I agree with the assessment that Song of the South's problems were exacerbated by the fact that it was really... freaking... boring. I'm a film buff of color - so if I want to watch anything made before - like - 1950, I'm going to have to deal with the fact that it's likely got something horribly offensive in it or was made by horrible people. I've certainly said "I've watched this, and it's nice but be warned - there's a blackface gag in it" more than a few times in my life.
So if I'm going to be offended, I might as well be entertained at the same time. The Uncle Remus segments aren't just archaic in depiction, they're also try and trite. People would be skipping Remus and only watching B'rer Rabbit even if there wasn't a racial problem there.
As for it not being so bad in a vacuum compared to other singular examples, the timeline context is also important for why it got such a nasty reception. The problem wasn't that the movie itself was over the top. It was that it was an unapologetic part of an inherently offensive film genre (Southern Revisionism / Romanticism) that people were by that point getting fed up with, and it was something of the straw that broke the camels back. Most of what makes the movie uncomfortable today would've been much more magnified decades prior because you would've been seeing those same tropes everywhere, and Uncle Remus is part of a entire pattern of depiction black characters as better off subservient and happier-for-it that people wanted to get rid off.
Edited by KnownUnknown on Nov 24th 2022 at 9:19:10 AM
"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.
Visiting from the Hoag Galaxy
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Yep. And since Song of the South is boring as hell, it had very few people defending it when it went into the vault permanently. Gone With the Wind is very racist and Birth of a Nation is just...all around horrific, but Gone With the Wind has gone down as one of the great classics of cinema and Birth of a Nation is taught as an example of film technique innovation (which it actually isn't, the cinematographer worked on a bunch of other movies around the same time and used all of the same techniques).
And I think it's important to also put it in the context of Dumbo and Peter Pan and (to some degree) Fantasia also having racist stuff in them. Song of the South was effectively the scapegoat to distract the movement enough that the other movies would squeak through with judicious timing of home video rereleases.
Not Three Laws compliant.
I wore out my Peter Pan VHS tape having great fun with all the Captain Hook slapstick segments, but even as a kid I could tell there was something wrong about the Native American scenes and fast-forwarded through them after my first viewing.
The Protomen enhanced my life.
Not as angry as the name would suggest.
Really? I must confess I didn’t make that distinction, though it might have given me the impression that Native Americans were some kind of fantasy adventure thing and not real people, which is…definitely a problem.
What exactly seemed off to you, if you don’t mind me asking?
Edited by KarkatTheDalek on Nov 24th 2022 at 8:24:25 AM
Oh God! Natural light!
Interestingly, the basic plot of the live-action segments of Song of the South is that the wealthy, white southern woman who grew up listening to Uncle Remus's stories herself isn't sure she wants her son listening to Uncle Remus's stories—she seems to think they're inspiring him to get in trouble, while in fact they're giving him the tools to navigate various difficulties. The movie is clearly on the side of Uncle Remus and his stories, which is a mite subversive for the time when you think about it (probably unintentionally). One expects that this was intended as a defense of fantasy and folktales in general (as I said elsewhere, Alice in Wonderland was originally going to have a similar message), but it can also come off as a defense of African-American culture—a defense buried within a depiction of the South that is both racially patronizing and mired in Southern Revisionism, but a defense just the same.
It seems like Disney felt with this string of films (Song of the South,and So Dear to My Heart, as well as his original plans for Treasure Island, and Alice in Wonderland) the need to defend storytelling, particularly the kinds of stories he was telling. One wonders why.
Still though, the live action segments are boring. As a kid, I couldn't quite wrap my head around what the mother's problem was.
The scene in the camp, where we get the (truly awful) song "What Makes the Red Man Red," is so weird on the face of it. It doesn't serve any purpose to the story overall. It's a literal show-stopper, in that the story comes to a stop so they can have this scene.
Edited by Robbery on Nov 24th 2022 at 2:38:30 AM
Which means that the song could be cut from the movie with relative ease. The only thing that may ruin the flow of the scene is that when Smee captures Tinkerbell, the natives' camp can be seen in the background.
Visiting from the Hoag Galaxy
It was "what makes the red man red" in Peter Pan, which is just full stop racist as hell. In Dumbo, it's the crows (sort of) and there's a slave workers song right at the start of the movie that most people seem to forget about. Fantasia had a really caricatured centaur in one bit they awkwardly cut out.
In terms of cutting out that song from Peter Pan...well, the ship has way sailed on that. It'd be completely pointless.
And with the crows in Dumbo...a lot of people say they're the best part of the movie, and they kind of are...but they're also stuffed full of minstrel tropes and there's not really a good way to redeem or reclaim those.
I will note one thing though. Disney, in the shorts, never got as bad as Warner Bros did. The Censored Eleven were these eleven Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts that were incredibly racist, to the point that people at the time pointed it out. They did get a modern release in a special box-set with an intro by Whoopi Goldberg, but I don't think they've been re-released since.
But yeah, with Song of the South, I think the reason Disney won't release it boils down to it being both racist and boring as hell. The PR would be really confused and not great, and the result would be just a big "this is the movie people got so angry about?"
