Y Yeah why not? I can't believe how many people are prepared to grab their pitchforks to defend a scene in a theme park attraction were women are being auctioned. I have no particular problem with the scene, but I'm certainly not going to get upset about changing it since that horse bolted years ago and the scene could cause offence.
Look if people want to be offended that's certainly well within their right. Me I think life is too short to get worked up over a scene in a theme park ride that most people never even gave two thoughts about it. Although I think if you are going to be offended shouldn't you be offended by Johnny Depp in the ride and how he's treated an actual woman?
You don't understand the Disney fan pattern. 1. Doubt rumors. 2. Once confirmed, be out raged. 3. Debate endlessly with people about the change while attraction is closed 4. Create record breaking lines once the attraction reopens. 5. Love the changes. We are only at step 2 now. Besides I find it interesting they are keeping this Mexican stereotype in the scene.
One would think there's a bit of inconsistency as to what is and isn't appropriate throughout the ride and park
Disney as a storyteller of "hard facts" is beyond laughable. Pirates is "world history" like Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln is American history. They're both anything but. Pirates of the Caribbean is a romanticized retelling of pirates meant to endear them to us. There's a reason kids come out of the ride and want a pirate hat or a pirate sword from Pieces of Eight. The ride is glamorizing violence, not soberly telling "hard facts." And hey, that's fine. That's part of our culture—the films we love mostly glamorize violence too. But let's own it as a culture and admit that we're fine with a ride auctioning off women while also belittling overweight women and older women in the ride instead of claiming that we're all actually horrified at this but we're boldly looking into the abyss of humanities depravity by keeping it in the ride. Nah, in reality it's the opposite; we just think it's funny and no big deal and we don't think it's offensive because it doesn't really affect most of us. It's just that "PC crowd" spoiling all of our fun again. Instead, maybe we should ask ourselves why we're fine with this particular bit of showmanship when we probably wouldn't be fine with a slave hanging from a tree in front of the Haunted Mansion. I mean, Disney's just telling hard facts, right? It's part of our history, right? So why not a Haunted Mansion refurb or overlay (it looks like a southern plantation house, after all) with a Gone with the Wind-esque portrayal of happy house slaves and a lynching of an uppity black or a runaway to show how things were.
Political correctness, even when it involves making a pretense of being sensitive to others (consider what was politically correct in Nazi Germany, or pre-Civil-War South Carolina) is a p***-poor substitute for genuine sensitivity. And you "erdc," you might consider editing the above comment, to put the word "uppity" in quotes. It has become sufficiently charged that it is frequently taken as a racist slur in and of itself, even if not followed by "the N-word."
I don't think little people with mental disabilities should be belittled in the Snow White ride either. #BanDopey
Then there's Cinderella glorifying rodent infestations. Do you know how many innocent third world children die each year from hemorrhagic fever?
I think the point is that pirates aren't nice guys. They're not "all noblemen who have gone wrong," who even make a point of "never molesting an orphan" (as in The Pirates of Penzance). They're not dashing heroes forced into piracy by circumstances beyond their control, like Westley as "The Dread Pirate Roberts" (The Princess Bride) or Nick Jamison (the classic Infocom game, Plundered Hearts) And most of them are not even real life privateer heroes like Jean Lafitte. So we don't need to lose scenes that remind us that they're not nice guys. Oh, and as to rodents, "mawnck," well, what about Mickey?
I should think that the context of ecdc's post shows that he understands these racist attitudes better than most. No need for the quotation marks (or the lecture).
Did you complain and say to your friends and family just how aweful it was for Walt and his crew to create such a scene, at any point, over the past 50 years of this ride's existence? Yeah, Disney addressing the "hard facts" is clearly laughable. But hey look, you can't even handle this watered down scene. What, prey tell, would you do with reality? Pirates were nasty people. They were alcoholics, stole, raped, murdered, and engaged in human trafficking.
Some might suggest we remove the ride altogether, plant a tree, and hold a drum circle around it. Fun.
To me, the problem with the auction scene is exactly that it is supposed to be funny. Pirates is a mix of serious and humorous, which mostly works, and I've always loved it overall. The cave/skeleton scenes are mostly serious (and the soundtrack basically tells you the balance between serious and humorous of each tableau). The burning of the town is serious. Firing on the fort is serious. Then the jail scene is humorous. Mini-tableaus like the pirate with the pigs are humorous. And the auction scene, without a doubt is meant to be humorous. And that's my problem with it. It's not presenting real pirate activity as something awful (like the burning of the town); we are meant to laugh at the fact that these "wenches" are being sold, and at the fact that the fat chick is hard to sell. (To me, the latter thing just adds a little awfulness; the main awfulness is the first part). The second time I rode it in the 60's, my uncle and aunt were along. My uncle pointed and read the sign aloud "Take a wench for a bride!" and laughed rather loudly. My aunt was not amused, and I didn't realize why. You can argue that the scene is not to be taken seriously, and that the sexism on display is more of the 60's Mad Men "take my wife, please" variety. That the men who put this ride together whitewashed the sexual slavery part and are just indulging in the garden variety sexism of a half century ago. (And you could counter-argue that that's bad enough and if we could replace the scene with one equally good, why not?) But ultimately, the scene shows women being sold into sexual slavery. And part of the 60's male mindset was a subtle "so what" attitude towards that. Unlike other things depicted in Pirates, we are meant to laugh at it. So yeah, pirates were bad guys, who did bad things, and several types of bad things are shown here. But this one is supposed to be funny. And that, I think, is the problem. Much depends on what they replace it with. But if the new scene is well done, just imagine for a minute if the original scene had never existed, and the new scene (auctioneer auctioning off stolen goods) had been there from the beginning - which it theoretically could have been. It's still as "authentic" a depiction of pirates as anything else in POTC - stealing a looted town's loot, with the pirates higher in the hierarchy selling to those lower down. Perhaps that will soften the blow for some. I agree that the best thing they could do to improve the ride, though, is take out or severely minimize the movie references. It's "Pirates of the Caribbean" plural, not "pirate" singular (i.e. "Captain Jack Sparrow" repeated ad nauseum.)
Out of curiosity, what is your take on the scene prior to the auction, where they're dunking the mayor in the well? I think that's supposed to be one of the ride's humorous ones (at least judging by the light-hearted music), but it never seemed particularly funny to me, even as a kid. At least the auction has the "not what you would expect in the situation" humor of both the plus-size lady and the redhead being excited about getting sold; the well scene is pretty much just pirates being pirates Even the burning city scene has it's humor. The individual tableaus within the scene are all funny (escaping with the hats, singing donkey, sleeping with the pigs), and it's when the song is introduced so the whole thing has upbeat allusions to Nero's fiddling. But with the well scene, I just can't quite figure out what we're supposed to laugh at
