One of the major revisions on A Frown Upside Down will be a largely new introduction to replace the old one, which had gotten a bit bloated and scattered. So, I'm testing out a new opening to the book (only a big chunk of the first paragraph is a holdover):
Hollywood history is littered with racist artifacts—but they are not always so lost, and their occasional endurance can tell us as much about media industry practices and racial relations in the present as the time in which they were first made. Disney’s Song of the South (1946) is today one such seemingly forgotten film, another racist relic from a cinematic past filled with no shortage of anachronistic and offensive depictions. As with many such films, it is tempting to toss Song of the South back into the dustbin of Hollywood history. The ideologically conservative Disney Corporation itself—never one to pass up a chance at exploiting older properties—has refused to re-release it to American audiences for over 25 years. On a first mention, the name itself may not even ring a bell. Yet mention Brer Rabbit, the “Tar Baby,” Uncle Remus (James Baskett) or “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah,” and suddenly many people remember that they once were quite familiar with the film, or at least with one of its many textual reiterations (Golden Books, Disneyland records, Disneyland television episodes, etc.).
For its part, Song of the South depicts Southern plantation life in the 19th Century, a time marked by unimaginable cruelty, as instead a white musical utopia. Based loosely on the 19th Century literary stories of Joel Chandler Harris, Song of the South mixed live-action footage of Uncle Remus, the kindly ex-slave, and his seemingly idyllic life on a Southern plantation, with animated sequences of Brer Rabbit outsmarting Brer Fox and Brer Bear. Despite being a landmark achievement in cost-cutting hybrid animation, early audiences initially rejected its racial insensitivities, in the wake of World War II, as well as its low-budget aesthetic, on the heels of more polished Disney productions like Snow White and Pinocchio. Yet Song of the South hardly disappeared after modest releases in the 1940s and 1950s. In fact, for a particular period as recently as the 1970s and 1980s, this offensive film was actually extremely popular. At the height of the “White Backlash” against the Civil Rights Movement and the subsequent rise of Reaganesque conservatism in the US, as well as Disney’s emergent cultural status as a powerful “family institution,” Song of the South was a considerable part of the American media landscape.
The first question one often asks now is “whatever happened to that film?” The truth, though, is that this especially problematic movie has not gone anywhere. Thanks to decades of cult followings and Disney’s own careful corporate remediation, Song of the South and the complicated histories of race and media convergence it embodies is as present and relevant as it ever was. In fact, of all the racist films from Hollywood’s past, Song of the South’s troublingly persistent survival may be the most distinctive for what it tells us today about the history of American media, its audiences, and their at times mutually-reinforcing negotiation of racist images. Beyond the limits of morbid curiosity, there is a more fascinating history of the relationship between media and race hidden here.
Song of the South has been a quietly, but instructionally resilient, film for seven decades, nearly spanning the entire lifetime of the more famous company which spawned, exploited, and eventually tossed it (officially) aside. Understanding the film’s role within the larger history of convergence culture and racial formations requires 1) documenting the ways in which Disney recirculated, repurposed and rewrote the film, 2) appreciating the diverse racial and political climates in which it appeared (and didn’t), and 3) articulating how different audiences responded to the film and its fragments via their own discursive production. This book will triangulate the cult history of Song of the South within all three contexts in order to move us closer to answering several interrelated questions: how have the textual and extratextual dynamics of “media convergence” historically interacted with larger cultural negotiations regarding racial identity in the 20th Century? How have industry strategies of remediation and forms of participatory culture affected socially-constructed notion of whiteness as mediated through, and in the reception of, representations of African-Americans in classical Hollywood films? How does the subsequent repurposing of these films in ancillary venues complicate its (and audiences’) relationship to the “original” text? How do issues such as the larger political climates in America, personal, public and commercial forms of nostalgia, and affective formations, play in further problematizing these questions? More specifically, in what ways do a powerful media institution (Disney) and its considerable, shifting, set of audiences play a sometimes mutual role in embracing, ignoring and exploiting the continuing presence of its racist past?
Embodying a wide range of contexts central to understanding these important but largely unanswered questions, Song of the South is an important text to consider not merely because of its fascinatingly unfortunate cult status as a notoriously racist film at the heart of a particularly image-conscious entertainment empire. Disney’s film has also appeared prominently both in moments of technological change and media platform transitions and in periods of cultural upheaval and racial tension. As older Hollywood films migrated—all or in part—across newer media and ancillary market channels, Disney repeatedly returned to Song of the South as a source for revenue and repurposed material despite its troubled origins and problematic history. Alternately, the film’s theatrical appearances over the last several decades always closely reflected white America’s racial consciousness, and lack thereof. Not surprisingly, then, fragments of the old Brer Rabbit film still exist in a variety of forms to this day. At a time when the future-oriented, vaguely utopian, logic of both convergence culture and post-racial whiteness suggest, even at times insist, that audiences forget the larger history of media practices underlining both, A Frown Upside Down instead seeks to illuminate the powerful ways in which the history of media convergence has alternatingly intensified, shifted and dissipated representations of racism and constructions of whiteness.
