Disney's Most Notorious Film (30 page)

THE
EMERGENCE OF EVASIVE WHITENESS

Song of the South
played in U.S. theaters through early 1987. By then, a Reaganist discourse of evasive whiteness that denied race, to the benefit of whites, was to become further engrained in popular periodicals of the time. Shortly after Snead’s article appeared,
Song of the South
played a second-run theater, the Webster, in Hartford, Connecticut. Aside from being one of the last known times that
Song of the South
played in theatrical release in the United States, the appearance is notable for the context in which the
New York Times
placed it. The article detailed how the Webster, which originally opened in 1937, managed to survive economically for so long in part because it began screening pornographic films in the mid-1970s. The theater continued this practice until less than a year before
Song of the South
’s reappearance in January 1987. During a Monday matinee on a school holiday, the theater manager claimed, “We had over 150 kids, and that was even with the snow. . . . It was a good matinee.” “Youngsters lining up outside the Webster is a far cry from this past summer,” the article continued, “when the clientele was virtually all men who came to see movies such as
Sex Capades
and
Young Doctors in Lust
.”
⁷²
Juxtaposing a children’s film such as
Song of the South
with the pornographic material that usually played at the theater gave the story an added level of humorous irony. Less amusing, however, was that the unnamed snowy January holiday in question was Martin Luther King Jr. Day. The Monday before the article’s publication on Sunday was January 19, 1987—the second official observance of the national holiday in honor of the slain civil rights leader. Reagan himself refused for many years to acknowledge the possibility of the holiday, or to sign the bill that would make it official. Eventually, conservatives had to concede to veto-proof numbers in the Democratic-controlled Congress.

At the heart of the Reagan era, this article at the very end of
Song of the South
’s theatrical run is an especially appropriate way to conclude this discussion of the film’s relationship to Reaganism. It is disturbingly ironic that children spent MLK Day watching Disney’s
Song of the South
. More distressing is that the
Times
didn’t even mention this, let alone its historical and cultural significance. Such ignorance, willful or otherwise, was exactly what Snead had been trying to highlight. Race had been erased as a valid way to discuss
Song of the South
, even while there remained a real material impact from such lack of knowledge (e.g.,
children
celebrating the holiday of a major civil rights figure by watching one of Hollywood’s most resiliently offensive racist texts). As with Reaganism, race was there by not being there, and the history of racial conflict and tension was there by not being there. Critics of
Song of the South
such as Snead and Johnson were on the losing end of a battle with the invisible ubiquity of whiteness. In this
Times
article, race really didn’t matter. And, as the next chapter demonstrates, Disney too was finding ways to remove the question of race from
Song of the South
. It could no longer just change perceptions of the film, as its defenders had. It would have to change the film itself.

Five

ON TAR BABIES AND HONEY POTS

Splash Mountain, “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah,” and the Transmedia Dissipation of
Song of the South

Like ruins, which contain within them the memory of a past existence, . . . the meaning of the fragment functions as nostalgic remnant or emblem of the past, but it also reinvents itself as a unique whole that belongs to its own time.

ANGELA NDALIANIS, NEO-BAROQUE AESTHETICS AND CONTEMPORARY ENTERTAINMENT

In her study of “polycentric” texts in contemporary media, Angela Ndalianis inverts the hierarchical connotations usually associated with such transmedia franchises as
Star Wars
(1977),
Jurassic Park
(1993), and
The Matrix
(1999). Often, films are repurposed through ancillary media—television shows, video games, theme park rides, and so forth. The temptation is to see the other texts as pale imitations, interesting but insufficient copies of the “original.” That has often been the argument—with good reason—about the wide range of texts produced by the Disney Corporation. Yet, Ndalianis argues, each of the other texts is no less significant than the film that spawned it. A particular theme park ride not only expands the narrative universe of its cinematic cousin, but initiates a reception history all its own. In the 1980s, the full-length theatrical version of
Song of the South
began to fade from theaters. Ndalianis’s emphasis on the “unique whole” gains added importance for understanding how the film endured as Disney’s other media “fragments” took its place.

Despite continued box office success during this decade, the 1980s symbolically marked the end of the feature-length
Song of the South
’s visibility. Most notably, Disney stopped distributing it theatrically. More quietly, isolated fragments of the film—such as “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah”—took its place.
Song of the South
disappeared into other media formats
throughout
the decade: Disney home video and audiocassette, and such films as
National Lampoon’s Vacation
(1983),
Splash
(1984),
Who Framed Roger Rabbit
(1988), and
Fletch Lives
(1989). This latter presence reaffirmed the film’s quiet but considerable ubiquity after forty years of recirculation. Yet, despite the modest acceptance it had acquired relative to its first appearance, the film in many ways was quickly outliving its usefulness to the Disney Corporation. To say
Song of the South
disappeared after 1986 because of its controversial status is accurate, but also
incomplete.
By the end of the 1980s, almost
all
old Disney titles began disappearing from theaters. The company shifted its focus to the emergent VHS market for new forms of distribution that, in the short term, were more lucrative.
Song of the South
would not make it to home video formats in the United States, but Disney still kept pieces of the old film around. This involved radically different forms, which meant that Uncle Remus himself was largely left behind.

Promotional still for Splash Mountain from 1989.

