Song Of The South is the (very worthy) target of scrutiny on this season of You Must Remember This
Aux Features Podmass
Camp Monsters
Loveland Frogman
For fans of the Halloween season looking for a low-key, not-too-scary scare, this episode of REI Co-op’s Camp Monsters is the ticket. The series collects regional legends about North American monsters and spins tales out of them. Some creatures, like the Thunderbird or the Jersey Devil, might already sound familiar, but this installment features the eerie, lesser-known Loveland Frogman. Loveland, Ohio, half an hour from Cincinnati, is famous for its bike paths, the Great Serpent Mound, and the seldom-seen but terribly scary frogmen: They’re not frogs, they’re not men, and they might just be the fictional creation of a door-to-door chicken salesman. The legend begins in 1955, when a traveling salesman stopped by the bank of the Little Miami River when a pungent odor overtook his Studebaker, reminding him of something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Feeling brave, he gets out of the car to investigate, and, well, it’s not good. After this incident, the frogmen keep returning to the banks of the river—but what do they want? [Morgan McNaught]
Function With Anil Dash
GIFs As Blackface
Glitch CEO Anil Dash is a tech guy who’s deep in thought over technology’s role in our lives, and Function is a space for him to converse with creatives and culture experts about what effects the digital age has on all of us. The ubiquity of GIFs in social media to express emotion seem innocuous on the surface, but what happens when the images of Black people are often tied to more exaggerated reactions, decontextualized and replayed on an endless loop? Dash speaks with Dr. Lauren Michele Jackson on the concept of digital blackface, a repackaging and appropriation of images and moments via public fandom or corporate brands. No matter the intention of the GIFs, celebrities can benefit from their image going viral in a way that everyday people have little to no control over. Know Your Meme founder Kenyatta Cheese recognizes the strength of this visual medium, using his database to explain the context and history behind the GIFs being circulated. This leads Dash and Cheese to examine the role of tech companies in building a platform with, as Dash puts it, “consent and context built into the technology.” [Jason Randall Smith]
Horror Movie Survival Guide
Don’t Look Now—Fetch Him Back!
Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now has appeared on just about every “scariest movies of all time” list since its release, but remains relatively underseen. The film’s influence can be felt in the works of modern horror filmmakers like Ari Aster and Robert Eggers, and over 40 years later, it still has the power to unnerve its audience. If you finally watch Don’t Look Now for your “31 days of horror” list, this week’s Horror Movie Survival Guide is a pleasant digestif after the main course of terror. Hosts Julia Marchese and Teri Gamble look back on this psychological horror classic in a conversation that is both natural and unpretentious, akin to two friends chatting as they walk out of the theater. The pair eschew any information about the making of the film and instead dive right into the work itself, particularly the controversial (and still arresting) sex scene between Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland, which is discussed with a welcome candidness. At 40 minutes, the episode is beautifully brisk, but proceed with caution: Spoilers abound, and you really don’t want to ruin this one for yourself. [Mike Vanderbilt]
Record Store Day Podcast With Paul Myers
Tony Visconti
Vinyl collectors around the globe know that one Saturday every April their local record store will be inundated with stacks of special limited pressings, 7-inch singles, and long-awaited re-releases. It’s a glorious, independent, retail-focused holiday that’s grown to international proportions in the last decade. It’s Record Store Day. And now it’s a podcast. Hosted by journalist, musician, and author Paul Myers, the official Record Store Day Podcast features regular updates on any RSD-related news in addition to lengthy interviews with some of the biggest names in the music industry. How big? Well, the premiere episode features a nice long chat with legendary producer and Brooklyn boy made good Tony Visconti. You might recognize his name from the liner notes of the majority of David Bowie’s 1970s output, but Visconti has had his fingers in a lot of pies over the years and has plenty of stories to tell. He’s also, as one might imagine, a frequent patron of record stores, which makes him the ideal guest to kick off what should be a vinyl-lover’s dream of a show. [Dan Neilan]
Scattered
Soy Andres, A Tus Pies
Chris Garcia’s stand-up comedy has often relied on stories about his father, Andres, a Cuban immigrant who fled the regime of Castro to the U.S. Like many refugees from oppressive and fascist regimes, Andres never told Chris any stories of his time in Cuba; understandable, as Chris and his family assume these memories were traumatic or linked to difficult emotions. After Andres died in 2017, Chris decided to embark on the deeply personal journey of answering the question, “Who was Andres Garcia?” By interviewing family members, colleagues, and close friends and intercutting those interviews with moving narration, this six-episode limited series promises a story that is not just about the Garcia family history, but about the realities of refugee and immigrant families that must abandon their homes and create new ones. Scattered is intimate, raw audio with heart, and it doesn’t put on a brave face and make jokes in the face of tragedy; there’s still humor, but it’s tasteful, at times ironic, and it underscores Chris’ thoughts on racism, generational trauma, and the act of uprooting oneself. [Elena Fernández Collins]
Short Wave
The Squishy Science Behind ASMR
NPR’s newest bite-size science podcast, Short Wave, delivers some literally spine-tingling reporting with an episode devoted to autonomous sensory meridian response, or ASMR. From softly spoken words to the sound of fingernails tapping on a table, some auditory triggers make a very specific crowd of people feel a low-grade sensation of euphoria often accompanied by a tingling feeling around the neck and upper spine. Reporter Emily Kwong joins Short Wave host Maddie Sofia to sit down and discuss the psychophysiology around ASMR and why it’s only an experience for some people and not all, picking apart the surprisingly recent origins of the phenomenon (and its tight-knit online communities) and interjecting interview clips with a psychology professor who will soon begin lecturing on the subject at the University Of Essex. The episode also dives into the weird and wonderful world of slime and how the fad of squishy noises is captivating the internet. As fascinating as it is brief, this episode of Short Wave is the perfect auditory stimuli for your brain, scalp, and spine. [Kevin Cortez]
The Fear
Andy Nyman “A Flaming Rabbi”
