Walt Disney’s
Song of the South (1946)
Artemus Ward
Dept. of Political Science
Northern Illinois University
aeward@niu.edu
Introduction
• The Uncle Remus stories are an important part of AfricanAmerican oral history.
• Disney’s Hollywood version of Uncle Remus portrays the
fictional idyllic master-slave relationship of the old south.
• The film “role-assigns” in that black characters do not
develop and are only important as workers, entertainers, and
generally in terms of their relation to whites.
• Walt Disney may have believed that he was doing the right
thing when he produced the film, but he succeeded primarily
in robbing the world of a folk hero and instead enslaving him
in a cartoon image.
Origin
• Folk stories of animal
tricksters derive from both
the African and Native
American cultures.
• They were passed down
orally, and the Brer Rabbit
stories specifically grew out
of the experience of
American slaves.
• Eventually whites heard
these stories, retold them,
and wrote them down.
•
Joel
•
Chandler
Harris
•
•
An illegitimate, red-headed son of an Irish immigrant, as a
teenager Harris worked on a Georgia plantation, got to know the
slaves, and listened to them tell folk stories.
He wrote them down and published them in the Atlanta
Constitution helping to popularize them with white readers. They
were collected and published in 1880 as Uncle Remus: His
Songs and His Sayings. Eight more Uncle Remus books followed
in subsequent years.
Chandler was part of the “New South” movement of “progressive”
yet paternalistic writers who stressed regional and racial
reconciliation during and after the Reconstruction era. He said
that he began the Uncle Remus stories as a serial to "preserve in
permanent shape those curious mementoes of a period that will
no doubt be sadly misrepresented by historians of the future.“
He likened his stories to that of Harriett Beecher Stowe’s Uncle
Tom’s Cabin calling the latter a "wonderful defense of slavery“
and arguing that Stowe's "genius took possession of her and
compelled her, in spite of her avowed purpose, to give a very fair
picture of the institution she had intended to condemn." In
Harris's view, the "real moral that Mrs. Stowe's book teaches is
that the. . . realities [of slavery], under the best and happiest
conditions, possess a romantic beauty and tenderness all their
own."
Initial Impact
•
•
•
•
•
The tales became immensely popular among both
black and white readers in the North and South.
Few outside of the South had ever heard accents like
those spoken in the tales, and no one had ever seen
the dialect legitimately and faithfully recorded in print.
To the North and those abroad, the stories were a
"revelation of the unknown.” Mark Twain noted in
1883, "in the matter of writing [the African-American
dialect], he is the only master the country has
produced.”
Twain went on to appropriate Harris’ dialect in The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884). Countless
subsequent writers borrowed heavily from Harris
including A.A. Milne with his Winnie-the-Pooh stories.
President Theodore Roosevelt said, "Presidents may
come and presidents may go, but Uncle Remus stays
put. Georgia has done a great many things for the
Union, but she has never done more than when she
gave Mr. Joel Chandler Harris to American literature.”
Black Cartoon Characters
•
•
•
•
•
•
Did Disney deliberately create black cartoon
characters?
Consider that for Fantasia (1940) the character
“Sunflower” was a hoof shining centaurette who had
“attitude” while polishing the hooves of white
centaurettes.
This sequence aired uncut in theaters and on
television in 1966 before the scene was cut for the
film's 1969 theatrical reissue.
In Dumbo (1941) the jive-talking black crows—
including Jim Crow—sing: “I'd be done see'n about
everything/when I see an elephant fly!”
In The Jungle Book (1967) , all the animals in the
jungle speak in proper British accents. Except, of
course, for the jive-talking, gibberish-spouting
monkeys who desperately want to become "real
people.“
Are the cartoons characters in Song of the South
black?
Brer Rabbit
• Brer Rabbit is said to represent the enslaved African who uses his wits to
overcome circumstances and to exact revenge on his adversaries, who
represent white slave-owners.
• Though not always successful, his efforts made him a folk hero.
• However, the trickster—in this case Brer Rabbit—is a multi-dimensional
character. While he can be a hero, his amoral nature and lack of any
positive restraint can make him a villain as well.
• For both Africans and African Americans, the animal trickster represents
an extreme form of behavior which people may be forced to use in
extreme circumstances in order to survive. The trickster is not to be
admired in every situation; he is an example of what to do, but also an
example of what not to do. The trickster's behavior can be summed up in
the common African proverb: "It's trouble that makes the monkey chew on
hot peppers." In other words, sometimes people must use extreme
measures in extreme circumstances.
