Film Studies 2159A/B Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Atlanta Daily World, Peddler, Lucile Watson
28 Jun 2018
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Screening 8, Lecture 8
Thursday, March 8, 2018 9:25 AM
Screening: Song of the South
Lecture:
• Exam:
○True Life Adventures - Themes
○Readings:
• Disney owed Bank of America 4.3 million dollars after WWII
• Idea of the frontier through nature documentaries:
• Did not want to see evidence of civilization or mans work
• Voiceover reintroduces man in terms of human units "families, highways"
• Retreat to a timeless past
• The frontier is a myth waiting for humanization
• Work values
• "Disney's focus on the timeless frontier of the pacific northwest…"
• Disney was responding to a new technology
○5 point bonus on the back!!
• What Movies?
○Bambi
○Cinderella
○WWII Shorts/industrial films
○Nature documentaries
○Song of the South
• Format:
○HISTORICAL CONTEXT
○True False
○Word Bank
○Short Answer
○Multiple choice
○Look at introduction to screening intros
• Animal characters in Cinderella
• Look at classic Disney chart
• Minor characters thought as sidekicks
• "Freedom in movement and mobility"
• In harsh juxtaposition, Cinderella and humans did not move in complete freedom
Song of the South (Harve Foster and Wilfred Jackson, 1946)
Race Representation in Disney
Song of the South:
• Zip-a-Dee-Do-Dah
• Won two Oscars
• Best original song in a film
• Song represents Disney - everything is real including cartoons
• Happy go lucky
• Uncle Remis first black man to win a Oscar
• Happy slave
• Surrounding controversy
Disney and Racism
•Three Little Pigs (1933) - The Big Bad Wolf as stereotyped as a Jewish peddler
Objecting to Racist Representation
• Shortly after the film was released, Rabbi J.X. Cohen of the American Jewish Congress called the
portrayal vile and revolting, stating that the scene where the wolf was presented as a Jewish peddler was
so "vile and revolting and unnecessary, especially in the light of what was then happening in Germany"
and he asked that the offending scene be removed. Disney executives refused to edit the scene.
Censoring Race/Reissued Film, 1948
• When the short was reissued to theaters in 1948, the Hay’s Office censors opposed the stereotypical
portrayal and were finally successful in getting Disney to edit the film. Footage of the stereotypical Jewish
pedlar was re-animated.
• The villainous Wolf now appeared as a “Fuller Brush Man” (door-to-door salesman who sold personal
hygiene products and household cleaning products) albeit one who still had a Yiddish accent even if he
lost his crooked nose and black hat. Airings on American television edited this further by using the Fuller
Brush Man footage and redubbing the Wolf's voice so that he does not sound stereotypically Jewish. When
the film was released on home video, the scene was further edited: the topical 'Fuller Brush Man' line "I'm
the Fuller Brush Man...I'm giving a free sample!" was changed to the incongruous "I'm the Fuller Brush
Man – I'm working my way through college" for this and all subsequent home video releases.
Censoring Race
• Douglas Brode has argued that the film originally offered a “positive portrayal- a pro-Jewish employment of the
cultural stereotype, invoked to ridicule the caricature itself, not ridicule the Jews.” Douglas Brode, Ch. 3: “Beat
of a Different Drum: Individuation and Ethnicity in Disney” (Multiculturalism and the Mouse)
• Question: What have we already learned about Disney and censorship?
• Disney avoided censorship
• Since it was animation people did not take it seriously
• Question: Are there other examples of Disney films from the 1940s that were later censored ?
• Parts of Fantasia were censored
○Black centaur who shines the shoes of white centaurs
• Perhaps as a result of the gains of the civil rights movement, in the late 1960s (sometime after 1966 but before
1969) the studio eliminated four sequences from the "Pastoral Symphony" section of Fantasia that showed a
black female centaur named Sunflower or Otika who also shined the white centaurs’ hoofs. Censors objected to
the sequences with the black centaur on the grounds that they were racist representations (see Karl Cohen’s
article). In the 1940s, censors asked that the bare-breasted centaurs be clothed (but did not object to the
racialized depiction).
Racist Stereotypes of Satire?
• Dumbo also has several sequences with black crows that speak in a heavy African-American dialect. The film
also features the “Song of the Roustabouts,” in which lyrics like “We slave until we’re almost dead / We’re
happy-hearted roustabouts” however now sung by faceless black circus workers. Or is the song satire? The
song was sung by Cliff Edwards and the Hall Johnson Choir, a famous all-black group
Online Debate about Disney and Race
• “I was absolutely shocked as well, and I don't think it matters whether or not your small child picks up on it
immediately or not, it's still ruminates with them; especially with continued exposure. I personally remember
watching Dumbo and Pinocchio as a small child, and though not grasping the meanings still having nightmares
about these dark scenes. If Dumbo is satirical why don't the roustabouts have any characteristics like defined
faces,part of the satire?... or not. I don't want to go to far into the argument about Disney's intentions, because
sometimes intentions don't matter. I just want to say that I agree that I won't be sitting my children down to
watch this one either, at least not until I can show them what had changed in our world, and what hasn't.”
