Disney's Most Notorious Film (26 page)

Yet
Coonskin
’s understanding of cultural politics and racial representations isn’t simple either. Like all blaxploitation texts, Bakshi’s visually and aurally challenging, adult-rated film can be also read as a liberatory white fantasy of how hopelessly violent and chaotic U.S. urban spaces had become in the aftermath of mass migration to the suburbs. Although the film itself did not appeal to those audiences, controversy around its aesthetic provocation symbolically reaffirmed for whites the need to leave the city, thereby reasserting racial order and boundaries. Reflecting the lack of direction within the civil rights movement, liberals and activists argued among themselves over the value of
Coonskin
. Its satirical logic may have shrewdly highlighted how the presence of
Song of the South
in the 1970s spoke to racist attitudes about American urban spaces. But the same can be said for Bakshi’s film.
Coonskin
was made by a white Brooklyn native who had since moved to a wealthy section of Southern California at the start of his successful career. While detractors such as CORE missed or ignored
Coonskin
’s attempt at satire, the larger concern about the use of racist stereotypes was not without merit.

COONSKIN
AND DEFENSES OF
SONG OF THE SOUTH

Reactions to
Coonskin
’s controversial reception represent one of the earliest shifts in the increasingly revived perception of
Song of the South
itself. The provocative textuality of Bakshi’s film, along with the critical backlash it elicited, were eventually appropriated by proponents of
Song of the South
to deflect attention from, and even validate, the latter. In nostalgic contrast to Disney’s old film,
Coonskin
became an example of a truly “offensive” representation of African Americans in film. They contrasted the negative media attention and the verbal and visual intensity of
Coonskin
’s satire with the popular and politically uneventful appearance of
Song of the South
a couple years earlier. Disney’s film, they deduced, was thus harmless, even morally positive, entertainment. Although
Coonskin
had been intended as a biting indictment of Disney animation,
Song of the South
, and the conservative audiences
that
embraced both, its reception was quite different from that progressive goal.

Arthur Cooper addressed his 1975 review of
Coonskin
to a now-deceased Walt Disney in
Newsweek
. As with several reviews of the time, he criticized Bakshi’s film as narratively uneven and unfunny. Cooper also directed attention back favorably to
Song of the South
.
Coonskin
, he wrote, has “got an R rating, which must stand for Ripoff because what he’s done is turn [Disney’s] Uncle Remus stories inside out.” Instead of analyzing
Coonskin
further, Cooper nostalgically evoked memories of what he saw as Disney’s more innocent version: “Last night I watched an old print of your ‘
Song of the South
,’ with all those cute bluebirds and sharecroppers, and I think I’ll send it to Bakshi. Although there were protests about [
Song of the South
in the past], in this case CORE ought to just let sleeping dogs snore.”
¹⁹
Cooper’s nostalgic lament highlighted how
Coonskin
received harsher criticism in the 1970s than did
Song of the South
. It also suggests the ways that negative reactions to Bakshi’s film were appropriated to more conservative ends by Disney supporters. Cooper’s review used the intensity around
Coonskin
to make the seeming simplicity of
Song of the South
more appealing to sympathetic critics and fans. Similarly, the film historian Leonard Maltin highlighted the
Coonskin
controversy in an entry on
Song of the South
in his book
The Disney Films
, published in 1984. Unapologetically reverent, his compilation offered information on the production histories, plot summaries, and critical receptions of every major Disney film ever made. For the second edition, Maltin added two sentences on
Coonskin
to his section on
Song of the South
: “There are still occasional protests [to
Song of the South
], though the worst of these seems mild compared to the reception given Ralph Bakshi’s live-action/animated
Coonskin
in 1975—a protest so fiery that the film was disowned by its distributor! Ironically,
Coonskin
was a modern-day satire based in part on
Song of the South
.”
²⁰
Maltin did not explain why
Coonskin
was “so fiery,” or how it was “a modern-day satire” of
Song of the South
. His reference to Bakshi’s film did little more than deflect attention away from
Song of the South
’s past controversies. Disney’s conservative film on the surface is a mild, less overtly offensive text than
Coonskin
’s abrasive satire. Yet what gets distorted is that Bakshi’s film was not meant to be child- or family-friendly. In fact,
Coonskin
intended to provoke.

