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  • 1997-07-12 (xsd:date)
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  • Has 'Song of the South' Never Been Released on Home Video in the US? (en)
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  • Song of the South, a 1946 Disney film mixing animation and live action, was based on the Uncle Remus stories of Joel Chandler Harris. Harris, who had grown up in Georgia during the Civil War, spent a lifetime compiling and publishing the tales told to him by former slaves. These stories — many of which Harris learned from an old Black man he called Uncle George — were first published as columns in the Atlanta Constitution and were later syndicated nationwide and published in book form. Harris's Uncle Remus was a fictitious old slave and philosopher who told entertaining fables about Br'er Rabbit and other woodland creatures in a Southern Black dialect. Song of the South consists of animated sequences featuring Uncle Remus characters such as Br'er Rabbit, Br'er Fox, and Br'er Bear, framed by live-action portions in which Uncle Remus (portrayed by actor James Baskett, who won a special Oscar for his efforts) tells the stories to a little white boy upset over his parents' impending divorce. Although some Blacks have always been uneasy about the minstrel tradition of the Uncle Remus stories, the major objections to Song of the South have had to do with the live-action portions. The film has been criticized both for making slavery appear pleasant and pretending slavery didn't exist, even though the film (like Harris' original collection of stories) is set after the Civil War and the abolition of slavery. Still, as folklorist Patricia A. Turner wrote: The NAACP acknowledged the remarkable artistic merit of the film when it was first released, but decried the impression it gives of an idyllic master-slave relationship. Disney re-released the film in 1956 but then kept it out of circulation all throughout the turbulent civil rights era of the 1960s. In 1970 Disney announced in Variety that Song of the South had been permanently retired, but the studio eventually changed its mind and re-released the film theatrically in 1972, 1981, and again in 1986 for a fortieth anniversary celebration. Although the film has only been issued for the home video market in various European and Asian countries, Disney's reluctance to market it in the USA is not a reaction to an alleged threat by the NAACP to boycott Disney products. The NAACP fielded objections to Song of the South when it premiered, but it has no current position on the movie. (en)
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