Walt Disney’s Song of the South (1946)

2. Walt Disney’sSong of the South (1946) Artemus Ward Dept. of Political Science Northern Illinois University aeward@niu.edu

3. Introduction • The Uncle Remus stories are an important part of African-American oral history. • Disney’s Hollywood version of Uncle Remus portrays the fictional idyllic master-slave relationship of the old south. • The film “role-assigns” in that black characters do not develop and are only important as workers, entertainers, and generally in terms of their relation to whites. • Walt Disney may have believed that he was doing the right thing when he produced the film, but he succeeded primarily in robbing the world of a folk hero and instead enslaving him in a cartoon image.

4. Origin • Folk stories of animal tricksters derive from both the African and Native American cultures. • They were passed down orally, and the Brer Rabbit stories specifically grew out of the experience of American slaves. • Eventually whites heard these stories, retold them, and wrote them down.

5. Joel Chandler Harris • An illegitimate, red-headed son of an Irish immigrant, as a teenager Harris worked on a Georgia plantation, got to know the slaves, and listened to them tell folk stories. • He wrote them down and published them in the Atlanta Constitution helping to popularize them with white readers. They were collected and published in 1880 as Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings. Eight more Uncle Remus books followed in subsequent years. • Chandler was part of the “New South” movement of “progressive” yet paternalistic writers who stressed regional and racial reconciliation during and after the Reconstruction era. He said that he began the Uncle Remus stories as a serial to "preserve in permanent shape those curious mementoes of a period that will no doubt be sadly misrepresented by historians of the future.“ • He likened his stories to that of Harriett Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin calling the latter a "wonderful defense of slavery“ and arguing that Stowe's "genius took possession of her and compelled her, in spite of her avowed purpose, to give a very fair picture of the institution she had intended to condemn." In Harris's view, the "real moral that Mrs. Stowe's book teaches is that the. . . realities [of slavery], under the best and happiest conditions, possess a romantic beauty and tenderness all their own."

6. Initial Impact • The tales became immensely popular among both black and white readers in the North and South. • Few outside of the South had ever heard accents like those spoken in the tales, and no one had ever seen the dialect legitimately and faithfully recorded in print. • To the North and those abroad, the stories were a "revelation of the unknown.” Mark Twain noted in 1883, "in the matter of writing [the African-American dialect], he is the only master the country has produced.” • Twain went on to appropriate Harris’ dialect in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884). Countless subsequent writers borrowed heavily from Harris including A.A. Milne with his Winnie-the-Pooh stories. • President Theodore Roosevelt said, "Presidents may come and presidents may go, but Uncle Remus stays put. Georgia has done a great many things for the Union, but she has never done more than when she gave Mr. Joel Chandler Harris to American literature.”

7. Black Cartoon Characters • Did Disney deliberately create black cartoon characters? • Consider that for Fantasia (1940) the character “Sunflower” was a hoof shining centaurette who had “attitude” while polishing the hooves of white centaurettes. • This sequence aired uncut in theaters and on television in 1966 before the scene was cut for the film's 1969 theatrical reissue. • In Dumbo (1941) the jive-talking black crows—including Jim Crow—sing: “I'd be done see'n about everything/when I see an elephant fly!” • In The Jungle Book (1967) , all the animals in the jungle speak in proper British accents. Except, of course, for the jive-talking, gibberish-spouting monkeys who desperately want to become "real people.“ • Are the cartoons characters in Song of the South black?

8. Brer Rabbit • Brer Rabbit is said to represent the enslaved African who uses his wits to overcome circumstances and to exact revenge on his adversaries, who represent white slave-owners. • Though not always successful, his efforts made him a folk hero. • However, the trickster—in this case Brer Rabbit—is a multi-dimensional character. While he can be a hero, his amoral nature and lack of any positive restraint can make him a villain as well. • For both Africans and African Americans, the animal trickster represents an extreme form of behavior which people may be forced to use in extreme circumstances in order to survive. The trickster is not to be admired in every situation; he is an example of what to do, but also an example of what not to do. The trickster's behavior can be summed up in the common African proverb: "It's trouble that makes the monkey chew on hot peppers." In other words, sometimes people must use extreme measures in extreme circumstances. • Do you agree?

