Song of the South Movie (movie theater, Hollywood, editor, dvd)
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I haven't seen this since I was 7 years old. I managed to find it online, restored to 1080p. I had to see what all the fuss was about. Setting aside the controversies and judging it from strictly artistic merits, its actually a nice movie. Young boy feeling alone, since dad was away, finds new friends and enjoy stories from Uncle Remus. Live action with the Br'er rabbit cartoon segments spliced in. I can see how this movie is radioactive in today's cancel woke culture, even more so than when it came out and in the years preceding this. The actor James Baskin, who played Uncle Remus, did a fantastic job and got an Oscar, but died at 44. He was the first African American male actor to win an Academy Award. The offensive theme was probably the newly freed slaves (takes place right after Civil War) working on the plantation and going off to work singing and carrying farm implements. That is basically a few minutes. Other offensive parts are the language and depictions of African Americans in subservient roles. The rest of the movie is a typical 1940's-1950's family movie with numerous child actors.
The author of record of the book of Uncle Remus stories was, IIRC, Joel Chandler Harris - white and from Eatonton. What isn't common knowledge is that the basis of the stories was what was told to him primarily by a real story-telling black man.
"Harris’s fictionalized storyteller, Uncle Remus, was a “human syndicate” whom he had admittedly “walloped together” from several Black storytellers he had met while working from 1862 to 1866 as a printing compositor on Joseph Addison Turner’s Turnwold Plantation, outside Eatonton, in Putnam County. Although Uncle Remus’s name has its ultimate origins in Rome’s Romulus and Remus legend, its more immediate antecedent was an elderly Black gardener Harris met in Forsyth, Georgia, where Harris had served from 1867 to 1870 as an editor for the Monroe Advertiser."
:Bickley, R. "Uncle Remus Tales." New Georgia Encyclopedia, last modified Jul 23, 2018. https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/...e-remus-tales/
Those original stories, passed verbally from generation to generation, are valuable teaching tales and will be increasingly recognized as having literary importance as time goes on.
The filter of Harris, when he related the stories, seems fairly light to me given that what he was told was likely tailored to his ears.
As for Disney's interpretation, it seems less of a stretch than many other of the company's versions of fairy tales.
The dark surround of the family life of the white child doesn't paint gentried life as any picnic.
I would have liked if that black gardener had been given full credit and royalties, but Hollywood is famous for short-changing.
I don't think I ever saw the movie but somehow I know the songs and some of the characters. "That's what Uncle Remus said"--that was a catchy song. Also, I remember the Tar Baby. But I don't remember anything positive or negative one way or the other and I don't know where I saw and heard it. Were parts of it on tv? Maybe on one of the Disney shows?
I don't think I ever saw the movie but somehow I know the songs and some of the characters. "That's what Uncle Remus said"--that was a catchy song. Also, I remember the Tar Baby. But I don't remember anything positive or negative one way or the other and I don't know where I saw and heard it. Were parts of it on tv? Maybe on one of the Disney shows?
I saw it in 1956 at a movie theater (remember those?). It has also been re released several times since then. It has been shown on TV but not recently.
It got a VHS release back in the '80s. It has never been released on DVD or streaming and never will be.
Which is a shame. Yes, the movie has a lot of content that is considered "problematic" today. Maybe even ugly. Fine. Let it be problematic and ugly. Address it. Make it the proverbial "teachable moment."
But Disney instead continues to try to sanitize and erase.
I saw it in 1956 at a movie theater (remember those?). It has also been re released several times since then. It has been shown on TV but not recently.
My dad saw it when it first came out in the 1940's. First movie he ever saw in a theater. During its last theatrical run 40 years ago he took me to see it.
I was able to track down the DVD online and bought him a copy, because he'd been trying to fund it for years. I have it now since he passed away 11 months ago.
It got a VHS release back in the '80s. It has never been released on DVD or streaming and never will be.
Which is a shame. Yes, the movie has a lot of content that is considered "problematic" today. Maybe even ugly. Fine. Let it be problematic and ugly. Address it. Make it the proverbial "teachable moment."
But Disney instead continues to try to sanitize and erase.
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Song of the South
