MOVIES: Song of the South

[colliric]

I do not believe this movie is Racist, I saw another Poster's thread on "Birth of a Nation" and it inspired me to bring this famous Disney classic up again.

I think this particular film is possibly actually a significant masterpiece of both animation and social comment. I think it has been misrepresented by radical anti-racists who look over the overwhelming positive aspects of the film.

I mean here is a film where the lead fatherly figure for a young white southern american boy, is an African American. This was actually the first time a Negro actually played a leading role in Hollywood. We get two young boys(one white and one black) and a young girl who all sit together and listen to the wise old man telling them beautiful stories. If anything the movie is about the races coming together and working for a better combined future.

This film, when understood correctly as being set after the Civil war(which it is, it is set in the near immediate aftermath) in a time of major social changes(including greater freedom to Negroes), is utterly entertaining, quite moral, and should be more avalible to the modern generation of children.

[tilly1]

I forgot about this movie till now...I loved it as a kid. I read the Uncle Remus stories as well. I will purchase it if possible.

Thanks

[maria rose]

When my husband worked as a storyboard artist for Disney in LA about 15years ago, the company would show in their theater lunch time movies. The Song Of The South was one of them. I agree, it's a great movie. Some say Disney won't release it because they're chickens and bow to to the popular belief that it is racist.
It is hidden away in some Disney vault and won't see the light of day until a huge demand is proven. Remember:When Disney can make money of it they'll release anything.

and then we'll have a "Zippedi-doo-dah day!"

[MoBeck]

Originally Posted by colliric

I think this particular film is possibly actually a significant masterpiece of both animation and social comment. I think it has been misrepresented by radical anti-racists who look over the overwhelming positive aspects of the film.

I mean here is a film where the lead fatherly figure for a young white southern american boy, is an African American. This was actually the first time a Negro actually played a leading role in Hollywood. We get two young boys(one white and one black) and a young girl who all sit together and listen to the wise old man telling them beautiful stories. If anything the movie is about the races coming together and working for a better combined future.

This film, when understood correctly as being set after the Civil war(which it is, it is set in the near immediate aftermath) in a time of major social changes(including greater freedom to Negroes), is utterly entertaining, quite moral, and should be more avalible to the modern generation of children.

Gee, I never heard the term "radical anti-racist" before. Song of the South certainly isn't racist in the same vicious sense that Birth of a Nation is, but if I were black it sure wouldn't be on my list of favorites.

As you say, it's set in the immediate postwar South but gives no hint about slavery (just ended) or the ordeals that the newly freed people were going through. I perpetuates racial stereotypes still prevalent when it was released. As for Uncle Remus bringing together black & white children -- bosh! White and slave children played together in the antebellum period -- until the black kids had to go work in the fields.

I suppose it was fairly harmless when it came out and significant now only as a bit of cultural archaeology.

[Sabda]

I would also like to get that movie but I don't see it happening in the near future.


However, when I saw the title of this thread I automatically thought of
Alabama's song.

"Song of the South"

Song, song of the south
Sweet potato pie and I shut my mouth
Gone, gone with the wind
There ain't nobody looking back again

Cotton on the roadside, cotton in the ditch
We all picked the cotton but we never got rich
Daddy was a veteran, a southern democrat
They oughta get a rich man to vote like that

Sing it...

Song, song of the south
Sweet potato pie and I shut my mouth
Gone, gone with the wind
There ain't nobody looking back again

Well somebody told us Wall Street fell
But we were so poor that we couldn't tell
Cotton was short and the weeds were tall
But Mr. Roosevelt's a gonna save us all

Well momma got sick and daddy got down
The county got the farm and they moved to town
Pappa got a job with the TVA
He bought a washing machine and then a Chevrolet

Sing it...

Song, song of the south
Sweet potato pie and I shut my mouth
Gone, gone with the wind
There ain't nobody looking back again

Play it...

Sing it...

Song, song of the south
Sweet potato pie and I shut my mouth
Gone, gone with the wind
There ain't nobody looking back again

Song, song of the south...

Gone, gone with the wind...

Song, song of the south.
Sweet potato pie and I shut my mouth.
Song, song of the south.
Sweet potato pie and I shut my mouth.

Sing it...

