By David T. Valentin
After Disney+ launched, many of Disney’s older films and shows were released on the streaming platform. A few of these movies were tweaked to either recover from more problematic elements from Disney’s past or to maintain Disney’s “family-friendly” image.
When Disney+ launched, fans of the mermaid romcom Splash, featuring Tom Hanks and Daryl Hannah as romantic leads, were excited to watch the film. When they did, they noticed something a bit odd in one of the more iconic scenes of the film.
In the scene where Daryl Hannah’s character saves Tom Hanks’ character, when she runs up to the shore, kisses Tom Hanks and dives back into the ocean, fans noticed something a bit off in the Disney+ release.
In the Disney+ release, Daryl Hannah’s hair is unusually long, which was Disney’s attempt at covering up a woman’s backside after deeming it “not family appropriate.” But the editing job makes it almost look like she clipped in some extensions lazily, ran on to set and hoped no one would notice she accidentally clipped them in without blending them properly. And that’s being generous. I’d say it looks like she’s wearing some sort of fur kilt, leading me to assume she’s some sort of ancient Viking instead of a mermaid.
Now, Disney has reverted the change according to a Disney+ users parental guidance settings. The movie now offers one scene where Daryl Hannah’s backside is still shown and another version where her backside is covered by a furry bathing suit—I mean fully covered by her hair.
The editing is a good laugh now, but it’s a sign of a much larger problem—a problem where corporations seek to quietly cover up their problematic past without actually having to ever really address why those decisions were made and why they should be tweaked according to today’s moral standards.
Of course, Daryl Hannah’s slightly revealed bum isn’t part of that problematic past (unless perhaps you’re dealing with those overly puritanical people) but racist elements in say Fantasia and other older movie films certainly are.
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