In each episode of The Fear, host Sarah Morgan invites a guest to talk about their phobias and the pop culture that frightens them. This week, she speaks with actor Andy Nyman, whose experiences co-creating the hit horror stage play Ghost Stories have given him many insights into the mechanics of fear. Horror, Nyman says, is all about what is hidden. A haunted attraction in the light of day is just a collection of cheap fairground gimmicks, but when covered in shadow and fog, it can frighten anyone. For Nyman, the things that scare us get their power from how little we understand them, which leads him to lament that as an adult he no longer experiences that rush of fear he used to get from a gory book cover or movie poster as a child. Though he does admit that the opening credits of the show Thriller, which caused him to flee the room when growing up, still has the power to fill him with dread. It’s a fascinating conversation that also covers subjects like loss and mortality in a thoughtful and serious way, making The Fear a perfect listen for all those with a morbid inclination. [Anthony D Herrera]
This Is Uncomfortable
Instrument Of Sabotage
Listening to this episode is guaranteed to enrage anyone new to this story, which went viral in June 2018. A budding orchestral musician is gutted after being denied acceptance to one of the world’s most renowned music schools, where he would have studied for free under a teacher he idolized. Except he was actually accepted then led to believe otherwise via bogus correspondence sent by a bad actor. In the end, the victim is too kind and/or shrewd to pursue criminal charges, opting to sue instead. How he calculates the dollar amount of his missed opportunity is of particular interest to this show, a recent addition to the Marketplace family that focuses on how money messes with life. The musician’s lawyer breaks down costs like the value of free college versus having to pay tuition somewhere else. There’s even an attempt to put a price on the pain of rejection. For anyone who is familiar with the story, there are some juicy updates on the attempts to collect, and the assurance of knowing that despite the cruel setback, our guy is doing fine. [Zach Brooke]
You Must Remember This
Disney’s Most Controversial Film (Six Degrees Of Song Of The South, Episode 1)
It’s been a minute since we heard from film critic/scholar Karina Longworth, who cuts a path through the dark crevices of Hollywood’s Golden Age on her beloved podcast, You Must Remember This. The new season started last week, and she’s picked a doozy of a big-screen blemish to shine a light on. With Disney about to stream everything from classic cartoons to Marvel blockbusters to whatever the hell Jeff Goldblum wants to do on the new Disney+ service, Longworth will be spending the entire season wondering one thing: What about Song Of The South? In the years since its 1946 release, this live-action/animated musical mashup (set on a slave-filled Reconstuction-era plantation and based on those already racist-as-fuck Uncle Remus folktales) has become a straight-up embarrassment for the Mouse Factory, which has refused to put it out on home video in the States. Longworth, who saw the film on those occasions when it was greedily re-released in theaters, comes out of the gate breaking down its myriad flaws and reminding listeners why Bob Iger and company would prefer that shit stay hidden. [Craig D. Lindsey]
While Black
My Life, My Love, My Way W/ Lisa Cunningham
Each week, hosts Vince and Art seek to uncover all that it means to live life while Black, getting into everything from the politics to the rich cultural experiences. This week Art is away, and Vince sits down with LGBTQIA+ advocate Lisa Cunningham to discuss how she believes Black culture has changed for the better in the past five years alone, especially when it comes to issues of gender and sexuality. The two break down the idea of the “gay agenda” and how there’s no such thing, because all that people are demanding are the rights and protections laid out by the Constitution. Plus, Vince shares why he thinks the term “homophobic” is a cop-out: “You’re not scared, you’re an asshole.” Lisa expresses her desire to use her platform to educate and inspire other young Black people to own their truth and to step into the freedom of who they are—something that historically has not always been accepted. It’s an important conversation on a culture that is always evolving, and the major barriers that have been broken down. This podcast highlights the extraordinary state of living while Black. [Vannessa Jackson]
Zero Hours
Those Familiar Spirits
The new fiction miniseries by Fear Of Public Shame (the team behind Wolf 359, Time Bombs, and No Bad Ideas) is Zero Hours, an anthology of stories about the end of the world. This first episode, “Those Familiar Spirits,” centers on a naïve, flustered priest trying to question the strange woman who shows up unexpectedly in his church. When the woman says she’s a witch, things are already dire, but when she says she has a prophecy about the imminent end of the world, the priest must try his hardest not to unravel at the seams. The episode flits between heavy, profound questions about faith and strange, zany humor. The dialogue has a cadence that feels similar to traditional theater, or even works by philosophers like Socrates. It’s set in the Puritan era, but it also feels unstuck in time—anachronistic, but with purpose. The characters, the setting, and the time period help the writers reach the questions they want to ask the listener to consider, while the form helps dig even deeper into the narrative by placing the listener there. [Wil Williams]
164 Comments
If you like that Song of the South episode, may a recommend a little podcast called Cum Town?
Zip-a-dee-doo-dah!
I skimmed through a few episodes, and was honestly confused. What is it about this podcast that makes it worth spamming for each week?
“I skimmed through a few episodes”I think you answered your own question…
I’ll always say that Songs reputation is a bit worse then it is. Its awkward to watch now but at the time some saw it as progressive. It did lead to the first African American actor to win an Oscar. Its not much worse then the Dumbo crows or the Indians in Peter Pan. If the movie was available to watch it wouldn’t be as controversial I’m pretty positive.
it’s not much worse than two other insanely racist things? well zipadeedooda, sign me up!
Racist? Yes. “Insanely racist”? Not by a long shot. Let’s keep a bit of perspective here…
imagine the kind of person who thinks it’s important to manage the distinction between “racist” and “insanely racist”, and the kind of exhausting conversations they must have.
Imagine the kind of person who defaults to hyperbolic rather than measured statements and the kind of angry life they must lead because of their inability to maintain a shred of perspective…There’s an entire spectrum of racism and if you’re going to call a bunch of animated crows in a children’s movie “insanely racist”, how to you sensibly scale up from there when you talk about mobs of people in white sheets stringing black people up on trees?Yes, I have a lot of exhausting conversations because I think that it’s not healthy for public discourse to constantly blow everything out of proportion.