• Do you agree?
Brer Rabbit Molasses
(1942)
The Disney
Version
• Disney’s film fortunes were in
decline. Snow White (1937) was a
hit but Pinocchio (1940) and
Fantasia (1940) did poorly at the
box office. Bambi (1942) lost
money.
• The new Disney studios—built in
1941—had cost a lot of money and
the war in Europe hurt overseas
receipts.
• Disney wanted to make a film that
would have wide appeal and be
relatively cheap to make. He chose
the Uncle Remus stories and
decided to combine live-action with
animation.
The Disney Version
• Song of the South is a frame story based on
three Brer Rabbit stories, "The Laughing
Place", "The Tar Baby", and "The Briar
Patch".
• Yet there is little in the film that resembles
the original stories except for the setting
and characters.
• African-American actor Clarence Muse,
hired to help with the script, made
suggestions for upgrading the image of the
black characters in the film. When those
suggestions were rejected, he resigned,
saying that he believed the movie would be
“detrimental to the cultural advancement of
the Negro people.”
• Similarly, actor Rex Ingram turned down the
role of Uncle Remus, reasoning that the film
would “set back my people many years.”
• In Harris’ version Uncle Remus is a teacher who
tells stories to help the children understand and
deal positively with the chaos in their lives. The
stories are real—terrible and tragic—with the
comforting presence of Remus to mitigate the
terror and cruelty of the tales.
• In the film Uncle Remus is at once two classic
stereotypes: the “old-time darky” who takes care
of white children and entertains white adult
audiences. The stories are entertainment first
and have a Disney social message as opposed
to the original lessons of the folktales.
• In Harris’ version the stories are central with the
frame secondary, simply setting up the stories.
The ratio is more than 2-1 stories to frame.
• In the film, the 94 minutes contain only 3 fullyanimated segments plus some combination
animation/live-action.
• Why the Disney distortion of the original stories?
Disney’s
Distortion
Disney is for Adults
•
•
•
•
•
•
This Disney film, like all Disney films, are not made
for children but are instead targeted toward white
adult moviegoers.
The formula: figure out what has sold before and
repeat it—only bigger and better.
Shades of Gone with the Wind (1939): the Tara-like
plantation, Hattie McDaniel’s Aunt Tempy, the
premiere in Atlanta).
Mimicry of Shirley Temple’s successful team
ventures with black dancer Bill “Bojangles”
Robinson, particularly The Littlest Rebel (1935)—the
tale of a white child left to fend for herself during the
Civil War, aided and cared for by faithful slave
Robinson, who dances with her.
Echoes of a popular radio show in the casting of
James Baskett, a regular on Amos ‘n Andy, in the
role of Uncle Remus.
These adult sources suggest that Disney did not
target Song of the South for children even though 3
cartoon sequences make it appear so.
James Baskett
as Uncle Remus
•
•
•
•
•
•
Black artists are often faced with the problem of having to elevate through
sheer skill material that is stereotypical or even racist.
Such was the case for Song of the South.
Baskett received an Academy Award shortly after his death—and criticism that
the Academy had ignored black actors.
Yet the film reduces Remus from a wise teacher in the mold of Socrates to little
more than a playmate and nursemaid to white children.
The Uncle Remus character has come to be seen as a distinct category of
racial stereotyping:
The final member of the coon triumvirate is the uncle remus. Harmless and
congenial, his is a first cousin to the tom, yet he distinguishes himself by his
quaint, naïve, and comic philosophizing. Remus’s mirth, like tom’s contentment
and the coon’s antics, has always been used to indicate the black man’s
satisfaction with the system and his place in it.
Hattie McDaniel as Aunt Tempy
• When criticized for often playing a mammy on film,
McDaniel famously said she would rather play a maid in
the movies than be one.
• Is she right?
• Should African-American actors refuse to play roles that
portray negative stereotypes?
Contemporary Controversy
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
On its release, the film was immediately denounced by the NAACP who called for
a total boycott of the movie and protested the perpetuation of “a dangerously
glorified picture of slavery.” NAACP executive Secretary Walter F. White regretted
that Disney had made use of what he called the “beautiful Uncle Remus folklore”
to give the “impression of an idyllic master-slave relationship which is a distortion
of the facts.”
