Disney Plus recently (and finally) got The Muppet Show, or at least as much of The Muppet Show as any streaming service can legally get without paying ungodly amounts of money for music licensing rights, but 18 episodes of the show were deemed potentially offensive enough that Disney added content disclaimers in front of them. The text of the disclaimers, which cannot be skipped past and include little 12-second timers so you know that you have to sit through them, explain that the episodes feature “negative depictions and/or mistreatment of people or cultures,” and while “these stereotypes were wrong then and are wrong now,” Disney has decided to leave them in order to “acknowledge the [offensive content’s] harmful impact, learn from it, and spark conversation to create a more inclusive future together.”
The 18 episodes are scattered throughout the run and consist of guest-host appearances from Jim Nabors, Joel Grey, Steve Martin, Peter Sellers, Cleo Laine, James Coco, Spike Milligan, Crystal Gayle, Kenny Rogers, Beverly Sills, Jonathan Winters, Alan Arkin, James Coburn, Joan Baez, Debbie Harry, Wally Boag, Marty Feldman, and Johnny Cash. Most of the content deemed offensive is pretty obvious, and it falls in line with the other imagery on Disney Plus that prompted the company to add disclaimers in front of Dumbo, Peter Pan, The Aristocats, and other animated films that veer off into racism. On The Muppet Show, the disclaimer-worthy stuff includes Johnny Cash performing in front of a confederate flag in his episode and the brief appearance of a puppet dressed as a stereotypical Native American (referred to as an “Indian”) in the Jim Nabors episode.
Song Of The South, the film that was determined to be too racist to exist by Disney, is still not available on the platform (with a disclaimer or otherwise).