Here's the real deal on Song Of The South

[Nelson]

This is not to be confused with the other bogus post on "Song Of The South" on dvd and I have a legit letter from the folks over at Songofthesouth.net.Last night. webmaster Christain Willis(who runs the site) sent me the newsletter and there some interesting tidbits about the movie we all want to see on dvd..So without further adeu, here is the complete letter regarding SOTS.

More hope for a dvd release?
A recent thread over at Home Theater Forum has brought out some very interesting news.Dick Cook, Chairman of the Walt Disney Studios, spoke at the summer 2004 annual convention of the NFFC.The September/October 2004 issue of the Fantasyline Express(the club's newsletter)reported part of his talk:"After the formal part of his presentation, Cook too questions from from Conventioneers.Among the issues on Conventionee's minds: Will Song Of The South ever be released on dvd?

"Yes".Cook said that the public has requested a dvd release of Song Of The South more than it has requested any other film.That said, Disney also is aware that some elements of the film reflect the time in which it was made and don't reflect current attitudes.He said that the studio has encounted similar issues with older material.In some cases, such as some of the World War II material in the Walt Disney Treasures, they've addressed the issue through introductions that place the material in context.He said that Disney hasn't yet found the ideal solution for Song Of The South, but he was confident that they would.

Mr.Willis offers his thoughts on this...

Coming from the chairman of the Walt Disney Studios, this sounds very hopeful.We now have confirmation that the studio recognizes it is the single most requested movie and that the studio is exploring ways that it can appropriately present this film to today's audience.We just hope they leave the original film unaltered.

The SOTS newsletter offer this little report from amazon .com

Guess! What's Amazon's 2nd most requested DVD?
Well, it's gotta be Song Of the South, or else it wouldn't be in this newsletter . :)That's right, Song Of The South is the 2nd most requested DVD on Amazon.com that hasn't been released yet.Over the past year, we watched it drop from 5th place overall to 2nd place.Currently it is only surpassed by "Twin Peaks-The Second Season", a tv show which is guaranteed to be released.Be sure to go to Amazon's Song Of The South DVD page and enter your email address so that you can let Amazon(and Ultimately Disney)know how many people want this movie.

As for my thoughts on this letter, it does indeed sound promising that we may see SOTS on dvd "FINALLY", hoepfully sometime this year.My belief is that the only best way that Disney can do this, is to have Leonard Maltin do the introductions to the feature length film, or another possible way is to release the classic film on the Disney Treasures set, just like the other politcally incorrect cartoons(On The Front Lines, Mickey Mouse In Black And White Volume 2) that was presented last year.Just keep this mind, that 2004 was a major breakthrough for Disney when it came to releasing their censored cartoons on dvd without any kind of flak from anyone.

[Merrytoon]

Great news, I predict we'll see it in the treasures wave after this next one based on that.

[Gossamer]

Great news, I predict we'll see it in the treasures wave after this next one based on that.


I don't think SotS is likely to be released as a Disney Treasure, given the level of interest. More likely is a Platinum SE release. The DTs up to now have had more limited runs. Disney will try quite hard to get the widest possible print run and have a better profit potential from "the most requested" property not yet released on DVD that they have rights to, in my view. Just my two cents.


Robert Reynolds
Tucson AZ

[Cartman]

Well I think this is a step in the right direction for the Walt Disney Company. Song of the South is too good of a film to not see official release here in the U.S.

[Jeff]

I think I'm even happier that "Twin Peaks Second Season" is the most requested DVD but I understand it's not "guaranteed" currently. I recently made Season 2 DVDs out of my Laserdisc box sets and gave them to my brothers for Christmas...

Can't wait for Song Of The South too though...:D

[Leviathan]

I Was Right. We WILL see Song of the South on DVD before Popeye.

[travis t]

I'm glad some people at the top are starting to get some sense in them and see what we want on DVD.

Really though what is so bad about this movie anyway?

[cabe624]

Personally, I don't care how they release SOTS on DVD as long as they release it completely uncut.

