In 1989 a new ride was opened at Disneyland called Splash Mountain that
has since, as you likely know, become one of the most beloved
attractions in the park. It’s basically an elaborate flume ride that
combines the thrill of the drop with many elements of classic Disney
“dark rides” and animatronic technology. It’s an exhilaratingly cheerful
and very damp experience. But how many
people realize that this ride and it’s whimsical story about the
adventures of Brer Rabbit, and his clever escape from the clutches of
Brer Fox, is actually based on scenes from Disney’s 1946 film, Song of
the South? Though many people love the ride not too many know about the
movie that inspired it and there’s a good reason for that, it’s never
been released on either video or DVD in the US and hasn’t been seen in a
theater since 1986 when it was last released on a limited basis to
promote Splash Mountain.
Well, why on earth should that be? Urban legend has it that the movie is banned for being ostentatiously racist but that is not the case. It is not racist, though that is the popular take on the movie, nor is it banned anywhere....the Disney company simply refuses to release the film in the United States (it has long been available in multiple formats in Europe) due to the fact that it might be construed as racist and they simply don’t want to deal with the controversy or face the charge that the Disney corporation is in any way racist, which is funny because that is already one of the most common charges levied at Disney by “knee-jerk anti-Disney contrarians”, otherwise known as “self-important, elitist douches” or, more colloquially, just “hipsters”.
Walt Disney, like many Americans of his generation, had grown up reading and enjoying the Uncle Remus stories that were edited together by Joseph Chandler Harris in the late 19th century. Harris was a progressive Atlanta based journalist who had grown up in the South during the harsh reconstruction period after the Civil War and had spent a number years actually working on a southern plantation. There he is said to have lived amongst former slaves, whom he clearly respected, and it is from this experience that he would compile his Uncle Remus stories, which are a large set of fables and morality tales told by a fictional, yet reality inspired, ex-slave named Uncle Remus.
The stories were a big hit for Harris and many praised his attempt at the historical and cultural preservation of authentic, orally transmitted stories and dialect of African Americans from the the mid-19th century. Similar to work done by Mark Twain in Huckleberry Finn, Harris made a deliberate effort to preserve the sound of the rural southern black dialect that he encountered on the plantation within his writing. Thus certain words, as spoken by certain characters, were written as they might have sounded if they had been spoken out loud in order to accurately capture as much of the ex-slave culture as possible. Thus Brother Fox and Brother Bear are written as Brer Fox and Brer Bear to convey how the word “brother” might sound out of the mouth of Uncle Remus, not because Harris is depicting him as an ignoramus but because that is simply how he historically would have pronounced that word. This, however, is a large part of the problem for some people because, for whatever reason, when Mark Twain does it it’s “historical representation in high literature” but when Harris does it it’s “a harmful stereotype of black people”.
Anyway, Walt Disney was a big fan and had planned on making an animated version of the Uncle Remus stories very early in his career as a film maker but he waited until he had the opportunity to perfect the technique of combining live action with animation that he had helped pioneer. After some experimenting in the Three Caballeros, it seems that Disney felt ready to place a live action Uncle Remus in a cartoon world. Another reason for making this movie though was that doing so was a way for Disney to break into live action film making. The war years had been extremely trying on the studio and the cost of making animated features had grown too high. If Disney wanted to stay in the film making industry he would have to find a way to produce more profitable films and live action was one way to do that since conventional movie making was much cheaper to do. Song of the South was a perfect opportunity, then, since most of the film is live action. He could spend more on less of the kind of quality animation he wanted to make an then couch that animation within cheaper live action sequences (the formula never took off but a subsequent Disney film, So Dear to My Heart, attempted to set this formula as a norm of the studio).
Disney’s adaptation introduces the Uncle Remus stories by way of a narrative about a wealthy little boy named Johnny who is moving to his grandmother’s plantation in rural Georgia during the reconstruction period. His parents are having marriage troubles and his father is leaving him there with his mother to tend to what sounds like controversial business in Atlanta with the newspaper he works at. It’s never explained what ideological bent his father has but whatever it is it’s important enough to abandon his family, apparently. Johnny is excited to meet the famed storyteller Uncle Remus, who works at the plantation, but he is so troubled by his new circumstances that he plans to runaway to Atlanta to see his father. Thus we are provided with the first of a series of opportunities for Uncle Remus to speak wisdom to Johnny through his stories about Brer Rabbit which are all presented as well crafted musical cartoons that initially and briefly include Uncle Remus singing and interacting with animated characters. The rest of the movie is basically a series of problems set up for Johnny that are then resolved with the help of the warm and caring Uncle Remus’s insights. After the travails are over we are then treated to an improbable happy ending and, for some reason, his parent’s have seen the error of their ways and Remus’s story telling has brought everyone together for a slaphappy good time.
