Disney's Most Notorious Film (16 page)

The only way to defend the film’s stereotyping might have been to ignore it entirely. Another letter on
Song of the South
published in the
Post
suggested as much. Cryptically identified as “White Texan,” this writer noted that others were disingenuously reframing the debate by suggesting that whites were treated just as negatively as were blacks: “Those Swiftean wits who satirically suggest that the Snuffy Smith type of caricature
should be objected to as reflections of the white race if protest is to be made at the caricaturing of Negro characters in such productions as ‘Song of the South,’ overlook an important circumstance present in the buffooning of Negro characters.”
⁶⁷
The author posited that other people must be behaving ironically to suggest that the depiction of whites in
Song of the South
was as demeaning as the depiction of African Americans. He or she proceeded to argue that degrading images of white people, such as the hillbilly comic strip character “Snuffy Smith,” are never held up in the media as representative of an entire race. Yet “Uncle Toms,” “Stepin Fetchits,” and other stereotypes were almost always used to create racist generalizations in the white media. Whereas white people were represented in a seemingly endless variety of roles—some less positive than others—African American roles benefited from no such range. The question of racial generalizations rested at the heart of
Song of the South
and stereotypes of African Americans. As a result,
Song of the South
was nothing short of “discrimination in ‘art.’
”
⁶⁸

NEGOTIATING DISNEY’S CRITICAL LEGACY

Critics too were concerned with the question of “art,” but with less attention to “discrimination.” Their sense of artistic merit went hand in hand with the larger issue of Disney’s legacy as a film studio. White’s statement appeared in the
New York Times
immediately following Crowther’s first review of
Song of the South
, one that was less interested in racial stereotypes than his second one would be. The review began by noting the increasing use of live action in Disney’s films at the expense of animated sequences: “By just those proportions has the magic of these films decreased. . . . The ratio of ‘live’ to cartoons is approximately two to one—and that is approximately the ratio of its mediocrity to charm.”
⁶⁹
While labeling the live action scenes a “travesty of the antebellum South,” Crowther was not overwhelmed by the animation either. In contrast to this film’s “mawkish” romance, “the cartoon episodes, when they do intrude, assume refreshing proportions that they probably do not actually have.”
⁷⁰
In several articles, Crowther was one of the few journalists overtly attentive to the fact that much of the innovation was driven more by costs than by aesthetics. Identifying what he called “the law of diminishing artistic returns,” he believed that “in
[Disney’s]
move towards economy with ‘live action,’ he has moved towards a perilous trap. If he doesn’t beware, a huge Tarbaby will snarl his talents worse than poor Br’er Rabbit’s limbs.”
⁷¹
An early advocate of Disney because of the company’s artistic innovations, Crowther became increasingly uninterested in the studio’s work as it gravitated unsuccessfully toward this new hybrid style of filmmaking.

Yet Crowther was hardly alone among film critics in criticizing the film’s aesthetics. At the end of 1946, the
Times
’ Thomas Pryor listed
Song of the South
as one of the year’s big disappointments. “The cartoon sequences—the tales of Br’er Rabbit and his animal friends—are not in the best Walt Disney tradition, but still they’re amusingly rambunctious,” he wrote. However, “it was in dressing up these episodes with a maudlin story about a little fellow whose mama and papa don’t get along anymore that Mr. Disney’s show went into a tailspin.”
⁷²
Pryor did not mention the race controversy activated by the film, and barely mentioned the character of Uncle Remus. Like Crowther, he was more interested in lamenting the awkward mix of live action and animation.

But Pryor pointed to a key aspect of the film that was often otherwise marginalized: divorce. That
Song of the South
was also about a boy coping with his parents’ separation was overlooked at the time in favor of aesthetic and racial concerns, which points toward important gaps in reception that future responses would highlight. Subsequent textual responses—such as Bret Lott’s short story in 2004, and Bill Vaughn’s autobiographical article a year later—suggested that this aspect of the film might have been one key to long-term nostalgic attachments. A child experiencing parental separation (from divorce or war) could find a potentially deep point of identification with Johnny. This coexists with, but is not automatically reducible to, the racial tensions also created by the film. For Pryor, such trite melodramatic narrative development becomes a source of derision for
Song of the South
; young audiences, though, may have had different responses.

