The culture of Uncle Remus, in which those who survived deferred, can well be seen as genius - the development and implementation of linguistic and behavioral codes by which to stay alive.
A slave culture had to do that. Uncle Remus' tradition can be seen as an example of the Stockholm syndrome. Get past the silly URL here and read about Stockholm Syndrome at //www.sniggle.net/stock.php.
The syndrome involves captives trying to please their captors, and very soon upon realizing they cannot escape, are isolated, threatened with death, yet the captors show some acts of kindness. That concept, the universal human one where the relationship is powerless vs. powerful, takes the relationship of Remus with Aunt Sally and others from the plantation into a different realm.
This purpose, using deference to defuse, is suggested on the blurb on the back cover, the 1982 Penguin Classics edition of "Uncle Remus, His Tales and Sayings" ties Uncle Remus' characters with history and human need:
1. Uncle Remus is described as "the docile and grandfatherly ex-slave storyteller," the "literary creation" of Joel Chandler Harris that "reassured white readers during the tense and tentative reconstruction."
2. Brer Rabbit is seen as a "mainstay of black folklore long before Joel Chandler Harris heard of him," "whose cunning and revolutionary antics symbolically inverted the master-slave relationship and satisfied the deep human needs of a captive people." Robert Hemenway wrote a fine introduction to that edition, see ://books.google.com/books
How people act in when one must defer, or possibly die, is discussed in "Unequal Power Relationships." See //serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/neuro/neuro04/web1/kkrasnec.html. It has been connected to slavery, abusive spousal or other interpersonal relationships, prisoners of war. Many captives soon seek to please the captor when the captor offers little kindnesses, and that syndrome recognized as a universal survival technique for the captive.
In Stockholm, people were held for 5 days in a Swedish bank heist - interesting study. The syndrome presented after only a few days of the captivity. Imagine the effect when it goes on for centuries. Schools, teach Remus with dignity and history in mind. The submissive behavior seen in Uncle Remus is not inferiority but brilliant modes of survival.
Here is an additional site on it, from a counseling perspective this time - at //counsellingresource.com/quizzes/stockholm/index.html. Other sites: //www.nurturingpotential.net/Issue13/Stockholm.htm; narrative race-relations personal blog-type article at //hometown.aol.com/jemiltd/myhomepage/index.html.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Sources of Tales Worldwide - Remus and Roman de Reynard
Sources of heritage. Often elsewhere.
Some information and research topics are available only to some institutions or other entities that require subscriptions, payments, all that. Still, some of those do relax a little and make bits open to the rest of us who are tight-fisted.
Roman de Renard or Roman de Renart.
Here is a scholarly source that traces Uncle Remus tales and themes back to France's 11th century Roman de Renard, the Story of the Fox - at JSTOR's ://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0030-8129(1892)7%3Cxxxix%3ATTOURT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-2. It even (for once) offers a free teaser as to content - actual pages from an early work from 1892. There was no "France" then, but the area is there.
This is not a critique or summary of that research, because that takes full access to this JSTOR - the point is only that human beings find certain themes to be of interest, develop tales about them, repeat them and they go miles and miles and miles.
Other sources trace the stories to Africa - the theory holds. Human beings find certain themes to be of interest, develop tales about them, repeat them, and they go miles and miles and miles.
THE FRANCE CONNECTION. The Roman de Renart dates from 12th or 13th Century France, a collection of tales, often rowdy, or bawdy, with a trickster at the focal point. If you were in college, we would find this source for a summary - at //www.enotes.com/classical-medieval-criticism/roman-de-renart; then party on and spit it back on an exam as though we figured it out ourselves. Life.
Tricksters. In any culture. Find more medieval French ones at ://www.utm.edu/staff/globeg/narrat.shtml. Click on the Fox.
Sometime we will get on Aesop and what role the fox plays in the fables. This is great stuff. We think we are all so different, but we ain't. From ancient Greece to reconstruction South. People, just getting along against the strong. Find a 1930's film on the Fox at ://www.imdb.com/title/tt0021309/.
The trickster. Everybody watch out.
Some information and research topics are available only to some institutions or other entities that require subscriptions, payments, all that. Still, some of those do relax a little and make bits open to the rest of us who are tight-fisted.
Roman de Renard or Roman de Renart.
Here is a scholarly source that traces Uncle Remus tales and themes back to France's 11th century Roman de Renard, the Story of the Fox - at JSTOR's ://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0030-8129(1892)7%3Cxxxix%3ATTOURT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-2. It even (for once) offers a free teaser as to content - actual pages from an early work from 1892. There was no "France" then, but the area is there.
This is not a critique or summary of that research, because that takes full access to this JSTOR - the point is only that human beings find certain themes to be of interest, develop tales about them, repeat them and they go miles and miles and miles.
Other sources trace the stories to Africa - the theory holds. Human beings find certain themes to be of interest, develop tales about them, repeat them, and they go miles and miles and miles.
THE FRANCE CONNECTION. The Roman de Renart dates from 12th or 13th Century France, a collection of tales, often rowdy, or bawdy, with a trickster at the focal point. If you were in college, we would find this source for a summary - at //www.enotes.com/classical-medieval-criticism/roman-de-renart; then party on and spit it back on an exam as though we figured it out ourselves. Life.
Tricksters. In any culture. Find more medieval French ones at ://www.utm.edu/staff/globeg/narrat.shtml. Click on the Fox.
Sometime we will get on Aesop and what role the fox plays in the fables. This is great stuff. We think we are all so different, but we ain't. From ancient Greece to reconstruction South. People, just getting along against the strong. Find a 1930's film on the Fox at ://www.imdb.com/title/tt0021309/.
The trickster. Everybody watch out.
Redacting, diluting in the Retelling. Miss Meadows and the Gals, and More.
Equivocation, and the weapon of those who have an agenda: The redaction pen.When matters get complicated, ignore some things. Cross it out. Pretend it was never there. Redact. Obscure or remove. See ://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/redact.
Look at Uncle Remus. And Miss Meadows and the Gals.
Are there parts of the Uncle Remus Tales and Stories that could possibly offend. Just look at all these branches. And even if so, why impose a literary pruning just because someone's worldview later is different from what was life's components before. Is not variety and spontaneity to be valued over forced shapes; and much can be presented as history, the period. To add to understanding.
"This means that??" You decide.
Uncle Remus. Read Uncle Remus' tales closely. A starting point could be our translations, done for recreational purposes and not scholarly, at see Uncle Remus Tales - Translations. Focusing on each image as the story proceeds leads to areas just under the surface that speak loudly, but only once noticed.
Here, look at the tale, Brer Rabbit Grossly Deceives Brer Fox - at Translation and notes: "Brer Rabbit Grossly Deceives Brer Fox". There are several images - described in footnotes at that site, here as translated -
- The Arabian Nights -"One evening when the little boy, whose nights with Uncle Remus were as entertaining as those Arabian ones of blessed memory...." That opens the story. This site, at //www.al-bab.com/arab/literature/nights.htm, says that some parts of the 1001 Nights are not suitable for children because of X content, and points out the reaction of later cultures - redaction, and change of the original to meet later sensibilities.
- A little song-ditty about "Ole Milly H'ar Wat you doin' dar, Settin' in de corner Smokin' yo' cigyar?"
- Miss Meadows and the gals - who was she? asks the little boy. Oh, don't ask me, says Remus. She and the gals were just in the story as it was given to me. Note that Brer Rabbit and Brer Fox pay them visits; and Miss Meadows and the gals have parties.
- When Brer Rabbit manipulates Brer Fox into letting him ride Brer Fox to Miss Meadows's party, he first adjusts the stirrup, and the action continues. Then, what you doin' now, asks Brer Fox who can't see because he has on a blind bridle. Brer Rabbit: "Pullin' down my pants, Brer Fox," says he.
- Tell me more, says the little boy when the story winds down. Wouldn't do, says Uncle Remus, to "give out too much cuff for to cut one pair pants."
This post suggests that there is a value to talking around ideas, and the original equivocations should stand without forcing anything further. The non-frontal approach. Let those with ears hear, and eyes see, etc. When done skillfully, a story can speak on many levels, and all is eminently deniable if somebody else sees it differently, because of the splendid equivocation in the first place. The value is also that the idea can get across without being lopped off immediately. Equivocation at its finest. Equivocation = safety, until discovered or interpreted by a Lopper.
Redactions. The lopping off. Happens all the time. Later generations of the earliest versions of fairy tales and fantasy tales often zap out explicit or violent acts incompatible with a current culture's ideas of what is proper. That kills the history and the original culture, but is done anyway if a perceived anathema is revealed - see ://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anathema. Equivocation and its rainbow and layers of meaning - room for all. Admit anyone's interpretation - that's what it's for. Why not let the discussion, the era, the untrimmed tale waft on.
