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Probably a free rental. I'd go for sending them a copy of the movie, partly to make sure that the rental places don't screw someone over again by giving them the captionless version.
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@waffles: Yeah... of course, as far as I can tell, they're not recalling the uncaptioned version, so it's still completely luck of the draw, particularly with places like Netflix and Redbox.
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If they would just release the original version of \"Song of the South\" I would find it much easier to forgive their obvious screwup with \"Up.\"
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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:
@H3ion: Seriously. I vaguely remember seeing it on video when I was little. I don't care to own it, I'm just curious to see exactly what the fuss was about. Not like Disney hasn't had any other racially insensitive characters (like the Indians in Peter Pan, or the crows in Dumbo) in their movies before.
@diasdiem:
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.
@Laura Northrup: I find the casual racism of yesterday amusing. I like to watch those old cartoons (Disney and Warner Bros.) and imagine what would happen if they tried to get away with that sort of thing these days.
@diasdiem: I don't believe a studio would allow Mel Brooks to make Blazing Saddles today. Our \"post racial\" society is not making progress.
@diasdiem: Many of Disney's movies have been somewhat less than politically correct, but I don't understand the fuss over \"Song of the South.\" These were the Joel Chandler Harris stories, an important piece of Americana. The character, Uncle Remus, was one of the first African Americans to be given a lead role in a major studio movie. As I recall the movie (and I got a poor bootleg for a birthday gift) he was treated with dignity. The story took place after the Civil War so he was certainly not a slave. All the children, black and white, looked up to him. I was a little kid the first time I saw it, but I thought he was great. As I said, I don't know what the problem is. Bootlegs are available from time to time but usually in a PAL format.
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.\"
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@H3ion: And let's not even get into Huckleberry Fin.
Our past is our past, frogs, princes and all.
(shrug)
@H3ion: Like I said, I'm curious. I mean, it might not have seemed too bad when you were little, but it might not seem that way when you see it again.
@diasdiem: I have seen it more recently (the bootleg version) and James Baskett was treated as a human being, not like Butterfly McQueen in \"Gone With the Wind\" where she was a caricature. There were a bunch of movies and record albums made with Bobby Driscoll and Luana Patten. They were all pretty good and suitable for children. As I said, James Baskett was the wise old soul who the children turned to. He was the storyteller, and I would have no hesitation in letting my children or grandchildren see the movie. I don't know why Disney has refused to release it.
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@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.
@Laura Northrup: I saw it when I was five, my first movie.
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.
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@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.
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@H3ion: Many many many of the animations of the time ( look at the WWII era parodies of Germans and Japanese people ) contained racially or politically incorrect imagery. The important thing about this I think is to learn why it is viewed as wrong today.
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.
@Oranges w/ Cheese has 2 cats! ahahaha.: They started doing that to all the old cartoons. Tom and Jerry cartoons that feature that black woman you only see from the neck down had her voice redubbed to sound less mammy-ish. It was really jarring because the audio quality was so different, it didn't have the same artifacts in the sound like the snaps or pops you get on records.
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.
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@H3ion: It says quite a bit about the nice racially-sensitive folks at Disney that they are concerned about the cluelessness in Song of the South, but don't care if kids watch \"What Makes the Red Man Red\" in Peter Pan or the crows in Dumbo.
Why the heck would it get sent to Neenah Wisconsin? Thats the most random place.
I always confuse Neenah with Necedah Wisconsin for some reason.
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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)
I bet is was Disney (not Pixar) that tried that sh*t.
@MYKEE: Yes, any company that would fly a DVD out so that a dying child who couldn't go to the theater could watch it before she died would be so insensitive.
@diasdiem: John Lasseter himself brought that kid back from the dead, then deafened him, then personally sent him the DVD lacking subtitles. Then they had a party.
Because THAT'S how they roll.
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@Trai_Dep: they also sat around, snickering while asking, \"is there a Docter in the house?\" Sick sense of humor, those Pixar guys.
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@TCama: Yeah, Disney bought Pixar when their contract to be Pixar's sole distributor was going to run out a couple of years ago. The deal made Pixar CEO Steve Jobs (yes, THAT Steve Jobs) Disney's largest stockholder. As a much smaller Disney stockholder, I wish he'd exercise a little more influence and do for Disney's stock what he's done for Apple's stock since he returned there.
I figured this was some kind of screwup. It's nice that they're moving so fast (for a company like that, just asking (and asking relatively quickly) for names & addresses while they work out the specifics).
I'm not a huge fan of Disney, but I'm heartened by their quick reaction and desire to address the people impacted by it.
@Trai_Dep: It's only a screw up if they specifically wanted to keep closed captioning intact. Most likely they told who ever was making the dvd to strip all extra content. They got exactly what they asked for.