[ohmahaaha]

I'm glad some people at the top are starting to get some sense in them and see what we want on DVD.

Really though what is so bad about this movie anyway?Could you imagine a movie like "Song of the South" being made today?

[Thad]

I've heard more speculations from higher sources that it's probably more likely that "Song of the South" will be released on a Disney Treasures set than a platinum 2-DVD set. Besides, who's to say that the Disney Treasures are really limited now anyway (besides the first two waves)? :scrooge:

-Thad

[Mac]

Could you imagine a movie like "Song of the South" being made today?

No way! If Song of the South was made today it would have to feature contemporary media stereotypes of black people. All the black characters would need to be smart talking, street wise types and Uncle Remus would possibly be a gangsta or at least a good guy who happens to be on the wrong side of the law. Also all the animated characters would be cg (because everyone hates hand drawn animation now) and Brer Bear would have to burp and fart a lot more. Mr Blue Bird would be a smart ass permanent sidekick to Big Daddy Remus. You can forget the songs, but shove in some rap and updated retro 70s tunes (with some hilarious scenes of the posh white people trying to join in). Finally it would need a stupid title which will make no one want to see it like "Brother Brer Rabbit: Back Home with a new Groove" and you have a modern Disney classic.

[Cartman]

No way! If Song of the South was made today it would have to feature contemporary media stereotypes of black people. All the black characters would need to be smart talking, street wise types and Uncle Remus would possibly be a gangsta or at least a good guy who happens to be on the wrong side of the law. Also all the animated characters would be cg (because everyone hates hand drawn animation now) and Brer Bear would have to burp and fart a lot more. Mr Blue Bird would be a smart ass permanent sidekick to Big Daddy Remus. You can forget the songs, but shove in some rap and updated retro 70s tunes (with some hilarious scenes of the posh white people trying to join in). Finally it would need a stupid title which will make no one want to see it like "Brother Brer Rabbit: Back Home with a new Groove" and you have a modern Disney classic.Could title it Song of the Ghetto. Uncle Remus could be a pimp.:p

[The G Man]

Could title it Song of the Ghetto. Uncle Remus could be a pimp.:pHave we forgotten about Ralph Bakshi's Coonskin? ;)

[J. J. Hunsecker]

Really though what is so bad about this movie anyway?I think the problem is one of interpretation of the original source material. The Uncle Remus stories were allegories of how the black slaves outsmarted thier white masters, and were told in order to raise the esteem of enslaved blacks. In this context the tales can be seen as being subversive.

The Disney version is quite the opposite of this, of course. The yarns are told to help out a troubled, rich white child in the film adaptation.

Disney's Song of the South handles the race issues by walking on eggshells and pretending they don't exist. While the film is not out-and-out racist like Birth of a Nation -- where enslaved blacks who crave freedom are portrayed as EVIL -- it can, never-the-less, be seen as condescending towards black people. After all, Uncle Remus and his relations live in abject poverty within sight of the grand mansion that is the white folks' residence. Yet Uncle Remus is unbelievably happy, and seems to cares more about the well-being of the white child than the children in his own family. In this regard Uncle Remus has been reimagined by the Disney writers as a classic "Uncle Tom" stereotype.

The other problem is that films like this are not judged as an individual piece of art. Instead, the movie is seen in context as part of a larger whole, and becomes a symbol of a dark period of a bygone era. Song of the South doesn't exist as a single film for many, but as one of a long line of movies that embraced the racist attitudes of their day. In this regards SotS has to pay not only for it's own sins but for those of films like Gone With the Wind, etc. The irony is, of course, that both Gone With the Wind and Birth of a Nation -- films far more racist than SotS -- are available on DVD, in unrated versions without any film historian to explain the "subtext".

[cabe624]

I think the problem also lies with misinformation. For example, many people believe that the film depicts "singing slaves", which isn't true - the film was set after the Civil War. Personally, I haven't seen the film, which is why I can't wait for it to be released on DVD. It's just odd how, like J. J. Hunsecker said, films like Gone With the Wind and Birth of a Nation can be released without having them put in proper context. I've always believed that Disney felt that their reputation would be on the line had they decided to release the film. Hopefully, with the news of this statement, they've changed their minds.

