Disney/Pixar In General

I wouldn't really call the Siamese Cats "primary" antagonists, per se. They appear for a single musical number, wreck a bunch of shit around the house, try to steal the baby's milk, Lady chases them out, the cats injure themselves, and Lady is blamed for the mess. Afterwards, they sort of disappear from the rest of the movie.

Their absence would be felt, as this leads to Aunt Sarah trying to get Lady muzzled and her running away. You could work around it, it'd just make Sarah come across as an even bigger Jerkass then she already is.

I dont think that site is reliable. That sort of news should have been covered by a more major news site if it was true.

Well according to the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia the case of the crows isn't quite as clear cut as some claim:

https://www.ferris.edu/HTMLS/news/jimcrow/links/essays/reversal.htm

It also helps that in the movie itself the head crow is never actually called Jim Crow.

Hence I doubt that Disney will ever remove the scene. It kind of belongs to Dumbo. And there is a huge difference between removing sunflower, which considerably improves Fantasia, and taking out a scene which is as essential to Dumbo as the Crows scene is. There is nothing gained by keeping sunflower. But Dumbo and the Crows, well, unless you replace the whole scene with something else, removing the crows would make the movie more nonsensical.

Disney will never be able to scrub away its off-colour moments completely. Nor should it try, btw. Because if we remove all traces of past transgression, you make it easier for people to claim "oh no, nobody would act THAT racist".

Well removing Sunflower did have that odd scene where that red carpet unfolds itself, though given Fantasia is supposed to be surreal it actually kind of works.

Edited by Psi001 on Apr 20th 2019 at 7:47:41 PM

Removing the crows would be like removing Mr. Popo from Dragon Ball and expect the story to run like a well-oiled machine. Fundamentally impossible. What will happen after Pink Elephant? Dumbo suddenly having a magic feather and is about to jump from a building? Or perhaps recolor all the crows from black to white? I say that this rumor is most likely bullshit. Far easier to believe that they'll never show Dumbo at all.

Whatever happened to good old disclaimer at the beginning? They did it with Der Fuhrer's Face, explaining why Donald Duck is a Nazi slaving away for Adolf Hitler to prevent accusations that Disney was a Nazi supporter.

May I mention that even as a German I appreciate Fuehrer's Face and Education for Death?

I think probably the only reason Disney is doing it to Dumbo and not Peter Pan or some of the other flicks is because Dumbo 2019 actually got people talking with "Hey, so... like the only two things I remember from that movie are the scene where the underage protagonist gets drunk and has a fever samba dream and the scene with the racist crow caricatures and... neither have aged well or would work today... assuming they ever did."

That's probably the only reason why.

Then it'll be far easier to simply not include the film then just edit out the "controversial" parts. Removing Pink Elephants and the Crows means no climax. Just a "Suddenly, Dumbo can fly." And if you can do that, why not do the same for "Song of the South"?

And let's be honest, the 2019 film makes references to "When I See an Elephant Fly" and "Pink Elephants." Folks would want to know where those references came from...

Edited by Shadao on Apr 21st 2019 at 12:49:34 PM

Not to mention that the pink elephants and the Crows are two of the three best scenes in the movie (the third is Baby Mine). Remove them or replace them, and what is left is a lot of mediocrity.

Isn't Dumbo barely over an hour long? Cutting the crows and the pink elephants would bring it down to the level of a featurette.

I think at some point you just have to accept that not everything in an eighty-year old movie is going to age perfectly. Sensibilities change, and if you don't want to risk your child seeing something that's out-of-date, maybe don't have them watch a film that was made eighty years ago.

This is a particular problem for Disney because Disney doesn't want to be perceived as a studio whose films exist in a certain time and place, they want their films to be considered timeless classics and thus eminently remarketable. Which spells problems for films like Dumbo, even though there are still-watched films from other studios that have way more problematic content that no-one bats an eye at.

I agree with the link Swanpride posted, by the way, that the Crow scene simply isn't that racist as people claim it is. It's way less cringeworthy than, say, the "Fortune cookie always wrong!" cat from The Aristocats. The most racist thing about it is the name "Jim Crow", which isn't even in the movie itself so much as it's just some distasteful joke made in either the movie's script or production notes.

Heck, I'd say the crows are the best part of the movie for me.

Characters who I can just genuinely enjoy and want to hang out with and talk with like old friends, and not some bland, two-dimensional do-gooder hero or Woobie like nearly every other good guy in this Tastes Like Diabetes film.

Edited by BrightLight on Apr 22nd 2019 at 12:42:26 AM

Wasn't nearly everyone but the crows and Timothy a Jerkass though? A big reason for Dumbo's Woobie appeal was that nearly everyone but his mother and a very small circle of friends treated him like crap for his ears.

Edited by Psi001 on Apr 21st 2019 at 1:48:01 PM

Pretty much

But yeah,this is a silly decison,maybe they should remake Dumbo without the crows or something

Um, they just did.

And it would probably be directed by Tim Burton,with Johny Depp and johnny depp and Helena bonham carter

Edited by Ultimatum on Apr 21st 2019 at 1:25:22 PM

Yes, the movie is barely a hour long. In fact, it is so short Disney had to fight to get it even recognized as a movie at all.