A lot of white devilry at work in this comment section
I vaguely recall it leaning cartoonishly in to broad racial stereotypes but not in a malicious way. I wonder how well it would compare against those Madea movies on the scale of offensive stereotypes.
You vaguely recall because the whole movie is the worst racist piece of media ever from a Disney property. If you can just ignore the scene where the field slave is explaining to the plantation owners son that they prefer living outside the mansion and out in the field with no shoes, then it looks like your selective memory forgot alot about the movie…like…most of it.
I vaguely recall it leaning cartoonishly in to broad racial stereotypes but not in a malicious way.
It literally features a black man, during reconstruction, talking about how he likes living on his plantation and pining for the good old days. What do you think “the good old days” are to someone who was enslaved for their entire lives minus five years?
Probably the same good old days Russians talk about under Communism…“I had a place to live, a job, and food on the table. Now, criminals kicked me out of my apartment so they can charge 100x as much, I’m told I’m too old to be worth paying, and the local grocery stores are all torn down with new monstrosities being built which will charge me more than if I go to McDonalds.”
Bbbbbbububut but no one said the N word!!!
Bre’r Fox and Bre’r Bear are both made clear analogues to those jerky poor white neighbor kids who bully Johnny after he befriends their sister. And Bre’r Rabbit serves as a role model for Johnny himself. They all speak in something like Remus’ dialect because he’s telling the story.
True. The “Uncle Remus*” stories are oral tradition variations of trickster tales from Africa (usually an Anansi or Monkey story transfered to animals found in the American south) are not racist in plot or action. However the presentation of them in the book the animated sequences were based on was very problematic, as the white man who wrote them in a “slave” dialect that he made up. As stories they are not racist and he did a service writing down the oral tradition. That service though was nearly nullified by his racist framing.
*I, personally, don’t like calling them “Uncle Remus” stories. They are African Slave folklore.
Pretty much. There are dumb stereotypes, the word tar baby is thrown around a lot. Its not great, but the character with the most agency and frankly most important is black. Also the worst parts of the movie is the dumb kid, those parts draaaaaaag.
I think people accept Madea because they’re produced by an African American man.
stereotyping takes on a whole new set of baggage when its done by those in power against those without power
And Madea is not pining for the days of being enslaved by the white devil
Good point. I find that shit offense as hell.. (Madea)
“not in a malicious way” is maybe too fine a way to describe “Hey, it could’ve been worse.”
I remember them as being very much in the same vein as the crows in “Dumbo” (which BTW I had zero clue were meant as broad stereotypes of African Americans when I saw it as a very, very young tyke). In other words, broad, comical, probably deeply embarrassing and or hurtful if you’re a black person – but also not overtly malicious, at least in the Birth of a Nation way.
But that’s my memory of it as an elementary school aged child. I have no idea how I’d perceive it as an adult.
“not in a malicious way” “Hey gang, slaves didn’t have it so bad. I ask you, if they really did not enjoy being enslaved, well why the heck were they singing so dang much??” -Walty D
I recall seeing an old B&W film from the thirties on TV long ago. Robert Young (“Father Knows Best”) interacting with Stepin Fetchit. Young just radiated malicious race hate from every pore while Fetchit was doing his grotesque imbecile act. It was appalling to watch. Song of The South, in comparison to that monstrosity, was merely folk tales from pleasant rural folks.
Yes, song of the south is a better tasting poison pill, much easier to swallow
I wonder how many people realize there’s a song called “What Made the Red Man Red” in Peter Pan. I’m really not sure how that still gets to see the light of day.
It’s a catchy tune.
I don’t think its as well known as the Dumbo crows. You won’t see it in a Disney song compilation.
I remember seeing the “Zip-a-dee-doodah” song in a compilation.
It actually kinda doesn’t; copies of the film sent out for TV removed the scene. The home video versions still have it, for some reason, but that counts a little…
Hattie McDaniel won in 1939.
She did. But James Baskett was the first actor to win an Oscar for performing the song Zipdeedodah. The Academy didn’t want him anywhere near the ceremony, Walt Disney had to force them to let him in.
Wow that Walt was sure one hell of a guy. Thanks Mr D!!
I believe he was referring to Baskett being the first black man to win an Oscar, even though a black woman had won hers 9 years earlier.
Oh no no no, it is not midly racist like your description tells it. It is full blown racist and you’re skipping over a lot.Did you just not pay attention to when the field slave is explaining to the plantation owner’s son that they prefer to live outside the mansion because they have more fun? That’s about a hundred times worse than the worst parts of Dumbo, Peter Pan, and Pocahontas…in just ten minutes!
It’s so weird that they mostly bury Song of the South, yet Splash Mountain remains a top-tier ride at Disney World.
That never ceases to amuse me. Bury the film but keep the ride that so prominently features the animated characters and the song.
That ride is so much more fun when you get it into your head that the song includes the line “show us your balls”. (Apparently it’s “sure as your born” but once you’ve heard it the other way, you can’t unhear it.
What’s interesting is that Splash Mountain is one ride where they don’t push the merchandising. They have a few themed trinkets, but for the most part you don’t see many shirts/dolls/etc. based on the ride.It’s like they don’t want the characters pushed out separate from the ride, because of course it would beg the question of their origins.
There’s plenty of merch of the ride compared to other rides. The issue is that rides themselves dont get much merch compared to the properties they’re based on, and they aren’t going to start printing SotS merch.
Arguably, Splash Mountain has transformed the characters from broad stereotypes of black southern sharecroppers to broad stereotypes of rural southerners in general. The years-long proximity to Bear Country Jamboree probably helped with that process.
