Song of the South to DVD?

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http://www.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/Movies/03/28/film.songofthesouth.ap/index.html

― Oilyrags, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 19:26 (nineteen years ago)

The best thing is the possibility of direct to video sequels.

― Oilyrags, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 19:27 (nineteen years ago)

that movie sucks

― Mr. Que, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 19:28 (nineteen years ago)

wow.

I once had the unenviable task of describing this movie to some black folks who had never seen or heard of it.

― Shakey Mo Collier, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 19:29 (nineteen years ago)

The best thing is the possibility of direct to video sequels.

Samuel Jackson as pissed-off Uncle Remus?

― Dr Morbius, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 19:31 (nineteen years ago)

what planet did that happen on?

― and what, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 19:31 (nineteen years ago)

xp w/ unfunny morbz

― and what, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 19:32 (nineteen years ago)

my oh my

― Dr Morbius, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 19:33 (nineteen years ago)

the fantastical planet of Oakland, CA.

― Shakey Mo Collier, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 19:36 (nineteen years ago)

haha I've never actually seen this before:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttlJYapP9Nk

― Curt1s Stephens, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 19:39 (nineteen years ago)

yeah, imagine some ppl not having heard of a 60-year-old movie that hasn't been revived in about 30 years.

― Dr Morbius, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 19:39 (nineteen years ago)

I don't know anything about this movie. At all.

― nickalicious, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 19:48 (nineteen years ago)

I decided at the last second not to post "DUR HUR" at the end of that, now I wish I had left it.

― nickalicious, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 19:48 (nineteen years ago)

didn't Driscoll turn into a junkie, die young, etc.?

― Shakey Mo Collier, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 19:50 (nineteen years ago)

It's too bad YouTube doesn't have this 1976 SNL sketch.

― Dr Morbius, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 19:50 (nineteen years ago)

[read the link]

...and now I know.

― nickalicious, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 19:51 (nineteen years ago)

haha I'm not gonna click on that and just assume it's the famous Richard Prior/Chevy Chase job interview.

― nickalicious, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 19:51 (nineteen years ago)

I saw this movie when I was a kid and the part where the little boy gets gored by a bull gave me nightmares for years. In retrospect I feel like I made that part up, but I think it's actually in the movie. It's part of the live-action sequences, not the Brer Rabbit crap.

― La Lechera, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 19:53 (nineteen years ago)

I had the LP for this movie as a child. It is weird.

― Shakey Mo Collier, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 19:54 (nineteen years ago)

no, nklsh, it's Michael O'Donoghue.

I've never seen SOTS.

― Dr Morbius, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 19:55 (nineteen years ago)

Yeah, i had the disney storybook brer rabbit/brer fox 7" thing.

Inspired the great scene from Fletch Lives:

http://www.destroyhimmyrobots.com/MySpace/Fletch%20Lives.jpg

Where his wife's divorce lawyer is shining his shoes, and the other employees of the newspaper are field slaves

― kingfish, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 19:59 (nineteen years ago)

T/S Unreleased Instances of Classic Disney Racism: Song of the South vs. excised "negro centaur" sequences from Fantasia

― Shakey Mo Collier, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 20:00 (nineteen years ago)

I loved this movie as a kid and my Mom used to sing Zip-a-dee-doo-dah to me all the time. That just feels so wrong thinking about it now.

― ENBB, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 20:00 (nineteen years ago)

I must have seen this in the '86 release, when I was 6. I didn't think I had, but it all sounds vaguely familiar.

― marmotwolof, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 20:00 (nineteen years ago)

Phil Spector version of Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah is fucking killer though.

― Shakey Mo Collier, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 20:02 (nineteen years ago)

I saw it once as a kid, but I also had the record/storybook and my GPs were up on Uncle Remus in general, so it's part of the ole folk tale pantheon in my brain, at least the Brer Rabbit bits.

― sexyDancer, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 20:03 (nineteen years ago)

...as is Sun Ra's.

― Oilyrags, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 20:03 (nineteen years ago)

ooh! I'll have to hunt that down. Sun Ra is my hero.

― Shakey Mo Collier, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 20:06 (nineteen years ago)

Yeah, but I think don't think she knew either of those versions.

― ENBB, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 20:07 (nineteen years ago)

I think I found the Sun Ra Disney tribute at either Nothing Is or Church Number Nine.

― Oilyrags, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 20:09 (nineteen years ago)

http://lounge.ongen.net/album/20060428/al0000079146_large.jpg

― sexyDancer, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 20:24 (nineteen years ago)

That's the one.

