“What courage?”
In Jackson’s culture, real herpetophobia is quite common, meaning it probably took him some guts to do the movie.
Of course, my poor, long suffering mother also had a good case of herpetophiaia. One of our next door neighbor’s favorite memories of mom is her standing on the back porch with an absolutely sick look on her face while she held a pair of my jeans at arm’s length, carefully turning the pockets out.
Surprisingly, in my snake forums, at least a third of snake owners are black.
Given demographics in general, they’re actually over-represented in the hobby.
:)