Zip-a-dee-doo-dah
February 23, 2005 8:45 PM   Subscribe

Hell has frozen over. Rumor has it that Disney is planning to re-release (on DVD) it's 1946 animated feature Song of the South which hasn't seen the light of day since 1986 in the fall of '06. The Oscar winning film was originally tucked away due to racially charged material that painted a grossly inaccurate picture of slavery and the south during reconstruction. There goes another EBAY market.
posted by TetrisKid (31 comments total)
 
They're simply responding to the changed social, cultural and political climate. Hell, I'd be surprised if DVDs of that old Popeye cartoon set in 'Bad-gag' weren't burned and handed out at the GOP convention last year. The market for racist materials in a form racists (most of 'em, anyway) can clearly understand has gone woefully underserved these past few years.
posted by trondant at 8:54 PM on February 23, 2005


From the article:
"Why -- after all these years -- did Disney finally give in?," you query. It's simple, really. "Song of the South" 's 60th anniversary was simply too good a promotional hook for the Mouse's marketing staff to pass up. More to the point, Buena Vista Home Entertainment could really use a hit right about now.

And so the forces of capitalism win again. Which, at least in this case, is OK, since film lovers like me have been dying to see this film for decades.

Still, this does mark the second recent occasion that Disney has gone into its vaults to release semi-controversial material on DVD: the other was Walt Disney on the Front Lines, a very nice 2-disc set of WWII propaganda films.

Doesn't quite take away the sting of their editing/censoring of some of the Mickey Mouse films, tho'.
posted by Dr. Wu at 9:03 PM on February 23, 2005


Disney-Bush is just softening people up for their future as servants to the rich -- yes, darlin', it will be just like the movie, we'll live behind the Big White House and sing all day and eat what they don't want at the big table.
posted by hank at 9:04 PM on February 23, 2005


Sweet potato pie and I shut my mouth.
posted by DrJohnEvans at 9:08 PM on February 23, 2005


DrJohnEvans: Since I read this post, that song's been in my head, too.
posted by Dr. Wu at 9:14 PM on February 23, 2005


The idea that "Song of the South" is racist is baloney anyway. I look forward to seeing a restored copy of this movie, that I enjoyed with my black father as a child.
posted by McBain at 9:23 PM on February 23, 2005


So for almost 20 years it sat on a shelf because the folks at Disney decided that it might be offensive, but they're releasing it now not because society's views have changed but because there's a nice anniversary marketing angle now? Nice.

Dick Cook, the chair of Walt Disney Studios says that SotS is the most requested DVD release in their archives. But are their that many other Disney features NOT on DVD (other than the hiatus titles)?
posted by Slack-a-gogo at 9:37 PM on February 23, 2005


It's a catchy tune no matter what kind of doctor you are.
posted by DrJohnEvans at 10:03 PM on February 23, 2005


Great news! Because management at Disney previously stated they were never planning on re-releasing, I came very close to posting the entire movie on my site last month. I wrote a long entry and seeded a torrent, but chickened out at the last minute.
posted by waxpancake at 10:11 PM on February 23, 2005


McBain: I was taken to see this film by my black aunt. She's a very hip chick; I very much doubt that she missed it if there's rascism in there. It's important to see the film (any film, really) with an adult who can explain things to you. I think the greatest damage will be kids who see it with their liberal/Northern parents who think that slaves are still being secretly kept in the South but who've never actually been there. And that's my rascist comment for the day.

How is this any different from the Huck Finn controversy? "Oh, it's got slaves in it! It's rascist!" Shut up and get me my 20 acres and half a mule already (since I'm only Halfrican-American) if you've got nothing better to do. I'm tired of white folks being outraged on my behalf.
posted by Eideteker at 4:38 AM on February 24, 2005


This isn't available in the US? Wow. I stumbled across it on Australian free-to-air TV on a Sunday afternoon about a year ago. My brief summary: quaint, honey-sweet old-school Disney film. Nothing to get your knickers in a knot about, unless you try real hard.
posted by Jimbob at 4:46 AM on February 24, 2005


zipitty doo da, zipitty day ... i can't seem to get THAT song out of my head now ... and i didn't even see the header ... it was one of those films i saw as a kid in the 60s
posted by pyramid termite at 5:31 AM on February 24, 2005


My folks bought me the record as a kid. They're both from the south (GA and LA) and wanted me to understand some things about the eviroment they grew up in. I think I remember playing "How Do You Do?" at 45RPM or something. It's easy to (mis) judge something by taking it out of context, and though Disney's reasons for releasing it seem sleazy, I'd be interested to see how the movie will be received today.
posted by black8 at 5:41 AM on February 24, 2005


I remember seeing it in the movies (early 70s?)...my oh my, what a wonderful day...i wonder if there were protests then about it?

they just released Bambi on DVD too so must need cash, but i can't wait to see it as an adult and decide.

This is telling: "This movie isn't nearly as good as people seem to remember it being. Sure, the animated sequences are charming. But the pace of the rest of the picture is so damned pokey.