― Oilyrags, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 20:25 (nineteen years ago)

Snow White replaced by Black Space

― sexyDancer, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 20:26 (nineteen years ago)

of course.

― Shakey Mo Collier, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 20:27 (nineteen years ago)

They used to show clips from this on britishes tv back in the seventies, maybe the early eighties. Don't remember much about it, except the tunes were good, and I thought br'er rabbit was very annoying. I always wanted br'er fox to eat him (this may be my memories of the stories getting mixed up, I'm sure they only ever showed the "zip-a-dee-doo-dah" bit in reality, it was like 25 years ago, or maybe more) Vaguely curious to see it, I suppose, given the controversy I read about from time to time. It's ongoing non-availability is one of those things that conservative shitheads hold up as an example of supposed "liberal media bias" and their ongoing victim status in today's culture, I believe? I can think of quite a few films unavailable on DVD that I'd want to see before this, personally, most of them silents or early talkies.

A good few years ago, perhaps in the late eighties/early nineties, a friend of mine bought a VHS cassette of thirties colour cartoon shorts, featuring some, er, "very well known characters" (not diznee ones, the other ones) - back then, before the copyright extension act (or w/e it was called) they were briefly in the public domain. A small number of them were quite shockingly racist, I can still remember watching the tape with him, our jaws dropped, we were like "holy fuck!" Really, it's not that long ago that such shit was considered quite acceptable & no big deal, I suppose.

― Pashmina, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 20:54 (nineteen years ago)

The best thing is the possibility of direct to video sequels.

Oilyrags on Wednesday, 28 March 2007 19:27 (1 hour ago)

Like those "aladdin 2" or "Tarzan 2" things you see advertised at the beginning of Pixar DVDs? Haha, god, I can imagine them actually doing that as well! Dig the hole a little deeper.

― Pashmina, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 20:56 (nineteen years ago)

"Our concern was that a film that was made so many decades ago being brought out today perhaps could be either misinterpreted or that it would be somewhat challenging in terms of providing the appropriate context."

"misinterpreted"----hahahahahahahahaha

― Abbott, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 20:59 (nineteen years ago)

[qoute]Our concern was that a film that was made so many decades ago being brought out today perhaps could be either misinterpreted or that it would be somewhat challenging in terms of providing the appropriate context."[/quote]

So no big deal either way? uh wtf?

― Abbott, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 21:00 (nineteen years ago)

Somehow I saw this in a theatre in Wyoming at age five!

In first grade, our teacher filmed our class singing some songs he taught us to mail to Gulf War soldiers for a cheer-up. One of the songs was "Zipahdedoodah."

My aunt has a dog named Tarbaby. :{

― Abbott, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 21:02 (nineteen years ago)

cartoons and comic strips from the first half of this century are LOADED with racism. In fact its kinda hard to find anything from the period that doesn't reflect this stuff.

Really racial stereotypes being considered morally objectionable is a fairly recent development.

― Shakey Mo Collier, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 21:03 (nineteen years ago)

haha first half of LAST century

― Shakey Mo Collier, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 21:03 (nineteen years ago)

The unabridged version will show Uncle Remus givin' it to Snow White up the ass.

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 21:13 (nineteen years ago)

When I was a kid I remember being mad at my mom for not allowing me to watch this, so I've still never seen it. I'm probably not missing much.

― Nicole, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 21:23 (nineteen years ago)

Samuel Jackson as pissed-off Uncle Remus?

I WANT THESE MOTHERFUCKIN BLUEBIRDS OFF MY MOTHERFUCKING SHOULDER!

― kenan, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 21:25 (nineteen years ago)

My aunt has a dog named Tarbaby

WAU

― HI DERE, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 21:26 (nineteen years ago)

"I AIN'T YOUR MOTHAFUCKIN BRE'R BRO!"

― Shakey Mo Collier, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 21:26 (nineteen years ago)

I saw this on what I think was the last official rerelease in the theaters back in 1980. Sketchy, to say the least.

― Ned Raggett, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 21:27 (nineteen years ago)

hahaha kenana

― nickalicious, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 21:27 (nineteen years ago)

argh I am so angry about not being able to use the word tarbaby anymore because racists had to go and ruin it

― bernard snowy, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 21:27 (nineteen years ago)

"kenana" WAU

― HI DERE, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 21:28 (nineteen years ago)

Skipping 22 messages at this point... Click here if you want to load them all.

wtf nu-ilx

― marmotwolof, Thursday, 29 March 2007 01:52 (nineteen years ago)

In YOUR heathen state, maybe. Out here Splash Mountain would not qualify as the premiere attraction by any stretch of the imagination.