Song, song of the south
Sweet potato pie and I shut my mouth
Gone, gone with the wind
There ain't nobody looking back again

Song, song of the south
Sweet potato pie and I shut my mouth
Gone, gone with the wind
There ain't nobody looking back again

[aggiecatholic05]

Originally Posted by Sabda

I would also like to get that movie but I don't see it happening in the near future.


However, when I saw the title of this thread I automatically thought of
Alabama's song.

"Song of the South"

Song, song of the south
Sweet potato pie and I shut my mouth
Gone, gone with the wind
There ain't nobody looking back again

Cotton on the roadside, cotton in the ditch
We all picked the cotton but we never got rich
Daddy was a veteran, a southern democrat
They oughta get a rich man to vote like that

Sing it...

Song, song of the south
Sweet potato pie and I shut my mouth
Gone, gone with the wind
There ain't nobody looking back again

Well somebody told us Wall Street fell
But we were so poor that we couldn't tell
Cotton was short and the weeds were tall
But Mr. Roosevelt's a gonna save us all

Well momma got sick and daddy got down
The county got the farm and they moved to town
Pappa got a job with the TVA
He bought a washing machine and then a Chevrolet

Sing it...

Song, song of the south
Sweet potato pie and I shut my mouth
Gone, gone with the wind
There ain't nobody looking back again

Play it...

Sing it...

Song, song of the south
Sweet potato pie and I shut my mouth
Gone, gone with the wind
There ain't nobody looking back again

Song, song of the south...

Gone, gone with the wind...

Song, song of the south.
Sweet potato pie and I shut my mouth.
Song, song of the south.
Sweet potato pie and I shut my mouth.

Sing it...

Song, song of the south
Sweet potato pie and I shut my mouth
Gone, gone with the wind
There ain't nobody looking back again

Song, song of the south
Sweet potato pie and I shut my mouth
Gone, gone with the wind
There ain't nobody looking back again

thats what i first thought of when i read the thread title. i never heard of the movie, i may have to look into it.

[Biblioassistant]

I saw it in the theatre and loved it. I thought that parts of it were a little sickly sentimental, but on the whole it was a delightful movie.

We recently finished Banned Books Week in our local library, and I couldn't help but think. Song of the South is a banned film. If a library decides not to buy a copy of a particular book, if you really want to read it, you can go to another library or buy it at the local Borders or Amazon. But there's no way you can see Song of the South unless you buy a bootleg DVD which may be of questionable quality.

[First of 9]

I saw "Song of the South" in 5th grade with my Catholic school class--minus two classmates. They were black, and the theatre was still segregated! This was about 1956-57 in southeast Missouri.

I do rememeber it was full of the "happy darky slave" stereotypes.

[maria rose]

What stereotypes? Please elaborate!

[KGM06]

Song of the South is not really a Banned Film.
More accurately, it was never released in the US.
Disney released VHS of the film in Europe & Asia.
So far, its never officially made it to DVD.

Here is one link
http://www.snopes.com/disney/films/sots.asp

You can still buy VHS copies of the film on UK-ebay

[DaveBj]

Originally Posted by KGM06

*snip

You can still buy VHS copies of the film on UK-ebay

They won't play on American VCR/TV combinations. Different scanning system.

DaveBj

[KGM06]

Originally Posted by DaveBj

They won't play on American VCR/TV combinations. Different scanning system.

DaveBj

Good to know.
I knew that DVD's were region coded. I didnt know that VHS had something similar.

[maria rose]

Originally Posted by KGM06

Song of the South is not really a Banned Film.
More accurately, it was never released in the US.
Disney released VHS of the film in Europe & Asia.
So far, its never officially made it to DVD.

Here is one link
http://www.snopes.com/disney/films/sots.asp

You can still buy VHS copies of the film on UK-ebay

I don't care for the person quoted in the link. And I most definetely don't care what the NAACP has to say.
SONG OF THE SOUTH is Disney saccharine sweetly reimagined South , so what!
Not all slaves lived in misery and not all slaves had wonderful lives. You can't judge a movie from the 1940s by today's PC standards. That's just nuts! It is a product of it's times and we ought to view it as that. That's all!
I vote to rerelease it to every Big Screen in the Nation and enjoy it for what it was meant to be.

[jc-servant]

Originally Posted by maria rose

What stereotypes? Please elaborate!