The way I’ve always seen it, is all the black characters, like the Crows in Dumbo are the only ones who have their shit together. The white parents in SotS are despicable horrible people. The kids run away to hang out with Uncle Remus because their home situation is unbearable. James Baskett’s acting should also be highlighted for the scenes he has to deal with white people. The subtle looks he gives the other black characters says volumes and he might as well say,”Be careful. These while people are crazy.” I’m probably reading too much into it.There are a lot of stereotypes of course, but for it’s time I think it did a lot more good than it did harm, and pretending like it doesn’t exist or is unimportant does everyone a disservice.
Well, apparently we have to be either (a) outraged they ever made it, or (b) outraged that Disney doesn’t acknowledge its existence. I don’t think there’s any other options.
Pretty much. I’ll take the side of, oh just release it and get Whoopi Goldberg to do an introduction touching on the less savory aspects. WB released all its censored cartoons that were frankly more racist.
The white parents in SotS are despicable horrible people. The kids run
away to hang out with Uncle Remus because their home situation is unbearable.Well, but that’s a pretty fraught depiction in and of itself. As in, it’s not black peoples’ job to unselfishly care for unhappy white children who have dysfunctional relationships with their parents. Even though, as a practical reality, this happened a lot in the South before and after the Civil War.
it is the kind of story-arc where your perspective matters a lot:’we wrote him as a nice guy, someone children want to play with’, ‘you wrote him as a magical negro who wants nothing more from life than occasionally babysitting white kids’
You should listen to the podcast. I’m not sure who you think saw it as progressive, but it was opposed by the NAACP, boycotted by other organizations. The New York Times reviewer said it made him wonder if Walt Disney was pro-slavery.Yes, the movie is about a white boy befriending a black man, but that man literally lives on a plantation during reconstruction and pines for “the good old days”. It’s reinforcing Southern hagiography of racial hierarchy.
It was opposed by the NAACP. There was pushback even in its day. But that wasn’t universal. And while it’s as I said, awkward to watch now, its hardly the censored 11.
Which NYT review? I found this one, but it doesn’t include what you mentioned. https://www.nytimes.com/1946/11/28/archives/the-screen-song-of-the-south-disney-film-combining-cartoons-and.htmlWould love to see the review you mention
It’s referenced in the podcast from this article.
The linked review isn’t loading for me, but the Rolling Stone feature on this season of YMRT quotes the relevant bit of the Bosley Crowther column (published a week or so later than the first review you posted): the “master-slave relation is so lovingly rendered in your yarn … that one might imagine you almost figure Abe Lincoln made a mistake.”
It was extremely progressive. The biggest protests came from whites who thought this elevated the “darkies”.
What do you think the NAACP stands for?
Considering I never said anything about the NAACP….
I own a bootleg copy of SOTS (European version converted to DVD, with German subtitles). I remember that Br’er Rabbit was an Anansi analog and that TarBaby is an actual tale of Anansi – as repeated in “Anansi Boys” by Neil Gaiman.I can understand how people might be conflicted with the idea of an elderly, happy go lucky, emotionally positive male ex-slave in Uncle Remus. Regardless of his education and dialect, Uncle Remus is actually a decent guy and a role model of sorts. He’s kind, gentle and wise. He uses the Tarbaby story to teach youngsters that “sometimes the worst thing you can do is get involved in something you don’t understand as you might find yourself getting more stuck through your efforts.” (my take away from it)For me, I view Uncle Remus much in the same way I see Mammy in “Gone With the Wind” – who won Best Supporting Actress in 1940. I think Uncle Remus, James Baskett, won an Honorary Oscar in 1948.
Why look at the positives when we can instead be outraged and bury the past!?
He didn’t win an Oscar, he was given an honorary award. There is a difference between winning one and being given an honorary one.
Still the first African American male preformer to win an award from the Academy. It still means something. It was not even ten years after Gone with The Wind. Progress is slow but its something.
I’ve told this story before, but I watched it a few years ago and for the first half hour or so, I thought it wasn’t that bad, that it had an interiority to its characters of color. Then Uncle Remus came on, who immediately becomes this shuckin’, jivin’, “oh lawd please don’t cry little white girl” character, and my jaw fucking dropped. The Brer Rabbit parts are fucking gorgeous though
James Baskett apparently wasn’t allowed to go to the awards because of segregation. That kinda tore my heart out.
I thought he was. Perhaps I’m misremembering Walt Disneys campaign for him to even get anything. Well that’s a shame.
It was the movie premiere he couldn’t go to.
I actually loved that movie as a child and was so disappointed that it became censored. I love the Bre’r Rabbit story and as a kid any racism in it went completely over my head.
I’ve seen it. It’s MAD problematic. It was protested even before it was released, which this episode gets into the fallacy around “oh it was ok back then”.
the picture is interesting: i didn’t realize the movie was inspiring visible protest at the timeanyhow, from how i’ve heard the movie discribed it always seemed more like ‘well-intented but extremely ignorant’ than ‘intentionally hurtfull’
Can you provide an example or a link or a reference to any specific person or entity that called this progressive at the time?
Herman Hill in The Pittsburgh Courier felt that Song of the South would “prove of inestimable goodwill in the furthering of interracial relations”, and considered criticisms of the film to be “unadulterated hogwash symptomatic of the unfortunate racial neurosis that seems to be gripping so many of our humorless brethren these days.” It should also be noted that the leader of the NAACP hadn’t seen the film and assumed it was set during slavery.
The films over all message, “slaves didn’t have it so bad,” is insidious and disgusting. The fact that is relatively unoffensive on a surface level is the worst fucking part. It is a complete Disneyfiction of our history of genocide and enslavement, truly grotesque
Personally I’d love to have access to a nice quality version of Song of the South, because it was one of the very, very few color films that Gregg Toland shot.
Song of the South really set the visual aesthetic for live action Disney movies through the mid-60s – this sort of overly bright, over-saturated color palette – but the lack of quality prints has sort of erased its place in that history.
It also did a LOT to advance the technology of mixing animation with footage of live actors, something Disney and others had been tinkering with for a long, long time.
It was remastered a few years ago, but I think that version is only available at the Library of Congress.