9. Brer Rabbit Molasses (1942)

10. The Disney Version • Disney’s film fortunes were in decline. Snow White (1937) was a hit but Pinocchio (1940) and Fantasia (1940) did poorly at the box office. Bambi (1942) lost money. • The new Disney studios—built in 1941—had cost a lot of money and the war in Europe hurt overseas receipts. • Disney wanted to make a film that would have wide appeal and be relatively cheap to make. He chose the Uncle Remus stories and decided to combine live-action with animation.

11. The Disney Version • Song of the South is a frame story based on three Brer Rabbit stories, "The Laughing Place", "The Tar Baby", and "The Briar Patch". • Yet there is little in the film that resembles the original stories except for the setting and characters. • African-American actor Clarence Muse, hired to help with the script, made suggestions for upgrading the image of the black characters in the film. When those suggestions were rejected, he resigned, saying that he believed the movie would be “detrimental to the cultural advancement of the Negro people.” • Similarly, actor Rex Ingram turned down the role of Uncle Remus, reasoning that the film would “set back my people many years.”

12. Disney’s Distortion • In Harris’ version Uncle Remus is a teacher who tells stories to help the children understand and deal positively with the chaos in their lives. The stories are real—terrible and tragic—with the comforting presence of Remus to mitigate the terror and cruelty of the tales. • In the film Uncle Remus is at once two classic stereotypes: the “old-time darky” who takes care of white children and entertains white adult audiences. The stories are entertainment first and have a Disney social message as opposed to the original lessons of the folktales. • In Harris’ version the stories are central with the frame secondary, simply setting up the stories. The ratio is more than 2-1 stories to frame. • In the film, the 94 minutes contain only 3 fully-animated segments plus some combination animation/live-action. • Why the Disney distortion of the original stories?

13. Disney is for Adults • This Disney film, like all Disney films, are not made for children but are instead targeted toward white adult moviegoers. • The formula: figure out what has sold before and repeat it—only bigger and better. • Shades of Gone with the Wind (1939): the Tara-like plantation, Hattie McDaniel’s Aunt Tempy, the premiere in Atlanta). • Mimicry of Shirley Temple’s successful team ventures with black dancer Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, particularly The Littlest Rebel (1935)—the tale of a white child left to fend for herself during the Civil War, aided and cared for by faithful slave Robinson, who dances with her. • Echoes of a popular radio show in the casting of James Baskett, a regular on Amos ‘n Andy, in the role of Uncle Remus. • These adult sources suggest that Disney did not target Song of the South for children even though 3 cartoon sequences make it appear so.

14. James Baskett as Uncle Remus • Black artists are often faced with the problem of having to elevate through sheer skill material that is stereotypical or even racist. • Such was the case for Song of the South. • Baskett received an Academy Award shortly after his death—and criticism that the Academy had ignored black actors. • Yet the film reduces Remus from a wise teacher in the mold of Socrates to little more than a playmate and nursemaid to white children. • The Uncle Remus character has come to be seen as a distinct category of racial stereotyping: • The final member of the coon triumvirate is the uncle remus. Harmless and congenial, his is a first cousin to the tom, yet he distinguishes himself by his quaint, naïve, and comic philosophizing. Remus’s mirth, like tom’s contentment and the coon’s antics, has always been used to indicate the black man’s satisfaction with the system and his place in it.

15. Hattie McDaniel as Aunt Tempy • When criticized for often playing a mammy on film, McDaniel famously said she would rather play a maid in the movies than be one. • Is she right? • Should African-American actors refuse to play roles that portray negative stereotypes?