Which is why I seriously doubt that we'll get all that many letters about "Song of the South" 's racial content. The way I figure it, most kids & adults will be nodding off 30 minutes into the thing. And people who are sleeping can't write letters of complaint."

posted by amberglow at 5:52 AM on February 24, 2005


The recent resurgence of all sorts of bigotry is just going to be fed by this, i think.
posted by amberglow at 6:09 AM on February 24, 2005


I think the greatest damage will be kids who see it with their liberal/Northern parents...

You might be on to something there. I loved the "Little House" books when I was a kid, so I bought my son a box set of them, and when I was re-reading it, I was horrified at the chapter where Pa puts on a "darkie show" with his friends, natch, complete with blackface. And I thought, "I can't let my kids read this!" for about two seconds, until I realized I read the books and still managed to grow up with a sense of both what is historical and what is inappropriate, and gee, I imagine my parents and my education had something to do with that. So, you know, I got over myself.

On topic, I also saw "Song of the South" when I was little, and the man who played uncle Remus is buried here in my hometown. His gravestone has birds and sunshine on it, and the inscription, My, oh my, what a wonderful day. (It's a thin veneer of on topic, I know.)
posted by headspace at 6:17 AM on February 24, 2005


Disney's reasons for releasing it aren't really sleazy. Disney is a business, it's job is to be profitable. That goal is balanced against the requirement to maintain the luster of it's brand (which arguably they've been failing at under Eisner). If they tarnish their brand future profits are jeopardized.

I'm pretty sure I saw Song of the South as a kid and it didn't turn me into a racist. If I did see it it's been so long that I don't recall any of it. It may well have had racist undertones but as you go backwards across the decades much of our cultural heritage does to varying degrees. The past shouldn't be sanitized, it should be understood and taken in context.

I remember reading Paul Bunyon in grade school. I doubt very much that book is in any grade school at least in the U.S. anymore unless it's been sanitized. It's a shame because that book made me understand a little bit about how our culture had changed (though in grade 3 or 4 I doubt I put it in those terms)
posted by substrate at 6:18 AM on February 24, 2005


I haven't seen the film, so I can't comment on its alleged racism, but I do know that the stories on which it was based were specifically written to be anti racist. If I remember correctly, their (white) author felt that the Gullah people had a rich oral culture that needed to be preserved, and his use of Gullah dialect was an effort to preserve not just the stories they told but the language in which they told them. As time went by, that attempt to portray Gullah dialect came to remind people of stereotypical black dialect in genuinely racist film and literature ,and the Uncle Remus stories got an unfair reputation as racist. (Admittedly, Harris was apparently not convinced that slavery was unequivocally bad, which makes it all the more understandable that people would look at his portrayal of African-Americans with highly skeptical eyes.)

But if you put aside what you know about the author and look closely at the Bre'er Rabbit stories, they tend to involve a powerless character using his wits to defeat a more powerful enemy; it's not hard to understand why these stories would have appealed to African-Americans during the slavery and reconstruction era.

Whatever Chandler's motivations, his books have had the effect of preserving an oral culture that would otherwise have vanished.
posted by yankeefog at 6:20 AM on February 24, 2005


.i wonder if there were protests then about it?

The NAACP protested Song of the South when it was released in 1946. I have no idea if they continued their protests at later re-releases.

The movie is definitely after the Civil War (one of the plot points is that Uncle Remus has the choice to leave the plantation if he wants).

It isn't so much overtly racist as it promotes the genteel paternalism view of the South that was prevalant in the early part of the century. The idea that everybody was pretty happy, that slavery was wrong but they weren't really mistreated. The closest thing to overtly bothersome in it is a scene where all the (black) farmhands are shown singing as they head off to work the fields . . . the white plantation owners fields.

But it isn't like Uncle Remus is saying "boy, we miss the days of slavery when our welfare was assured."

The rumor that Disney is going to release SotS has popped up many times over the years so I'm not going to pay much attention until I see a press release (and even then will have doubts, Disney once made it as far as the press release and then backed off).
posted by obfusciatrist at 6:59 AM on February 24, 2005


I saw the movie a couple years ago. My neighbors in Britain shared it. I had wanted to see it because I didn't know the film, but Disneyland has that water ride.

