Disney's Most Notorious Film (28 page)

The last 20 years have seen many strides made by the Civil Rights movement and the resulting, though very slight, bettering of life for some Black people here. But now, with the economy in a mess, the Klan is on the rise again to once more put Blacks, and other non-white people, in their place. The political manifestation of the rise of racism is the election of Ronald Reagan espousing the politics of the right replete with the same “states rights” policies of Rutherford B. Hays 100 years ago. This is once again, the beginning of the end of Reconstruction—a call to return to earlier and simpler times when Blacks knew, and stayed in, their place. Small wonder that this is also a time for the re-issuance of
Song of the South
.
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Divergent critics of
Song of the South
sometimes spent as much time attacking one another as criticizing the film itself. Despite the coalition’s subsequent success at having the screening cancelled, the group itself was not happy with the
Venice Beachhead
’s representation of their position.
A month later, a coalition leader wrote to the paper to criticize its depiction of the movement. While grateful for the positive support, the Anti-Racism Coalition organizer Ed Pearl protested the article’s headline, which had described
Song of the South
as “fascist.” “First of all, it is inaccurate,” he wrote. “Nobody claimed [the film] as fascist, genocidal, or anything other than ‘Mickey Mouse’ pernicious racist.”
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Pearl’s larger concern was that such hyperbole would, by alienating most readers, undermine the very effort his group was trying to make. Pearl made the observation that the parents themselves had grown up on, and had strong affective attachments to, cartoons—almost all of which were in some way sexist, racist, or violent. To attack any of these texts carelessly was to risk turning away the adults they were attempting to educate. Moreover, defenders of
Song of the South
, wrote Pearl, would respond to such an extreme position by marginalizing it entirely: “The forces of reaction will no doubt point to this headline to label both yourselves and the protesters of this film as reckless leftists and censors of cartoons. This diminishes your voice and our effectiveness as organizers against the growing racism of this political period. We do not wish to be dismissed and that headline did not help.”
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Pearl’s concern proved in some ways justified. At least two people later took issue with the headline’s implication that
Song of the South
was “fascist.” This objection was then deployed to reject the larger, and more justified, criticisms of the film. In that same issue of the
Beachhead
, David Fertik argued that the headline was “frightening” and “seemed to . . . incite your readers and to frighten them and coerce Fox [Theatre’s] management to capitulate.” Fertik took issue with the move toward censorship that the paper and the coalition seemed to be advocating, turning the
Beachhead
’s language against itself: “To me censorship especially in the arts and communications is the worst sign of impending fascism in a free society. . . . Are your actions any different from the ‘Moral Majority’ stopping a local movie theatre in Yahoo, Mississippi from showing
Hearts and Minds
by calling it commie propaganda, or
Last Tango in Paris
by calling it a film of sexual perversion?” Fertik resisted the link to Reagan, and instead believed that
Song of the South
was actually the opposite of everything the new president stood for. “Spiritually,” he noted, “the film suggests that happiness is not a function of wealth and power—what a threatening idea for the Reagan administration.”
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Fertik argued that
Song of the South
’s emphasis on finding joy in the simple things in life contradicted Reagan’s emphasis on the accumulation of wealth through policies such as deregulation and reckless tax cutting.
But one of the
Beachhead
’s original criticisms of
Song of the South
was that “the lesson of the film is that life is as it should be. Any person—Black or white, child or adult—who wants to change their unhappy situation and leave the ‘plantation’ for a better life will always experience something worse. . . . The psychological lesson learned by children who identify with Br’er Rabbit is that what is, is better than what could be.”
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This suggested that one of
Song of the South
’s “lessons” is that black, but also poor and lower-middle-class white people, should accept their economic and social status in life. In theory, that worked
in support
of a Republican presidency focused on making the rich richer (“trickle-down economics”) at the expense of the other contented classes. Fertik took exception to the
Beachhead
’s use of hyperbole, just as the Anti-Racism Coalition had. He criticized the loose connection drawn between the film and larger historical developments:

Your article suggests that
The Song of the South
[
sic
] was to be shown by the Fox [Theatre] and was released by Disney Studios to celebrate Reagan’s election and the return of right wing power. This is then linked up to the KKK and the killing of black children around the country. To me, this is irresponsible, yellow journalism of the worst kind, especially considering the proximity of the Oakwood neighborhood, a neighborhood beset by unemployment, drug abuse, and violence. . . . You created a dangerous situation by suggesting that the Fox was showing a film that you say creates a climate for the killing of black children. This coercion is not calm, clear, rational communication. This is fascism.
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Fertik’s response was as careless as the article he criticized. There was a slippery logic in comparing
Song of the South
to contemporary racial violence. At the same time, the film appealed to people who embraced its vision of racial and economic inequalities in the United States. Published five months later in the
Los Angeles Times
, fellow Venice resident Thomas Pleasure’s response reinforced Fertik’s point about the problematic extremity of the original
Beachhead
piece. The coalition, he wrote, “opposed the screening on the grounds that it was ‘racist to the core,’ that Uncle Remus was a racist tool and that the animated fables were clever devices designed to keep the ‘natives’ down on the farm, to keep them accepting of slavery.”
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Like Pearl, Pleasure found the controversy
counterproductive,
taking issue with the idea that the film was fascist. He believed that “the censorship of the film hurts the black-awareness movement far more than it helps it.” Pleasure touched on a defense that would become increasingly common. He felt that the white characters in
Song of the South
were portrayed much less sympathetically than were the black ones. Identifying what he saw as an “anti-white bias,” Pleasure insisted, “Each time I left the theatre feeling elated but with the distinct impression that the white people had been raked over the coals in a subtle way. Whether it was the rich plantation owners or the poor white trash, these white Southerners were portrayed as unfeeling, uptight and downright stupid.” This defense vaguely echoed the earlier logic of reverse discrimination that Phillips argued for concerning the film’s critiques in the wake of affirmative action. They both believed that whites, not blacks, were the ones really offended. Pleasure joked that “whites may wish to censor the film just to save face.”
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He did not so much deny the offensive aspects of
Song of the South
as he deflected it. Arguing that the film is merely a product of a racist past, he insisted that the blacks portrayed are the more likeable and honorable characters.

