During halftime of last Saturday’s football game, the UW band once again regaled us with what I assume was a wonderful performance, though I couldn’t really hear it in the student section. Usually the halftime performances are more for the benefit of the adults, with the students occasionally engaged by a song like “Sweet Caroline”. However, my mid-game space-out was interrupted by the announcer, as he informed us the band was now playing “the time-honored classic ‘Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah’”.
Most people remember the song from one of those Disney sing-a-longs that your elementary school music teacher put on video when she was tired of teaching a bunch of third graders to sing “Jingle Bells” for the tenth year in a row. But most people have no idea what movie it came from.
The movie was called “Song of the South,” and even during its release in 1946 it was considered racially insensitive. The film blends live action and animation, with the animated characters representing characters in a story told by Uncle Remus, a perpetually happy slave who spins morality tales for the children of his plantation owners. When the film was released the NAACP “applauded its artistic merit,” but also criticized the “impression it gives of an idyllic master-slave relationship.”
The film had occasional re-releases, but Disney has intentionally never released it on home video or DVD, citing the potential conflicts that could arise. Even the great film critic Roger Ebert, who rarely advocates censorship, believed the film should stay locked in the Disney vault so as to not make a mark on impressionable children.
Although I can understand Disney’s viewpoint, I still think “Song of the South” deserves a re-release of some sort. Not only could film students everywhere benefit from seeing the kinds of films that were the norm during this time, but the film would hardly be the top choice for parents to pick out for their kids. Who wants to rent “Song of the South” when your kids could be watching guinea pigs fight crime in “G-Force”?
Furthermore, aren’t there already enough Disney classics that incorporate racism? Films like “Peter Pan,” “The Jungle Book” and “Dumbo” all feature stereotypical interpretations of a certain race, but are considered time-honored classics, not shut away in the Disney vault forever. Sure, Uncle Remus (portrayed by James Baskett) was a living, breathing representation of racism, but the natives in “Peter Pan” singing “What makes a red man red” and naming the lead bird in “Dumbo” Jim Crow are just as insensitive.
The point is, racism existed in the early 1900s, and continues to exist today. If we can look at films like “Birth of a Nation” and “Gone with the Wind” as movie masterpieces made during a backwards era, why can’t “Song of the South” be re-released? Additionally, won’t the forward march of progressive policies always find something that is politically incorrect? What may have been acceptable 50 years ago almost certainly won’t be acceptable 100 years after that. What if “Beverly Hills Chihuahua” is banned in the year 2100 for its grotesque portrayal of Hispanic stereotypes? Sure, they may seem harmless now, but the citizens of tomorrow may find that children are affected by the subtle jokes, or even constraining chihuahuas to Mexican roles. It may sound absurd, but political correctness is a fickle thing.
Disney has made enough money off “Song of the South,” from the theme park ride Splash Mountain (based on the animated characters in the film) to the sing-a-longs, but no one knows the context from which they came. As George Santayana said, “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” If we turn our back on a film because of its questionable content, we’re not only ignoring what was considered a great film, but we’re also writing revisionist film history.
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Re-release 'Song' rather than hiding it
Published: Thursday, September 24, 2009
Updated: Thursday, September 24, 2009
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