Is Disney being a Dumbo when it comes to “Song of the South” ?

Jim Hill

14 years ago

You know what I find bizarre? A week ago today at the annual
meeting of shareholders, Bob Iger reaffirmed his commitment to keep “Song of
the South” in the Disney Vault. Saying flat-out that it wouldn’t be in the
best interests of the Company’s shareholders to make this Academy Award-winning
film available for purchase on Blu-ray and DVD because ” … it was made at a
different time.”

Image courtesy of Profiles in
History & Van Eaton Galleries

And – yet – when I popped “Tangled” into my computer
yesterday, what did I see? A sneak preview for the 70^th anniversary edition
of “Dumbo.”

So let me see if I understand this? A live-action feature
from 1946 featuring kindly old Uncle Remus gets shoved to the back of the
Disney Vault, while a feature-length cartoon from 1941 which features a character
called (I kid you not) Jim Crow …

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History & Van Eaton Galleries

… gets fully restored and released in high definition? Doesn’t
that seem a trifle hypocritical to you?

Okay. I get it. The 1930s & 1940s were a far less
politically correct time. Which is why the artists at Disney Studios felt it
was perfectly fine back then to dress the Big Bad Wolf as a stereotypical
Jewish peddler in the original version of “The Three Little Pigs.”

Or why – back when Disney was initially developing an
animated version of “Peter Pan” back in the late 1930s – the Studio’s storymen
thought it would be a scream if Captain Hook have a Chinese cook working for
him that had big buck teeth, squinty eyes and a long pigtail.

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History & Van Eaton Galleries

To give the artists & animators at Disney some credit,
when the Studio finally released its animated version of “Peter Pan” to
theaters in February of 1953, that Chinese Cook character was nowhere to be
seen. On the other hand, Native Americans still get steamed whenever they see
this film’s “What Makes the Red Man Red?” sequence.

And as the 1950s gave way to the 1960s, Disney did become somewhat more enlightened when it came to issues of race and stereotyping. Which
is why the Studio began doing things like trimming “Fantasia” ‘s Beethoven’s
Pastoral Symphony sequence. So that that pair of Nubian Zebra girls …

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History & Van Eaton Galleries

… who attended to Bacchus wouldn’t be quite so obvious …

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History & Van Eaton Galleries

… while poor little Sunflower, the servant centaurette who attended to all
of the other “ladies” in her herd, wound up being cut out of this motion picture entirely.

Mind you, one might argue that – these days – the pendulum has
swung too far in the opposite direction. I can remember
talking with Disney animators back in the early 1990s while they were working
on “Pocahontas” …

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History & Van Eaton Galleries

… And these guys complained to me about all of the notes that they were getting from Studio execs about how the Native Americans in this movie
had to be depicted as being good & kind & noble & handsome. With the end result being that these executives’ good intentions basically sucked any sense of spontaneous fun & humor out of this animated feature.

But at least there were Native Americans in “Pocahontas.”
Contrast that with Disney’s “Tarzan” ..

… where you get to see Tarzan, Jane, the great white hunter
Clayton, kindly old Professor Porter, gorillas, elephants, baboons, birds and
jaguars … But not a single member of Africa’s indigenous people.

Okay. I know. The easiest way to avoid offending someone is
by doing nothing. Or – in the case of long-ago offenses – by just pretending that
something potentially offensive or controversial never actually happened. Like – say —
that handful of early Mickey Mouse cartoons where Disney’s corporate symbol
performed in blackface.

Image courtesy of Profiles in
History
& Van Eaton Galleries

But then the question becomes where do you draw the line? Do
you do what Disney did in the 1940s (which is actually go back in and reanimate
the Jewish peddler scene in “The Three Little Pigs” so that this scene in that
short is no longer so offensive) …

… every time the Studio gets an angry letter from someone
who’s upset about the way their particular religious or ethnic group was depicted in a
Disney movie, short or TV show? If that were really the case, the Italian
American Anti-Defamation League would have had Stromboli …

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History & Van Eaton Galleries

… removed from “Pinocchio” decades ago?

But how do you folks feel about what Walt Disney Studios is up
to these days? Does it bother you that Bre’er Rabbit remains tied up in
the Disney Vault …

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History & Van Eaton Galleries

… while Jim Crow and his feathered friends from “Dumbo”
continue to fly free?

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History & Van Eaton Galleries

If you do have an issue with this somewhat hypocritical
situation, what would you like Disney to do differently with its library of
films?

FYI: Many of the pieces of animation art that were used to
illustrate today’s article are actually items that will be up for bid in the
auction that Profiles in History and Van Eaton Galleries will be holding in May.
To learn more about this once-in-a-lifetime event, please click on this link.

Image courtesy of Profiles in
History
& Van Eaton Galleries

Your thoughts?