Also evoking Disney’s legacy, the
Chicago Daily Tribune
critic Mae Tinee liked the film even less, writing that “the cartoons seemed to me to lack the old Disney touch.”
⁷³
While noting that Harris’s original tales ranked with the most popular literature of “all time,” Tinee’s take on their adaptation was less enthusiastic. Although no fan of the animation, she greatly disliked the live action. She saw the film’s plot as excessively abusing the main child protagonist, both mentally and physically: “First his father leaves, for reasons I never did understand. Then, he’s bedecked
in
a velvet suit with lace collar, set upon by local bullies, given a puppy and forbidden to keep it, misses his own birthday party, and eventually is deprived of even the solace of Uncle Remus and his tales and nearly killed [by an angry bull] before he’s happy once more.”
⁷⁴
Tinee’s focus with the film is on a boy who is “so cute, it’s too bad to see him achieve complete happiness only at what seems to be death’s door.”
⁷⁵
She also reiterated in passing how the father’s absence is ambiguous at best. This is a twist, as I noted in the previous chapter, that some have tried to interpret as a progressive narrative move, yet this take reads more into the film than is really there.

MODEST INDUSTRIAL SUPPORT

There was clearly a jarring disconnect between differing reactions to the film, just as Bowles noted. But most of
Song of the South
’s positive buzz came from within the industry. The reviewer for Hollywood’s prominent trade publication,
Variety
, had an encouraging response, though not without some critical reservation. Despite the film’s “great deal of charm,”
Song of the South
was also “sometimes sentimental, slow and overlong.” Like Tinee, the
Variety
reviewer pointed directly to one of the film’s central ambiguities—“the confused and insufficiently explained estrangement of the parents.” Still, the review was supportive overall, with the strongest emphasis placed on the film’s aesthetics: “Some excellent Technicolor effects heighten the picture of an idealized, romanticized South, with its plantations, stately manors, campfire meetings and colored mammies. Alternate live and cartoon stories are interwoven smartly, with the occasional combination of real and animated figures handled with imagination and skill. Most of the songs are above average, with one, ‘Zip-adee-do-da’ [
sic
] likely to be one of the season’s favorites. The usual distinctive Disney touches are sprinkled throughout.”

Being an industry paper,
Variety
promoted the still novel idea of using Technicolor film in 1946. Few other critics applauded Disney’s use of Technicolor in
Song of the South
. While most Hollywood films were still shot in black and white at the time, Disney had been using color since the early 1930s.
Variety
made a note of Disney’s product differentiation. As with many critical responses, the technological advances overrode race relations.
Variety
offered an uncritical take on the film’s representation
of race and its “colored mammies.” The review also noted that “cartoon animals with Southern Negro accents” were one of the film’s “brilliant touches,” and that Baskett, “with his fat, round black face and scraggly white beard, is also as warming a portrait as had been seen in a long time.” Unlike others,
Variety
saw the African American stereotypes as one of the film’s virtues. Fulfilling its trade obligations, the review accurately predicted the film’s box office prospects, noting that “it will do okay.”
⁷⁶
Variety
’s review of
Song of the South
should be read with a healthy amount of skepticism: it appeared in print six days before the film’s world premiere in Atlanta, and Disney had just poured thousands of dollars into advertising the film within the magazine’s pages.