We know the Walt Disney approach - make money off everything in sight and shape the culture. Prune out all that does not fit the desired message, which may well be far removed from the actual. See post 10/22/07 here. Joy of Equivocating - Uncle Remus, Toxic Disney.
The real community here. Uncle Remus. Later vaudeville and other caricatures of former slaves show them as persons to be ridiculed. See ://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackface. Uncle Remus here, an individual clearly respected for and trusted in his role at Aunt Sally's, is instead a full, real person. Remus may even know the "Arabian ones of blessed memory;" they are part of a large oral tradition of stories, seeping around the globe.
Here is the irony. We do not. Who can get back to those original texts for us, long redacted by later retentive cultures interested in imposing agendas. What did you know, Uncle Remus? More than we. What if we want to put some parts back in?
Aunt Sally and the rest of the whitewashed culture in post-reconstruction South further whitewashing their culture. Who here is deceived about the depth of the humanity of Uncle Remus.
Who wears the blind bridle after all? Aunt Sally.
The little boy. He's fine. He picks up enough about the adult world and his community as he can handle at the time, no need to deny, no need to lie or elaborately steer away, just let it pass, equivocate the issue away, and he asks no questions at all about what Brer Rabbit is doing, or why Brer Rabbit and Brer Fox go visitin'.
Now to look up if later collections in the children's section have Brer Rabbit just adjusting stirrups on the way to Miss Meadows's.
Redaction and today's readers. Should children or adults be steered away from Uncle Remus because there are these kinds of references once in a while, to life as it was in that era, and who the people were, and the roles? Should that sentence about Brer Rabbit and the pants be redacted out. Why? This is a period piece - a slice of life in the post-reconstruction South. History, culture.
Redaction gets difficult. Mark Twain's "Huckleberry Finn" appears to be banned in some places for supposedly presenting racial stereotypes. Read closer. Jim there as a character shows himself to Huck and others as no part of that stereotype. The individual rises above.
At some point here, we will have to deal with the n word if we go into the plantation stories - on what grounds does anyone redact, edit material out, see ://www.thefreedictionary.com/redactions.
Is not redaction itself then a lie. Do we really think kids don't know, and if our parents and grandparents could handle Uncle Remus as is, why not now. Put in the context, but is that enough to meet the needs of the redactors.
Here are the Uncle Remus Tales if the equivocation, ambiguity, and the multiple unfathomable truths they convey, are subjected further to the Loppers - the redactors, Walt Disney and his impositions, adders and changers.Is this what also happened to the original messages of the religious greats, the classical thinkers, the Founders, after attacked and coopted by "institutions."
We love the wild trees, the understories of stories. However, there is a danger that pointing something out in them will guide the Loppers, who then will seek to redact. Like a bad movie. The tightrope. Discussion of meanings in that light can endanger the integrity of the story, or even shape how later readers interpret it.
Text Redactors. Text Changers. Text Adders. Run, tales, run.
No answer. But we have an awareness and concern for any "interpreting" possibilities. Some fear of the consequence of exploration here, so far offset by the joy of exploring equivocating.
Ethical Issues - even in The World of Uncle Remus. Miss Cow.
Remus' stories and ethical, dignitarian issues. Here, "Miss Cow Falls a Victim to Mr. Rabbit."
The tales are more complex than a surface, or recreational read in dialect, suggests. Too much gets passed over because of the difficulty in understanding the dialect. Or, because the drive for entertainment leads to editing out serious thoughts.
It takes translating for yourself, each word, before the realization hits. For example, look what is happening with Uncle Remus. His world is like ours after all.
Read: "Miss Cow Falls a Victim to Mr. Rabbit," see Uncle Remus Tales, Miss Cow. Read it there. Not perfect, but you got an amateur here.
Some ethical issues in the story. The Plot. Rabbit and his family are hungry. He sees Miss Cow. He wants some milk, is not optimistic about his chances. He polites her up, gets her to butt the persimmon tree so he can get some persimmons, knowing she will get stuck with her horn in the tree; and she does, and it does, and he won't help her out.
He said he would get Brer Bull to help pry her loose.
Instead, he brings back his family with pails and they - ha ha - milk her dry and leave her there. No asking, no permission. All night she moos there. She finally gets loose, mad, and hatches a plan to get back at Brer Rabbit, by sticking her horn back in the hole so she can slide it out easy when and if he comes to help.
He sees her do it, won't get close - says he can help by doing the grunting while she does the work of getting loose. She pulls out that horn and takes off after him - he ducks in the briar patch, pretends he is another rabbit entirely, tells here where Brer Rabbit ran off to, and she heads on, not seeing that he is there.
Issues. Why does that sound like a gang assault (put in fear, in some jurisdictions) or battery (unwanted touching in some jurisdictions) or both. Yet, there are other angles - the nature of milking as necessary after all, and the use of young 'uns, worse - see ://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape#Gang_rape.
Who owes what to whom. Still, see it from Sis Cow's view. She would have had choices, except that Brer Rabbit cut them off. What were Sis Cow's choices? Can her rights be valorized, a value put on it? Brer Bull could have helped gouge out the hole in the tree so she could get loose, and Brer Rabbit did say he was going to get him (never did). Unstuck, she would have gone back to the barn.
Brer Rabbit perhaps himself could have helped her get loose because he could see what was going on,, but instead he took advantage. But, here is the twist. As Uncle Remus knows, and tells the little boy, if Brer Rabbit had not milked Sis Cow, she would have been in great discomfort. It benefited her to get milked.
A cow + full udder = pain, etc.
But that is not enough to assess Brer Rabbit. None of this is intended to take away the enjoyment of an old folk tale with a trickster, that common character among cultures globally, but it is worth discussing.
Rights or not.
1. Does Sis Cow have a right to her bodily integrity: has she not the right to decide when and how a necessary milking will take place? Or to take the pain and defer it, until she is treated right.
Sis Cow Returns! Here she is, with reinforcements, to take her revenge.
2. Did Brer Rabbit, once he caused her to change her position and butt the tree, have an obligation to follow through, get help, as he said he was doing (before he just came back with his family and he pails), and to ask if he could have the milk? Knowing she needed to be milked and was stuck in the tree trunk, she may well have agreed.
3. This story is a mess from the view of Sis Cow and others of her gender persuasion, who can imagine what it was like for her, stuck in the tree, betrayed when Brer Rabbit doesn't go for help, but instead Brer Rabbit and his folks are all over her. What is the role of the ask. Do time, place and manner determine ethics.*
And if that is so, that there is a Bovine Liberation Front (the BLF) out there (we will head it up), how do we see milking factories. Just a thought.Are there any?
Ethical issues in old trickster stories. See tricksters around the world at //128.32.250.47:8080/folkartandlit/stories/storyReader$27. Foxes and rabbits and ravens and Squirrel Nutkin. He's at://wiredforbooks.org/kids/beatrix/sn1.htm. Fodder - the receiving end of the trickster - in lit.
Uncle Remus' tales. There we are, laughing at Brer Rabbit as trickster, how the so-called underdog, the weakest critter in the neighborhood, a rabbit, prey, manages to do to get his way against the mighty and the supposedly wily. The subversive message of the slave besting the owner.
Then move from the funny images to see why we also get uncomfortable. The human condition in the mirror, mean delight in taking advantage, and can we ever rise above.
......................................................................
* More on Ethics. Permissions. Choice. Time, Place, Manner.
Many acts seem ethical or not depending on the time, place and manner of execution. Is that so?
Does it matter when, where and how we do things. Or can we run roughshod over people, on grounds that we "can" and by pointing out some other benefit to them - while, on the other hand, we continue to benefit at their expense.
Not easy. Issues of dignitarianism arise, see the somebodies and nobodies, and the idea of "all rise" at ://www.humiliationstudies.org/news-old/archives/001256 and related searches for "dignitarianism" or rankism. Can we "valorize" ourselves or is it hopeless. Is there a right to autonomy, that we get to give permission before things are done to us, even if someone else thinks it is necessary.
Can we choose time, place and manner, even in extremis. For that, see //www.bartelby.org/61/42/I0124200.
The tales are more complex than a surface, or recreational read in dialect, suggests. Too much gets passed over because of the difficulty in understanding the dialect. Or, because the drive for entertainment leads to editing out serious thoughts.
It takes translating for yourself, each word, before the realization hits. For example, look what is happening with Uncle Remus. His world is like ours after all.
Read: "Miss Cow Falls a Victim to Mr. Rabbit," see Uncle Remus Tales, Miss Cow. Read it there. Not perfect, but you got an amateur here.
