Because the movie isn’t widely available — although some copyright scamps have illegally uploaded it online — most have never seen it in its entirety. Its reputation as a racist relic is based on a few clips and on Disney’s insistence that it won’t release the film again. As a result, some fans of the movie claim “Song of the South” isn’t nearly as bad as innuendo would have you believe.
It is. The movie is steeped in racist stereotypes and minstrel tropes. They are intrinsic to the narrative, not passing references. The plot revolves around Johnny, a young white boy in the Reconstruction South, who lives on his family’s plantation. Many people, then and now, mistakenly believe the movie is set before or during the Civil War, a mistake that’s easy to make because the world is composed of white masters and Black workers. In one song, the Black plantation workers allude to choosing to stay on the farm over risking the outside world, implying these formerly enslaved people willingly decided to work for their former oppressors. This, of course, ignores the reality of the Reconstruction era, where employment was not readily available anywhere for Black people and many, as a matter of survival, remained on plantations in systems that were still slavery in all but name.
The movie cuts between live action sequences and animated ones featuring the adventures of Br’er Rabbit. In perhaps the most troubling overly racist scene, Uncle Remus tells Johnny these stories are from “the old days” before the Civil War. “In dem days, everything was mighty satisfactual… and if you’ll excuse me for saying so, ‘twas better all around,” Remus says.
Those were incredible—and still are! I snapped some up on a nostalgia binge a few years back: an episode of Batman ’66, King Kong ’76, The Poseidon Adventure ’72 (so many things have to be dated now, because remakes), The Six Million Dollar Man…but yeah, the best ones were the cartoons translated into 3D models—Peanuts, Snoopy & The Red Baron, Bugs Bunny, The Road Runner, Donald Duck vs Chip & Dale!
“Is a squirrel chewing really that bad?” “I confess, I lied. I could no longer stand to hear everyone digesting food. It was like a hundred bubbling cauldrons. I could even hear your father, and he had just consumed an inadequately microwaved burrito.”
Texas: “Hey, what about us? We’re threatening transgender children and their parents, and making it illegal to try to flee the state! How monstrous is that?”
(thinks back to The Stare Master and how Twilight was turned to stone and the CMC saw her with a snail crawling across her eye and they missed an opportunity to show her rubbing her eye after she was “cured” and wondering why it felt so gross)
https://www.sfgate.com/sf-culture/article/Its-inspiration-is-so-racist-Disney-s-buried-it-15350268.php
Because the movie isn’t widely available — although some copyright scamps have illegally uploaded it online — most have never seen it in its entirety. Its reputation as a racist relic is based on a few clips and on Disney’s insistence that it won’t release the film again. As a result, some fans of the movie claim “Song of the South” isn’t nearly as bad as innuendo would have you believe.
It is. The movie is steeped in racist stereotypes and minstrel tropes. They are intrinsic to the narrative, not passing references. The plot revolves around Johnny, a young white boy in the Reconstruction South, who lives on his family’s plantation. Many people, then and now, mistakenly believe the movie is set before or during the Civil War, a mistake that’s easy to make because the world is composed of white masters and Black workers. In one song, the Black plantation workers allude to choosing to stay on the farm over risking the outside world, implying these formerly enslaved people willingly decided to work for their former oppressors. This, of course, ignores the reality of the Reconstruction era, where employment was not readily available anywhere for Black people and many, as a matter of survival, remained on plantations in systems that were still slavery in all but name.
The movie cuts between live action sequences and animated ones featuring the adventures of Br’er Rabbit. In perhaps the most troubling overly racist scene, Uncle Remus tells Johnny these stories are from “the old days” before the Civil War. “In dem days, everything was mighty satisfactual… and if you’ll excuse me for saying so, ‘twas better all around,” Remus says.