The intersection of
Coonskin
, Disney, and the legacy of the civil rights movement becomes increasingly entangled here. In addition to reframing the reception of Bakshi’s film, Maltin perpetuated several
myths
about
Song of the South
. For one, he intimated that it was always a huge box office hit. Another was that criticism of the film was muted in 1946, save for “some liberal reviewers and Negro organizations.”
²¹
Maltin also suggested that “it was only in the 1960s, when civil rights became a major concern of the entire United States, that it became clear that
Song of the South
and films of that kind would be touching sensitive spots if shown again. Even the reissue of
Gone with the Wind
in 1967 sparked some (relatively minor) protest among certain Negro groups who objected.”
²²
But this is the exact opposite of what happened—
Song of the South
was most forcefully protested in the 1940s, not the 1960s. In the 1984 edition, Maltin even reworded one sentence to reject the “Uncle Tom” criticism of
Song of the South
. In 1973, Maltin wrote, “It is difficult to condemn a film of this kind,
Uncle Tom accusations notwithstanding
, for in spite of its syrupy story line and occasional flaws,
Song of the South
has some of the most delightful moments ever captured on film.”
²³
In 1984, however, Maltin rewrote this sentence to read, “
Accusations of Uncle Tomisms and quibbles over its syrupy storyline are ultimately defeated
by the film’s sheer entertainment value.”
²⁴
The difference is noteworthy, given that most of the other pages on
Song of the South
are otherwise identical. The first edition appears to bracket off consideration of “Uncle Tom accusations,” suggesting the concerns may have validity. Yet the second edition collapses those criticisms with the other reservations about the film, creating the impression that
every criticism
of
Song of the South
was overcome by its entertaining affect. In the context of his second edition, Maltin positioned
Song of the South
as a happy corrective, as reassurance, to the perceived trauma caused by
Coonskin
. In the long run,
Coonskin
’s controversies worked in support of the very same film it sought to criticize.

Just as white opposition to civil rights increased steadily in the late 1960s and 1970s, there was another backlash to
Coonskin
. As Maltin and Cooper’s reactions demonstrated, the backlash was not in defense of
Coonskin
. Rather, the controversies around the film were used to deflect the question of racial difference altogether. In the void of liberal disagreements over Bakshi’s film grew an unchallenged conservatism. The criticism of
Coonskin
was used to implicitly discredit the larger civil rights movement for greater equality in cinematic representation. In a review of Daniel Leab’s 1975 book
From Sambo to Superspade
, Tom Shales commented in passing on the controversy. He noted that “one would think constructive forms of consciousness-raising, if such are possible, would be preferable to coercive tactics such as” CORE’s call for
censorship
of
Coonskin
.
²⁵
He pointed out that around the same time, “pressure groups in New York [had] blocked the airing of a public television documentary because they thought it offensive.”
²⁶
For Shales, these were examples of how counterproductive the protests were. He went further, arguing that the notorious radio and later television program
Amos ’n’ Andy
was “funny” and that “several black celebrities have said they did not find it objectionable.”
²⁷
Shales’s review criticized Leab’s book—which highlighted the ugly history of African American representations in Hollywood—for “righteous indignation” and for demanding too much progress too soon. By “asking a 1949 film to succeed at a 1975 level . . . ,” he wrote, “Leab apparently expects films to reform overnight.”
²⁸
Yet Shales also undermined that same progress in representation by arguing that protest groups (such as CORE) had gone too far. The contradictions of an evasive whiteness begin to reemerge in Shales’s piece, which criticizes any critical recognition of racial difference (in the service of white privilege).