Just thinking about this narrative and it’s weaknesses begs the question as to why so many people fawn all over this movie the way they do. Johnny’s character and his “problems”, save for an incident with a bull, are pretty dull. Further, nothing ever becomes of any of the real potential drama. What’s the deal with Johnny’s parents? It sound like they were considering a divorce but then that question never goes anywhere. Johnny’s dad is some kind of ideologue but what kind? Why does he think he needs to be in Atalanta while his family is on the plantation. Uncle Remus is also unexplored, who is he, really? What’s the source of his wisdom? What’s the nature of his special friendship with Johnny’s grandmother, the planation owner? Those would have all been interesting things to explore but they are passed over in favor of a bit about Johnny’s interest in a puppy gifted to him by a poor neighbor girl and her bully brothers that want it back (there’s an Uncle Remus story for that). The overarching story, while pleasant enough, just isn’t compelling.
James Bakett, on the other hand, who plays Uncle Remus, is amazing and the animated sequences with Brer Rabbit and friends are top notch Disney. The scene where Uncle Remus literally pops into the cartoon world, which is represented as a pre-fall Edenic time period (no joke), is still stunning to this very day. First Remus is telling us about this world of talking animals then BAM, the camera pulls back and we’re singing zippity-doo-dah. It’s really impressive, even by today’s special effects standards. The music in this movie is also unusually good. I have no idea who put the music together’s but it’s no wonder that they ended up changing the name of the movie to Song of the South since the musical bits are really the best parts of the whole movie, hands down.
So it’s a technical marvel with one incredible performance by James Baskett (who also does the voice of Brer Fox and, in one scene, the voice of Brer Rabbit) as Uncle Remus and some incredibly well done animated musical sequences. On the other hand the overarching narrative, while mildly pleasant, just pales in comparison leaving us with a movie that is, as one New York Times review has famously pointed out, generally only really good when Uncle Remus is telling his tales (the animated bits). It’s a good Disney movie, one of the best live action Disney films, which isn’t saying much, and a historic moment in film history.
So why do so many people believe it is racist? One, people mistakingly believe that Uncle Remus and the other, nearly absent, African American characters are slaves and that as such they are too happy to be slaves. They ask, how can Uncle Remus sing zippity-doo-dah when he’s someone else’s property? The trouble is that Uncle Remus is not a slave, he’s a free man who works on the plantation and, further, being happy is possible even if you are a slave regardless of baseless intuitions to the contrary. The reason so many make this error is that the film is not explicit enough about the reconstruction setting but that’s only because at the time it was released they need not have been; the film clearly presupposes an audience that is familiar with the Uncle Remus stories and their setting prior to going into the theater and such an audience, unlike our own, would not have made such an error.
Second, it’s the way Uncle Remus talks and is dressed. Disney attempted to capture the dialect of Harris’ books by having Baskett speak in an antiquated rural black lingo throughout the movie and obviously as a poor(er) farmer he wasn’t going to be wearing a tuxedo. The trouble is that people have a knee-jerk tendency to conceptually frame this depiction as a harmful racial stereotype, again, on the basis that he talks and looks a certain way. This is absurd though. The film makes no commentary on whether or not it is a good or bad thing that Uncle Remus speaks this way and it in no way insinuates that ALL black people are poor farmers with a funny accent. Further Uncle Remus is really the only truly virtuous character in the movie. The point isn’t to show a character that’s black and poor, but to historically depict a poor black man in a specific setting that has attributes that surpass those of nearly everyone around him, creating a character that can sing zippity-doo-dah even in-spite the fact that he doesn’t have the nicest clothes to wear. That’s supposed to be part of the charm. I suppose this explanation only works for people that don’t think only very rich people are happy?
