{"id":1573,"date":"2007-05-12T12:15:00","date_gmt":"2007-05-12T12:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2007\/05\/more-ado-about-song-of-the-south\/"},"modified":"2007-05-12T12:15:00","modified_gmt":"2007-05-12T12:15:00","slug":"more-ado-about-song-of-the-south","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2007\/05\/more-ado-about-song-of-the-south.html","title":{"rendered":"More ado about Song of the South"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a>
Song of the South<\/a><\/i> (1946; my comments<\/a>) makes the news again \u2014 this time via an article in Maclean\u2019s<\/a><\/i> magazine:<\/span><\/p>\n

. . . The ironic thing is that keeping Song of the South<\/i> out of circulation may have caused Disney even more trouble. Because the company is so anxious to hide it, the legend has arisen that the film is some kind of white-supremacist movie, a suppressed example of Walt Disney\u2019s racism. Many articles about the film claim that Uncle Remus is a slave; if the movie were available, people could see for themselves that he isn\u2019t. Saturday Night Live<\/i>\u2018s Robert Smigel even did a parody of it where Uncle Remus sings, \u201cZip-a-dee doo-dah, Zip-a-dee-ay \/ Negroes are inferior in every way.<\/i>\u201d If people could see the movie, they\u2019d see its virtues as well as its flaws; because they can\u2019t see it, they\u2019ve inflated it into a negative legend on a par with Disney\u2019s support for fascism, or his frozen head.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, Disney executives have gotten worse publicity for not releasing Song of the South<\/i> than they would probably get for releasing it. After Iger\u2019s comments about the film at the 2006 meeting, there were stories in the newspapers and on the Internet that portrayed him as bowing to so-called political correctness. \u201cI think Iger was genuinely being sincere,\u201d Hill says. \u201cHe\u2019d looked at the film, and was trying to give a sense of \u2018this is the kinder, gentler, not-Michael Eisner version of the Walt Disney company. We\u2019re not going to be nakedly about profit.\u2019 \u201d But the story wasn\u2019t that Iger was kind and gentle; the story was that he\u2019d chickened out.<\/p>\n

Iger has charged one of his executives, Dick Cook, with the task of finding a way for the company to flip-flop on Song of the South<\/i>. Hill says Cook is considering putting the film into the Disney Treasures<\/a>, a series of box sets where some controversial short subjects have been released. The problem with that plan, though, is that the Disney Treasures is a limited-edition series that prints only 100,000 copies of each title, and the demand for Song of the South<\/i> is far bigger than that. \u201cThey need to make this as big a release as possible,\u201d Hill explains, \u201cbut they also need to assure the Wal-Marts and the Targets that no one\u2019s going to be protesting outside of their stores for selling Song of the South<\/i>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, despite Song of the South<\/i>\u2018s reputation as a \u201clost\u201d film, it\u2019s really only \u201clost\u201d in North America. Though Iger claimed that \u201cethics and integrity\u201d demand that the film be suppressed, it\u2019s on television in England every year, and several countries have been allowed to release it on home video. So how would Hill, for one, sum up the Disney company\u2019s attitude to Song of the South<\/i>? This way: \u201d \u2018We\u2019re keeping it on moratorium in the United States because this is where all the pains in the ass live.\u2019 \u201c<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

FWIW, I believe the image above is from a bootleg DVD that took its cover art from the British VHS edition<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Song of the South (1946; my comments) makes the news again \u2014 this time via an article in Maclean\u2019s magazine: . . . The ironic thing is that keeping Song of the South out of circulation may have caused Disney even more trouble. Because the company is so anxious to hide it, the legend has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1116,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nMore ado about Song of the South<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Song of the South (1946; my comments) makes the news again -- this time via an article in Maclean's magazine:. . . 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