The National Urban League objected to the film, citing “another…perpetuation of
the stereotype casting of the Negro in the servant role, depicting him as indolent,
one who handles the truth lightly.”
Ebony said that Disney’s Remus was an “Uncle Tom-Aunt Jemima caricature
complete with all the fawning standard equipment thereof: the toothy smile,
battered hat, grey beard, and a profusion of ‘dis and ‘dat talk.”
It was picketed by members of the National Negro Congress, whose officials
charged that the film rehashed all of the old racist stereotypes that demeaned
black people and called on black people to “run the picture out of the area.”
At the film's New York premiere in Times Square, dozens of black and white
pickets chanted, “We fought for Uncle Sam, not Uncle Tom.”
In most of the country, Song of the South was both a critical and commercial
failure—though its technical achievements were sometimes lauded.
Newsweek called the story “irritatingly inconsequential.” Variety complained that
the story of the “confused and insufficiently explained estrangement of the parents
overbalances the cartoon sequences.” The New York Times called Disney Studio
writers “just a lot of conventional hacks” and that the actors in the film “behave like
characters in a travesty on the ante bellum South.”
Most audiences were ambivalent toward the post-Civil War movie in an era
flooded with wildly popular WWII films.
Walt Disney arrives at the film’s premiere in Atlanta, Georgia.
Southern
Reaction
• Yet in the southeast, the movie was a major event. For example, its
Atlanta opening found its way into the civic celebration of Armistice Day.
• Walt Disney, the film’s producer, members of the cast, and Disney’s voice
artists paraded down Atlanta’s Peachtree Street alongside uniformed
veterans of wars past and military decoration. Atlanta society later
celebrated the film’s release at a formal gala event. There they were
joined by the film’s stars — except, of course, by the African American
actors James Baskett and Hattie McDaniel.
• Also, “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah” won the 1947 Academy Award for Best Song,
has been widely used by Disney since, and has become a standard.
Re-Releases
• On the film’s initial release Disney
published a “Golden Book” version of
the movie and a gatefold album with
picture book. Each were issued for
decades thereafter.
• Disney re-released the film the first time
in 1956.
• In 1970, Disney announced in Variety
that the film had been "permanently"
retired.
• The studio changed its mind and rereleased the film in 1972, 1981, and
1986.
• Total box office gross for the 1986 rerelease: $38 million.
• When it was rumored that Disney might
re-release the film in 2007 the Los
Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable,
which includes representatives from the
Los Angeles Civil Rights Association,
the NAACP National Board, and the
Youth Advocacy Coalition, sent out a
press release denouncing the plan.
Splash Mountain
• When "Splash Mountain",
an amusement ride based
on the film, "Song of the
South" opened in
Disneyland in the 1992 the
local NAACP and others
protested.
• The ride also appears at
other Disney theme parks.
• Should it be shut down?
Rescuing Remus
• Modern scholars are mixed with some seeing
the Uncle Remus stories as little more than
plantation-school revisionism while others
argue that the stories satirize, and therefore
critique the genre.
• Black folklorist and university professor Julius
Lester sees the Uncle Remus stories as
important records of black folklore. He has
rewritten many of the Harris stories in an effort
to elevate the subversive elements over the
purportedly racist ones.
• Regarding the nature of the Uncle Remus
character, Lester said, "There are no
inaccuracies in Harris's characterization of
Uncle Remus. Even the most cursory reading
of the slave narratives collected by the Federal
Writer's Project of the 1930s reveals that there
were many slaves who fit the Uncle Remus
mold."
Conclusion
• Disney’s Song of the South changed the Uncle Remus-Brer
Rabbit folktales forever. No longer part of the philosophical
teachings of African-American culture, the stories were
transformed by the film to be little more than entertainment
for whites.
• Though there have been some recent attempts to rescue the
stories as important records of African-American folktales,
the Disney film and related materials have left an indelible
image of Remus as a negative stereotype and the stories as
little more than Disney entertainment.
• The film has never been released on home video or DVD in
the United States. Should it be?
References
•
•
•
•
Boyle, Donald. 1973. Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies and Bucks.
Snead, James. 1994. White Screens/Black Images: Hollywood from the Dark Side. Routledge.
Staples, Brent. 2012. “Black Characters in Search of Reality.” New York Times, February 11.
Walker, Alice, "Uncle Remus, No Friend of Mine", Southern Exposure 9 (Summer 1981): 29-31