It was quite revolutionary when it came to live action effects. It was in many ways the original Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
I always thought the hand-wringing about whether to re-release Song of the South could be solved by donating all proceeds from the DVD (or, nowadays, I guess streaming fees) to the United Negro College Fund.
Neat, I didn’t even realize that You Must Remember This was starting a new season and it is a really interesting film to discuss. Will have to give it a listen.On podcasts in general, I just have to express my current frustration with How Did This Get Made, which has been made worse by me having gone back to listen to their old episodes. The problem I have with it isn’t that I think it’s bad, actually if they have guests they are usually able to still hit that good energy, but something’s happened to June. Like she really, at least in my opinion, really drags the energy of the show down currently, especially compared to how she used to be. And this is made even worse by the fact that they seemingly are the live shows, which is majority of their shows, with just the three of them. The latest episode was almost painful to listen even if it had some fun stuff in it as the place just felt dead. I can’t really explain it better.Apologies on the vent and negativity, it has just been one of my favorite podcasts for a while.
Maybe she was just burned out by the end of their long tour? I havent listened to the latest episode so cant really say, but she was pretty on fire for Drop Dead Fred. I was mainly bummed that we didnt get a special June call-in episode about Disclosure like we did with her thoughts on Zardoz.
Drop Dead Fred was a guest episode, Casey Wilson was there. And I disagree about June being on fire because while she was much more vocal there, it was one of those situations where she just blindly loves a movie. They’ve had those before which I would just skipped hearing her thoughts on Disclosure.I want to be clear, my opinion wasn’t just based on the Jason Lives episode, but almost every recent episode where it is just the three of them. For Jason to work, he needs to bounce off of someone and June no longer really seems to want to be that person. It is just one of the weirder new aspects, but again, just my opinion and when they have guests, I usually still get a kick out of the show.
I agree with you, she seems to shut down the energy of the back and forth a lot and doesn’t seem to have the sarcastic incredulity of earlier episodes from a few years ago. Now it mostly seems like ‘I don’t remember any of this’ and ‘what are you talking about?’ She isn’t ruining the podcast but she doesn’t seem to be enjoying her time as much as anyone else there and it just feels like they might better serve the audience by having guests on instead.
Ive always thought that since they have gotten close to quite a few insiders they find it harder to mock these films. Could be just me.
I’ve usually found their live shows to not be as good as in studio shows, but these days it seems like almost all they do.
I’ve noticed that, too, and maybe it’s because her career is really taking off, plus she has two young kids. But overall the whole show just seems tired. Unless they have a decent guest and/or an interesting movie, it’s not really worth it anymore. Jason does his best but it’s not enough for him to try to carry it all. I’m hit or miss on Paul anyway, but he seems worn out, too – again, two young kids takes a lot out of moms and dads.
I take it that you’ve never listened to Unspooled in that case. I don’t think the kids are the issue and I don’t actually have a problem with Paul, I think it’s rather the dynamic coming back to haunt them. The rhythym they kind of fell in to was that while Paul is a participant, he is more commenting on actual things happening in the films while Jason, June and the guests provide the driven humor. When whatever happened with June started taking place, it threw that dynamic in to the winds.As for June, again I don’t think it’s tiredness, but I don’t quite what it is. At times, it does slightly come across, at least to me, is that she is trying to differentiate from her role in before of being that person asking the confused questions, but doesn’t really have anything else to add after that.
I meant “tired” more as “over it” than “sleepy”. She has other priorities now both career and personally. Though I did say Paul seems worn out on HDTGM and I stand by that – not necessarily because of the kids but more trying to hold that podcast together. And I agree: Paul on Unspooled is more of where he hits for me, because being a host not relying on comedy is a better fit for him than as a host who tries to goose the comedy/energy like on HDTGM.
Okay, understood your point better after the clarification. While I slightly disagree on the Paul point still, I completely get where you’re coming from. I think for me, you can still feel coming alive when they have that good, or even decent guest, or when they are bantering in the studio. But these live shows with the three of them, it is constantly coming across as him just trying to make something happen and not finding that angle. Just compare Disclosure and Jason Lives. His energy just completely different in the two.
I do still maintain it mainly comes down to June and whatever is happening with her as the difference is really stark compared to even a few years ago. I suspect the main reason they’ve done a couple of live tours now without guests is due to logistics, but I do wonder if it was also an attempt to jumpstart their old chemistry back up. Which is really failing as June just doesn’t want to give anything.
The live shows probably make them good money, but they’re just not as good usually. I think June does better with certain genres and not always as “on” for the more bro-y actiony stuff.
she must be really killing the vibe. It’s hard to drag down anything with Mantzoukas on it.
I couldn’t make it through the last 3 episodes. I agree about June. But I will say the Hobbs and Shaw episode is one of my favs
Karina is back! Whoo hoo! I just finished reading “Seduction.”
The real reason Song of the South is still blocked is because it has a white woman as the villain.
I just listened to an analysis of SotS from the Stay Doomed podcast
slave-filled Reconstuction-era plantationReconstruction took place after the abolition of slavery. And it’s an important part of the plot that Uncle Remus is free to leave when he feels like it, although I think in reality that would have run afoul of vagrancy laws.
The big problem with the film, is that it does a bad job communicating to the audience what era this is suppose to be. Hence why many thing its during slavery.
Yeah, the film doesn’t mention any details like the history of slavery because it was designed as bland pablum that wouldn’t offend even touchy southerners. I suppose it would have been better if the year appeared on-screen.
A decent point. It was suppose to be one of Disneys first live action family projects. They go out of there way to not mention controversial stuff. Highly ironic I know.
That misunderstanding might be more a function of very few living people actually ever seeing this film. I’d argue it is more fucked up to have a free man nostalgic for his enslaved youth
yeah that’s a pretty big typo. granted sharecropping wasn’t much better than slavery since it was still like the only option, but…AVC should remember how the civil war went down.
