Disney-Fying Dixie: Queering the ‘Laughing Place’ at Splash Mountain

Abstract

This chapter examines the Splash Mountain attraction. First tracing the origin and history of the attraction, including its roots in the racially problematic Disney film Song of the South, Bringardner examines Splash Mountain through the lenses of gender and sexuality. Bringardner intervenes in critical debate over whether the ride is a thinly veiled, racist journey in a plastic log, an overly sanitized, commodified excuse for a souvenir photograph, a discursive, subversive, embodied experience, or something completely different. In the rush to consider the ride from the more obvious (and of course necessary) perspective of race and racial representation, most analysis has unproductively shied away from a more intersectional approach. When looking at the ride through such an approach, it becomes clear that troubling racial narratives have been replaced with equally problematic depictions of queer sexuality.