And I didn't say it was something I would run out and show my future kids; I just said it was nowhere near as bad as I was expecting. From the ban that's been on it pretty much my whole life, I thought it must have been up there with Birth of a Nation rather than GWTW.

Frankly, SotS isn't much more or much less trash on its own narrative and technical merits than other Disney movies (or other cartoons, of all studios) of the same era; it's just much more loaded and problematic.

I don't know, I think Song of the South is pretty terrible. The slaves are so happy to be slaves it's ridiculous. The actual cartoon characters are, quite frankly, stupid. Gone With the Wind does the same garbage. Both should be relegated to the trash pile because they're basically trash, regardless of the racism in them. The racism only helps them on their way to the dump imo. The only redeeming quality of the movie is that you will now understand Splash Mountain a little bit better.

You know its coming....

It was actually nowhere near as bad as I was expecting. As others say, it was on par with a lot of other media of the time, for casual racism and certain assumptions / implications. It is a shame to me that we lose one of the few uniquely American sets of folktales. (Though really, they're Anansi stories, which makes them even more interesting to me from a cultural-artifact kind of standpoint.)

The thing is, Disney's in a bind there. They cannot just re-release that movie the way they do Cinderella and so on; there would be a lot of people pretty rightfully angry about the messages it sends and the way it portrays people and situations. (The movie just basically ignores the existence of slavery and Reconstruction in favor of the "happy negro" trope so common to its era.) But I think they should make it available so that people who are interested in it can find it. (I can think of a lot of film school grad-level classes that would have a field day with it.) The solution is probably something like a Criterion Collection release.

@H3ion: My first movie, too!

I know for a while you could find copies of the betamax (yes, betamax) in Europe. This was a long time ago. I have relatives in Europe who had copies of this movie. IIRC, my parents tried to get copies of it, then realized they'd need a betamax player. Or a place to convert it. Needless to say, we never got one.

But you can always go to a Disney park and ride Splash Mountain for a taste of the movie.

I guess I really am stupid since I don't find anything racist about anything. If somethings funny I laugh but I don't do it to hurt anyones feelings, I make fun of myself. I guess I would rather laugh than cry. Todays society is to sensitive.@H3ion:

@dwb: I was inadvertent now that they got called on it. Gotta love how the story changes when people get pissed.

The internets can be of assistance in finding a high quality DVD of that movie.

Having watched it myself, it was quite funny and, yes, racist.

The Loony Tunes Golden collection, starting with Volume 3, has an intro with Whoopi Goldberg explaining the context of some of the more insensitive cartoons as a product of their times.

@diasdiem: I don't believe a studio would allow Mel Brooks to make Blazing Saddles today. Our "post racial" society is not making progress.

[www.cracked.com]

I remember when they started editing everything out - there was a Donald Duck and Chipmunks cartoon where he was making pancakes - at the end, donald got stuck in the chimney and because it had a peaked round roof, chip and dale danced around and stretched out their eyes and laughed because he looked "asian". Around 1991 or '92 Disney stopped showing the ending and simply cut it out. It disturbed me to no end as a child because instead of saying "these things may contain imagery that no longer applies, and here is why we should learn from that" they just shoved it under the rug and denied it.

@SarcasticHobbes:

It is a little random. It's not a big town, at all. (I grew up in the also smallish town just north of it, Menasha)

... of course, it is really difficult to keep up with the dialogue and after a couple lines the bottom of the TV gets pretty filled up, but still - cheaper and better for me, plus it tastes better too!

Walt Disney had a reputation, whether or not deserved I don't know, as an anti-Semite. As a matter of record, he was ultra conservative and involved in the McCarthy era on the side of McCarthy and the blacklist. I wouldn't be at all surprised to find racial references in his movies that would probably have passed without comment in the 30s and 40s but which would be considered wholly inappropriate today.

@H3ion: I just did some research to help me remember whether or not I was hallucinating or I really did go see it in the theater as a child. Turns out there was a 1986 theatrical release, which my dad took me to see.

Is closed captioning really that expensive a feature to add? It's what?!? 2-3 hours of labor for the transcription, no more than a week of programming/design labor...It probably would add maybe 5k maximum to the costs of production if they outsourced it.

I bet that if the people who send in their receipts and stuff are actually deaf or hard-of-hearing, Disney will send them full versions of the DVDs to keep. Of course, it'd be far too easy for people who aren't deaf or hard-of-hearing to take advantage of this.

In light of the new Disney movie featuring an African American princess (or frog at times) with a non-African American prince (also a frog at times) I don't see why they can't release "Song of the South."

I always confuse Neenah with Necedah Wisconsin for some reason.

[consumerist.com]

(yay for me)