There were a lot of laws in place to restrict the ability of farm laborers to leave their jobs, like the vagrancy laws I mentioned earlier, but economists have still measured some quite significant gains in compensation compared to what they received under slavery. The laws prohibiting the recruiting of workers weren’t entirely effective, as many took better paying offers anyway. This film has no interest in any of that, expecting that the intended audience will just identify with Johnny and his childish concerns rather than the adult world of work.
also the film constantly calls back to the good old days, which for Uncle Remus, would have been slavery. This is bad because slavery. The only positive parts of the film for me, are Remus being a better example for the kid than his own shitty parents, and the music and art of it are pretty good. But there’s nothing there I can’t get better elsewhere. I don’t ever need to see it again. I mean no one needs to see A Serbian Film either. Just read the joy filled Wiki page.
The only positive parts of the film for me, are Remus being a better
example for the kid than his own shitty parents, and the music and art
of it are pretty good.
Eh, my understanding is that the stories in the animated sequences are retellings of old folklore. Like the whole “briar patch” segment is sort of a parable for how a person without a lot of power can turn the tables on their exploiter/persecutor by fooling them into thinking that something is a punishment when really it isn’t.This is probably why the animated sequences continued to surface for years in various other Disney specials after the feature was pulled. In fact, I’ve sometimes wondered if Disney could possibly keep the animated portions, and create a modern live action story around them.
The continued stories of rabbit and bear and fox are a regular feature in (the dutch version of) the donald duck weekly magazine. In those stories they live in the same forrest as the 3 little pigs and the big bad wolf. The wolf and the bear and the fox have formed a very unsuccesfull ‘crime club’ and try to eat the pigs and the rabbit. The rabbit and the smart pig always manage to foil those schemes. The dumb-but-strong bear runs a moderatly succesfull farm: rabbit steals carrots (usually succesfull), wolf steals chickens (always unsuccesfull)The wolf has a son who is hardworking and friendly and has befriended the pigs, to the frustration of his father. Together with Donald’s nephews this makes for a magazine full of kids who are waaaay better behaved then their supposed guardians (there have been some interesting theories about how this all fits in dutch culture, given how wildly succesfull this magazine has been in the last half-century)
When I hear “digital blackface” I think of that type of shit you see on Reddit a lot like, “As a black man, I think racism is totally cool and my people should shut the fuck up about it immediately and forever.” Turns out the actual usage is less insidious. Maybe?On the podcast front, I’ve been listening to Janus Descending, which is pretty rad even though the disjointed narrative throws me a little. Check it out if you like SF-ish horror. Or horror-ish SF.What was controversial about the sex scene in Don’t Look Now? I haven’t seen it in a few years and don’t have much interest in listening to a podcast about it.
I recall alot of Donald Sutherland’s ass being right in the camera a la Tommy Wiseau in The Room. Maybe that was why?
There were a lot of questions about whether or not the sex was simulated.
Yeah, I saw the film for the first time 5 or 6 years ago and was surprised by how tame the sex-scene seemed. But shit, I love that movie. The ending is one of the few to have legitimately terrified me.
Yep, anytime I see someone saying that kind of thing I just immediately have an image of a white guy in front of a Confederate flag typing it out.
“no one can prove i’m not! i’m a GENIUS”
There’s a ridiculous rumor that Sutherland and Christie were actually having sex in the scene.
There’s a similar rumour that Mick Jagger and Anita Pallenberg really had sex on screen for Performance, too, made more complicated by the fact that she was going out with Keith Richard(s) at the time.I’ve often wondered if, as they are both Nicolas Roeg films, the two stories have been conflated somewhat. Christie and Sutherland hadn’t even met before, I think.
I believe it was the first studio picture to display cunnilingus onscreen. It was a fairly explicit sex-scene for a big studio release at the time (very tastefully done imo).
I always wonder how many of the people that complain about Song of the South have actually seen it, in its entirety. My guess is very few.
I always wonder how many of the people defending it have actually seen it. My guess is the same as yours.I’d be interested in your summary of the plot. Please include details not available on the wikipedia page.(Ps – Not really interested. Just making a point.)
Rich family on a farm with a couple kids. Mom is a miserable B. Boy likes Uncle remus’ stories and tends to go see him to hear more stories. Kid gets bullied and Uncle Remus intervenes. More stories. No mentions of slavery.Kid nearly gets killed by a bull.Mom is still miserable.Uncle remus is a nice guy.I’ve seen it several times. My kids like the cartoon portion and the acting in the live action isn’t very good, so I made a cut of just the cartoons. If you really want a stretch for racism in the cartoon, you could refer to the tar baby trap.
Yeah. Nothing in there you can’t find online.
There’s a rich literary tradition of exactly what Song of the South was about, which was pretty much: Hey, slavery wasn’t THAT bad. The slave masters were always heroes that the slaves wanted to die for. Pretty much what you’d expect. (This isn’t an endorsement of them. This is to point out how terrible they are, and adding a talking cartoon rabbit doesn’t help.)If you’re interested in how things like this were received, you might want to check out The conjure Woman and other Tales by Charles Chesnutt who wrote what amounted to parodies of these types of stories, and turned them on their heads. It’s about a wealthy Northerner buying a grape farm and employing a former slave who would tell stories about slave-times to him. It’s a fascinating read.
wikipedia has a list of ‘anti-tom literature’, for anyone interested in self-delusional tales about happy slaves whose greatest fear was emancipation
I’ll look that up in my research. Thanks!
I wonder if podmass is harder to do now than it was a few years ago. Everyone has gotten so angry, politically speaking, and the milquetoast NPR stuff (like Serial) that everyone liked to listen to 4 years ago seem quaint and out of touch.
I’ve been checking Podmass week-to-week, and it hasn’t been very heavy on angry-in-a-political-sense podcasts. This week isn’t either, they have a whole gamut of different topics (science/tech/culture/reviews/fiction/etc.).