I can't see the source of controversy. Ya, okay, inaccurate portrayal of slavery. If films are to be condemned for inaccurate portrayal of history, then there goes every historical film ever made in Hollywood. Mary Poppins must be banned for an inaccurate protrayal of the British!
posted by Goofyy at 7:07 AM on February 24, 2005


You mean they don't really fly like that?
posted by TetrisKid at 7:20 AM on February 24, 2005


I too saw this when I was little when it came out for the last time in theaters in '86. When I discovered it wasn't released in the US it didn't surprise me, though I knew it was in there I couldn't remember much about the racism specifically since I was pretty young at the time. I had a good friend in England buy me the PAL format version a few years ago and I split the cost with my best friend to have it converted here. I am not sure it was worth the money we spent on it, as what they said about it is pretty accurate. I remembered it being really a great movie, but trying to watch it again I didn't make it more than half an hour into it... yet I'm sure I'll buy it when they release the DVD so maybe they do know what they're doing.
posted by meg6212 at 7:21 AM on February 24, 2005


Having never seen this movie, I cannot comment on it directly. However, I must say that I despise the Disney empire and all that it represents. Nonetheless, I still retain a fondness for some of the movies that illustrated my childhood, namely Alice in Wonderland and Robin Hood. Oh, the guilt.
posted by crapulent at 7:38 AM on February 24, 2005


I agree. Let's continue the ban on SOTS. That way we can save our money for good non-racist fare like "Booty Call", et.al.
posted by davenportmom at 8:10 AM on February 24, 2005


I would love to see SoTS rereleased...but I doubt it's ever going to happen.
posted by dejah420 at 8:16 AM on February 24, 2005


So for almost 20 years it sat on a shelf because the folks at Disney decided that it might be offensive, but they're releasing it now not because society's views have changed but because there's a nice anniversary marketing angle now?

This is only half right. For almost 20 years it sat on a shelf because the folks at Disney couldn't come up with a marketing angle for it, but they're releasing it now not because society's views have changed but because there's a nice anniversary marketing angle.

I have to agree with those who say this is a good thing. Although I can't remember having seen the film (I've heard some of the songs), the best way for parents to handle controversial art or ideas is to expose them to their children (a the right age, of course) and talk about them, not pretend that they don't exist. Children will learn about racism from their peers and other adults at an early enough age anyway -- and they might not be the lessons that you want them to learn.

Disney is evil, though. This move is probably based on their calculation that they can fetch a high price for the DVD based on the artificial scarcity of the films. They've been pretty open about this policy, actually -- their TV commercials exhort parents to "buy these DVD's now before we put them back in the vault for another twenty years!"
posted by casu marzu at 8:17 AM on February 24, 2005


And I thought, "I can't let my kids read this!" for about two seconds, until I realized I read the books and still managed to grow up with a sense of both what is historical and what is inappropriate, and gee, I imagine my parents and my education had something to do with that. So, you know, I got over myself.

Yeah. I saw it when I was a kid. It's a cute film, classic Disney.

(Mr. Bluebird's on my shoulder... it's the truth, it's natural... everything is satisfactual!)
posted by Specklet at 9:17 AM on February 24, 2005


First off, having seen it fairly recently, I can vouch for what he says at the bottom of the article - the movie just is NOT very interesting. In fact, the only thing that kept me awake through the live-action sequences was marvelling over the surreality of the scenario. Not just the racial ignorance on display, but all sorts of random pieces of wackiness, like the screenwriters apparently having no idea what the south was like Pre- vs Post- Civil War.

I don't believe the film is RACIST in any sense we would use the word today. It was, in fact, remarkably progressive given the time period it was made. And it can't be forgotten that the man who played Uncle Remus, James Baskett, won one of the first Academy Awards given to a black man. That ALONE makes the movie worth preserving, as far as I'm concerned.

But really, it's no more offensive than, say, Gone With the Wind. I know a few people get huffy over its depiction of slavery in the south, but most can accept it in context. The same should be true of SOTS - it's just that, by sitting on the movie so long, Disney has allowed its reputations, both good AND bad, to grow well past what is warranted.
posted by InnocentBystander at 10:07 AM on February 24, 2005


There's a big difference between "racist" and "misleading." If Uncle Remus came off as stupid, evil, or lecherous, that would be racist. Showing the sharecroppers as happy and carefree — that's misleading.

But hell, all of Disney's movies are misleading — about money, gender roles, the possibility of living "happily ever after," the linguistic ability of mice, or whatever. Fairy tales aren't realistic. And Song of the South is just another fairy tale, even if it's set in quasi-Reconstruction-era sorta-America and not quasi-Medieval sorta-Europe.

(Now, if I saw someone treating SoTS as historically accurate, I'd be sure to set them straight. But I'd do the same if I saw someone treating Snow White or Aladdin as historically accurate.)
posted by nebulawindphone at 10:47 AM on February 24, 2005


I loved the "Little House" books when I was a kid, so I bought my son a box set of them, and when I was re-reading it, I was horrified at the chapter where Pa puts on a "darkie show" with his friends, natch, complete with blackface.

Back in the sixties, Grosset & Dunlap edited out bits of Penrod lest children be corrupted. This , for example, was truncated to 'Troops in Action', and various Bad Words here and there were expurgated.

I like to think they were marketing to righteous parents and relatives rather than to the children themselves.
posted by IndigoJones at 3:31 PM on February 24, 2005


a) why did he want to save this culture so badly?
b) did he ask the Gullahs what parts of their culture were the most important to them to preserve?
c) didn't he turn around and sell the shit to make money for himself?
d) why was Disney so interested in this? who were they selling it to? how did consumers react?
posted by Embryo at 9:10 PM on February 24, 2005


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