Some ethical issues in the story. The Plot. Rabbit and his family are hungry. He sees Miss Cow. He wants some milk, is not optimistic about his chances. He polites her up, gets her to butt the persimmon tree so he can get some persimmons, knowing she will get stuck with her horn in the tree; and she does, and it does, and he won't help her out.
He said he would get Brer Bull to help pry her loose.
Instead, he brings back his family with pails and they - ha ha - milk her dry and leave her there. No asking, no permission. All night she moos there. She finally gets loose, mad, and hatches a plan to get back at Brer Rabbit, by sticking her horn back in the hole so she can slide it out easy when and if he comes to help.
He sees her do it, won't get close - says he can help by doing the grunting while she does the work of getting loose. She pulls out that horn and takes off after him - he ducks in the briar patch, pretends he is another rabbit entirely, tells here where Brer Rabbit ran off to, and she heads on, not seeing that he is there.
Issues. Why does that sound like a gang assault (put in fear, in some jurisdictions) or battery (unwanted touching in some jurisdictions) or both. Yet, there are other angles - the nature of milking as necessary after all, and the use of young 'uns, worse - see ://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape#Gang_rape.
Who owes what to whom. Still, see it from Sis Cow's view. She would have had choices, except that Brer Rabbit cut them off. What were Sis Cow's choices? Can her rights be valorized, a value put on it? Brer Bull could have helped gouge out the hole in the tree so she could get loose, and Brer Rabbit did say he was going to get him (never did). Unstuck, she would have gone back to the barn.
Brer Rabbit perhaps himself could have helped her get loose because he could see what was going on,, but instead he took advantage. But, here is the twist. As Uncle Remus knows, and tells the little boy, if Brer Rabbit had not milked Sis Cow, she would have been in great discomfort. It benefited her to get milked.
A cow + full udder = pain, etc.
But that is not enough to assess Brer Rabbit. None of this is intended to take away the enjoyment of an old folk tale with a trickster, that common character among cultures globally, but it is worth discussing.
Rights or not.
1. Does Sis Cow have a right to her bodily integrity: has she not the right to decide when and how a necessary milking will take place? Or to take the pain and defer it, until she is treated right.
Sis Cow Returns! Here she is, with reinforcements, to take her revenge.2. Did Brer Rabbit, once he caused her to change her position and butt the tree, have an obligation to follow through, get help, as he said he was doing (before he just came back with his family and he pails), and to ask if he could have the milk? Knowing she needed to be milked and was stuck in the tree trunk, she may well have agreed.
3. This story is a mess from the view of Sis Cow and others of her gender persuasion, who can imagine what it was like for her, stuck in the tree, betrayed when Brer Rabbit doesn't go for help, but instead Brer Rabbit and his folks are all over her. What is the role of the ask. Do time, place and manner determine ethics.*
And if that is so, that there is a Bovine Liberation Front (the BLF) out there (we will head it up), how do we see milking factories. Just a thought.Are there any?
Ethical issues in old trickster stories. See tricksters around the world at //128.32.250.47:8080/folkartandlit/stories/storyReader$27. Foxes and rabbits and ravens and Squirrel Nutkin. He's at://wiredforbooks.org/kids/beatrix/sn1.htm. Fodder - the receiving end of the trickster - in lit.
Uncle Remus' tales. There we are, laughing at Brer Rabbit as trickster, how the so-called underdog, the weakest critter in the neighborhood, a rabbit, prey, manages to do to get his way against the mighty and the supposedly wily. The subversive message of the slave besting the owner.
Then move from the funny images to see why we also get uncomfortable. The human condition in the mirror, mean delight in taking advantage, and can we ever rise above.
......................................................................
* More on Ethics. Permissions. Choice. Time, Place, Manner.
Many acts seem ethical or not depending on the time, place and manner of execution. Is that so?
Does it matter when, where and how we do things. Or can we run roughshod over people, on grounds that we "can" and by pointing out some other benefit to them - while, on the other hand, we continue to benefit at their expense.
Not easy. Issues of dignitarianism arise, see the somebodies and nobodies, and the idea of "all rise" at ://www.humiliationstudies.org/news-old/archives/001256 and related searches for "dignitarianism" or rankism. Can we "valorize" ourselves or is it hopeless. Is there a right to autonomy, that we get to give permission before things are done to us, even if someone else thinks it is necessary.
Can we choose time, place and manner, even in extremis. For that, see //www.bartelby.org/61/42/I0124200.
Tar-Baby story issue: The blackness of the added bear. The dangers of Gratuitous Changes - Walt Disney and Brer B'ar
Today we look at bears. This fellow from our yard, sunning after sunflower.First, look at "The Wonderful Tar-Baby Story." Two characters: Brer Fox and Brer Rabbit, in their eternal dance of who gets the better of whom - and the rabbit usually wins, even if after a time.
The story ends equivocally - Brer Rabbit all tarred up, Brer Fox celebrating about him. The little boy asks Uncle Remus what happens - and Uncle Remus says that is as far as the story goes, he says he hears Aunt Sally calling,now run along.
Then there is a second story entirely, "Why Mr. Possum Loves Peace," and then the little boy persists in wanting to know what happened to the tarred Brer Rabbit. Another Tar-Baby installment begins: "How Brer Rabbit Was Too Sharp for Brer Fox" -
The great briar patch escape.
1. There is no Brer B'ar. Anywhere. In either tale.
2. Now look at the 1946 Walt Disney film based loosely on Uncle Remus' tales -Disney adds another character to the story, and then distorts who that character is in the community.
He adds another participant, Brer B'ar, who appears in several of the tales, but Disney turns this community member into a caricature, an oaf, a outsized figure of Vaudeville. Brer B'ar also is apparently an Appalachian or American Black Bear, and has the white blaze on his belly that is often seen: see www.fieldtripearth.org/article.xml?id=789&ordinal=2 .
The size range of black bears - from 50-75 inches long, 130-660 pounds in weight. See fieldtripearth.
Do an Images search for Uncle Remus and see for yourself, or look up the film clips on the Internet. Black and dumbdumbdumbdumb. "I'm gonna blow his haid clean off!" and everybody, most everybody, jes' laffs en laffs.
Overt racial overtones? Of course not. Black bears are black. The point is that Disney doesn't let the black character be a regular member of the community. This is the one he makes the doofus. A hopelessly slow-minded fool in a raggedy hat, a figure with mental retardation and a rural uneducated accent to boot, an ungainly clod, the better to amuse you, and reinforce your own feelings of your own superiority. No other figure in the tales fits that role.
These are racial overtones nonetheless. Not part of the tales.
His addition and then rendition of Uncle Remus tales in the 1946 "Song of the South" is humorous, to those who have been taught to laugh at the status of others, and not just their predicaments.
Please airbrush it out. Add it, if you have to, in a trailer at the end, the way people can watch out-takes as they leave the theater. Uncle Remus would never laugh at a character because of who he was- just the situation.
Find the commentators and websites promoting release of the film. Are they even aware of the changes Disney made, and the teaching effect they can have? Maybe some promoters of the uncut film intend to promote Disney's full film as a way of promoting not-so-subtle racial stereotypes indirectly. They could not be anti-race directly. Do they want to continue the viral idea that some people by nature are dumb and inferior? Go ahead. Sell it and see if anyone minds. Sales people are clever. You don't even know Disney put this element in, until you look at original story sources and see the change. Clever. Polluting, viral, subtle, good salesmanship.
For an overview of Disney's powerful cultural-educational influence: see this college syllabus overview at //www.mediaed.org/videos/CommercialismPoliticsAndMedia/MickeyMouseMonopoly/studyguide/html.
Notes on The Wonderful Tar-Baby Story. Later Toxic Additives
The Tar-Baby Story is well known, from generations of children's retellings, and Hollywood's film including the story, in "Song of the South." The result is that we know the version that appeared on film, and the kiddie books, better than the original. We accept all those as "Uncle Remus" but many of them are not. The film version, for example, by act and omission raises many racial issues, stereotypes, adds characters and blackens them bigly for more racial effect, and all that just gets absorbed.
Please see a more complete discussion at Joy of Equivocating: Benign and Malignant Walt Disney. or that is retold with many changes that raise racial issues.
See also the discussion on why we fill in blanks - discomfort with uncertainty - as seen in Walt Disney's treatment of the Tar-Baby and Briar Patch stories, in Joy of Equivocating: Where Fear of Uncertainty Leads Us.
Please see a more complete discussion at Joy of Equivocating: Benign and Malignant Walt Disney. or that is retold with many changes that raise racial issues.