For some reason I'm surprised. I mean, I guess it makes sense, but still, I expected that Disney would have done this deliberately.
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.
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I just watched this, rented, last night. It had closed captioning for the hard of hearing, but not an option for English subtitles.
@INsano: Hm, maybe they've already started sending out corrected discs. Both discs I received from Netflix had neither subtitles nor CC.
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@codeman38: Huh. The copy I got from Netflix not only had subtitles/CC, it also had various shorts and talk-with-the-moviemakers extras, so it wasn't even _slightly_ a feature-deprived version.
It's really distasteful to not offer captions on every tv/dvd release. It really bothers me...because I have a hearing problem from my musician days (granted it WAS my fault for not wearing plugs) and I can't really capture the nuance in shows without the subtitles/captions. Sometimes the caption feature on my tv works without dedicated captions (oddly) but it's still annoying to see black boxes across the screen.
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.
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@nstonep: I've done Closed Captioning work for short films (less than 30 minutes) and let me tell you that even if you've already got the whole dang script WITH shooting changes it can take a loooooong time to do captions right. It can be done quickly, but you often end up with timing issues if you push your work out that fast. A 120 minute film takes 3-4 weeks on average (assuming one person doing the work) to get the captions in their proper places on screen at the proper times. You also need to make sure that the positioning for the captions doesn't cover up anything important on screen. Most movies you might also need to include notations for certain sound effects, and heaven help you if it's a musical.
@nstonep: What's so bad is that the retail disc already had CC and subtitles created for it. There was no additional cost to add it to the rental version.
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@nstonep: ... which would be a valid point if they left the captions off on purpose, which they did not. From the sounds of it, they accidentally stripped the subtitles when they took out the extra content. Oops.
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@nstonep: The CC transcription had already been done, and the CC encoding embedded in the movie, because it was included on the retail DVDs. The cost for doing it and encoding it had already been paid. There was NO money savings to be had in not including it on the rental DVDs. The only benefit to Disney in not including it on the rentals would have been to encourage purchases over rentals.
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Here's to hoping it really was a mistake, and whether it was or not, that they've just learned not to pull that crap again.
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Disney, while you're at it, add the director's commentary to the single-disc DVD.
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I make my own subtitles at home, with a marker.
... 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!
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But Disney already said it made a marketing decision to remove all the special features, including the closed captions - now they say it was inadvertent?
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@dwb: I took that as a \"yes we meant to remove all special features but we did not mean for CC to be included in \"special features\"\"
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@dwb: I was inadvertent now that they got called on it. Gotta love how the story changes when people get pissed.
@dwb: I've been wondering about that too. Three separate bloggers were told by Disney support that it was a marketing decision.
@codeman38: I'm assuming that whenever anybody calls CS to complain that they're missing a feature, the stock answer is always \"the rental version has *no* special features.\" The people who answered the phone probably didn't realize it was a mistake to leave the captions out.
Work at a Blockbuster, Funny People has no subtitles either.
It's become pretty common for rental DVDs to not include the extras and special features that the retail discs contain. No captions, though, is a bit too far, imho.
I'm just surprised they didn't offer a boilerplate response, \"We're listening to your concerns...\"
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Oops, we really thought we'd be able to get away with this one. But the internet made it an issue so I guess we'd better apologize. Well, you can't blame a giant corporation for trying.
@H3ion: My husband and I actually just watched a Song of the South bootleg last weekend. We actually both have media / media criticism backgrounds and we're off to WDW in a couple of weeks, so it seemed an interesting use of our time.
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.
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@Etoiles:
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.
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I can't wait for the Consumerist story stating \"Disney sues owner of \"Up\" DVD for creating a \"fansub\" of their own subtitles.
You know its coming....
@trujunglist: Like them or not, garbage or not, the fact remains that both actually do show us something relevant about American film history and cultural history. (They tell us a hell of a lot more about the filmmakers than about the stories they tell, but still.)
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.
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Right. A mistake. No, it was a mistake that they let themselves get caught.
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Like I was telling Codeman the other day, this is sounding too much like a Blame Game being played (I found out about the \"apology\" through Marlee Matlin's twitter's page when she went to meet with Disney execs) -- something about this still doesn't *sit* right with me. Maybe it was an innocent mistake when they said \"strip the extras out\" not realizing that someone had assumed that closed captioning/SDH/Descriptive Audio was \"extra\". But-- the fact that someone had considered those as extra doesn't sit too well with me!
What a load of crap!
http://consumerist.com/2009/11/disney-removes-closed-captioning-from-up-rental-release.html
No, Disney has already said this was a \"marketing ploy\" and that they were aware of the omission of captions and subtitles.
Eff Disney. Stupid morons.
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Called it.
[consumerist.com]
(yay for me)