Disney's Most Notorious Film (14 page)

POST–WORLD WAR II ACTIVISM

Just as some inside the Disney Studios had feared, several resistant groups awaited
Song of the South
’s arrival. In
Making Movies Black
, Thomas Cripps describes the concerted effort to boycott the film, which was planned long before the movie hit theaters. African American and other progressive advocacy groups targeted
Song of the South
as the test case for the new power they hoped to exercise over the representations of African Americans in the cinema. Groups focused on this movie not only because of its regressive plantation narrative, but also because, as a Disney film, it would be a high-profile production. But the movement was largely undermined by the film’s lack of box office success, and because many “were demoralized by the general sweetness” of the picture.
²⁰
African Americans had a conflicted, begrudging respect for Baskett, who had admirably performed the tightrope act of, as the activist Bernard Wolfe called it three years later, “the mediating smile of [Uncle] Remus.”
²¹
Baskett was in a difficult position as one of the first African American leads in a major Hollywood production, cast in a role characterized by degrading stereotype. The actor, wrote Cripps, “managed to give black viewers a tolerable dignity while playing to whites with a reading so densely packed with ancient props and manners that he transported them into a rose-colored past.”
²²
The deep affection between Uncle Remus and the children, along with the catchy music and colorful animation, complicated matters further. Cripps reflected on the film with a deliberately sarcastic rhetorical question: “How could
anyone
, black or white, resent this happy tale?”
²³
While few if any progressive viewers liked the film,
Song of the South
ultimately proved a slippery target.

Some protests even called for censorship. In December 1946, U.S. Representative Adam Clayton Powell Jr. demanded that the New York police stop the screening of both
Song of the South
and
Abie’s Irish Rose
(1946), which he said were “an insult to American minorities.”
²⁴
The attempt to ban the film came on the heels of the influential radio personality
Jimmy Fiddler’s similar criticism. Fiddler released a statement in early January that insisted
Song of the South
“should immediately be withdrawn and the entire Hollywood industry share the cost because it will mean a black eye for all the industry.”
²⁵
Elected only two years earlier, Powell was the first black congressman from New York State, representing a segment of New York City that included much of Harlem. Powell introduced failed legislation to prohibit the motion picture industry from using derogatory representations of race, creed, and religion.
²⁶
While he later played a significant role in the passing of Lyndon B. Johnson’s “Great Society” civil rights legislation, his largely symbolic attempts at boycotting films such as
Song of the South
did not have much of an effect. In New York City, the film continued to play several weeks at the Palace, despite protests outside.
²⁷
The six theaters in Chicago that catered to African American audiences, meanwhile, refused to screen the film, despite the fact that
Song of the South
still appeared in white theaters in the city.
²⁸

Criticism during this time, though, was not restricted to African Americans. Mainstream, white audiences identified
Song of the South
as an overtly racist film. For example, someone writing under the pseudonym “White Veteran” argued in a letter to the
Washington Post
that
Song of the South
was a dangerous depiction of African Americans. Although not singling out anyone in particular, the writer stated that:

readers and letter writers who fail to see any evil in such productions as “Song of the South” or “Gone with the Wind,” represent that Janus-faced segment of our population. . . . These people appear innocent enough on the surface, but scratch them and you find shallow hypocrites who believe in democracy provided that benefits extend only to certain citizens, preferably white, Protestant and Anglo-Saxon.

It might be argued that the above films are historical, but it is possible to distort history to the extent that the baser emotions of ignorant people are appealed to and historical truths are buried under an avalanche of lies and reactionary propaganda.
²⁹

One cannot know for sure whether the person writing really was either “white” or a “veteran.” Nevertheless, evoking such an identity demonstrates a particular discourse of the period that marks
Song of the South
as both racial and post–World War II. It also reinforces the idea
that
identity politics were always deeply involved in responses to the film. The writer may have assumed that black audiences would be expected to criticize the film, since it
was
a reactionary depiction of race relations in the wake of the war. But a white veteran might gain greater credibility with predominantly white readers. The anonymous writer might have been an African American activist, or a nonveteran, hoping such guises would increase the likelihood of publication and thoughtful readership. The latter options seem unlikely, but they raise the issue that identity play is not limited solely to the age of new media and the Internet, the current historical moment where such discursive masks may only
seem
more likely.

The most famous activist criticism was Walter White’s response, representing the NAACP. He was quoted as denouncing
Song of the South
for “helping to perpetuate ‘the impression of an idyllic presentation of a master–slave relationship’ in the South.”
³⁰
This single phrase—that the film represented “an idyllic presentation of a master–slave relationship”—is the one most often repeated as representative of the critical responses at the time. The larger statement, which White sent out in a telegram to several news outlets, read, in part, “In an effort neither to offend audiences in the North or South, the production helps to perpetuate a dangerously glorified picture of slavery. Making use of the beautiful Uncle Remus folklore, ‘
Song of the South
’ gives the impression of an idyllic master–slave relationship which is a distortion of the facts.”
³¹
Many fans and other defenders of Disney responded to White’s statement by arguing that the film is not a depiction of slavery. Still others have attempted to argue that slavery was a historical reality and that
Song of the South
cannot be criticized for depicting this fact. Yet, as I noted in the previous chapter, such rebuttals miss the point. What matters in
Song of the South
is the impression generated by the film. The film taps into an imaginary space of the “Old South,” as Disney himself put it in 1946,
³²
which would seem to evoke generic, but distinctly pre–Civil War, historical conditions. While Remus is free to leave in the narrative, he does so only after being banished by the white mother. The plantation itself—stocked with black workers and free of the ravages of time and war—looks nothing like the postwar South depicted in the second half of
Gone with the Wind
. Most important is that the discussion of the film’s historical setting or accuracy avoids the crux of White’s concern about the film’s depiction of race relations more generally. As he wrote,
Song of the South
gives the impression of an idyllic, white-centric, master–slave hierarchy, especially since there’s no clear indication of when it’s really set.