See also the discussion on why we fill in blanks - discomfort with uncertainty - as seen in Walt Disney's treatment of the Tar-Baby and Briar Patch stories, in Joy of Equivocating: Where Fear of Uncertainty Leads Us.
Notes on "Brer Rabbit Grossly Deceives Mr. Fox"
If we add our own commentary as a reader is reading, it may be a distraction. And, our interests may not coincide with a reader's - especially if issues are raised that are uncomfortable for some. To us, all is good and wonderful because it is the world that Uncle Remus is portraying, and we want to learn about it.
For example, "Brer Rabbit Grossly Deceives Mr. Fox." Read it closely and find that Brer Rabbit has harnessed Mr. Fox and they are off to the house of the ladies to party. On the way, Brer Rabbit gets ready. The little boy asks who the ladies are, and Uncle Remus dodges. See the commentary on ths bit of local color at Joy of Equivocating, Uncle Remus and Life Education.
For example, "Brer Rabbit Grossly Deceives Mr. Fox." Read it closely and find that Brer Rabbit has harnessed Mr. Fox and they are off to the house of the ladies to party. On the way, Brer Rabbit gets ready. The little boy asks who the ladies are, and Uncle Remus dodges. See the commentary on ths bit of local color at Joy of Equivocating, Uncle Remus and Life Education.
Notes on ethical issues raised: "Miss Cow Falls A Victim to Mr. Rabbit"
Ethical, dignitarian issues raised in Uncle Remus.
Some topics raised by the stories can be distracting if raised at first reading of the story. And the purpose of this recreational effort is to increase enjoyment of Uncle Remus, while offering commentary on the side, and not imposing on the reader.
In that vein, please see the comments on Miss Cow's situation - the forced milking - at this other site - Hello, Fodder: Ethical and Dignitarian Issues in Uncle Remus.
And read the entire story, in our translation, at IX. Miss Cow Falls A Victim to Mr. Rabbit.
Some topics raised by the stories can be distracting if raised at first reading of the story. And the purpose of this recreational effort is to increase enjoyment of Uncle Remus, while offering commentary on the side, and not imposing on the reader.
In that vein, please see the comments on Miss Cow's situation - the forced milking - at this other site - Hello, Fodder: Ethical and Dignitarian Issues in Uncle Remus.
And read the entire story, in our translation, at IX. Miss Cow Falls A Victim to Mr. Rabbit.
Original Uncle Remus and Child Fare
Should you buy an original edition as a gift for a child? If done with care and paying attention to the unintended lessons a child might learn from it.
The book is indeed a treasure as to the tales; and as to presenting rural southern life with its social stratifications stemming from slavery. However, that slavery-culture made liberal use of the N word, even though "negro" itself is also used; and the C word for "colored," and all the rest in the further stories and proverbs, part of the oppression-subservience of the plantation, as well as gradations that people use about each other in any group or town life. America.
Choice: You can teach your children about that, or you can avoid their seeing the words at all. In favor of the words is that they make so clear how gradations and labels affect how people see themselves, what the life was like, and Joel Chandler Harris presents it so well. Can children understand that context? Or will this exposure just reinforce Jim Crow. Find more about Jim Crow at //www.jimcrowhistory.org/.
Probably in later editions, like contemporary now, those now-offensive terms are redacted - and that in itself is a shame in a different way, because redacting essential parts of a narrative alters our understanding of what life was like in Remus' time. The characters lived and died under the burden of those terms, used by themselves as to each other, and by the other groups in the society as to them.
The book is indeed a treasure as to the tales; and as to presenting rural southern life with its social stratifications stemming from slavery. However, that slavery-culture made liberal use of the N word, even though "negro" itself is also used; and the C word for "colored," and all the rest in the further stories and proverbs, part of the oppression-subservience of the plantation, as well as gradations that people use about each other in any group or town life. America.
Choice: You can teach your children about that, or you can avoid their seeing the words at all. In favor of the words is that they make so clear how gradations and labels affect how people see themselves, what the life was like, and Joel Chandler Harris presents it so well. Can children understand that context? Or will this exposure just reinforce Jim Crow. Find more about Jim Crow at //www.jimcrowhistory.org/.
Probably in later editions, like contemporary now, those now-offensive terms are redacted - and that in itself is a shame in a different way, because redacting essential parts of a narrative alters our understanding of what life was like in Remus' time. The characters lived and died under the burden of those terms, used by themselves as to each other, and by the other groups in the society as to them.
Online Sites for reading Uncle Remus
1. Complete, I think Try this site for each story in dialect. Go to://www.fullbooks.com/Uncle-Remus.html
See all the other free books available. No connection here, just glad to see it.
2. Modern compilation. "Complete Tales of Uncle Remus." 2002. Compiled by Richard Chase. Not all pages provided. See www.books.google.com/books? Copyrighted.
3. Also looks complete. See www.uncleremus.com. Click on the menu at the top right for the 35 complete stories, and other material provide. They can be downloaded as a Project Gutenberg eBook, with the provisos given at the eBook site.
4. Portions of the 1880 edition, Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings The Folk-Lore of the Old Plantation, illustrations by Frederick S. Church and James H. Moser (cover is reproduced): at http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/railton/enam481c/harris.html
5. No illustrations but full version at http://www.fullbooks.com/Uncle-Remus1.html
See all the other free books available. No connection here, just glad to see it.
2. Modern compilation. "Complete Tales of Uncle Remus." 2002. Compiled by Richard Chase. Not all pages provided. See www.books.google.com/books? Copyrighted.
3. Also looks complete. See www.uncleremus.com. Click on the menu at the top right for the 35 complete stories, and other material provide. They can be downloaded as a Project Gutenberg eBook, with the provisos given at the eBook site.
4. Portions of the 1880 edition, Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings The Folk-Lore of the Old Plantation, illustrations by Frederick S. Church and James H. Moser (cover is reproduced): at http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/railton/enam481c/harris.html
5. No illustrations but full version at http://www.fullbooks.com/Uncle-Remus1.html
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Social context: Reconstruction South; then the 1940's
What was the context of these stories, that enabled them to spread so widely so fast in the Reconstruction South.
The stories challenged racism. University sources point out the ongoing and changing struggle for dominance between the races, an enhanced instability that came upon the culture with abolition of slavery. A social issue was what to do when social lines could not be enforced by slavery any more. See "Remus Tales: Selected Text," virginia.edu. Is that the University of Virginia.
Blacks told the stories, and had for years, because in them the weak overcame the strong. That was a subversive idea - good did not necessarily prevail, but wits did. Whites were interested because they were grappling with what to do with this newly freed group. Control, let be, and control did not always work.
The issue never went away. World War II saw continuing segregation, even in the army. Enter Walt Disney in post-war 1946. In a sense, he reverses the lessons of the stories, that the weak can overcome the strong, by reinstating the race issue in a new and more insidious way.
Disney's changes to support ongoing racism: Disney looks at the animal community in Uncle Remus, and suddenly has to interject stereotypes that were not there.
He spontaneously makes Brer B'ar the biggest oaf of all, the biggest and blackest and dumbest character of all, he can't even think in dialect as the others can - all the doofus can say is, "I'm gonna blow his haid clean off," or some such; and plunking him where he has no business - in the Tar-Baby story and its briar-patch sequel, in "How Mr. Rabbit Too Sharp for Mr. Fox."
Brer B'ar is there just to be laughed at for being dumb. How can he defend himself? Remus would never do that. He does not ridicule people for their status, he laughs at their situations and how they cope. Disney - shallow and a seller cheap.
Be careful watching Disneyed tales of any kind. Disney had an agenda, whether in depicting fairy tales, or cultural tales.
The stories challenged racism. University sources point out the ongoing and changing struggle for dominance between the races, an enhanced instability that came upon the culture with abolition of slavery. A social issue was what to do when social lines could not be enforced by slavery any more. See "Remus Tales: Selected Text," virginia.edu. Is that the University of Virginia.
Blacks told the stories, and had for years, because in them the weak overcame the strong. That was a subversive idea - good did not necessarily prevail, but wits did. Whites were interested because they were grappling with what to do with this newly freed group. Control, let be, and control did not always work.
The issue never went away. World War II saw continuing segregation, even in the army. Enter Walt Disney in post-war 1946. In a sense, he reverses the lessons of the stories, that the weak can overcome the strong, by reinstating the race issue in a new and more insidious way.
Disney's changes to support ongoing racism: Disney looks at the animal community in Uncle Remus, and suddenly has to interject stereotypes that were not there.
He spontaneously makes Brer B'ar the biggest oaf of all, the biggest and blackest and dumbest character of all, he can't even think in dialect as the others can - all the doofus can say is, "I'm gonna blow his haid clean off," or some such; and plunking him where he has no business - in the Tar-Baby story and its briar-patch sequel, in "How Mr. Rabbit Too Sharp for Mr. Fox."