Yes, but in WDW we "honor the vision of Walter Elias Disney."

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Thursday, 29 March 2007 03:06 (nineteen years ago)

"To plant an amusement park in a humid swamp!"

― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 29 March 2007 03:08 (nineteen years ago)

Yes, but in WDW we "honor the vision of Walter Elias Disney."

oh yeah?

― walterkranz, Thursday, 29 March 2007 03:32 (nineteen years ago)

Okay, so I just downloaded and watched this again for the first time in 27 years. Perhaps it's because I was expecting to be so offended by the subtle racism and underlying context that I didn't pick up on when I was 6, but I found it barely seems racist at all. Every single black character in the movie is not only in possession of a quiet kind of nobility, but they're all respected and treated without any real classist or racist lean on the part of any white characters in the film. Remus is the center around which all good things revolve.

The worst part of the film was how much of a raging bitch Johnny's mom was. If anything, there's a sick kind of anti-feminism at work here. Sort of an "If I don't have my man, I'm just gonna fall to pieces and take it out on everyone around me" attitude. Of course, that kind of thing's not out of the ordinary at all for most films made in the first three-quarters of the 20th century either.

― Johnny Fever, Thursday, 29 March 2007 08:27 (nineteen years ago)

* The apocryphal tale about EPCOT's subterranean passageways being designed to accommodate a cult of Hindu vampires (at John Hench's request) has been disproven.

― Frogman Henry, Thursday, 29 March 2007 08:39 (nineteen years ago)

i'm not sure why song of the south being rereleased is a big deal in a country where GONE WITH THE WIND got voted the fourth best movie ever.

― J.D., Thursday, 29 March 2007 09:47 (nineteen years ago)

I read about this on John K's blog where he refers to it regularly and creepily insists that it's the greatest cartoon ever made.

haha that's how i found out about it too! john k's followers are kind of creepy. he's like the ayn rand of cartoons, only with actual talent.

the best ever semi-banned cartoon = DER FUEHRER'S FACE, the legendary disney cartoon where donald duck goes to nazi germany. it won an oscar and disney still wouldn't show it for forty years! you can probably still find it on youtube.

― J.D., Thursday, 29 March 2007 09:55 (nineteen years ago)

>> yeah, imagine some ppl not having heard of a 60-year-old movie that hasn't been revived in about 30 years.

> They used to show clips from this on britishes tv back in the seventies, maybe the early eighties.

it's been on english tv sometime since christmas. caught the start and ended up watching all of it - had seen it in cinema when i was young and had some disney soundtracks lp (mono iirc) with all the songs on. and what johnny fever says basically.

― koogs, Thursday, 29 March 2007 11:04 (nineteen years ago)

a big deal in a country where GONE WITH THE WIND got voted the fourth best movie ever.

otfm. I guess it's cuz it's "a kids' movie," while adult fans of GWTW can presumably recognize it as a racist melodrama.

The really cringey Looney Tunes I recall is "Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips."

Some friends and I watch old (silent to early '50s) comedy shorts a few times a year, so we're used to seeing casual racism in that stuff. On being asked to program a series of short comedies at a NYC museum, one of our group found that some members of the audience definitely didn't take a scholar's interest in blackface minstrelsy...

― Dr Morbius, Thursday, 29 March 2007 13:15 (nineteen years ago)

five months pass...

"wait a minute, wait a minute, you ain't heard nothing yet":

http://www.dvdactive.com/news/releases/the-jazz-singer3.html

― Pashmina, Friday, 31 August 2007 15:42 (eighteen years ago)

Um, no-one's mentioned Enid Blyton wrt "Brer Rabbit" etc?

― Mark G, Friday, 31 August 2007 15:49 (eighteen years ago)

now that movie sucks

― Eric H., Friday, 31 August 2007 15:50 (eighteen years ago)

tastefully blacked-out black-up

― sexyDancer, Friday, 31 August 2007 15:51 (eighteen years ago)

I saw it on TV years ago, and I agree that it's a pretty ropey film, even w/o taking into account the embarrasing blackface minstrel act thing. It's a pity the first talkie wasn't, like, a Murnau film or a Douglas Fairbanks swashbuckler or something. Oh well.