Still other critiques of
Song of the South
that tied it to the U.S. president surfaced at this time. As I noted earlier, Finney wrote an editorial in the
Los Angeles Times
attacking
Song of the South
’s latest rerelease: “We’ve seen 1980 close with the re-release of a film that has debased blacks for 34 years. The fact that Walt Disney Productions’
Song of the South
is circulating during the holiday season is a callous addition to the web of disrespect that surrounds blacks.” Finney situated the reappearance in relation to a number of other recent events, including Reagan’s election and the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan. He also specifically summarized the problems with
Song of the South
’s representations. He noted “slaves returning from the fields, singing in perfect harmony about how fortunate they are to be on the plantation”; the young black child—“in a take-off on the coon-scared-of-the ghost bit, Toby having to pinch Johnny to confirm that he is real”; and the cartoon characters “all having either tattered hats or coon dialects—or both—just like the human coon characters. Even the tarbaby dummy wears a tattered hat.”
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His largest compliant was the effect
Song of the South
had on children, particularly white children, and their perceptions of African Americans. “Numerous studies have shown,” he argued, “that children get their view of the world as much, if not more so, from the media as much as from school.” His argument about a film’s effect serves as a reminder that deployment of the “child” as a discursive move is inherently neither conservative
nor progressive. Finney mentioned some children’s reactions to the movie’s conclusion: “When I saw
Song of the South
in a Westwood theater, the worst of it came, for me, when the house lights went up. The audience, all white except for me, applauded. One woman nearby stood, stretched and said to her kids, ‘Wasn’t that nice? How’d you like it?’ In reply, the kids literally skipped out of the theatre—singing ‘Zip-ah-de-doo-dah.’
”
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For Finney, the children seemed happily oblivious to the film’s negative representation of racial relations. Not surprisingly, his observations about
Song of the South
ruffled some feathers. Like Paul Cooke’s critical letter to the
Washington Post
in 1946, Finney’s editorial provoked a spirited response. Unlike the
Post
letter, however, it was far from a unanimous reaction. In fact, in sharp contrast, the letters overall were mostly supportive of
Song of the South
, and critical of Finney for mentioning race at all.

The
Los Angeles Times
devoted an entire section to the responses generated by his op-ed.
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The first four letters alternated between positive and negative, while the last three all condemned his comments, albeit for different reasons. It is impossible to determine whether the balance of responses was representative of all letters sent in, or how the
Times
went about selecting which letters to publish. Supporting Finney’s argument, Denise Henderson wrote, “It really disgusted me to see the movie coming back,” while Jan Brown said, “I had decided not to take my children to see
Song of the South
because I knew it presented damaging and offensive images.” The focus for Brown was also on children, as she insisted, “We parents can no longer dismiss this type of humor as harmless while struggling to raise healthy, wholesome children in a society plagued by young alcoholics [referencing criticisms of ethnic stereotypes in Disney’s
Aristocats
, 1970] and witnessing the Ku Klux Klan’s attempts to make their violent message appealing to youngsters.”

On the other side of the ledger, Luella Green wrote, “I have but one comment . . . hogwash! It is just such attitudes as [Finney’s] that set back the so-called ‘movement.’ How could any thinking person see that movie as a racial slur?”
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Green felt that
Song of the South
’s utopian conception of race relations was a boon to the same “so-called” civil rights movement she felt Finney undermined. This explicitly reinforced the contradictory color-blind logic of Reaganism. Her argument, like those of many defenders over the years, was that blacks were the only sensitive people in the film, and thus the representation was not racist. These rhetorical moves are interesting, and not only in their defense of
Song of the South
. More telling is their attempt to silence dissent by condemning
critics
for supposedly undermining the very causes they claim to champion. In the same set of letters, Coates’s appropriation of the oppositional language suggested as much. “Finney’s article brought to sight,” she argued, “how narrow-minded and bigoted our country has become over the years”—despite the fact that Finney’s criticisms of
Song of the South
were nothing particularly new in the 1980s.

REAGANISM’S POPULIST REVISION OF PERSONAL MEMORY AS HISTORY

By this time, however, the social history was less important than the personal nostalgia that was firmly a factor in
Song of the South
’s enduring, even expanding appeal. Criticizing the Disney film forty years after its first appearance was complicated by nostalgia’s inherent temporal ambiguities—a historical mistiness of which Reaganism took full advantage. In
The Reagan Range: The Nostalgic Myth in American Politics
, James Combs argued that the president used his own personal narrative of progress to shift our understanding of history away from collective movements to private memories. This then was mobilized into a political power that attempted to change American history. The 1960s and 1970s were rewritten as an era marked not by progress in equality but by chaos in the existing social order. A figure rooted in nostalgia for the 1950s, according to Combs, Reagan “appeared in the present of the fallen 1980s as representative of the reformed Rockwell of the 1950s, a model of assured affluence and cultural continuity. He came to political power as a reaction against the reforms and innovations of the 1960s and as a spokesman for a coalition that won the Presidency in the wake of pessimism and exhaustion of the 1970s.”
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