How about the "harmless" old black man who just loves to entertain the wonderful little children of the former slave masters. Like he would want to hang out with any of the white people right after slavery. Even into the past 60 years a black man could get jailed or killed on the accusation of a white child, so hanging out with white children without their parents was not going to be happening. Also Uncle Remus would have been working at hard labor of some type in order to feed himself. He would not have had time to sit around telling happy tales to any kids.

All of the black people are just sooo happy to be poor and serving white folks, singing and dancing and speaking bad English which perpetrates the myth that this is the "nature" of the "simple" black people. You have to remember that many people gain their only ideas about groups other than their own by looking at mass media. They have no real exposure to other cultures or races until they are adults who are filled with incorrect information and possibly biases.

I saw the movie as a child and later when I was older also. The racial bias in it is not as overtly damaging as Birth of a Nation, but the movie does present an inaccurate and shaded view of the people and activities during that time period.

There are other examples of Disney using racial stereotypes or down right racist language in their material right through the 1950s. I saw an old show that was a tour of Disney back then and they used a word for a female of Native American heritage that is a basically is another word for a female's private part. It has been in common usage in films made by white Americans, so you probably would not believe it is really offensive.

I don't think that deliberately Disney people set out to be offensive in any of their materials, but not caring enough to learn about the other cultures/races led to the use of inappropriate material. Blacks were not even allowed in the Disney parks at this time, so no great surprise that they would not consult anyone before making films/shows about other groups. They were not the only ones. I love early Warner Bros. cartoons, but they had some that were clearly filled with racial stereotypes and offensive images. I can recall one with characters in black face make up.

If you like Song of the South, then it is a free country so go buy it. However, watch it carefully before you screen it for innocent children and think about having a talk about why this is not even close to reality. People raised on this nonsense are the ones who say ignorant things to black people like, "My you speak English, so well." To which the reply often is, "Of course, it is my native language."

[maria rose]

Originally Posted by jc-servant

How about the "harmless" old black man who just loves to entertain the wonderful little children of the former slave masters. Like he would want to hang out with any of the white people right after slavery. Even into the past 60 years a black man could get jailed or killed on the accusation of a white child, so hanging out with white children without their parents was not going to be happening. Also Uncle Remus would have been working at hard labor of some type in order to feed himself. He would not have had time to sit around telling happy tales to any kids.
All of the black people are just sooo happy to be poor and serving white folks, singing and dancing and speaking bad English which perpetrates the myth that this is the "nature" of the "simple" black people. You have to remember that many people gain their only ideas about groups other than their own by looking at mass media. They have no real exposure to other cultures or races until they are adults who are filled with incorrect information and possibly biases.

I saw the movie as a child and later when I was older also. The racial bias in it is not as overtly damaging as Birth of a Nation, but the movie does present an inaccurate and shaded view of the people and activities during that time period.

There are other examples of Disney using racial stereotypes or down right racist language in their material right through the 1950s. I saw an old show that was a tour of Disney back then and they used a word for a female of Native American heritage that is a basically is another word for a female's private part. It has been in common usage in films made by white Americans, so you probably would not believe it is really offensive.

I don't think that deliberately Disney people set out to be offensive in any of their materials, but not caring enough to learn about the other cultures/races led to the use of inappropriate material. Blacks were not even allowed in the Disney parks at this time, so no great surprise that they would not consult anyone before making films/shows about other groups. They were not the only ones. I love early Warner Bros. cartoons, but they had some that were clearly filled with racial stereotypes and offensive images. I can recall one with characters in black face make up.

If you like Song of the South, then it is a free country so go buy it. However, watch it carefully before you screen it for innocent children and think about having a talk about why this is not even close to reality. People raised on this nonsense are the ones who say ignorant things to black people like, "My you speak English, so well." To which the reply often is, "Of course, it is my native language."

You might not believe this, but some blacks were very well treated and provided for. Revisionist historians will make you believe that all white people are devils and all blacks innocent victims even to this day.
But check out the crime rates of minorities! Why do we have a majority of blacks on death row?
Anyway, that's a different subject.
It is not nonsense to see another point of view. As I said the movie is a product of its time.
The reason why people are surprised that some blacks speak English well is because as a culture blacks believe it's cute and oh so culturally superior to speak in bad English.
The lingo of the hood isn't going to endear you to society. It is not culture but bad grammar/spelling/pronounciation anyway you choose to twist it.