The extras on disc 2 and 3 are a big fat juicy carrot dangling in front of me, though, damn. Especially the surviving segment from "Gold Diggers of Broadway", the tunes in that are fucking awesome.

I wonder how this will do when it comes out, given that it's essentially a silent film with a few talkie bits and some songs in it. And, not a very good silent film. And, it has all these embarrasing blackface bits in it. I don't think that much is known about it these days other than "it was the first" (even if only kind of) unless yr an old fart like me?

― Pashmina, Friday, 31 August 2007 16:08 (eighteen years ago)

Since it got mentioned in passing a while back, Song of the South / Splash Mountain ride at Disneyland is on fucking crazy drugs. Fact that all the creepy ass puppet monsters are covered in grimy spider dust only ups the ante.

Zip-a-dee-do-dah is a GREAT song. Context be damned. The song stands alone.

Had an Uncle Remus book as a kid (Little Black Sambo, too). Loved it, and especially loved the "tar baby" story. Was years before I found out that the phrase might have other meanings. Makes me wonder what was up with my parents.

― Bob Standard, Friday, 31 August 2007 16:35 (eighteen years ago)

I have to say, that first "Talky" bit in the JazzSinger film is pretty awesome, in a "this is what you can do with it", as opposed to a "one man speech to camera" which is what you might have expected the first talking picture to be.

I haven't seen the rest however.

― Mark G, Friday, 31 August 2007 16:37 (eighteen years ago)

T/S Unreleased Instances of Classic Disney Racism: Song of the South vs. excised "negro centaur" sequences from Fantasia
-- Shakey Mo Collier, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 20:00 (5 months ago)

said scenes are here if u scroll down:

http://disneydiaries.blogspot.com/

― pisces, Saturday, 1 September 2007 11:35 (eighteen years ago)

Mark G otm. I always thought so too.

― pisces, Saturday, 1 September 2007 12:00 (eighteen years ago)

maybe it will turn out that the film is not actually racist after all, and that its suppression really is an example of political correctness gone mad.

― The Real Dirty Vicar, Saturday, 1 September 2007 13:24 (eighteen years ago)

I thought it was "surpressed" because the rest of it isn't actually that good!

― Mark G, Saturday, 1 September 2007 18:31 (eighteen years ago)

My dad asked me to find a bootleg DVD of this for him last year. The only thing I found was a Japanese release, so maybe I'll Amazend him this when it's out.

― libcrypt, Saturday, 1 September 2007 20:04 (eighteen years ago)

For what it's worth, my dad thinks that the reason this film was, er, "blackballed" is only because of the story of the tar baby.

― libcrypt, Saturday, 1 September 2007 20:10 (eighteen years ago)

My aunt named her little black Shih Tzu Tarbaby. :(

― Abbott, Saturday, 1 September 2007 20:14 (eighteen years ago)

Sorry guys, explain me why the tar baby story is racist again. I read the story in some book when I was small, and it was yet another Brer Rabbit pwns Brer Fox story.

― The Real Dirty Vicar, Saturday, 1 September 2007 22:19 (eighteen years ago)

The tar baby is black and undesirable, I guess.

― libcrypt, Saturday, 1 September 2007 22:24 (eighteen years ago)

I remember seeing ALL those Bugs Bunny cartoons that had blackface as a kid, either on the Bugs Bunny & Tweety Show, or the Nickelodeon Looney Tunes show, but most likely on those "Bugs and Elmer part 279" kind of VHS tapes they had for very cheap. I was talking to a friend about this the other day, how I saw them so many times that back then I thought Warner Bros., when they couldn't think of an ending, just decided to have Bugs and some humans, all in blackface, pop up with banjos and sing "Mammy."

― Abbott, Saturday, 1 September 2007 22:39 (eighteen years ago)

I've seen plenty of Popeye like that, but not much Bugs.

― libcrypt, Saturday, 1 September 2007 23:29 (eighteen years ago)

The tarbaby STORY is not racist. The fact that bigots call black people tarbabies is racist.

― Oilyrags, Sunday, 2 September 2007 02:39 (eighteen years ago)

What about the reference to certain political scandals as "tar babies"?

― libcrypt, Sunday, 2 September 2007 02:48 (eighteen years ago)

DV: the b'rer rabbit stories were written by "uncle remus," who was really joel chandler harris, a white dude who'd traveled through the south collecting black folktales. the original stories are written in heavy dialect (and very hard-going, IMO), but their actual content as far as i can recall isn't racist at all. tho it weirds me out that people call it the "tar baby" story, since what makes it memorable is the "briar patch" bit.

