Does Song of the South really live up to the social norm that it's "racist?" In the last few years I've felt like more people are calling out and questioning this notion, especially compared to other media out these days.
I'm hoping someday they'll finally give it the Blu-ray release it needs, or at least air it on Treasures From the Disney Vault.
Even if you find the live action segments boring, the animation is some of the most spectacular the Disney studios have ever put out, James Basketts acting is A+, and the songs are definitely classics thats original forms should be remembered.
It's the whole "glossing over slavery" part that pisses people off, which is understandable, imo. I'm sure it'll eventually get a rerelease someday, most likely in a limited run.
>>80722070
>>80722997
It is ignorant racism rather than hateful racism, which is the kind that you can EASILY stop and deal with by just NOT shying away from it.
Disney hiding from Song of the South has mythologized the racist aspects of it and damaged their companies reputation far greater than actually confronting it, discussing it, and accepting it as racism based in the ignorance of literally 70 years ago.
Frankly, the animated characters were entertaining, and Uncle Remus was likable, and would have been likable still, if they had made his character stronger, and even added touches of the reality of the time to him and the human world.
Also, interestingly, the human villains were both white, and were represented in Remus's tales by Br'er Fox and Br'er Bear, who could be consider white by proxy in that case.
Considering that in that time period many other depictions of Blacks showed them to be drug using rapists and 1 level above wild animals, Song of the South hardly lives up to the racial hype, at least when taken in a rational historical context.
Also, in before tldr
>>80723637
Disney tried to promote the script to the NAACP and other black rights activists before they even filmed it, wanting to get their approval, and they said no, this is really bad, there's a lot that's offensive here and needs fixing. He ignored them and made it anyway without fixing it.
So you can't really say it was ignorant. He was warned.
>>80722997
glossing over slavery also means forgetting that blacks were the ones who were enslaving other blacks in africa and selling them to whites and that black on black slavery existed and continued long before and after white on black slavery people cherry-pick the parts they want to be offensive about
>>80723776
People are offended by parts that have to do with the history of where they live.
Same reason why people ignore human trafficking today even though it's a huge issue.
>>80723776
Are you one of those people who constantly say racist shit and then act offended when people call you a racist?
>>80722070
>Does Song of the South really live up to the social norm that it's "racist?"
>>80723776
Sure thing, cumskin.
>>80723722
Do you have sources on this, since it is the first I have heard of it.
>>80724078
It was discussed quite a bit in that Walt Disney biography they did on PBS a few months ago.
Dude had a real problem with listening to criticism.
>>80722070
It was a product of its time. What we would consider blatant racism, sexism and bigotry was quite acceptable well into the 1960s.
If you want a film about race relations in the 1970s, just watch coonskin.
Thinking about it, it'd be pretty likely that Disney might just let the rights run out on this particular movie. I know Disney are usually more likely to throw money at lawyers to make sure they never lose ownership, but that's for stuff like Steamboat Willie and Snow White i.e. stuff that makes them money.
Song of The South has too much baggage for them to do much in the way of merchandise (I think there are some Disneyland pins and Brer Rabbit/Fox/Bear plush toys) but you can bet your boots that somebody will spend a shitload of money on pic related.
>>80723776
What the fuck does that have to do with Song of The South?
>>80724737
>Thinking about it, it'd be pretty likely that Disney might just let the rights run out on this particular movie
They did in Japan, but by accident.
So Song of the South is public domain over there and that's where most of the world's bootleg copies originated.
>>80723637
this pretty much. I watched it for the first time a few months back expecting it to just be politically incorrect silliness but was actually taken aback by how racist it is. I was also very disappointed with the movie as a whole. Technically innovative but if it weren't for its racism and Splash Mountain no one would remember this.
>>80724882
... Huh.
They should do what Warner Bros. did.
>>80724737
Just because the 1920s short becomes public domain doesn't mean that sculpture does too, or that you can market Disney knockoff products, people have a real weird magical thinking impression of what copyright is
>>80726050
B A S E D
>>80722997
Nah, when the race war happens and the vaults of Hollywood are raided, this'll be one of the first things to go.
>>80723852
Tar baby was an African folk tale.
>>80723776
>>80722070
I feel like a lot of the people today that complain about Song of the South being racist have never actually seen it. It is offensively boring more than anything else.
>>80727283
C U C K E D, actually. There's no good reason to put the disclaimer on them.