Brer B'ar is there just to be laughed at for being dumb. How can he defend himself? Remus would never do that. He does not ridicule people for their status, he laughs at their situations and how they cope. Disney - shallow and a seller cheap.
Be careful watching Disneyed tales of any kind. Disney had an agenda, whether in depicting fairy tales, or cultural tales.
Monday, October 22, 2007
Cross-cultural connections. Remus trickster tales and medieval lore
The stories in Uncle Remus cross several cultures - the element of the trickster does not depend on any ethnic group for enjoyment, no particular color of skin or animals taking the place of humans.
1. Those who trace tales take them back to the middle ages, and even long before. See
//www.1911encyclopedia.org/Reynard_The_Fox; and the Google digitized book, "Fairy Tales from Before," at http://books.google.com/books?id=jDgdupF3VWcC&pg=PA150&lpg=PA150&dq=uncle+remus+roman+de+renard&source=web&ots=mSRMrJMG0l&sig=u1kFuOOe2ZKAAcGm0p36INiFXsk.
2. For an overview, see "Fables and Trickster Tales Around the World," a lesson plan for cross-cultural learning from the National Endowment of the Humanities - excellent. See the roots there in Aesop's Fables (Greece area), and the Anansi tales from Ghana, that the article identifies as the basis for the Remus tales.
3. See a discussion by author G.K. Chesterton, see //www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/index.html, as to the similarities between Aesop, a Greek slave, much beloved and a teller of fables; and Uncle Remus, an African-heritage slave, by then freed, and still much beloved, and a teller of fables, at "Aesop's Fables: the Difference Between Fables and Fairy-Tales," online at //query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9A04E2DE1E3AE633A25754C1A9679D946396D6CF
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With these deep roots, we continue to have a concern with Walt Disney changing cultural essential tales, fairy tales, fables, far more than entertainment requires. He has his own message. He Ralters character. Adds pollutants. The original flavor falls away so that something more box-office can take its place. If it will sell, put it in along with all the music. And the value system of Disney takes over the value system of the culture of the story, to the loss of all of us.
Proposal: Where the Walt Disney film, "Song of the South," 1946, violates the integrity of the traditional stories in ways that alter the meaning, take them out. Put them in an informative trailer at the end if you have to. See the concern with infecting cultural material for purposes of sales, inculcation and profit motives, as happened with the Joel Chandler Harris tales from the Uncle Remus tradition at Joy of Equivocating, Additives to Remus.See FN 1.
........................................................
Next research: Those who love fairy tales (me), and examine their cultural sources and their spread, may well say that any tale-teller or transcriber puts a differing imprint and change on the material, to suit their own dramatic purposes. FN 2
..................................................................................
FN 1. Background. Walt Disney, in "Song of the South," adds a cultural overlay in ways that take away from the essence. People seeing his film instead of reading the original would have no idea where the differences are.
The vote here on the areas found so far:
1) return to the original equivocal ending to The Wonderful Tar Baby story; and make us wait for the next episode, after "Why Mr. Possum Loves Peace" before continuing with the Tar-Baby conclusion, about the briar patch in "How Mr. Rabbit was Too Sharp for Mr. Fox."
2) return to the original one-on-one trickster theme in Tar Baby, leaving out the added laughingstock Brer B'ar. Let it remain Brer Rabbit and Brer Fox and keep Brer B'ar to his own stories, and as he is in the book - a respected member of the community who gets targeted by Brer Rabbit like everybody else.
If the outcry is so great at going back to the original, then put that clip in a trailer, with information about 1946, the Jim Crow laws, stereotypes and Vaudeville caricatures, showing people as buffoons, and laughing at them. One problem is that we will continue to imitate Brer B'ar anyway.
emus would not laugh at anyone. He would have us laugh, or be horrified, at the predicament, but laugh at someone? Never. Laughing at people and putting them down is the Walt Disney approach to entertainment, not the Joel Chandler Harris.
If we find that JCH did put those elements in editions we have not yet checked, of course we will let you know. We have checked the 1895 and 1921 editions - no dim-witted (if lovable, as he surely is - and that is the insidious part of the stereotype - he is such a dear) B'ar in Tar Baby.
Aha - Here, however, is a reference to a new addition - a "first Remus volume" in 1881 edition - at //edsitement.neh.gov/view_lesson_plan.asp?id=237. Is Brer B'ar as an oaf in there? Our 1921 lists copyrights only for 1880, 1895, 1908, 1921
FN 2. Someone else take up this issue: Whether cultures (or individuals) have a need, as part of perpetuating their own identity, to designate some religious, political, social or gender group(s) that they can target, deprive if possible, and denigrate as different, and unworthy.
And if one group rises above the designation, is there pressure to keep them back down there, or to fast identify another to take its place so that somebody is always significantly down. What a satisfaction for those who are up. Self-reward for behavior. Works every time. Think of immigrants, Gypsies, or Roma, other ethnic groups, or those with mental retardation, or women, or blondes - for example. Nicknames for everyone and every light bulb joke in the place serves a purpose. Fill in the blank.
We don't need Disney, or talking heads, or columnists, to add to it.
1. Those who trace tales take them back to the middle ages, and even long before. See
//www.1911encyclopedia.org/Reynard_The_Fox; and the Google digitized book, "Fairy Tales from Before," at http://books.google.com/books?id=jDgdupF3VWcC&pg=PA150&lpg=PA150&dq=uncle+remus+roman+de+renard&source=web&ots=mSRMrJMG0l&sig=u1kFuOOe2ZKAAcGm0p36INiFXsk.
2. For an overview, see "Fables and Trickster Tales Around the World," a lesson plan for cross-cultural learning from the National Endowment of the Humanities - excellent. See the roots there in Aesop's Fables (Greece area), and the Anansi tales from Ghana, that the article identifies as the basis for the Remus tales.
3. See a discussion by author G.K. Chesterton, see //www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/index.html, as to the similarities between Aesop, a Greek slave, much beloved and a teller of fables; and Uncle Remus, an African-heritage slave, by then freed, and still much beloved, and a teller of fables, at "Aesop's Fables: the Difference Between Fables and Fairy-Tales," online at //query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9A04E2DE1E3AE633A25754C1A9679D946396D6CF
......................
With these deep roots, we continue to have a concern with Walt Disney changing cultural essential tales, fairy tales, fables, far more than entertainment requires. He has his own message. He Ralters character. Adds pollutants. The original flavor falls away so that something more box-office can take its place. If it will sell, put it in along with all the music. And the value system of Disney takes over the value system of the culture of the story, to the loss of all of us.
Proposal: Where the Walt Disney film, "Song of the South," 1946, violates the integrity of the traditional stories in ways that alter the meaning, take them out. Put them in an informative trailer at the end if you have to. See the concern with infecting cultural material for purposes of sales, inculcation and profit motives, as happened with the Joel Chandler Harris tales from the Uncle Remus tradition at Joy of Equivocating, Additives to Remus.See FN 1.
........................................................
Next research: Those who love fairy tales (me), and examine their cultural sources and their spread, may well say that any tale-teller or transcriber puts a differing imprint and change on the material, to suit their own dramatic purposes. FN 2
..................................................................................
FN 1. Background. Walt Disney, in "Song of the South," adds a cultural overlay in ways that take away from the essence. People seeing his film instead of reading the original would have no idea where the differences are.
The vote here on the areas found so far:
1) return to the original equivocal ending to The Wonderful Tar Baby story; and make us wait for the next episode, after "Why Mr. Possum Loves Peace" before continuing with the Tar-Baby conclusion, about the briar patch in "How Mr. Rabbit was Too Sharp for Mr. Fox."
2) return to the original one-on-one trickster theme in Tar Baby, leaving out the added laughingstock Brer B'ar. Let it remain Brer Rabbit and Brer Fox and keep Brer B'ar to his own stories, and as he is in the book - a respected member of the community who gets targeted by Brer Rabbit like everybody else.
If the outcry is so great at going back to the original, then put that clip in a trailer, with information about 1946, the Jim Crow laws, stereotypes and Vaudeville caricatures, showing people as buffoons, and laughing at them. One problem is that we will continue to imitate Brer B'ar anyway.
emus would not laugh at anyone. He would have us laugh, or be horrified, at the predicament, but laugh at someone? Never. Laughing at people and putting them down is the Walt Disney approach to entertainment, not the Joel Chandler Harris.
If we find that JCH did put those elements in editions we have not yet checked, of course we will let you know. We have checked the 1895 and 1921 editions - no dim-witted (if lovable, as he surely is - and that is the insidious part of the stereotype - he is such a dear) B'ar in Tar Baby.