[Cartman]

I think the reason as to why SOTS hasn't been released while BOAN and GWTW have is because it's a Disney film and the Disney Corporation wants to keep a clean, family-friendly image. They are afraid that if parents see the film, they'll begin sending in angry letters/emails of protest and start a boycott.

[Greg Method]

I just find Disney's (for lack of a better phrase) preferred public forgetting of the film even more amazing when one considers that the studio kept rereleasing it theatrically through 1986, long after the initial wave of the civil rights movement was over and resulted in such film suppression as the "Censored 11" and Stepin Fetchit being edited out of TV prints.

[J Lee]

Censorship is a funny thing when it comes to who controls the films and what they're censoring. There are people on both sides of the political spectrum who feel the need to censor films. It's just that which films they feel the need to censor differs.

The Walt Disney Co. up until the mid-1980s was the most conservative of the Hollywood studios. That meant that they were turning out family fare that wouldn't offend people who were sensative to things that more conservative people in the U.S. would be offended by -- in this case, it was sex, language and religion, which were pretty much the three no-nos dating back to the Hays Code of the 1930s and 40s when the cartoons were first made. Those same people had less trouble with films like "Song of the South" or others that had ethnic stereotypes and violence (though the latter was less of a problem for Disney than for the other cartoon studios in the 30s, 40s and 50s).

Unfortunately for Disney, popular culture was changing in the 70s and 80s, and by 1984, after the box office failure of "Tron", the studio was in serious danger of being bought out, the same way United Artists had been by MGM after their disaster with "Heaven's Gate". Enter Michael Eisner, who along with Jeff Katzenburg and several others, was brought over from Paramount to save the studio by Roy Disney, working with the very rich (and conservative) Bass family of Fort Worth.

Eisner did save the studio, creating Touchtone Pictures to handle more adult-themed movies, while also reviving Disney's slipping feature animation department. The problem was the new group of Disney execs were more politically liberal than those who had been running Disney in the past, and their ideas about what should and what shouldn't be censored also followed a more politically correct path.

What that's boiled down to is films like "Song of the South" have scared this group of Disney execs. Hence it's current place, locked in the back closet somwhere in Burbank, while several of their recent 2-D feature films have let their multicultural message predominate over actually telling a good story ("Lilo and Stich" is the only one of that group to really escape that problem), and as a result, the animation department now is even deader than it was when Eisner came on board two decades ago. Meanwhile conservative groups who used to be the studio's biggest supporters now rage about supposed anti-religious or overly sexed-up films being backed either directly by Disney or through it's partnerships with companies like Mirimax (though this isn't a cut-and-dried issue, since money plays a key factor as well in what is shown on the screen, on Disney's ABC Network and on its ABC Radio Network. Conservatives yell about the liberal bias of ABC TV, while ABC Radio is the major souce of conservative talk shows in most of the major cities in the U.S.)

Eisner is supposed to be gone by next year, so we'll see if the general attitude towards what's acceptable in the classic Disney library changes. Roy Disney was the one pushing the Treasures series despite several things that are considered politically incorrect today, and since Eisner's decision to retire was seen as a victory for Roy, "Song of the South" may actually see the light of day in a few years. But the current mindset (which also infuses the corporate folks over at Time-Warner) is going to be tough to turn around in a short period of time.

[JIM ENGEL]

The "TREASURES" route for SOTS would seem to be the safest and most logical way for Disney to go. They could just tack on a Maltin disclaimer and simply produce it in the larger numbers demand would call for...

That way they'd have dealt with it in the same way they did the war stuff, and they'd have the built in defense that it was a "historical" or "collector's" release, and not the more "in your face/boastful" platinum-type thing.

[Duck Dodgers]

The "TREASURES" route for SOTS would seem to be the safest and most logical way for Disney to go. They could just tack on a Maltin disclaimer and simply produce it in the larger numbers demand would call for...