In the 70s and 80s the Contemporary Hotel at Walt Disney world had an amazing arcade in the basement, which featured a small theater that showed Disney classics around the clock free for the guests and their kids.I saw song of the south there a number of times, even into the 80s. Even as a kid I was like, what the fuck is this shit? haha
It got theater re-releases into the ‘80s. Parts of it were shown on the Disney Channel and put on compilation-y things even into the ‘90s. Disney didn’t really put it on full lockdown until the 2000s.
Release Song of the South on Blu-ray, cowards!
I enjoyed the history told in You Must Remember this, enjoyed it much less when Longsworth would attempt impressions of the people she was talking about. Her Streisand made me want to turn the thing off, her Squeaky Fromme finally got me to. That, in addition to the fact that she often says words with d as it they are t’s (i.e. wridden instead of written) has me not wanting to return.
I hope that podcast (which I will listen to, promise!) slams Disney hard for trying to pretend SOTS never happened. As more and more streaming is leading to the death of physical media, my paranoid ass keeps worrying about the increasing ability for Disney (and other corporations) getting to effectively wash away any history they might see as too shameful to the brand.
From what she was teasing about future episodes, it will paint Disney as even worse than that: ignoring the film when convenient but still not opposed to making a buck off it, through the cinema re-releases in the 70s and 80s and stuff like Splash Mountain.
why is that a bad thing, exactly?i’m just imagining an alternate reality where they never hid anything and people are demanding that SOTS be banned. isn’t it considered progress to remove these films from future distribution?
why is that a bad thing, exactly?
Because a powerful corporation getting to sweep any dirty little secrets under the proverbial rug and pretending they never happened is fucked up.
i’m just imagining an alternate reality where they never hid anything and people are demanding that SOTS be banned. isn’t it considered progress to remove these films from future distribution?
Then that would be fine. Frankly to me it’s more about the hiding thing; I’m not demanding SOTS be up on Disney+ next to Endgame or anything.
how exactly are they pretending it never happened? i tried looking up news stories about this and only thing i did find was people upset that it wasn’t coming to disney+
How is not spending money and effort to distribute something people will complain about “hiding” anything? What a dumb take.
I don’t want them to distribute it, I want them to publicly acknowledge that it’s bad and was a mistake and that’s why they’re never gonna release it again. Quietly not distributing it (while never saying never to a re-release) without ever giving a public statement on the matter while is not the same thing, imo.But w/e, agree to disagree.
I want them to publicly acknowledge that it’s bad
Why? The company is litteally not doing anything wrong.and was a mistakeIt wasn’t at the time.
Which would you rather have? Them still releasing it every few years and protesting it, or having the people who are running the company (70 years later) show their growth by just locking it up forever. I’d prefer the latter.
I’d prefer them come out and say something about it. I think it’s kinda messed up that Disney has never condemned the movie in any official capacity, or hell, even tried to give some mea culpa statement over all these years like “Well, Walt thought it was a good idea at the time but clearly that wasn’t the case” or something; but instead they rather keep dancing around the subject and pretending it never existed. They’ve never even given a definitive “no we won’t ever re-release this” statement. The closest, it seems, in all these years is an offhand comment from Bob Iger (that wikipedia needs a big fat [citation needed] on) about it being offensive, while again, not speaking in any official capacity. Like, I think it’s telling that the news that the movie wouldn’t be coming to Disney+ (and about
the Jim Crow scene in Dumbo being excised) was broken not by Disney itself, but by a site about
Disney parks.
I don’t believe that solely locking it away forever shows growth (though it would be better than their current non-stance), it just shows that once again, Disney knows that they’ve done wrong but won’t admit to it, preferring to just hope everyone forgets and let them keep their image squeaky clean.
I don’t know, is there any studio other than Disney that really gives that much of damn about their “Brand.” Like, if Paramount had made a super racist slavery movie in the 40s would anyone give a shit?
I keep having this thought in the back of my head…am I the only one who thought she decided to do a slam-Disney season because of how they treated Rian Johnson and all the mess with his star wars trilogy?or am I reading too much into it?
I would say maybe reading too much, but I’m generally bad about detecting subtext, so who knows, it could be a factor? *shrug*
Wrong take.
Agree to disagree.
So am I supposed to be mad that Disney ever made Song of the South, or should I be mad that they have since buried it and refuse to acknowledge its existence?Please help me direct my outrage.
Your user name really checks out!
Lindsay Ellis did a video on SOTS (which I CANNOT FIND>>>OH MY GOD MY SHIFT KEY IS STUCK! THIS IS NO JOKE! CRAP!
SO THAT”S WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU SPILL GINGER ALE INTO YOUR KEYBOARD>>>
Was it Vernors? That would be a double loss.
SOME WORLDS STAY SLEEPING FOR A REASON.
I always feel weird about most things related to the old Uncle Remus stuff (and by proxy Song of the South even though I’ve never actually seen it), because I used to have those read to me as bedtime stories when I was a kid. I haven’t gone back and read anything about them in the nigh 25 years since I was young enough to require bedtime stories to drift off, because I worry that reading them with fresh eyes (or jaded rather than fresh, if I’m being honest) will knock some of the rosy tint off some of my earliest formative memories. I did go and read the wikipedia article about Uncle Remus and was really surprised how wild across the board reception to it is. Like, some people call it all racist, some people call them classic literature; I figured it would’ve all leaned one way or the other. Also apparently Riker makes a reference to the Briar Patch in a Star Trek movie and I think that’s kinda wild.
Same. Didn’t realize they were written/transcribed by a racist old white dude. I assumed they were written by a Southern african american. I don’t remember them being racist, and the stories track with some of the african folk tales I’ve heard since then. I have not desire to watch the movie tho.
The white dude in question was attempting to capture these tales in order to celebrate the culture of early African Americans, but his own blind spots are still a problem in that regard. He had been picked on quite a lot as a child and naively thought that experience was somewhat comparable to racism. He was, of course, incorrect; his approach does mean that the type of racism inherent in his work is more unintentionally condescending than malicious. That being said, I do believe the Brer Rabbit cartoons from SOTS could be extracted from the movie and contextualized in an educational fashion. The rest of the movie is better lost to history.
