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.
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