That way they'd have dealt with it in the same way they did the war stuff, and they'd have the built in defense that it was a "historical" or "collector's" release, and not the more "in your face/boastful" platinum-type thing.
uhmm,it would be great to have the 2005 wave of the treasures to have song of the south,the volume 2 of the symphonies and the donal cartoons and the true life adventures but i think that the song of the south dvd will be in stores probably in 2006 and that the fouth volume of this year will be the assorted treasures or the educational shorts one

[Larry T]

No way! If Song of the South was made today it would have to feature contemporary media stereotypes of black people. ......Finally it would need a stupid title which will make no one want to see it like "Brother Brer Rabbit: Back Home with a new Groove" and you have a modern Disney classic.Heh. Well said, Mac.

The implications of the original movie and your suggestion are the exact same, it's just that nowadays the public easily buys the stereotypes being shoved in their faces as long as they're deemed "hip" (ooooohhhh, I hate that word) and up-to-date masquerades of their former selves.

Disney's Song of the South handles the race issues by walking on eggshells and pretending they don't exist. ....After all, Uncle Remus and his relations live in abject poverty within sight of the grand mansion that is the white folks' residence. Yet Uncle Remus is unbelievably happy, and seems to cares more about the well-being of the white child than the children in his own family. Very much so. In addition, the movie makes a slight jab at the fact that the plantation workers are much happier and secure with what little they have, whereas the rich white owners are in a troubled, loveless relationship with a child suffering from the ripple effect of such. Even the grandmother is remote and somewhat cold when addressing the needs of the little boy. Although there are a couple of poor Anglo-saxon boys and their sister Ginnie living on the platation, it is clearly shown that their parents are comfortable between each other, even if their kids are misbehaved brats. Uncle Remus is actually a positive role model, substituting as a parent of sorts for Johnny.... there really is a lot of positive to be read from the movie if you can look behind the obvious.

[Bugsmer]

Excellent news! May the great day finally come! Coincidentally, someone else seems to have already released a "Song of the South" DVD.

https://www.splashmountaindvd.com/home.shtml

I think I'll wait for the official version.

[guy incognito]

Censorship is a funny thing when it comes to who controls the films and what they're censoring. There are people on both sides of the political spectrum who feel the need to censor films. It's just that which films they feel the need to censor differs...
Excellent post. Agreed, what's most offensive and censorable depends very much upon whose particular ox is being gored.

With America's center of political gravity shifting further and further to the Right in recent years, it's not unreasonable to assume that the earlier paradigm (sex and cussing bad, minority stereotypes A-OK) will eventually begin to reassert itself, at least to a degree.

[Cartman]

With America's center of political gravity shifting further and further to the Right in recent years, it's not unreasonable to assume that the earlier paradigm (sex and cussing bad, minority stereotypes A-OK) will eventually begin to reassert itself, at least to a degree.
Does this mean that we may get another Hayes Code?:p

[J Lee]

Does this mean that we may get another Hayes Code?:p
Well, you've got the FCC battle going on right now about sex and language on TV and radio, though admittedly, the goal posts in terms of what is and isn't over the line is much further down the field than even the mid-1960s, when the old production code bit the dust.

The thing is with the 1930s through 60s cartoons, everything was pretty much pre-censored, with one or two exceptions, like Clampett's rogue gag from "An Itch In Time" that snuck through. The rare problems that did show up and were changed, like in "Clean Pastures", were due to religious fears by the censors. They didn't have any problems with the cartoon's racial content, while today, the original religious inferences would get a pass, while it's the racial content that put the short on the "Censored 11" list.

(The changed ending to "Hare Ribbin' " is the only one I can think of that was modified during the classic era due to violence, but it's never been made clear if there was an objection from the Hayes Office to the ending, or if the problem was in-house, with Leon and/or J.L. objecting to their top cartoon star blowing another character's brains out right after they started charging theaters extra $$$ to run Bugs Bunny cartoons.)