song of south merge1

destruction/2023-06-23 song of south.txt

@@ -8,7 +8,8 @@ As mentioned earlier, the Favers brothers, as bullies, seem to have a natural bi
 
 I've heard some say that Sally is racist due to the scenes where she asks Uncle Remus to stop telling his stories or interacting with Johnny. I think her motivation is pretty clear; she thinks the stories could cause him to behave outside of how she's been trying to teach him. I don't think she has reason to believe this, so it's a bit of a plothole I suppose. But her issue is with the stories, not with who's telling them. It's about a lack of trust in the material. I'd probably fix this by getting Grandmother to convince Sally to have Remus tell the stories with Sally present, to make sure she's there for parental guidance. And then she can realize they're not a problem. Actually my proposed fix would be quite focused on adapting the story to focus on Johnny and perhaps his family trying to fit into this world he doesn't understand, and trying to become friends with Toby despite their differences. That, if executed properly, could be a much more effective story about reconciliation between the races; treating people as equals.
 
-It's bad for the story for many reasons to treat all characters as equal when they are objectively not in equal standing; some of these characters are enslaved to the others, creating a significant thematic dissonance. But it's very important to remember that this film came out over a decade *before* the civil rights movement. And yet it's quite respectful to black people. In many racist cartoons and other media from this period, you'll see exaggerated, ugly appearances of black people. They're portrayed as uneducated, stupid, sluggish, selfish, and generally no good. In contrast, Remus is a kind, insightful old man, with wonderful stories that provide enriching ideas to children. His vocabulary is fairly advanced and his wordplay is quite clever. He speaks in an accent that is indicative of where he came from, but he still comes off as exaggeratedly uneducated, far from it. All the other black characters, unless I missed something, are similarly portrayed in an inoffensive, respectful manner.
+(paragraph added 2023-12-11)
+It's bad for the story for many reasons to treat all characters as equal when they are objectively not in equal standing; some of these characters are enslaved to the others, creating a significant thematic dissonance. But it's very important to remember that this film came out over a decade *before* the civil rights movement. And yet it's quite respectful to black people. In many racist cartoons and other media from this period, you'll see exaggerated, ugly appearances of black people. They're portrayed as uneducated, stupid, sluggish, selfish, and generally no good. In contrast, Remus is a kind, insightful old man, with wonderful stories that provide enriching ideas to children. His vocabulary is fairly advanced and his wordplay is quite clever. He speaks in an accent that is indicative of where he came from, but he doesn't come off as exaggeratedly uneducated, far from it. All the other black characters, unless I missed something, are similarly portrayed in an inoffensive, respectful manner.
 
 The Uncle Remus stories themselves are just Disney's imagining of the original stories. Their voiced by black people, in fact the actor for Remus himself voices Br'er Fox. Make no mistake: these stories are historically significant Black Culture. To erase them is an injustice and incredibly disrespectful. The closing of Splash Mountain in Magic Kingdom and Disneyland is a disgrace. Those rides were a physical portrayal of Black Folklore as imagined by Disney. This portrayal was, at every level that I have researched, 100% respectful. It's completely removed from the film itself and its issues in being unsympathetic or ignoring the struggles of the slaves it portrays. It's a stylistic portrayal of Uncle Remus's stories in and of themselves. It is not and will never be racist; those stories were created by black people. I'm sick of people being so race-obsessed that they assume that anything that involves black people in any way is racist. Watch the animated scenes of this movie in isolation from the live action segments. They have absolutely zero negative portrayals. These haphazard assumptions cause people to take actions to erase black culture and I can't stand it. These stories are wholesome, and Disney's portrayal of them are enriching to all types of people. Only the live action segments of this film ignore historical context. But even that may not create harmful ideas in the heads of children who may consume it. It just may have to be recontextualized once they're old enough to understand the history.