Sweet Remus, that was a painfully slow podcast. I was all set for some deep diving into Song of the South, but that narrator is unbearable. Is her Target audience elderly people on their death bed? I started skipping ahead as she very… carefully…rehashed…the…his…tory…of… Disney, but it wasn’t enough. Gonna try later on Spotify so I can play it at 1.5x speed. Y’all gotta warn people about her.
You Must Remember this is one of my favorite podcasts. Even when I am not familar with the movies/actors, I find it fasincating. Also, I relistened to the Mason series last year when I was in LA for work and I was perfect. This series is coming out right in time for my next trip, so I’m trying hard to save the next few for that. I did listen to the first episode and I saw SotS the same release time at she did. I was 8 and I don’t remember anything except Zip a Dee (and even then, I think I am mostly remembering the spoof scene in Fletch Lives).
Lindsay Ellis did an essay on SOTS (which I can’t find on youtube, now), and she said that for all its other faults, the biggest problem with SOTS is that it’s just a plain BAD MOVIE. It’s not something that will ever be taught in film schools, unlike Birth of a Nation, which birthed the modern language of cinema (and the resurgence of the Klan, but that’s another story).
Bosley Crowther’s original review of Song of the South is available online, and reading it has really upped my estimation of the man – deliciously snide movie reviews were definitely a thing even back in 1946:https://www.nytimes.com/1946/11/28/archives/the-screen-song-of-the-south-disney-film-combining-cartoons-and.htmlAlso, I never realized Song of the South stared Bobby Driscoll. For those unaquainted with Mr. Driscoll’s tragic tale, it is a true exemplar of the darker side of Hollywood:
https://ew.com/oscars/2019/01/22/bobby-driscoll-former-disney-star-oscar-winner/As the host of one of my favorite old shows on the E! network used to say, “Fame, ain’t it a bitch?”
Bobby was in Treasure Island, the first live action Disney film. He was also the voice of Peter Pan, which is highly ironic since Red Man Red song is often cited as horribly offensive. Died real young from drug use if I recall. Sad tale indeed.
Genuine white-boy curiosity here: I understand the Brer Rabbit tales to be a key facet to the Oral Tradition that gave part of the foundation for early African American Literature. Obviously it’s bad optics to have a major studio release a movie that features things like “Tar Baby,” but that was one of the most popular Brer Rabbit stories, and having it released as part of a motion picture was, at the time, a fairly well-intended and progressive thing for a studio to do. In other words, are we SURE it’s “racist as fuck?” I understand Harris’ Remus, as a device to collect anthologize the tales has aged, uh, not so well, but I genuinely wish we’d teach the Oral Tradition, including the trickster tales, as part of the origins of American lit. God knows we could stand to inject some life into the painfully dry, kill-me-already lessons about Anne Bradstreet and the Puritans that we currently jam down our kids’ throats under the bullshit guise of “This is where all American Lit started.” Probably less than five percent of white people even know what the Brer Rabbit is, let alone that the Trix Rabbit, Bugs Bunny, and Roger Rabbit are derivatives of him. If we frame the film in a way that educates viewers on the troublesome nature of the Remus character, I don’t see why we have to erase this movie from all of history.
I’ve had a copy of “Song of the South” on Laserdisc for years and can confirm: it’s racist as fuck.
Anyone claiming the Song of the South is racist is objectively wrong. Learn your history.
?
If it is OBJECTIVELY wrong. It should be really easy for you to explain.So?
I love the content and logical, brick-by-brick approach to constructing an argument Karina Longworth takes, but I do not understand her (chosen?) speaking style. It is distractingly halting, especially the ends of (almost every) sentence where she seems to slow to one quarter speed. An hour into her podcast I haven’t gotten used to it.
It kinda makes sense for the more complex points she (very effectively) makes, but it’s universally deployed. I simply do not understand it.
Another interesting point, there was a war of sorts between the films two screenwriters. One wanted more overt racial slurs and the phrase masta thrown in. The other wanted to include several phrases to point out its post civil war. Stuff like the plantation owner saying we have to pay them, they aren’t slaves. Also there was suppose to be a bit where Uncle Remus says I’m freedman I don’t need to take this. Guess which writer was white and which was black. In the end all the ideas mentioned were cut, to both writers annoyance.
“You Must Remember This” sounded familiar, and I jumped into the new season.Within the first minute I remembered that Podcast. I had tried it before, and OH MY GOD what is wrong with her cadence and delivery? It’s like an AI trying to sound normal.I looked it up, and people had already come up with a way to enjoy the great stories without the terrible pseudo-dramatic and robotic narration: Speed it up to 1.3-1.5x speed. It works!
I never knew they turned splash mountain into a movie
“[…] a Cuban immigrant who fled the regime of Castro to the U.S. Like many refugees from oppressive and fascist regime”“Castro”“fascist”
I’ve said it before but I think the most historically and artistically responsible move for Disney would be to make Song of the South available, but not for sale on Bluray or Disney+ or something. Ideally it would be hosted for free on a website they own, accompanied with text and/or a video introduction giving context to the film and explaining why it was never released on video in the U.S., etc.
Aside from the film’s entertainment value, it’s an important cultural artifact and should be made available to people curious about history. I mean, as offensive as parts of it are it’s still nowhere near as bad as, say, Mein Kampf, and you can still find THAT at your local library or even on Amazon (a fact the site’s algorithms will probably make me regret verifying).
Song of the South sits in a unique spot: something we should be able to see to remind us of casual racism and yet something the copyright owner never wants to see the light of day because it would receive scorn for releasing it. Even if Disney were to release a public domain version and scrub the name “Disney” from every credit screen, it would still tie back to them and likely necessitate the complete overhaul of the Splash Mountain rides as well as burying every instance of Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah used everywhere.Speaking of, I remember having something like a story book from Disney that included the story of Br’er Rabbit and the tar baby from like the 80’s. No mention of Uncle Remus of course, but still interesting since the tar baby obviously looked like a blackface character.