Someone recently described the movie as a collection of silly symphonies which someone build one narrative and frankly, that is fair. I mean, you start with a musical number about the fact that Storches bring babies (supposedly). Then you have a short sequence of Dumbo ending up with his mother followed by another musical number about Casey Junior which immediately shifts to the roustabout sequence (which is more questionable than the crows, btw), and only then the movie decides to have a little bit of plot in which the story of Dumbo loosing his mother is told and encountering Timothy is told. And even that sequence contains a LOT of scenes which simply involve music and Dumbo reacting to what is happening to him. And let's not kid ourselves, the pink elephant on parade sequence is just two minutes of weirdness. Amazing weirdness, but weirdness.

Well a lot of the golden era have kind of episodic feel, they seemed to be still getting used to making feature length stories. They had to repeatedly fine tune Bambi's script because they kept detouring away from Bambi himself.

I do wonder how that Disneytoons sequel to Dumbo would have turned out. On the topic of Disney wanting to be "timeless" it's obvious their storytelling and approach has changed differently as years have passed and their audience has become accustomed to that. Dumbo 2 actually intended to use one of the original film's writers but I have little doubt they'd have to make things more contemporary in direction, much like you can tell with the other sequels of earlier works. Hell maybe that's the reason it never came out and old and new creative members just wouldn't blend.

Edited by Psi001 on Apr 21st 2019 at 3:44:04 PM

I'm surprised any of the original writers were still alive during the height of the DTV sequel era.

This is especially troubling, because it's another example of Disney addressing social stuff strictly in regards to their reputation.

I consider a "warts and all" approach to be the best way to present these things. They're more than just advertisements for Disney's perfect image, they're pieces of cultural history: yes, there was a time when even Disney was indulging in the racist trends around them. There was a time when minstrel jokes were a popular brand of humor, and this is what it looked like even in the most archetypically "innocent" areas. It's important to acknowledge the flaws of the past, in order to acknowledge how we have changed and will continue to change.

You could argue that Disney's trying to get ahead of the "see? Disney says that's right!" crowd that will just use it as validation, but I doubt it. Instead, they're just going "nope, it never happened," and they're willing to hatchet their own movies to pretend the dark mark on their history doesn't exist - seemingly oblivious to the fact that that's only going to invite more criticism, not less.

We don't even know if the whole thing isn't fake news.

Let's be honest it sounds silly to be fake news,I mean who wants to censored Disney films instead the whole package like they've been doing for years?

NVM

Edited by KnownUnknown on Apr 21st 2019 at 8:39:43 AM

Assuming these rumors are real, I kinda understand why they might want to remove the crows, because in this modern age of social media outrage, the thought that someone will complain on Twitter or Facebook about the crows and accuse Disney of being racist could very well force a discussion they don't want to be pulled into. They just don't want to take the risk (so if they're consistent, they might as well remove Big Chief from the Disney+ release of Peter Pan).

As for the comparisons between this and WB's treatment of their classic cartoon shorts, that's a little misleading. WB makes in clear in the DVD packaging that the shorts on the set aren't meant to be seen by kids, and that they are intended for mature audiences. Disney+ is family-friendly service, meaning kids will likely utilize the app on their phones or TV without parental supervision most of the time. It's much more safer for Disney to keep the scene on home video than it is to stream it on a service where kids will likely serve as the majority of the user-base. I do think they will keep the scene intact on international Disney+ feeds, i.e. Europe, where racial stereotypes against African-Americans are less problematic.

That being said, I have no idea how the movie is supposed to work without the crows. They're too important to just cut out. If I were smart, I'd just redub the voices for the Disney+ release to more "normal"-sounding accents, much like how Cartoon Network re-dubbed Mammy Two-Shoes when they aired the Tom and Jerry shorts.

Edited by Mario1995 on Apr 21st 2019 at 1:31:36 PM

I never said Disney was SMART to try and remove it this way. I was merely trying to explain it.

I also agree a Warts and All approach is the best one. Acknowledge the history and time it came from, but draw the line that it's something thing BELONGS in the past. Even if 'Jim Crow' is some Spock Never Said that, it's something that's become super ingrained into people's minds that they're not likely to separate it.

Same as, while the movie just refers to the three blonds in Beauty and the Beast as 'Silly Women', I've known them as 'The Bimbettes' for years and didn't even realize it wasn't in the movie itself until a High School Production.

Warts and All is also why I want Song of the South and Sweatbox to get released. Sweatbox really isn't that bad of a documentary and not-un-kind to Disney really (though I suppose what could have been edited out might change my mind) but it's outright DISASTEROUS in the eyes of Disney. Because Disney must be butterflies and rainbows and magic at all hours and cannot recognize that they're a media production house and there will be bumps in the road and that happens EVERYWHERE.

Song of the South, like it or not, actually has an award to it's name and that's actually a part of Black History that shouldn't be ignored. And I think it's reputation as 'The CENSORED Disney Film' and etc has given it this Forbidden Fruit legend status that would... probably go away if anyone actually watched it and realized how boring it was. It's like that reverse-psychology thing; The more you hide it away, the more people think its important or interesting because of how much effort you're going through to hide it.

Edited by InkDagger on Apr 21st 2019 at 2:54:57 AM

@ Psi001

Personally speaking, Dumbo feels more like a featurette than a movie.

The story, while not outright bad, just kind of drags.

If I were making the original movie, it would've been trimmed and condensed even more, so it's at most a half-hour special.

Speed up the pace, trim out most of the songs, excise most of the long-winded parts, and get Dumbo's story over and done with.

There's only so much cuteness to go around before a piece of media becomes Tastes Like Diabetes.

And yeah, I would've cut out the Crows — if only so I could dedicate an entire movie centered around them, with the possible story of them being an allegation for black people fighting for acceptance and for their rights.

Edited by BrightLight on Apr 21st 2019 at 9:31:28 PM