Edited by Zendervai on Nov 24th 2022 at 6:46:02 AM
Not Three Laws compliant.
In today’s edition of weird behind the scenes stuff that only I care about:
Something that I kind of been wondering about, is how Muppets finally ended becoming part of WDI in 2017
Like because it’s kind of unusual, it you think about it. At least as far as I’m aware, it’s unusual, if not unique for an existing, non-parks original franchise to solely managed by WDI.
Edited by megaeliz on Nov 24th 2022 at 6:44:15 AM
Visiting from the Hoag Galaxy
The Jim Henson Company is still separate, right? That's probably why.
Everything else, Disney bought the overall company, for the Muppets, they just bought the property.
Not Three Laws compliant.
The Muppets studio is what manages everything to do with Disney Muppets.
Basically, for most of it’s history at Disney, the whole studio was thrown around like a corporate hot potato that no one knew what to do with, and kept being transferred to different parts of the company, before finally ending up being incorporated into a division of Imagineering in 2018.
And from what I can tell, that’s unusual to say the least.
As far as I know, it’s the only existing, non-theme-park related property that they have sole management over.
I mean, Imagineering has always “gotten” the muppets more than most. Apparently, they were even one of the few departments that Jim always loved working with during the failed Disney merger, and have always had strong ties to them.
Edited by megaeliz on Nov 24th 2022 at 7:05:17 AM
This is going to be so much fun.
RE: a certain franchise of wizards. Yeah, there's a reason why Universal Parks finally got an edge and it's due to Chapek missing out on the supposed bullet he dodged. Regardless of the author's behavior, that franchise is massive and is currently pulling things in Universal's parks.
Death is a companion. We should cherish Death as we cherish Life.
Do a barrel roll!
I am also seeing more ads for it today.
x7 Yeah, Disney did use racist imagery in a number of cartoons ("Mickey's Mellerdrammer," for instance, where Mickey and Co. put on a production of Uncle Tom's Cabin); the old Complete Mickey Mouse DVD's put those in their own "From the Vault" section. But as far as I can remember Disney never did any cartoons where most if not all the humor depended on racial caricatures, which was the the case with a lot of WB's Censored 11.
Fantasia had a pair (I think it was a pair) of black male centaurs with zebra hindquarters (like the two female centaurs who arrive with Bacchus). They're not actually caricatured (aside from being cartoons and, you know, centaurs), the problem with them is that they shine the other male centaurs' shoes. So yeah, that bit has been cut.
For my part, I'm not in favor of cutting anything from anything. I say just run a disclaimer/warning at the beginning of the film.
Edited by Robbery on Nov 24th 2022 at 5:29:51 AM
There’s a few. Dave Down Under has been doing an anthology on them over on his You Tube channel iirc.
"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.
Not a cat
Visiting from the Hoag Galaxy
Oh okay, my mistake.
Not Three Laws compliant.
Mr. Clueless
They planned to release a DVD of the Censored Eleven, but it was canceled because sales of classic cartoon DVDs had sold less than expected.
De Romanīs, lingua Latina gloriosa non fuī.
A couple of them are in public domain anyway, including the Bugs Bunny one.
Disasturbator
Going back to this
> and there's a slave workers song right at the start of the movie that most people seem to forget about
I think it's because they don't read the roustbounts as being like slave labour,they're just workers singing while they pitch the tent,who are also completely faceless,also there's massive storm at night while they're working which is super dangerous but kind of shows how they're considered expendable as manual labourers to the circus
New theme music also a box
Professional Moldy Fig/Curmudgeon
Especially since, because it takes part in then-present times, it's most likely not slave labor...
"They say I'm old fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast."
The song the roustabouts sing at the beginning of Dumbo is called "The Song of the Roustabouts," and the lyrics are in the same vein as loads of other traditional hard-labor songs, from loads of other hard-labor occupations (sea shanties, mining songs, railroad songs, chain-gang songs, etc; even military cadence singing). Such songs have historically been sung by white laborers and black laborers alike, though it's interesting to note that all the roustabouts in Dumbo appear to be black. "The Song of the Roustabouts" is original to Disney, and not a traditional song at all. I read one analysis that reads Unfortunate Implications into the roustabouts being black and singing lyrics about being "happy roustabouts'' and blowing their pay as soon as they get it, which I'd give more credence to if pretty much every work song ever didn't say the same kind of thing, regardless of what racial group it originated with. Disney could be and frequently was patronizing in regards to African Americans, but I don't think he was in this instance.
If I remember right, Dumbo later has the clowns singing a song called "Hitting the Boss Up for a Raise" (or something like that), which I read was borne out of Walt's frustration over the strike, which was going on while Dumbo was being made.
Anyone want to hear a story about Jim Henson involving a Bert Statue and nude photos of Frank Oz?
Edited by megaeliz on Nov 25th 2022 at 8:00:13 AM
Mr. Clueless
Sure.
Several YouTube TV subscribers in four US states are bringing an anti-trust lawsuit against Disney claiming their ownership of ESPN and Hulu has been driving up subscription prices across the board.
"We're all paper, we're all scissors, we're all fightin' with our mirrors, scared we'll never find somebody to love."