Aha - Here, however, is a reference to a new addition - a "first Remus volume" in 1881 edition - at //edsitement.neh.gov/view_lesson_plan.asp?id=237. Is Brer B'ar as an oaf in there? Our 1921 lists copyrights only for 1880, 1895, 1908, 1921
FN 2. Someone else take up this issue: Whether cultures (or individuals) have a need, as part of perpetuating their own identity, to designate some religious, political, social or gender group(s) that they can target, deprive if possible, and denigrate as different, and unworthy.
And if one group rises above the designation, is there pressure to keep them back down there, or to fast identify another to take its place so that somebody is always significantly down. What a satisfaction for those who are up. Self-reward for behavior. Works every time. Think of immigrants, Gypsies, or Roma, other ethnic groups, or those with mental retardation, or women, or blondes - for example. Nicknames for everyone and every light bulb joke in the place serves a purpose. Fill in the blank.
We don't need Disney, or talking heads, or columnists, to add to it.
Uncle Remus' dialect: Translating from inland rural slave-heritage
A. Translation issues:
1. Difficulty, risk.
Any translation is difficult and risky, because it is impossible to catch every nuance of one language form in another. Shades of meaning are lost. Translating is always difficult and even controversial, because, in most cultures, the body language is integral to the meaning of a communication, especially in the telling. Gestures accompanying words can even stand alone as communications. Look at tv feeds from the United Nations, for example, with some delegates leaning back, silently stroking their chins, over and over, during an entire speech. Showing derision? We sense a communication without the words.
2. Controversy.
Translation is also controversial because it offers somebody the chance to substitute a personal view and agenda for the original, by word selection, additions, uses of words, inclusions and exclusions, and even through inadvertent errors. See the discussion of this particular 1995 translation of the Book of Luke into Gullah - this focuses on all those issues. See
://www.adoremus.org/997-Gullah.html: "De Good Nyews Bout Jedus Christ Wa Luke Write."
3. Necessity, in order for content to be transmitted.
Translations are needed where the original language is so unfamiliar that a reader bogs down and goes to a movie about the story instead, with all the distortions of film by the promoters for its profit-entertainment purposes.
4. Alternative to third party translations.
Proposal - be proactive. Do your own translation, or read one already available; then go immediately back to the original and read it in dialect with the plot meaning already in your head.
B. The Nature of the Dialect in Uncle Remus
1. Gullah. The Uncle Remus dialect: So far, the dialect of Uncle Remus seems not to be "Gullah." Gullah appears to be a specific kind of blended language characteristic now of the coastal islands and coast areas of the south, a mix of many cultural traditions of slaves from different parts of Africa, see //www.coastalguide.com/gullah/.
Uncle Remus is not a coastal island set of tales, however - few water images - and there are many slave-heritage dialect roots in the plantation area context. This site refers to the Virginia, the Sea Islands, the Louisiana, and the Inland -- that seems to be the area of the Uncle Remus dialect. See www.bartleby.com/226/2011.html
The dialect of Uncle Remus in some sources is still often described as "Gullah," see for example //homepage.ntlworld.com/matt_kane/uncle%20remus%20tales.htm, but this may be a shorthand for all the kinds of dialects there really are.
2. Enriching the dialect.
Many people came ashore in the Virginias and Carolinas, see Gypsies, Roma: Melungeons, Racial, Ethnic Mixes. Among these are Portuguese sailors, and see in Uncle Remus the Portuguese word, "palaver", at Mr. Wolf Makes a Failure. See the footnote, the asterisk at the end there.
See some of the issues in this Gullah translation of the Book of Luke, at http://www.adoremus.org/997-Gullah.html
1. Difficulty, risk.
Any translation is difficult and risky, because it is impossible to catch every nuance of one language form in another. Shades of meaning are lost. Translating is always difficult and even controversial, because, in most cultures, the body language is integral to the meaning of a communication, especially in the telling. Gestures accompanying words can even stand alone as communications. Look at tv feeds from the United Nations, for example, with some delegates leaning back, silently stroking their chins, over and over, during an entire speech. Showing derision? We sense a communication without the words.
2. Controversy.
Translation is also controversial because it offers somebody the chance to substitute a personal view and agenda for the original, by word selection, additions, uses of words, inclusions and exclusions, and even through inadvertent errors. See the discussion of this particular 1995 translation of the Book of Luke into Gullah - this focuses on all those issues. See
://www.adoremus.org/997-Gullah.html: "De Good Nyews Bout Jedus Christ Wa Luke Write."
3. Necessity, in order for content to be transmitted.
Translations are needed where the original language is so unfamiliar that a reader bogs down and goes to a movie about the story instead, with all the distortions of film by the promoters for its profit-entertainment purposes.
4. Alternative to third party translations.
Proposal - be proactive. Do your own translation, or read one already available; then go immediately back to the original and read it in dialect with the plot meaning already in your head.
B. The Nature of the Dialect in Uncle Remus
1. Gullah. The Uncle Remus dialect: So far, the dialect of Uncle Remus seems not to be "Gullah." Gullah appears to be a specific kind of blended language characteristic now of the coastal islands and coast areas of the south, a mix of many cultural traditions of slaves from different parts of Africa, see //www.coastalguide.com/gullah/.
Uncle Remus is not a coastal island set of tales, however - few water images - and there are many slave-heritage dialect roots in the plantation area context. This site refers to the Virginia, the Sea Islands, the Louisiana, and the Inland -- that seems to be the area of the Uncle Remus dialect. See www.bartleby.com/226/2011.html
The dialect of Uncle Remus in some sources is still often described as "Gullah," see for example //homepage.ntlworld.com/matt_kane/uncle%20remus%20tales.htm, but this may be a shorthand for all the kinds of dialects there really are.
2. Enriching the dialect.
Many people came ashore in the Virginias and Carolinas, see Gypsies, Roma: Melungeons, Racial, Ethnic Mixes. Among these are Portuguese sailors, and see in Uncle Remus the Portuguese word, "palaver", at Mr. Wolf Makes a Failure. See the footnote, the asterisk at the end there.
See some of the issues in this Gullah translation of the Book of Luke, at http://www.adoremus.org/997-Gullah.html
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Other Remus stories, non-fable, real-life. Two-step method to understanding.
Uncle Remus as a fictional communications centerpiece, served in more capacities than for the familiar compiled plantation legends with the animal fables.
In our 1921 edition by Joel Chandler Harris, there are real-life stories, with people as people, on plantations, in the Reconstruction South, leading real lives.. The animal fables were made then into a Disney film, that put the fables in the forefront - "Song of the South," now in DVD. There is some effort about to get the original movie re-released, and there are some issues as to that (see other posts, especially re Tar-Baby, about Disney's distortions of the stories and why he did that - cultural/racial biases that he put in there, profit, whatever).
The Remus works are also history. As to Uncle Remus and more current events issues than animal tales, see the reconstruction issues at ://xroads.virginia.edu/~ug97/remus/atlanta.html
There are sayings, songs, stories that evoke an entire era. Some of them are also in this edition from 1921, but not advertised on the cover. They are as hard to read as the fables in dialect, so for me, it helps to do a translation first, then go back to the dialect.
Even read them aloud. Hear the words and characters come alive. Try this two-step method yourself, do your own translations, then go back to Uncle Remus' own voice.
Copyright
Does anyone understand copyright? We are using a 1921 edition Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings (the Uncle Remus Legends of the old Plantation), and have enjoyed reproducing the wonderful illustrations in past translation efforts as in the public domain. We believe they are, by now, public domain. Is that right? We may or may not continue- or put in a more occasional illustration, in hopes the earlier ones encourage people to look them up. - 70 years long gone. Why should We The People be deprived of our heritage after that?
Saturday, October 20, 2007
Initiates the little boy story issue: "Calamus Root" - Brer Rabbit a user. Uncle Remus Initiates A Little Boy
Read the story at Uncl Remus Tales, Uncle Remus Initiates the Little Boy. Meet the calamus root.
But don't tell the feds where Brer Rabbit is. Could they arrest him? Is calamus merely declared "unsafe," see 1968 status at //www.viable-herbal.com/singles/herbs/s741.htm; or does that decision about "unsafe" make its sale or use illegal. Not sure. The calamus root has a long history as a remedy for many ailments, and an enhancer for other matters, see this Natural Herb sales catalogue describing what has been alleged, at ://dotcrawler.com/natural-herbs.html/ It was even found in the tomb of Tutankhamen, so they say.
Native Americans used it to communicate with spirits. The North American variety, one of four worldwide, seems to be the safest - others have carcinogenic qualities (on people or just rats, like the sassafras?)
