BlackChampagne -- no longer new; improvement also in question.: Movie Review: Song of the South
Monday, July 27, 2009
Movie Review: Song of the South
Song of the South is a controversial, "lost" Disney classic. Controversial for the racial elements, which have kept it from ever being released on home video in the US, the only Disney film so stigmatized. (Happily, it's readily available online, and since they don't sell it in the US, it might not even be entirely illegal to download it.)
Released in 1946, it's mostly a live action film, enlivened by several animated segments illustrating the B'rer Rabbit stories told by the elderly, kindly, not-entirely-Uncle Tom'ish, Uncle Remus. Those animated segments are fun, if somewhat sub-Bugs Bunny quality in their anthropomorphized animal antics, of the "wily rabbit outwits blundering fox and bear" style. There are also some scenes of live action with cartoons drawn into them, which work fairly well.
Here's a YouTube clip from fairly early in the film, which is what most people have seen or remember about this film. Zip Dah De Do Dah is the film's signature tune, and it won an Academy Award that year.
Unfortunately, the vast bulk of the film is entirely live action, and it's dreadful. Literally unwatchable. Terrible, boring, stupid plot, sub-afterschool special quality acting (adults and children), ugly, muddy colors, bad dialogue, etc. As such it's a weird film to score, since the animated parts are pretty good, and Uncle Remus is such a great character, and well-performed, that his sections are fine. Yet everything else is "cut the celluloid into ukulele picks" bad, and that stuff makes up the vast bulk of the all-too-long 1:34 running time.
Song of the South, 1946 Script/Story: 2 Acting/Casting: 5 Action: 0 Eye Candy: 3 Fun Factor: 4 Replayability: 1 Overall: 3
As I said, schizophrenic scores. Or at least schizophrenic values for each score that averaged out poorly. Just the cartoon segments are good, and the scenes with Uncle Remus interacting with the kids are good. Tragically, that's less than half the film, and the rest is uniformly horrible. It's like watching a school play someone filmed and ineptly edited into a movie. Well, it's actually a bit more like watching recorded rehearsals of a school play, since most of the actors don't seem to know their lines, or have any idea how their character should react at any given moment.
Part of that is the age of the film. Most movies from the 40s and 50s are done in that stage-like style, where the actors are always consciously acting. They don't try (or succeed) at seeming like real people living real lives. Everything is done as a performance, and it gives all of their actions a very unnatural nature. This tendency is most pronounced with the child actors, most of whom talk in weirdly stilted ways and mug like they're looking at a camera on Christmas morning. Admittedly, I have very little practical experience being around 5-8 year olds, so it's possible that when lots of them hear a question they pause, their faces screwed up in thought, for several seconds before giving a halting, non-sequitur of a reply. But I sure hope not.
The adult acting isn't any better, and it all exists entirely to advance the plot. No one just does anything naturally, where we get the feeling that we're simply observing real life through the camera lens. Every scene is blocked out, with characters facing each other at an angle so they can both look at the camera, sitting in carefully arranged chairs, etc. A lot of it is just the style of movie making at the time, which doesn't make it any less painful to watch today, but at least gives it's suckitude something of an alibi.
I was not able to watch the whole film. I went into this with no memories of anything other than some Brer Rabbit cartoon stuff, and I was groaning during the fantastically stiff acting during the carriage ride that takes up the first five minutes of the film. I had to start skipping forward through the live action almost immediately after that, and I only made it through the film by jumping forward a minute or two at a time through everything but the cartoons. I did force myself to watch the last 10 minutes without interruption, suffering through the eloelably fake "Johnny races the bull" scene (that earned the film its rare zero in that category), and his predictably melodramatic, Wizard of Oz-esque death bed reawakening. I could not have watched the entire film, though. Not even drunk.
Racial Elements
As for the racial elements, they weren't that remarkable, for all I'd heard about their role in keeping this film under wraps.
The movie was released in 1946, and it remains the only Disney film to never be released on home video in the US. That's a fairly remarkable fact, given the way Disney recycles their film properties every few years in "limited edition" home videos, rapes their classics with low quality DVD sequels, and shamelessly churns out anything and everything to siphon money from parents desperate for another hour of digital babysitting. When you realize that they've got a whole film that they've not yet issued in seven different DVD versions, and you hear that it's not been released since it's racially insensitive, you expect lynchings. At a minimum!
Not so much. This isn't exactly Birth of a Nation. In fact, Song of the South is a very simple, friendly, happy little feature written to the comprehension level of an 8 year old. There's no violence, no hatred, no racial discord, etc.
The controversy comes from the racial elements and interactions, with the happily subservient blacks working around the plantation, in constant deference to their white superiors. It's not clear when the film is set, but there aren't any cars, so I guess it's supposed to be the late 1800s, some decades after the Civil War. The blacks aren't slaves, at least not legally, but they clearly think of themselves as second class citizens, cheerfully and uncomplainingly laboring under their benevolent white masters.
It's not so much that the blacks are servile, it's that they're so content and obliging in their behavior, and that the whites are naturally condescending and superior, even when theyr'e kind. They just feel a natural superiority towards the blacks, and while I'm sure that's historically accurate, it's still creepy to watch. The adult whites speak to the black people exactly as they would when fondly addressing a pet, or perhaps a retarded child.
The black/white relations are actually very good in this film; friendly, respectful, unchallenging; which is what upsets people about it today. The film perpetuates the "impression of an idyllic master-slave relationship" as wikipedia quotes the NAACP on the issue. Compared to something like Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, which shows the cruelty, hatred, and barbarism of a racially segregated society in the postbellum South, Song of the South is happy, peaceful, and utterly unrealistic. If you'll pardon the term, it whitewashes the actual state of affairs, and as such it can be seen as propaganda for white supremacy. As if it's arguing something like, "See how happy those Negros were when they knew their place?"
Walt Disney was aware of this issue while planning and filming it, as some quotes on the Wikipedia page attest. I didn't find it offensive, and I think it's useful as a sort of historical document, but I think it's best that children don't watch this and use it to form their views of black/white relations, or their idea of the postbellum history of the American south. It could be interesting for adults to view, as a sort of conversational piece... except that it's written on such a stupid, childish level that I doubt many adults could get through it, much less enjoy themselves.
Honestly, it's probably best that Disney has only released the partially and fully animated bits, since the rest of the film is terrible, both as a cultural document and as a motion picture.
This was one of the best animated movies Disney ever did. Each cell frame has been drawn on to create the animation. I have copy of this, bought it at a comic book convention, as it was recorded off of Japanese TV. The quality is remarkable, so the YouTube gives you nothing good as a comparison.