Anyway there are a many charges levied against this movie by so many people and I’ve never seen one that was remotely credible. Sure it doesn’t depict the hardships of southern life for black people (or white people, really) but this movie wasn’t designed to be a Disnified forerunner to Roots....it’s supposed to be about the Uncle Remus stories and that’s fine.
I give it 3.4 blue birds on my shoulder
I know it’s not THAT great but I have a soft spot for it in my heart...and in my head.
Well, why on earth should that be? Urban legend has it that the movie is banned for being ostentatiously racist but that is not the case. It is not racist, though that is the popular take on the movie, nor is it banned anywhere....the Disney company simply refuses to release the film in the United States (it has long been available in multiple formats in Europe) due to the fact that it might be construed as racist and they simply don’t want to deal with the controversy or face the charge that the Disney corporation is in any way racist, which is funny because that is already one of the most common charges levied at Disney by “knee-jerk anti-Disney contrarians”, otherwise known as “self-important, elitist douches” or, more colloquially, just “hipsters”.
Walt Disney, like many Americans of his generation, had grown up reading and enjoying the Uncle Remus stories that were edited together by Joseph Chandler Harris in the late 19th century. Harris was a progressive Atlanta based journalist who had grown up in the South during the harsh reconstruction period after the Civil War and had spent a number years actually working on a southern plantation. There he is said to have lived amongst former slaves, whom he clearly respected, and it is from this experience that he would compile his Uncle Remus stories, which are a large set of fables and morality tales told by a fictional, yet reality inspired, ex-slave named Uncle Remus.
The stories were a big hit for Harris and many praised his attempt at the historical and cultural preservation of authentic, orally transmitted stories and dialect of African Americans from the the mid-19th century. Similar to work done by Mark Twain in Huckleberry Finn, Harris made a deliberate effort to preserve the sound of the rural southern black dialect that he encountered on the plantation within his writing. Thus certain words, as spoken by certain characters, were written as they might have sounded if they had been spoken out loud in order to accurately capture as much of the ex-slave culture as possible. Thus Brother Fox and Brother Bear are written as Brer Fox and Brer Bear to convey how the word “brother” might sound out of the mouth of Uncle Remus, not because Harris is depicting him as an ignoramus but because that is simply how he historically would have pronounced that word. This, however, is a large part of the problem for some people because, for whatever reason, when Mark Twain does it it’s “historical representation in high literature” but when Harris does it it’s “a harmful stereotype of black people”.
Anyway, Walt Disney was a big fan and had planned on making an animated version of the Uncle Remus stories very early in his career as a film maker but he waited until he had the opportunity to perfect the technique of combining live action with animation that he had helped pioneer. After some experimenting in the Three Caballeros, it seems that Disney felt ready to place a live action Uncle Remus in a cartoon world. Another reason for making this movie though was that doing so was a way for Disney to break into live action film making. The war years had been extremely trying on the studio and the cost of making animated features had grown too high. If Disney wanted to stay in the film making industry he would have to find a way to produce more profitable films and live action was one way to do that since conventional movie making was much cheaper to do. Song of the South was a perfect opportunity, then, since most of the film is live action. He could spend more on less of the kind of quality animation he wanted to make an then couch that animation within cheaper live action sequences (the formula never took off but a subsequent Disney film, So Dear to My Heart, attempted to set this formula as a norm of the studio).
Disney’s adaptation introduces the Uncle Remus stories by way of a narrative about a wealthy little boy named Johnny who is moving to his grandmother’s plantation in rural Georgia during the reconstruction period. His parents are having marriage troubles and his father is leaving him there with his mother to tend to what sounds like controversial business in Atlanta with the newspaper he works at. It’s never explained what ideological bent his father has but whatever it is it’s important enough to abandon his family, apparently. Johnny is excited to meet the famed storyteller Uncle Remus, who works at the plantation, but he is so troubled by his new circumstances that he plans to runaway to Atlanta to see his father. Thus we are provided with the first of a series of opportunities for Uncle Remus to speak wisdom to Johnny through his stories about Brer Rabbit which are all presented as well crafted musical cartoons that initially and briefly include Uncle Remus singing and interacting with animated characters. The rest of the movie is basically a series of problems set up for Johnny that are then resolved with the help of the warm and caring Uncle Remus’s insights. After the travails are over we are then treated to an improbable happy ending and, for some reason, his parent’s have seen the error of their ways and Remus’s story telling has brought everyone together for a slaphappy good time.