Headache, toothache, fatigue, hangover, cough,gas, diabetes, asthma, on and on. Promote real testing anyone, or since it can't be patented, do the drug companies not touch it? No profit?
How does calamus figure in Uncle Remus?
Here, Brer Rabbit outsmarted Brer Fox, shown wrapped up in the flannel in the rocker, in the first tale of the Uncle Remus cluster, "Uncle Remus Initiates the Little Boy," see Uncle Remus Initiates the Little Boy: Calamus Root story, and Brer Rabbit ducked out fast when he saw he might be the dinner to which he had been invited-- and said he just had to get a "calamus root" to eat with supper. Fast escape.
And Brer Fox got back at him in Tar-Baby - "I done laid in some calamus root...," sez Brer Fox, sezzee. Brer Rabbit loved it. Tricked with it.
Look it up. You will find all this about a calamus root: health and recreation.
The viable-herbal site, above, starts with calamus being used for centuries as an expectorant and anesthetic. It has been used to focus the mind and stop smoking, increase endurance, stamina. It is also a "uterine stimulant," so pregnant or nursing women should not use it (does uterine stimulant mean abortifacient? how to find out?)
Other names; and its uses. It is also known as bittersweet, or Sweet Flag, for herbal use to stimulate digestion, can be chewed or made as an infusion, helps with anorexia (says this site) by stimulating appetite and mind; has anti-anxiety effect; and treats motion sickness. See //www.erowid.org/experiences/exp.php?ID=8800.
"Acorus calamus" is also a plant sacred to the Cree Indians. There are many other names for it, specific to different and other tribes. See //users.lycaeum.org/~iamklaus/acorus.htm. Some of the effects are hallucinations, euphoria, stimulation.
The Dakota Indians use it to treat diabetes (will someone please follow that up??). See Lycaeum.org site. It was also psychoactive and known as one of the "witches' flying ointments." Same site. Then see Exodus 30:22-25 - calamus root was one of the ingredients of a "holy anointing oil," says same site. Its "ketoret" component is an ingredient in certain incense, Exodus 3:34-38, says //www.alchemy-works.com/herb_calamus.html - also used in snuff.
(have we found Biblical support for mild hallucinagens). sites look at the same words and say no. See .freeanointing.org/Calamus_is_a_lie. So, the debate goes on, and that is why we try to get back to original sources and people who actually know a language, not just the later interpreters with agendas one way or another. Keep looking.
Walt Whitman, poet, wrote about calamus in his "Leaves of Grass." See //findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3708/is_200407/ai_n9452864. That site also notes that calamus was known to blacks in the rural south.
Enter the government governing. The FDA gave (or did others do it for them?) massive doses to rats over a long time and the rats got cancer. So, after 1950, the FDA declared it unsafe for human consumption. I understand that the FDA cannot regulate food, and surely a natural plant is a food, but they called it a food "additive" instead and they can regulate additives.
However, the FDA's studies show that only the variety in India has the beta-aserone, the carcinogen in it, the North American variety only has aserone, but aserone can be made into other things that site readers probably know about. Same site: //users.lycaeum.org/~iamklaus/acorus.htm.
So, the FDA is regulating a food ingestible, something that is not addictive, not harmful when used as directed, as any herb, and apparently just because it can be used as an alternative to liquor for recreation? Could it be that people, real people at the FDA benefit by its relationship to the liquor lobby. Is that true? Go check. Also look into some of the other issues raised by this initially simple look into what is a calamus root anyway:
Food additive: formal definition
Quote
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Calamus is also listed in that same site as one of the "carminative" herbs (this means that it relieves gas or cleanses bowels, see //www.medterms.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=24293)
Quote
Minor carminative herbs
Anise (Pimpinella anisum)
Caraway (Carum carvi)
Coriander (Coriandrum sativum, C. vulgare, C. microcarpum)
Fennel (Foeniculum vulgare)
Calamus (Acorus calamus)
Rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis)
Unquote.
From ://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~comm/ds-econ4.html
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With more important things to do, including tending to its apparent failures to protect in ways the law requires, do your own search for FDA fail as a start on that, is a ban on Brer Rabbit's beloved calamus really necessary?
Then look up why on earth is simple sassafras also banned. Once started a silly site about the historical uses of sassafras, at Sassafras, Centuries of Uses, then never got back to tidy it up. There was a similar testing of rats, I understand, but the massive testing on rats backfires because rodents are naturally "allelopathic" to sassafras - naturally averse - a protection developed by the sassafras plant to keep from being totally eaten by beavers, say, near waterways. Look that up, too.
The alchemy-works site above does say that calamus grows in water, or near it. If it developed protections against rodent ingestion, no wonder the critters got sick from it. Come on, FDA. Think. Think. If the ban is because it can be converted into a drug chemically similar to mescaline www.erowid.org/chemicals/tma2/. Mescaline is from cactus, or peyote, see www.drugeducation.net/mescaline.htm. Those are issues not related to the 1950's cancer finding. Read also about caffeine, aspirin, alcohol and tobacco at the drugeducation site. Some things get singled out, some don't.
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After centuries of uses, however, the FDA said in 1958 (?) we should not use it at all - see reasons here, and question it as you will. Still, the calamus root figures prominently in parts of Uncle Remus, Legends of the Old Plantation, the first section of "Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings," by Joel Chandler Harris 1890, 1895, 1908, 1921, Grosset & Dunlap. This is from the 1921 edition.
But don't tell the feds where Brer Rabbit is. Could they arrest him? Is calamus merely declared "unsafe," see 1968 status at //www.viable-herbal.com/singles/herbs/s741.htm; or does that decision about "unsafe" make its sale or use illegal. Not sure. The calamus root has a long history as a remedy for many ailments, and an enhancer for other matters, see this Natural Herb sales catalogue describing what has been alleged, at ://dotcrawler.com/natural-herbs.html/ It was even found in the tomb of Tutankhamen, so they say.
Native Americans used it to communicate with spirits. The North American variety, one of four worldwide, seems to be the safest - others have carcinogenic qualities (on people or just rats, like the sassafras?)Headache, toothache, fatigue, hangover, cough,gas, diabetes, asthma, on and on. Promote real testing anyone, or since it can't be patented, do the drug companies not touch it? No profit?
How does calamus figure in Uncle Remus?
Here, Brer Rabbit outsmarted Brer Fox, shown wrapped up in the flannel in the rocker, in the first tale of the Uncle Remus cluster, "Uncle Remus Initiates the Little Boy," see Uncle Remus Initiates the Little Boy: Calamus Root story, and Brer Rabbit ducked out fast when he saw he might be the dinner to which he had been invited-- and said he just had to get a "calamus root" to eat with supper. Fast escape.
And Brer Fox got back at him in Tar-Baby - "I done laid in some calamus root...," sez Brer Fox, sezzee. Brer Rabbit loved it. Tricked with it.
Look it up. You will find all this about a calamus root: health and recreation.
The viable-herbal site, above, starts with calamus being used for centuries as an expectorant and anesthetic. It has been used to focus the mind and stop smoking, increase endurance, stamina. It is also a "uterine stimulant," so pregnant or nursing women should not use it (does uterine stimulant mean abortifacient? how to find out?)
Other names; and its uses. It is also known as bittersweet, or Sweet Flag, for herbal use to stimulate digestion, can be chewed or made as an infusion, helps with anorexia (says this site) by stimulating appetite and mind; has anti-anxiety effect; and treats motion sickness. See //www.erowid.org/experiences/exp.php?ID=8800.
"Acorus calamus" is also a plant sacred to the Cree Indians. There are many other names for it, specific to different and other tribes. See //users.lycaeum.org/~iamklaus/acorus.htm. Some of the effects are hallucinations, euphoria, stimulation.
The Dakota Indians use it to treat diabetes (will someone please follow that up??). See Lycaeum.org site. It was also psychoactive and known as one of the "witches' flying ointments." Same site. Then see Exodus 30:22-25 - calamus root was one of the ingredients of a "holy anointing oil," says same site. Its "ketoret" component is an ingredient in certain incense, Exodus 3:34-38, says //www.alchemy-works.com/herb_calamus.html - also used in snuff.
(have we found Biblical support for mild hallucinagens). sites look at the same words and say no. See .freeanointing.org/Calamus_is_a_lie. So, the debate goes on, and that is why we try to get back to original sources and people who actually know a language, not just the later interpreters with agendas one way or another. Keep looking.
Walt Whitman, poet, wrote about calamus in his "Leaves of Grass." See //findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3708/is_200407/ai_n9452864. That site also notes that calamus was known to blacks in the rural south.