― J.D., Sunday, 2 September 2007 05:03 (eighteen years ago)

it took me forever to figure out that "b'rer rabbit" et al is just a variation on "brother rabbit."

― J.D., Sunday, 2 September 2007 05:04 (eighteen years ago)

http://www.sacred-texts.com/afr/jas/jas021.htm

― libcrypt, Sunday, 2 September 2007 18:53 (eighteen years ago)

I thought the b'rer was supposed to be like "briar" because of all the briar patches.

― Abbott, Sunday, 2 September 2007 19:02 (eighteen years ago)

They should make a double DVD release of Song of the Sounth and this:

http://www.ralphbakshi.com/images/coonskin.jpg

― Abbott, Sunday, 2 September 2007 19:04 (eighteen years ago)

TS: "bro rabbit" vs. "bro rape".

― libcrypt, Sunday, 2 September 2007 21:45 (eighteen years ago)

Good ol' USA American English Speaking DVD + racism tar baby scenes == ordered.

― libcrypt, Sunday, 2 September 2007 21:55 (eighteen years ago)

I have this movie on my hard drive, dl'ed from K4ragarga. It's not as hideously offensive as I'd feared. It deals in black stereotypes, true, but if you remember the year it came out, it still seems very good-hearted and well-intentioned. Just a little misguided.

And really, that Uncle Remus sho can tell a story.

― kenan, Sunday, 2 September 2007 22:00 (eighteen years ago)

I've been unable to track down an online copy of Alice Walker's, Uncle Remus, No Friend of Mine to see where she believes the line between authentic slave folktale and exploitative white profiteer lies, or if those categories even rightfully exist. Anyone with access to such a thing is welcome to get in touch with me.

― libcrypt, Monday, 3 September 2007 00:21 (eighteen years ago)

I will look at the crazy-ass used book store here. I am always finding things I thought never might actually exist.

― Abbott, Monday, 3 September 2007 00:36 (eighteen years ago)

The Enid Blyton storybook I use to tell the kids stories at night (I extemporise a fair bit, to general laffing), have loads of Brer Fox/Rabbit/etc stories in.

― Mark G, Monday, 3 September 2007 09:35 (eighteen years ago)

my whole elementary school saw this one day; everybody went to the gym, they turned the lights off and they actually had a movie projector and we saw the whole thing. i had NO idea it was so old!!!

the phrase and/or concept of a "tar baby" isn't racist, it's a frickin metaphor

― Tracer Hand, Monday, 3 September 2007 10:52 (eighteen years ago)

to what extent does this film stereotype white southerners?

― The Real Dirty Vicar, Monday, 3 September 2007 12:38 (eighteen years ago)

Marshmallow babies.

― aldo, Monday, 3 September 2007 12:43 (eighteen years ago)

Just got the DVD. It's from Taiwan, and the case is probably the foulest chemical-smelling thing I've whiffed in years. I was kinda worried at first that I was inhaling a big gulp of killer fumes, but I seem to be alive, several days later. It's watchable, although the transfer isn't as hi-quality as it could be.

― libcrypt, Wednesday, 12 September 2007 19:47 (eighteen years ago)

three years pass...

Pretty Good, Sure As You're Born

― Gukbe, Sunday, 21 November 2010 17:24 (fifteen years ago)

i got a bootleg dvd vers ^_______^

― JIMMY MOD THE SACK MASTER (Jimmy The Mod Awaits The Return Of His Beloved), Sunday, 21 November 2010 17:31 (fifteen years ago)

OHHH!

― kind of shrill and very self-righteous (Dr Morbius), Sunday, 21 November 2010 17:33 (fifteen years ago)

^________^

― JIMMY MOD THE SACK MASTER (Jimmy The Mod Awaits The Return Of His Beloved), Sunday, 21 November 2010 17:52 (fifteen years ago)

one year passes...

Just saw this for the first time in decades. I'm pretty sure I saw the 1986 re-release as a 4 year old, maybe as a school thing alongside a trip to the Atlanta Cyclorama. The Tar Baby thing seemed icky for a minute or two but that's really about it. The most damning thing that could be said about this is that it's an idealistic view of racial relations. But yeah it also features talking animals.

― Emperor Cos Dashit (Adam Bruneau), Saturday, 10 March 2012 17:51 (fourteen years ago)

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