Once devised as a particular kind of critique of
Song of the South
,
Coonskin
’s failure and de facto censorship became appropriated by Disney supporters as a vindication of the 1946 film’s innocence and entertainment value, and as a deflection from the controversies Disney’s movie had incited. In the 1984 edition of
Disney Films
, Maltin declared that “
Song of the South
has triumphed, and survived a period of acute racial sensitivity.”
²⁹
As framed, “a period of acute racial sensitivity” conflated both the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s with the controversy around
Coonskin
in the 1970s. This conservative denial of race in the 1980s celebrated an environment in which whites became less racially conscious, and where civil rights groups and media critics failed to mount an effective critique of films such as
Song of the South
and
Coonskin
. That progressive failure served those who wished for
Song of the South
’s survival. This confident assertion was particularly appropriate to the anti–civil rights movement of the 1980s.

Subsequently,
Song of the South
’s racist depiction of the plantation South, generally agreed on since the 1940s, was rejected by fans and Disney supporters by the 1980s. Sympathizers were emboldened by the controversy around
Coonskin
, by an increasingly conservative political climate, and by the continuing survival of the 1946 film. Although it’s inaccurate to trace all this back to the release of
Coonskin
, negative reactions to that film symbolized in particular this twisted logic. The reactions to both films in the 1970s served as sobering snapshots of white America’s decreasing racial consciousness. When
Song of the South
reappeared
in the 1980s in this new condition of possibility, the film seemed tame, even harmless for many. The film was now a nostalgic journey from a beloved institution’s past. Audiences during the emergent colorblind 1980s were suddenly quite anxious
not
to see race, or allow others to see race, in the Disney film. In retrospect, attacks on
Coonskin
were misplaced. As Bakshi’s film faded,
Song of the South
would remain, far more resilient and insidious—the same sort of evasive whiteness that
Coonskin
had tried to deconstruct.

REAGANISM AND WHITENESS

By the 1980s, there was no greater symbol in the United States for the post-racial rewriting of history than Ronald Reagan. As the journalist Haynes Johnson explicitly noted, the return of
Song of the South
was symbolically appropriate to this newfound conservatism.
³⁰
Meanwhile, a Venice Beach, California, newspaper’s criticism of the film’s planned appearance at the Fox Theatre in 1981 was one of several responses then, as I discuss later, to link the film directly to Reagan’s election. During his presidency, the history of racial strife and difference was carefully rewritten into a “post-racial” United States that didn’t want to see color (at the same time that he demonized minorities for political advantage). Disney’s film was far from the only instance of such cultural logic, but its reception was a particularly prominent place for it. Material from the period suggests that
Song of the South
’s reception in the 1980s was never far removed from discussions about the sitting U.S. president. This culturally conservative, post-racial “whiteness” in President Reagan’s America made for a welcoming environment in which to rerelease
Song of the South
—not once, but twice in a six-year span. Moreover, its continued endurance, at this point now over forty years, brought that historical and racial revision into particular relief.

By “whiteness,” I do not mean simply the real power and privilege of being a white person in American society over the course of the twentieth century. Rather, I refer to “whiteness” as a discursive category, as a way of seeing the world. It is a particular racial identity, one that derives its power precisely from being ignored. There is great power in being unchallenged in that way, in being the unquestioned norm. The political policies of Reaganism sought to undo the accomplishments of the civil rights movement, and to protect that invisibility in particular. In his landmark work
White
, Richard Dyer defined the deconstructive project
of
whiteness: “Seeing the racing of whites is to dislodge them/us from the position of power, with all the inequities, oppression, privileges and sufferings in its train, dislodging them/us by undercutting the authority with which they/we speak and act in and on the world.”
³¹
In contrast, Reaganism sought to affirm that authority by dismissing its ubiquity and advantages. One of its privileged positions was a particular understanding of history that rewrote past racial conflict to avoid strife in the present. Reagan and his followers’ strategic deployment of discourses of whiteness in various contexts were politically and culturally successful because they worked through passivity and appeals to color blindness. Thus talking about race and Reaganism is trickier than it at first appears.