Disney’s biggest support consistently came from within the industry. The famed Hollywood gossip columnist Louella Parsons attempted to promote
Song of the South
as an Oscar contender.
⁷⁷
The extent of its eventual success was “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah” winning the award for Best Original Song, and Walt Disney successfully lobbying the Academy for Baskett to receive an honorary Oscar, the first African American male to win one. The columnist Nelson Bell also wrote a favorable piece in the Christmas Day edition of the
Washington Post
, promoting
Song of the South
’s “entertainment of universal and infallible appeal.”
⁷⁸
Aside from the lavish praise, Bell is unique in privileging the children’s performances over that of the adults, while also finding the live action sequences as effective and artistic as the animation and the music. Bell avoided the race controversy, though his use of the even-then derogatory term “pickaninnies” (to identify Johnny’s African American friend Toby) may be particularly telling. Instead, Bell described
Song of the South
as a “universal” film that would appeal to every “age and taste,”
⁷⁹
a deliberate attempt to ignore the racial tensions the film had created.

Three weeks later, he again referenced
Song of the South
in an article on the UK’s top box office hits from 1946. Bell wrote that “
Song of the South
goes sailing along into its fourth week at RKO-Keiths.”
⁸⁰
Since his previous column, figures such as Bowles and Griffin had written heated responses in those same pages. Bell’s metaphor suggested that
Song of the South
had survived something of a critical storm. At the same time, though, Bell also noted that Disney’s film was set to be pulled from the theater the following week to make room for Ginger Rogers’s
Magnificent Doll
(1946). For Bell,
Song of the South
represented one of several recent examples (along with the Bing Crosby/Fred Astaire vehicle
Blue Skies
, 1946; and the espionage tale
13 Rue Madeleine
, 1947, starring James Cagney) of Hollywood’s continuing dominance worldwide.

WHAT
WOULD BECOME OF DISNEY AND
SONG OF THE SOUTH
?

By the tail end of the film’s first distribution in the late 1940s, supporters and critics alike began assessing the film’s reputation overall. Critics and industry insiders weren’t the only ones concerned with how
Song of the South
would affect the company’s legacy. Disney himself wrote an editorial in the
Washington Post
a month after the film was released, explaining why he made the film. It would be tempting to impose a certain amount of authorial intent on both the article and the film. Given Walt’s own immeasurable power and influence, it would be foolish to completely discount that perspective. But this article reveals not only Disney’s position as producer, but also the role of
Disney himself as audience
. The column was his attempt to come to terms with
Song of the South
’s initial response as much as it was his effort to shape people’s perceptions of the film. Disney did not frame the use of live action as a practical business decision, but rather as a necessary artistic innovation: “I always felt the Uncle Remus character—one of the great legendary figures of literature—should be played by a living actor. The other important persons should also be humans. The folk tales, themselves, however, could only be treated adequately in animation. . . . That, in turn, required a new screen story-telling device—a combination of action by a complete human cast and cartoon animation such as never before undertaken on such a scale.”
⁸¹
Defending its aesthetics, Disney posited Uncle Remus not as an African American cinematic character or stereotype, but as an important literary figure. Mapping such prestige onto the project deflected attention away from the studio’s influence and toward Harris. As Disney wrote, the story “must be told in the tradition of the author and without stepping outside the character or material.”
⁸²
While scholars later debated how much of the film accurately reflected the written stories, Disney consistently promoted
Song of the South
as a faithful adaptation.

He resisted the idea that the film was a product of his own vision at all, save for the technological advances necessary to realize the stories. Disney made more explicit references to Harris than did others at the time, hoping to reframe the film’s controversies as steeped in (and protected by) larger issues of literary heritage. Disney concluded with an appeal to his own childhood nostalgia as a justification of the decision to adapt the Brer Rabbit stories: “One final reason why we selected Uncle Remus tales: I have been familiar with them since boyhood, have seen
them
vie with other immortal tales for widest distribution. They must have something of great worth, else ‘why,’ in the words of Uncle Remus, ‘do they last so long?’
”
⁸³
Song of the South
was both received within and framed by the seemingly innocuous discourse of childhood. That the film was a product for kids has long marked sympathetic discussions of the film. Moreover, Disney’s comments revealed a key selling point for
Song of the South
, which would often return in the years to come: The film’s presumed appeal depended on the temporal disjunction between the literary past (Harris) and the technological future (groundbreaking animation techniques). Both functioned to obscure the present.