"Classic Disney" - Negative Stereotypes
•As Wasko argues, “stereotypical representations of gender and ethnicity”, “formulaic heroines, heroes, villains,
sidekicks” and “anthropomorphized, neotenized (juvenile-like) animal characters” are all defining
characteristics of Disney’s “Golden Age” characters.
• Although Elizabeth Bell has argued that in Disney films women are not “bifurcated into good and bad” and we
find “worlds of women—worlds of song and power and care—that offer alternatives to institutional hierarchy,
science and technology, and divine rights of kings,” other critics have identified/analyzed “good and bad”
gender constructions and negative stereotypes and racist representation in the Disney dream factory. For
example, Giroux and Pollock argue that Disney films are “male narratives” about “domination” that privilege
and universalize “Whiteness” and “Western culture” and its “middle-class social relations, values and linguistic
practices.”
Negative Stereotypes/Gender Construction
• Giroux and Pollock assigned for next week also discuss the “negative stereotypes” and “absence of complex
representations of African-Americans and other people of color” in Disney’s animated films and in themeparks.
Here are themes you should look for in this reading next week…
• As part of the “classic” Disney mode, Cohen argues that 1) women and girls are submissive and “subordinate to
males” .. Their sense of power is often limited to the role they play within “dominant male narratives”… a girl
in search of a man. However, over time Disney’s construction of gender roles becomes more complicated and
nuanced [Mulan] .… 2)Disney films have both racially coded images/visual representations and racially coded
language 3) Children are taught to “laugh at or deride”, rather than “respect difference” 4) Disney films uphold
Western ethnocentrism- examples – Disney bleaches colonialism of its genocidal legacy in Pocahontas, even if
there are in Pocahontas more positive portrayal of racial differences /Aladdin has Western stereotypes of a Arab
culture as “backward and demonic” with “racially coded language and accents”, mispronounced Arab names
and nonsensical scrawl as a substitute for written Arabic language. There were protests of anti-Arab themes in
Aladdin and eventually the Disney studio changed one line of a stanza about “barbaric” Arabs cutting off ears,
although they did not cut the word “barbaric” and did not change the lyrics on their CD music release. 5)
Disney’s animated films “trivialize cultural difference” and celebrate and naturalize “racial hierarchies” and a
“stratified society”, “hierarchies of gender and race” and “structural inequality,” legitimating “caste systems”.
Cohen argues in Disney fairy tale narratives “men rule and strict discipline is imposed” through strict and fixed
social barriers… Cohen argues that ultimately “harmony is bought at the price of domination…” Disney films
legitimate social domination and teach children as moral message “that social problems such as the history of
racism the genocide of Native Americans, the prevalence of sexism, and democracy in crisis are simply willed
by the laws of nature.”
Lion King
• As we will discuss next week and as Giroux and Pollock point out in their notes on “reading gender, race and
hierarchy in Disney films of the 1990s”, some reviewers of Lion King also critiqued racist stereotypes in the
celebrated musical production, arguing that the film “is full of stereotypes” [Carolyn Newberger’s “Intolerance
is the Real Message of the Lion King” (Boston Globe) - OWL].
• Newberger writes that as she watched the movie, “another layer of consciousness began to emerge” (she is
perhaps referencing what W.E.B. Dubois described as a ‘double consciousness’ – looking at oneself through the
eyes of the other’). She saw “two movies” – “one superimposed on the other.” In one film, “a tale of good
and evil – growth and redemption unfold.” “In the other – a story of racism and inequality- poverty and
degradation play out.”
Scratching the Surface
• Newberger introduces the idea that we need to “scratch the surface” of Disney’s films, to examine “hidden
stories” and “embedded messages” as well as the obvious moral lessons, stories, plot-lines and messages…
Song of the South
• shot in technicolor
• -live-action/animated musical film
• advertised as “first live-action musical drama” or “first live-action feature”
• although it was promoted as the first Disney feature film to use live actors, Reluctant Dragon (1941) also
combined live-action footage with cartoons
• based on Uncle Remus stories narrated by black slaves, adapted by white author Joel Chandler Harris
• setting: Southern Plantation in Georgia
•James Baskett who portrays Uncle Remus, was the first black male actor to win an Oscar. However, this was
only an Honorary Academy Award (Baskett died in July 1948 and received the award in March 1948). Baskett’s
co-star Hattie McDaniel had won an Oscar earlier in 1939, Best Supporting Actress, for her performance in
Gone with the Wind
Hattie McDaniel
• Hattie McDaniel accepted her award in a segregated "no blacks" allowed hotel in 1938
Document Summary
Readings: disney owed bank of america 4. 3 million dollars after wwii. Look at introduction to screening intros: animal characters in cinderella, look at classic disney chart, minor characters thought as sidekicks, "freedom in movement and mobility" In harsh juxtaposition, cinderella and humans did not move in complete freedom. Song of the south (harve foster and wilfred jackson, 1946) Disney and racism: three little pigs (1933) - the big bad wolf as stereotyped as a jewish peddler. Objecting to racist representation: shortly after the film was released, rabbi j. x. Censoring race/reissued film, 1948: when the short was reissued to theaters in 1948, the hay"s office censors opposed the stereotypical portrayal and were finally successful in getting disney to edit the film. Airings on american television edited this further by using the fuller. Brush man footage and redubbing the wolf"s voice so that he does not sound stereotypically jewish.