Just thinking about this narrative and it’s weaknesses begs the question as to why so many people fawn all over this movie the way they do. Johnny’s character and his “problems”, save for an incident with a bull, are pretty dull. Further, nothing ever becomes of any of the real potential drama. What’s the deal with Johnny’s parents? It sound like they were considering a divorce but then that question never goes anywhere. Johnny’s dad is some kind of ideologue but what kind? Why does he think he needs to be in Atalanta while his family is on the plantation. Uncle Remus is also unexplored, who is he, really? What’s the source of his wisdom? What’s the nature of his special friendship with Johnny’s grandmother, the planation owner? Those would have all been interesting things to explore but they are passed over in favor of a bit about Johnny’s interest in a puppy gifted to him by a poor neighbor girl and her bully brothers that want it back (there’s an Uncle Remus story for that). The overarching story, while pleasant enough, just isn’t compelling.
James Bakett, on the other hand, who plays Uncle Remus, is amazing and the animated sequences with Brer Rabbit and friends are top notch Disney. The scene where Uncle Remus literally pops into the cartoon world, which is represented as a pre-fall Edenic time period (no joke), is still stunning to this very day. First Remus is telling us about this world of talking animals then BAM, the camera pulls back and we’re singing zippity-doo-dah. It’s really impressive, even by today’s special effects standards. The music in this movie is also unusually good. I have no idea who put the music together’s but it’s no wonder that they ended up changing the name of the movie to Song of the South since the musical bits are really the best parts of the whole movie, hands down.
So it’s a technical marvel with one incredible performance by James Baskett (who also does the voice of Brer Fox and, in one scene, the voice of Brer Rabbit) as Uncle Remus and some incredibly well done animated musical sequences. On the other hand the overarching narrative, while mildly pleasant, just pales in comparison leaving us with a movie that is, as one New York Times review has famously pointed out, generally only really good when Uncle Remus is telling his tales (the animated bits). It’s a good Disney movie, one of the best live action Disney films, which isn’t saying much, and a historic moment in film history.
So why do so many people believe it is racist? One, people mistakingly believe that Uncle Remus and the other, nearly absent, African American characters are slaves and that as such they are too happy to be slaves. They ask, how can Uncle Remus sing zippity-doo-dah when he’s someone else’s property? The trouble is that Uncle Remus is not a slave, he’s a free man who works on the plantation and, further, being happy is possible even if you are a slave regardless of baseless intuitions to the contrary. The reason so many make this error is that the film is not explicit enough about the reconstruction setting but that’s only because at the time it was released they need not have been; the film clearly presupposes an audience that is familiar with the Uncle Remus stories and their setting prior to going into the theater and such an audience, unlike our own, would not have made such an error.
Second, it’s the way Uncle Remus talks and is dressed. Disney attempted to capture the dialect of Harris’ books by having Baskett speak in an antiquated rural black lingo throughout the movie and obviously as a poor(er) farmer he wasn’t going to be wearing a tuxedo. The trouble is that people have a knee-jerk tendency to conceptually frame this depiction as a harmful racial stereotype, again, on the basis that he talks and looks a certain way. This is absurd though. The film makes no commentary on whether or not it is a good or bad thing that Uncle Remus speaks this way and it in no way insinuates that ALL black people are poor farmers with a funny accent. Further Uncle Remus is really the only truly virtuous character in the movie. The point isn’t to show a character that’s black and poor, but to historically depict a poor black man in a specific setting that has attributes that surpass those of nearly everyone around him, creating a character that can sing zippity-doo-dah even in-spite the fact that he doesn’t have the nicest clothes to wear. That’s supposed to be part of the charm. I suppose this explanation only works for people that don’t think only very rich people are happy?
Anyway there are a many charges levied against this movie by so many people and I’ve never seen one that was remotely credible. Sure it doesn’t depict the hardships of southern life for black people (or white people, really) but this movie wasn’t designed to be a Disnified forerunner to Roots....it’s supposed to be about the Uncle Remus stories and that’s fine.
I give it 3.4 blue birds on my shoulder
I know it’s not THAT great but I have a soft spot for it in my heart...and in my head.
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