Hollywood history is littered with racist artifacts—but they are not always so lost, and their occasional endurance can tell us as much about media industry practices and racial relations in the present as the time in which they were first made. Disney’s Song of the South (1946) is today one such seemingly forgotten film, another racist relic from a cinematic past filled with no shortage of anachronistic and offensive depictions. As with many such films, it is tempting to toss Song of the South back into the dustbin of Hollywood history. The ideologically conservative Disney Corporation itself—never one to pass up a chance at exploiting older properties—has refused to re-release it to American audiences for over 25 years. On a first mention, the name itself may not even ring a bell. Yet mention Brer Rabbit, the “Tar Baby,” Uncle Remus (James Baskett) or “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah,” and suddenly many people remember that they once were quite familiar with the film, or at least with one of its many textual reiterations (Golden Books, Disneyland records, Disneyland television episodes, etc.).
For its part, Song of the South depicts Southern plantation life in the 19th Century, a time marked by unimaginable cruelty, as instead a white musical utopia. Based loosely on the 19th Century literary stories of Joel Chandler Harris, Song of the South mixed live-action footage of Uncle Remus, the kindly ex-slave, and his seemingly idyllic life on a Southern plantation, with animated sequences of Brer Rabbit outsmarting Brer Fox and Brer Bear. Despite being a landmark achievement in cost-cutting hybrid animation, early audiences initially rejected its racial insensitivities, in the wake of World War II, as well as its low-budget aesthetic, on the heels of more polished Disney productions like Snow White and Pinocchio. Yet Song of the South hardly disappeared after modest releases in the 1940s and 1950s. In fact, for a particular period as recently as the 1970s and 1980s, this offensive film was actually extremely popular. At the height of the “White Backlash” against the Civil Rights Movement and the subsequent rise of Reaganesque conservatism in the US, as well as Disney’s emergent cultural status as a powerful “family institution,” Song of the South was a considerable part of the American media landscape.
The first question one often asks now is “whatever happened to that film?” The truth, though, is that this especially problematic movie has not gone anywhere. Thanks to decades of cult followings and Disney’s own careful corporate remediation, Song of the South and the complicated histories of race and media convergence it embodies is as present and relevant as it ever was. In fact, of all the racist films from Hollywood’s past, Song of the South’s troublingly persistent survival may be the most distinctive for what it tells us today about the history of American media, its audiences, and their at times mutually-reinforcing negotiation of racist images. Beyond the limits of morbid curiosity, there is a more fascinating history of the relationship between media and race hidden here.
Song of the South has been a quietly, but instructionally resilient, film for seven decades, nearly spanning the entire lifetime of the more famous company which spawned, exploited, and eventually tossed it (officially) aside. Understanding the film’s role within the larger history of convergence culture and racial formations requires 1) documenting the ways in which Disney recirculated, repurposed and rewrote the film, 2) appreciating the diverse racial and political climates in which it appeared (and didn’t), and 3) articulating how different audiences responded to the film and its fragments via their own discursive production. This book will triangulate the cult history of Song of the South within all three contexts in order to move us closer to answering several interrelated questions: how have the textual and extratextual dynamics of “media convergence” historically interacted with larger cultural negotiations regarding racial identity in the 20th Century? How have industry strategies of remediation and forms of participatory culture affected socially-constructed notion of whiteness as mediated through, and in the reception of, representations of African-Americans in classical Hollywood films? How does the subsequent repurposing of these films in ancillary venues complicate its (and audiences’) relationship to the “original” text? How do issues such as the larger political climates in America, personal, public and commercial forms of nostalgia, and affective formations, play in further problematizing these questions? More specifically, in what ways do a powerful media institution (Disney) and its considerable, shifting, set of audiences play a sometimes mutual role in embracing, ignoring and exploiting the continuing presence of its racist past?
Embodying a wide range of contexts central to understanding these important but largely unanswered questions, Song of the South is an important text to consider not merely because of its fascinatingly unfortunate cult status as a notoriously racist film at the heart of a particularly image-conscious entertainment empire. Disney’s film has also appeared prominently both in moments of technological change and media platform transitions and in periods of cultural upheaval and racial tension. As older Hollywood films migrated—all or in part—across newer media and ancillary market channels, Disney repeatedly returned to Song of the South as a source for revenue and repurposed material despite its troubled origins and problematic history. Alternately, the film’s theatrical appearances over the last several decades always closely reflected white America’s racial consciousness, and lack thereof. Not surprisingly, then, fragments of the old Brer Rabbit film still exist in a variety of forms to this day. At a time when the future-oriented, vaguely utopian, logic of both convergence culture and post-racial whiteness suggest, even at times insist, that audiences forget the larger history of media practices underlining both, A Frown Upside Down instead seeks to illuminate the powerful ways in which the history of media convergence has alternatingly intensified, shifted and dissipated representations of racism and constructions of whiteness.