The most significant of these fragments was the theme park attraction “Splash Mountain,” which was based solely on the film’s animated sequences. It may appear at first glance foolish to try to reuse
Song of the South
at all, given the cultural issues attached to the film, the considerable financial investment that rides require, and the physical permanence of a theme park attraction. But
Song of the South
was quickly becoming one of the few remaining major titles not yet exploited by the parks in the mid-1980s. Hence, understanding this complicated series of corporate decisions requires understanding Disney’s dependence on “branding.” Branding is the attempt to use a previously recognizable brand name across multiple media platforms and ancillary markets as a means to sell new products. “Disney” itself is a brand, but so are individual properties within the company. The act of branding has become, writes Paul Grainge, the “lynchpin of a new gestalt of ‘total entertainment,’ central to a consolidated media moment transforming the status of the motion picture as commodity and aesthetic object.”
¹
When consumers watch a Disney film, visit a Disney theme park, or buy a Disney toy, they are paying for the presold brand of wholesome, nostalgic entertainment that the name brings with it as much as they are the particular item. And when a new regime took over in the mid-1980s, Disney’s brand was in need of revitalization.

Disney had undergone quite a few changes from the late 1960s up to the 1980s. Although the theme parks and rereleases were doing extremely well, few of Disney’s new products were making money. After Walt’s death in 1966, and Roy’s a few years later, the company lost a great deal of its direction and character. But it is also easy to overstate the company’s woes in retrospect. Guided largely by Disney disciples such as Cardon Walker and Ron Miller, the company deliberately ran from Walt’s image for fear the direct comparison would hurt its present fortunes. Yet the company quietly maintained his existing vision by focusing on rereleasing the classics, making low-budget live action films, exploring the possibilities of television, and investing in the theme parks. This fulfilled the long shift away from groundbreaking animation, which had begun in
the
1940s with World War II propaganda like
Victory Through Air Power
(1943), hybrid animation films like
Song of the South
, and documentaries like
Seal Island
(1948). Disney still made a few animated films through the 1970s and into the 1980s, such as
The Black Cauldron
(1985), but they were no longer the focal point of the company’s energies, nor were audiences flocking to see them.

There was no central logic to Disney’s business plan other than to continue to do things exactly as they’d always been done. In the post-Walt era, only
The Love Bug
(1969) proved the kind of major box office smash that could match some of the company’s earlier successes. Meanwhile, fiascos like
The Black Hole
(1979) symbolized not only Disney’s significant theatrical woes but also its lack of creative direction, since the film was basically a knockoff of George Lucas’s
Star Wars
. To a point, Disney’s difficulties during this era have been sometimes exaggerated by historians anxious to glorify the later innovations of Michael Eisner’s leadership. Thanks to the parks, reissues, and low-cost live action films, Disney was treading water throughout the 1970s more than drowning. Nevertheless, Disney’s net worth and vast library of existing assets made it an attractive target for hostile takeovers. Such an outcome was avoided, however, when friendly investors such as Sid Bass agreed to outbid the competition and install a new regime of leaders in 1984. This ushered in the “Team Disney” era of Eisner, Frank Wells, and Jeffrey Katzenberg. They mostly came over from Paramount Studios, where Eisner had been hired in 1976 to replace the same man who had dropped
Coonskin
, Barry Diller.

Since Team Disney was rooted in a particular investment in the company’s past, its nostalgic vision for the company brand had distinctive implications for
Song of the South
. They are most famous for revitalizing the animation department, which they saw as a cornerstone of the company. Feature-length cartoons offered an endless well of new ideas for merchandising, theme park attractions, and other paratexts. This decision to reinvest in animation led to the phenomenal five-year-run of
Little Mermaid
(1989),
Beauty and the Beast
(1991),
Aladdin
(1992), and
The Lion King
(1994). More quietly, this period also created another generation of loyal fans. Appealing to Disney’s tradition of animation excellence, however, was also built on Team Disney’s belief that playing up nostalgia for its studio history was key. They also exploited affection for the company’s past by flooding the emergent home video market with VHS copies of old titles from the classic period, such as
Pinocchio
(released in 1985). The previous regime had resisted home video: it presented
copyright concerns and undermined their own lucrative theatrical reissue practices, which the era of the VCR effectively ended. In the short term, however, it was a remarkable economic success.

Song of the South
was awkwardly caught up in this new generation of a distinctive Disney brand that celebrated, exploited, but also sanitized the company’s past. At the core of all of these decisions was Eisner’s embrace of the “Uncle Walt” mythology, and with that the heightening of nostalgia for the perceived glory days of
Disneyland
and the 1950s. Focusing on the studio’s history as its central selling point, Team Disney had a particular challenge in rebuilding the brand. The easier part was solidifying a new generation of customer loyalty through the nostalgic use of Disney’s preexisting consumer recognition and attachments. In
Convergence Culture
, Henry Jenkins has called this emphasis on branding in the modern corporate age “affective economics”: “[Media companies] don’t simply want to get a consumer to make a single purchase, but rather to build a long-term relationship with a brand. . . . Marketing gurus argue that building a committed ‘brand community’ may be the surest means of expanding consumer loyalty.”
²

Disney capitalized on affective economics fifty years ago with the spatial and televisual development of Disneyland, as Grainge, Christopher Anderson,
³
and others have argued. They then refined it considerably in the 1980s. This attachment was always deeply affective, writes Grainge, because branding is “a question of the degree to which a product or company can naturalize an emotional relation or set of values.”
⁴
It also depends on customer recognition of the same images, sounds, and stories. This is where even a deeply problematic property like
Song of the South
comes into play. While Mickey Mouse and Walt himself were significant emblems of the Disney brand, its long-term textual universe depended on exploiting the feature-length films whose theatrical presence granted them the greatest visibility. Most everything Disney did began with a movie, and that aspect of the brand served as the glue that held the larger multimedia empire together.