"SONG OF THE SOUTH"........THE SKELETON IN DISNEY'S CLOSET........

Song Of The South (1946)     It all comes down to one crucial question........

               Repress it?   Or make it freely available to all?

               For you visitors to the BQ from Europe and Asia, we know this isn't an issue.......copies of the film have been available for decades.

                Our question only concerns the U.S., where Disney has kept this film, Walt Disney's first attempt at a live action feature, locked up tightly out of circulation since the early 1970's

                  And in today's increasingly incendiary racial climate, the chances of the studio putting the film on DVD and Blu-Ray remain..........let's not kid around......non-existent.

                  Next big question........how offensive is it?

                  Taken in the context of the era in which it was produced, it was never out to cause intentional harm.   Unlike other studio chiefs, Walt Disney wouldn't dream of courting controversy..........he was only out to warm hearts into tears not stir souls into anger.....

                    Therefore his depiction of Southern society during post Civil War Reconstruction appeared every bit as childlike as the film's three animated sequences.  The black sharecroppers spend all their time singing while they work, while the animators rendered the three principal cartoon creatures  to mimic the raucous black stereotypes of the era's Hollywood films.......(which they'd already done five years earlier in 1941, with "Dumbo"s wisecracking crows...)

                    Watching it again in 2019.........no question, it's painfully patronizing, condescending and a ludicrously caricatured portrait of American history's most tormented time and place........

                      Then again, so is "Gone With The Wind", easily available on disc and shown regularly on Turner Classic Movies year after year....

                      Then again, prominent filmmakers continued to dabble in "Song Of The South"-like sequences.......some 20 years after the film's release, Otto Preminger still showed poverty-stricken Southern blacks gatherin' 'round to sing in "Hurry Sundown"......(for which he earned the same shame and derision heaped on "Song Of The South")

                      The difference, of course, comes down to ownership......."Song Of The South" remains forever and always a part of the Disney canon and legacy......and stands as an embarrassment for the world's most prominent purveyor of family-oriented entertainment.

                      Yet it's impossible to deny the exquisite artistry and, for the time, cutting edge live action/animation technology that went into the making of the film.  You can ridicule James Baskett's Uncle Remus for its Uncle Tom-ishness.........but it's as talented a musical performance as anything in an MGM musical......and earned Baskett an honorary Academy Award, .

                        So where do we stand? 

                        We agree with Whoopi Goldberg, who weighed in on this very topic during a trip to Disneyland.....

                       Let "Song Of The South" be seen.......we suggest a presentation similar to a Criterion Collections release......with loads of extra commentary to put the film in both current and historical  perspective.......price it at like a Criterion at 40 dollars or more and clearly mark it for adult purchase only.  Just one suggestion........(we're open to any others....)

                        It seems foolish to us for Disney to continue to allow this film viewable only in bootleg, unauthorized copies, rather than in the pristine condition its parent company could give it.

                         And we're damned if we know how to properly rate this film........so we'll split  the rating into  the two separate perceptions of it.......for its unreal portrait of history and African Americans, Zero Stars (0).....for an example of slick Disney craftsmanship at its finest 3 stars (***).