>>80727691
I think Song Of The South is widely seen as racist by people who haven't seen it largely because, to the uninformed, it seems like the kind of thing that's likely to be racist. I mean, come on, it's called "Song Of The South", for God's sake! But nope. It's actually quite sensitive even by today's standards and strongly pro-integration and pro-race-equality. If somebody has seen the movie and says that it's racist, they have willfully misinterpreted it.
>>80728849
>implying acknowledging shifts in what is culturally acceptable is bad
>>80729169
it's definitely better than selling some shitty edited version or something
>>80728930
It feeds directly into an old racist saw that black folks were all smiling and happy in the Old South, just totally content with slavery and everything, that is until dirty Northerners came along and stirred them all up. It's a lie that was popular from the civil war on out to about the 60s, and you still hear it on the rare occasion, usually from old racist coots.
>>80723776This is true and initially black slavery was simply purchasing already-enslaved blacks from African nations, but the chattel system (i.e owning their kids) ended up entrenching a specifically racial ideology associated with slavery (see John C Calhoun's references to slavery as "A Positive Good.").
>>80729391
>slaves
Confirmed for having not seen the movie and talking completely out of your ass.
SotS takes place during Reconstruction. There are no slaves in the movie.
>>80724722
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPIZboQw1zA
>>80730843
Confirmed for nitpicking.
>>80730843
>also confirmed for not seeing the movie
>>80724722
God I fucking love Coonskin.
>>80723722
>NAACP
Who cares what a bunch of communists think?
>>80724882
That's how I saw it. Only the songs had Japanese subtitles for whatever reason.
>>80723722
>NAACP
Niggas Aren't Always Cockin' Pistols?
My grandma has this tape out when I was visiting 10 years ago when I was 8-9. I never thought it was anything bad just a lively old guy.
>>80726050
what warnings does that run on?
>>80735314
Classic Looney Tune collections have those.
>>80723776
It's nice how you cherry pick about cherry picking. I never heard as much about black-on-black slavery in my mostly white elementary school and junior high, or on the History Channel back when it was about history, as I did in an almost-all-black high school from a black world history teacher.
That gets at part (admittedly probably a small part) of why it's glossed over: because it's not really American history and Americans have this thing where we don't really care what happened elsewhere. How much do people talk about the other legs of the triangle trade at all?
gold? moderately interesting
slaves? well those are people, and their descendants are here
rum? buncha' pirates, that's not history
cotton? we built that!
spices? no one cares
indigo? nigga that's a color
>>80723722
The reason why is Ub really pushed it through because he thought of it as a foreigner trying to explain the racial divide in America. Disney actually loved his friend Ub to go head to head and look like a racist historically for him, which is weird that everyone thinks they weren't the best of friends. Ub Iwerks was a weirdo genius who carried Disney artistically, but Disney was a socialite who basically helped Ub do whatever he wanted and gave him the resources to make the multi-planar camera and the live-action integration technology that Ub employed for Song of the South.
Ub saw Song of the South as a view of how race relations worked in America, even as the son of disconnected immigrants. And the worst part about it is that from the outside looking in he wasn't completely wrong - Song of the South confronts the racism by basically saying "So...this is how you guys act right?" and while it certainly is a little ignorant it does play completely to the social construct of race at the time.
>>80722997
Yeah, and we don't know if the blacks in the film were pre-Civil War slaves or Reconstruction-era sharecroppers. All we know is that they're content with working for the white man.
>>80723776
"Slavery" in the anglo-American sense was very different from slavery globally (I'm including Brazil in anglo-America even though some hueheuhue will disagree, and I'm including the Caribbean).
Classically slavery was putting other humans in a lower caste, one they maybe someday could overcome but they were outcasts for the time being that you could slightly abuse - like nerds in a highschool setting.
The East India Company (which wasn't alone in doing it, but is the easiest scapegoat because capitalism) started treating slaves as essential property and product. And by treating imported slaves as "product" they were no longer considered human which has created a racial divide that the new-world really hasn't gotten over yet (except for the fact that everyone's kinda lighter skinned because humans will fuck humans).
This impacts you because blacks enslaving blacks in Africa is slightly different - they thought of slaves as a commodity that might not have been abused. Now, if they knew (and of course some groups did) would they still have enslaved other groups for more modern weapons and medicine? Probably. But it's interesting to speculate.
