Song of the South

Welcome back everyone to “Disney Month.” As always, I will be reviewing various Disney films that I have not seen and including MCU and Star Wars shows in here. Let’s get starting with the 1946 controversial film, “Song of the South.”

Famously labeled as too racist to ever release for modern audiences, “Song of the South” is easily the lest seen, most obscure film ever made by Disney. It’s a combination of live action actors and cartoon scenes, added by occasional songs. Mike Massie said in his review, “Considered a musical, the several numbers sung by crowds of sharecroppers are smoothly integrated, while the remaining tunes are crooned by curious animated critters communicating with Remus via melodic conversations.” Set in the Reconstruction era of the deep South and based on Joel Chandler Harris’ stories, all taking place after the Civil War (despite none of this is apparent enough), the controversy around the showing the black characters has prevented generations of audiences from seeing the movie or realizing that the now removed “Splash Mountain” theme park ride at Disneyland came from this film.

Miss Sally (Ruth Warrick) and newspaper man Mr. John (Erik Rolf) travel to a Southern plantation to visit their son Johnny’s (Bobby Driscoll) grandmother (Lucile Watson). The building is a huge white mansion filled with black workers, including “Aunt” Tempy (Hattie McDaniel) and young Toby (Glenn Leedy), who is told to look after the adventurous Johnny. Immediately after arriving, Mr. John leaves, loyally off to attend a newspaper crisis, separating for the first time from his wife and son.

Johnny is upset and sneaks away in the middle of the night (in his little orange suit), wanting to go to Atlanta where his father is going, but quickly becomes distracted by a small campfire gathering where Uncle Remus, played by James Baskett, is telling the story of Br’er Rabbit and how he lost his tail. After inviting Johnny, the two stop at Remus’ cabin for some cornbread, continuing with the stories of the friendly animals that speak with Remus. Eventually returned to the house, Johnny is prepared the next morning to see his grandmother, dressed up in nice clothing and a lace collar, only to be made fun of by the neighborhood, poorer Faver family boys. His little depression is fixed by the generous Ginny, played by Luana Patten, who gives him a puppy – except that Sally tells Johnny he’s not allowed to keep it. Later, the stories of the Br’er animals continue, with Br’er Bear and Br’er Fox, also voiced by Baskett, making a tar baby decoy (literally a decoy made of tar, turpentine, and sticks) to catch Br’er Rabbit for a nice stew – unpredictably successful when Br’er Rabbit is mad by the tar baby’s refusal to respond to a greeting, and punches the prop until he’s completely stuck with the tar.

Nothing about the film is in any way famous (except for the often-debated subject matter), however the unforgettable song Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah has surprisingly been around all the years. Massie noted, “The dialogue is slightly confusing to follow, heavily inundated with slang, accents, dialect, and culturally familiar grammatical errors, but most strikingly peculiar because of the intentionally stereotypical voicework by Nicodemus Stewart as Br’er Bear and Johnny Lee as Br’er Rabbit – both African-American comedians from vaudeville, radio, and television. Likely the primary reason Disney continues to so strongly object to the showing of this film, the cartoons speak with exaggerations, like the crows in “Dumbo,” over the course of the entire feature, leaving little room for casual historical inclusion as a politically correct explanation.” Even though the African-American roles are not mistreated, they appear as equals, and are the main characters (Remus is actually a hero), the voices alone are understandably unpleasant.

The main reason of the film is to demonstrate the usefulness of Remus’ stories as learning tools for Johnny to use in his real-life scenarios. Massie mentioned, “The boy is described as desolate without whimsical allegories to latch on to (apparently unable to befriend the locals). Fighting, bullying, threats of hanging and skinning Br’er Rabbit as preparation for feasting on him (along with reverse psychology for the cottontail to be thrown into a thorny brier patch instead, which he uses to escape), and even the declaration of drowning the puppy work their way into the script – making “Song of the South” oddly unfriendly to younger audiences, regardless of the animated pieces. Suppressed for controversial depictions of a factual time period, the movie will certainly remain more notable for that single aspect – leaving the mediocrity of the film and its moderate entertainment value largely undiscussed.”

I had heard of this film a long time ago and of the fact that this was never shown again after its release. I think this was debated as the first live-action Disney movie, so I decided to check this one out and see what was so controversial about it. I believe this film should be seen by everyone at least once just so they know and get an understanding of it. Especially with the famous song. It’s not on Disney+, but if you can find it somewhere, see it.

Sorry for the late posting. I was called down to see a movie and I fell asleep because I was just so tired from work. Stay tuned tomorrow to see a review on an adaptation of a book in “Disney Month 2024.”