16. Contemporary Controversy • On its release, the film was immediately denounced by the NAACP who called for a total boycott of the movie and protested the perpetuation of “a dangerously glorified picture of slavery.” NAACP executive Secretary Walter F. White regretted that Disney had made use of what he called the “beautiful Uncle Remus folklore” to give the “impression of an idyllic master-slave relationship which is a distortion of the facts.” • The National Urban League objected to the film, citing “another…perpetuation of the stereotype casting of the Negro in the servant role, depicting him as indolent, one who handles the truth lightly.” • Ebony said that Disney’s Remus was an “Uncle Tom-Aunt Jemima caricature complete with all the fawning standard equipment thereof: the toothy smile, battered hat, grey beard, and a profusion of ‘dis and ‘dat talk.” • It was picketed by members of the National Negro Congress, whose officials charged that the film rehashed all of the old racist stereotypes that demeaned black people and called on black people to “run the picture out of the area.” • At the film's New York premiere in Times Square, dozens of black and white pickets chanted, “We fought for Uncle Sam, not Uncle Tom.” • In most of the country, Song of the South was both a critical and commercial failure—though its technical achievements were sometimes lauded. • Newsweek called the story “irritatingly inconsequential.” Variety complained that the story of the “confused and insufficiently explained estrangement of the parents overbalances the cartoon sequences.” The New York Times called Disney Studio writers “just a lot of conventional hacks” and that the actors in the film “behave like characters in a travesty on the ante bellum South.” • Most audiences were ambivalent toward the post-Civil War movie in an era flooded with wildly popular WWII films.

17. Walt Disney arrives at the film’s premiere in Atlanta, Georgia.

18. Southern Reaction • Yet in the southeast, the movie was a major event. For example, its Atlanta opening found its way into the civic celebration of Armistice Day. • Walt Disney, the film’s producer, members of the cast, and Disney’s voice artists paraded down Atlanta’s Peachtree Street alongside uniformed veterans of wars past and military decoration. Atlanta society later celebrated the film’s release at a formal gala event. There they were joined by the film’s stars — except, of course, by the African American actors James Baskett and Hattie McDaniel. • Also, “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah” won the 1947 Academy Award for Best Song, has been widely used by Disney since, and has become a standard.

20. Re-Releases • On the film’s initial release Disney published a “Golden Book” version of the movie and a gatefold album with picture book. Each were issued for decades thereafter. • Disney re-released the film the first time in 1956. • In 1970, Disney announced in Variety that the film had been "permanently" retired. • The studio changed its mind and re-released the film in 1972, 1981, and 1986. • Total box office gross for the 1986 re-release: $38 million. • When it was rumored that Disney might re-release the film in 2007 the Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable, which includes representatives from the Los Angeles Civil Rights Association, the NAACP National Board, and the Youth Advocacy Coalition, sent out a press release denouncing the plan.

21. Splash Mountain • When "Splash Mountain", an amusement ride based on the film, "Song of the South" opened in Disneyland in the 1992 the local NAACP and others protested. • The ride also appears at other Disney theme parks. • Should it be shut down?

22. Rescuing Remus • Modern scholars are mixed with some seeing the Uncle Remus stories as little more than plantation-school revisionism while others argue that the stories satirize, and therefore critique the genre. • Black folklorist and university professor Julius Lester sees the Uncle Remus stories as important records of black folklore. He has rewritten many of the Harris stories in an effort to elevate the subversive elements over the purportedly racist ones. • Regarding the nature of the Uncle Remus character, Lester said, "There are no inaccuracies in Harris's characterization of Uncle Remus. Even the most cursory reading of the slave narratives collected by the Federal Writer's Project of the 1930s reveals that there were many slaves who fit the Uncle Remus mold."

23. Conclusion • Disney’s Song of the South changed the Uncle Remus-Brer Rabbit folktales forever. No longer part of the philosophical teachings of African-American culture, the stories were transformed by the film to be little more than entertainment for whites. • Though there have been some recent attempts to rescue the stories as important records of African-American folktales, the Disney film and related materials have left an indelible image of Remus as a negative stereotype and the stories as little more than Disney entertainment. • The film has never been released on home video or DVD in the United States. Should it be?

24. References • Boyle, Donald. 1973. Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies and Bucks. • Snead, James. 1994. White Screens/Black Images: Hollywood from the Dark Side. Routledge. • Staples, Brent. 2012. “Black Characters in Search of Reality.” New York Times, February 11. • Walker, Alice, "Uncle Remus, No Friend of Mine", Southern Exposure 9 (Summer 1981): 29-31