same page. A unified front spanning theme parks, movie theaters, merchandise, and beyond is synergy at its best. The best content library that Disney has is not what’s tucked away in the vault or on Disney+, but the lived experiences of its employees and Cast Members. The idea of inclusion being an overarching key is noble, but the implementation has been shaky so far. If Disney has a system dedicated to inclusion in its theme parks and beyond, it clearly needs some fine-tuning.