Enter the government governing. The FDA gave (or did others do it for them?) massive doses to rats over a long time and the rats got cancer. So, after 1950, the FDA declared it unsafe for human consumption. I understand that the FDA cannot regulate food, and surely a natural plant is a food, but they called it a food "additive" instead and they can regulate additives.
However, the FDA's studies show that only the variety in India has the beta-aserone, the carcinogen in it, the North American variety only has aserone, but aserone can be made into other things that site readers probably know about. Same site: //users.lycaeum.org/~iamklaus/acorus.htm.
So, the FDA is regulating a food ingestible, something that is not addictive, not harmful when used as directed, as any herb, and apparently just because it can be used as an alternative to liquor for recreation? Could it be that people, real people at the FDA benefit by its relationship to the liquor lobby. Is that true? Go check. Also look into some of the other issues raised by this initially simple look into what is a calamus root anyway:
Food additive: formal definition
Quote
(s) The term "food additive" means any substance the intended use of which results or may reasonably be expected to result, directly or indirectly, in its becoming a component or otherwise affecting the characteristics of any food (including any substance intended for use in producing, manufacturing, packing, processing, preparing, treating, packaging, transporting, or holding food; and including any source of radiation intended for any such use), if such substance is not generally recognized, among experts qualified by scientific training and experience to evaluate its safety, as having been adequately shown through scientific procedures (or, in the case of a substance used in food prior to January 1, 1958, through either scientific procedures or experience based on common use in food) to be safe under the conditions of its intended use; except that such term does not include—
(1) a pesticide chemical residue in or on a raw agricultural commodity or processed food; or
(2) a pesticide chemical; or
(3) a color additive; or
(4) any substance used in accordance with a sanction or approval granted prior to the enactment of this paragraph 4 pursuant to this Act, the Poultry Products Inspection Act (21 U.S.C. 451 and the following) or the Meat Inspection Act of March 4, 1907 (34 Stat. 1260), as amended and extended (21 U.S.C. 71 and the following);
(5) a new animal drug; or
(6) an ingredient described in paragraph (ff) in, or intended for use in, a dietary supplement.
Unquote. From//www.fda.gov/opacom/laws/fdcact/fdcact1.htm......................................................................................
Calamus is also listed in that same site as one of the "carminative" herbs (this means that it relieves gas or cleanses bowels, see //www.medterms.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=24293)
Quote
Minor carminative herbs
Anise (Pimpinella anisum)
Caraway (Carum carvi)
Coriander (Coriandrum sativum, C. vulgare, C. microcarpum)
Fennel (Foeniculum vulgare)
Calamus (Acorus calamus)
Rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis)
Unquote.
From ://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~comm/ds-econ4.html
...........................................................................
With more important things to do, including tending to its apparent failures to protect in ways the law requires, do your own search for FDA fail as a start on that, is a ban on Brer Rabbit's beloved calamus really necessary?
Then look up why on earth is simple sassafras also banned. Once started a silly site about the historical uses of sassafras, at Sassafras, Centuries of Uses, then never got back to tidy it up. There was a similar testing of rats, I understand, but the massive testing on rats backfires because rodents are naturally "allelopathic" to sassafras - naturally averse - a protection developed by the sassafras plant to keep from being totally eaten by beavers, say, near waterways. Look that up, too.
The alchemy-works site above does say that calamus grows in water, or near it. If it developed protections against rodent ingestion, no wonder the critters got sick from it. Come on, FDA. Think. Think. If the ban is because it can be converted into a drug chemically similar to mescaline www.erowid.org/chemicals/tma2/. Mescaline is from cactus, or peyote, see www.drugeducation.net/mescaline.htm. Those are issues not related to the 1950's cancer finding. Read also about caffeine, aspirin, alcohol and tobacco at the drugeducation site. Some things get singled out, some don't.
....................................................................
After centuries of uses, however, the FDA said in 1958 (?) we should not use it at all - see reasons here, and question it as you will. Still, the calamus root figures prominently in parts of Uncle Remus, Legends of the Old Plantation, the first section of "Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings," by Joel Chandler Harris 1890, 1895, 1908, 1921, Grosset & Dunlap. This is from the 1921 edition.
Online sites for lessons, analysis
"Remus Tales: Selected Texts" at//xroads.virginia.edu/~UG97/remus/selections.html.
Uncle Remus and Dialect; Rhetoric, Ambiguity Technique
Before starting in on Remus tales translations, you might want to see the songs, proverbs and the tales in dialect at Uncle Remus (tales, sayings, songs).This site may or may not include the songs, proverbs, or sayings, though. Those are for adult analysis and were not part of my growing up. This site focuses on the tales - see the 1946 film at "Song of the South" at /www.imdb.com/title/tt0038969/", and //www.songofthesouth.net/.
Before dismissing Uncle Remus as stereotypical and therefore to be hidden, read the background of Uncle Remus, and the inland rural slave-heritage dialect (see //www.bartleby.com/226/2011.html) in which the stories are presented,. Go to the introduction in the original (now on the net, a Google book) and see discussion on The Joy of Equivocating, earlier post on Uncle Remus.
Translations - be careful, but they can be useful. Use them to get at the plot, then go back to the originals - immediatlely. These stories are difficult to skim in the dialect, unless the dialect is yours. Be prepared to focus on endings. When does Uncle Remus state a firm conclusion, and when does he leave it open, tantalizing, and only coming to a resolution a story or two later. True to life. Why do later translations and movies have to move the resolution up. Wrap ups are premature that way. False to Uncle Remus.
Many issues in the Uncle Remus' era tales are laid out at Joy of Equivocating, Remus sites. That site explores uses of the unclear, and how positive that element can be in literature, for storytelling (like Uncle Remus), for entertainment and life's lessons; and how negative lack of clarity can be, in selling political ideas or in commerce with intent to deceive, where the sellee has little means of testing out truth from his or her own experience.
Political correctness. I believe that focusing on dialogue fits political correctness, if anyone disputes. The behaviors and speech patterns of Uncle Remus in the context of a slave-origin culture, brought survival - and should be respected a such. Take pride in the flexibility and genius of it.
A child's braided hair: This illustration from the inside cover of Harris' "Uncle Remus" 1928 reminds me of the styles in Nigeria when I was there in the 1960's - the carefully patterned and sectioned hair on adult women and children, then twisted neatly with coiled black thread, like carpet thread in strength. Cool, neat under a head wrap, shampooing was easy - multiple immersions, and rinses.
There is a fine line, though, and well recognized here, between any representation of an actual hair style and its use in "Jim Crow" issues. See Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia, Ferris University . Spend thoughtful time at that site. I believe the effort here, however, to broaden interest and appreciation in the tradition of Uncle Remus' times and thought, is consistent with respect: recognizing the joy and wisdom that lived on in an oppressed race, in spite of the context. Not an easy area. Recognized.
Note also who is in the chair, and who is on the floor. Discuss that as well.
Uncle Remus is not one historically identifiable individual, to my knowledge. Like Robin Hood, stories from many sources may coalesce around a single figure as traditions are passed on. You can look at the logs in Nottingham, for example - all the nameless petty thieves brought in to the sheriff for this or that were called Robin Hood. There are many of them, over several hundred years, as I recall. See England Road Ways, Nottingham and Robin Hood.
Joy of translating. What's in and what's out. I do take the liberty not to translate or keep in actual words designating skin color, race, or terms now pejorative. You can find those at the originals, Uncle Remus (tales, sayings, songs), but I find them distracting to the purpose here - common humanity.
Further background on Remus: Joy of Equivocating, Uncle Remus posts; Joy of Equivocating, Uncle Remus' Rhetoric, Ambiguity, Dialect. For an absurd book review, see www.conservativebookservice.com/products/BookPage.asp?prod_cd=c6987. Simplistic, off base, and clearly the reviewer had not read beyond the charming first half of the book tales of animals, to the second half of the book and the caricaturish behaviors required of the people there, in interacting with whites. Read it yourself - the entire book, and see what had to be coped with. Point: trust no reviewer. Read the original yourself.
Translations: Not to update, but to make later dialect reading smoother
For anyone unfamiliar with the everyday cadence of dialect, it is difficult to follow the story line. Every sentence needs a stop and think, for the word's meaning somewhere.The translations here are not intended to update Uncle Remus.
Instead, they are intended to set a firmer foundation for anyone then going back to the original dialect, as should be the next step.
Only the dialect conveys the context, the idiom, who these folk really are in their daily lives. Do read the original
A look at illustrations - Arthur Bennett Frost and Uncle Remus 1921
Unsung heroes and heroines - those who illustrate. See the contrast between a Disney cartoon two-dimensional set of characters, and simple, black and white sketches. There is a dignity to these characters presented this way - they are not caricatures, but representations of a universal human condition, in human predicaments.
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