Less
than two weeks after
Song of the South
opened, a front-page
Variety
article announced that the NAACP planned to open a Hollywood bureau in the near future. The goal would be to “wean producers away from its concept of the Negro as ‘scared of ghosts, addicted to tap dancing, banjo plucking and the purloining of Massa’s Gin.’
”
³³
The same article reported that the role of Walter White and the NAACP would be largely advisory, consulting with studios during preproduction to induce Hollywood producers to “treat the Negro in a fair and sensible way . . . [by promising that the] NAACP would cite filmmakers who handle the subject properly in its bulletin which the 565,000 members receive monthly.”
³⁴
As
Ebony
noted less than three months later, however, “the NAACP bureau died a-borning,”
³⁵
because of conservative trends in the postwar climate and apathy among black performers within the industry who were hesitant about the fallout from such activism.

With the failure of the Hollywood bureau, a more aggressive measure was suggested—a “Negro Legion of Decency.” According to
Ebony
in February 1947, this was to be modeled after the “Catholic Legion of Decency,” a censorship organization that worked through the 1930s and 1940s to regulate violent and sexual material in Hollywood films. The call for a new activist organization was specifically provoked by the appearance of
Song of the South
, which the magazine labeled African Americans’ “worst black eye in the opinion of white Americans.” The Disney film was “the worst bender to date,” referring to Hollywood’s tendency after the war to fall off the metaphorical “wagon [of positive images] and [go] on an anti-Negro binge again.”
³⁶
The ultimately unrealized organization could have won “the respect and admiration rather than contempt and derision for the Negro when he appears on the screen.”
³⁷
Despite the harshness of the usually tepid
Ebony
’s call to action, it generally epitomized the failure of various activist groups to make anything substantive of
Song of the South
’s controversial appearance. This was also partly due to how quickly the film then disappeared from theaters.

While today the NAACP’s critical responses are the most often quoted from the period, it was far from the only progressive activist group to criticize the film. One union—the American Federation of Teachers Local 27—was far more aggressive in articulating its position against
Song of the South
. In a column in the
Washington Post
, President Paul Cooke noted that the film was of poor aesthetic quality, but “more important it is insidious because the Negro is presented treacherously and slyly in the conventional stereotype.” Cooke then relayed many of the common
criticisms
of the film’s depiction. He insisted that while Baskett handles the role well, the character of Uncle Remus “is unfortunately the fixed conception of the Negro as a lazy, hat-in-hand, spiritual-singing, inferior ‘old rascal.’
” The local AFT president then argued that
Song of the South
could have portrayed Remus as an artist or businessman without being anachronistic, since the film doesn’t depict life just the way it happened to be in the post-Reconstruction South. He, too, called for a boycott of the film:

The picture offers only the Negro in service to white people, the Negro apparently whose only thought is to help solve the problems of the white people.

Inasmuch as “
Song of the South
” abuses the Negro in every way possible, there is little in the picture to recommend. The American Federation of Teachers, Local 27, in full meeting, condemned the picture.
³⁸

Cooke’s comments were picked up weeks later in African American newspapers.
³⁹
While many progressive teachers and their unions might be expected to take an overtly activist stand, not all educators at the time felt the same way about
Song of the South
. A month earlier, a wing of the National Review Board called the “Schools Motion Picture Committee” recommended the film for children. The committee was described in the paper as “a voluntary organization of teachers and parents of pupils in local public and private elementary and high schools.” The group listed
Song of the South
as one of ten films (including a reissue of Disney’s
Fantasia
) currently playing in the New York City area that were suitable for eight- to fourteen-year-olds.
⁴⁰

As with nearly every critical response to the film, the AFT’s note in the
Post
initiated passionate responses—both supportive and critical. Bowles objected with the argument that
Song of the South
“was a new medium for entertainment, something which would bring pleasure to all who saw it.”
⁴¹
Bowles also became one of the first to suggest that
Song of the South
was representing an unfortunate historical reality, wherein blacks were subservient to whites. “Some people,” wrote Bowles, “have reached a state of mind where they feel that they must attack everything which does not portray the Negro as a perfect ‘artisan or business’ person. These people stir up hatred and ill feeling doing little good by forgetting that no race is perfect no matter how loudly they proclaim otherwise. You cannot destroy history by shouting. ‘Song of the South’ is
set
in its historical time as were ‘Caesar and Cleopatra’ and ‘Gone with the Wind.’
”
⁴²
Problematic comparisons to
Gone with the Wind
as another acceptably accurate cinematic representation of the past continue to this day. Directly opposing this, however, Jacqueline Griffin, a student at the Miner Teachers College, noted what she saw as the film’s typical portrayal of the Uncle Tom stereotype. She argued for a more inclusive depiction of African Americans during this time: “It is evident that such persons [who defend the film as historically accurate] don’t realize that there were ‘artisans and businessmen.’ Why then continually distort history by giving the impression that the only Negro was he who worked on the plantation and recognized the white man as his master?”
⁴³
Her voice intervened on the particular question of the film’s historical accuracy. Griffin noted that African Americans would not object to historically accurate depictions of slavery and plantation life, provided that deliberately fantastical films such as
Song of the South
did not constitute the extent of Hollywood’s efforts in this regard.