But why help them feel better for being racist at all?
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The precious fee-fees of âdecent White folksâ must be preserved at all times, no matter what the circumstances or context may be.
Michael Harriotâs response to âPhilip Fâ is most relevant to that point:
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Iâm confused: I thought your first post was written sarcastically, and that you were calling Disney cowardly for not acknowledging their racist past. However, your later posts suggest you sincerely do want that movie released. Iâm too young to have ever seen it, but itâs clearly racist and pro-Confederate. You appear to agree with that judgmentâso why do you want it available for streaming? I just donât understand what your position actually is. Would you be willing to clarify?
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I suspect that he would have ultimately rejected the role as it was written, since it was, once again, a lost cause mythology influenced film.
You really think that there arenât already copies in circulation, that itâs not been shared and can likely be found online?
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Besides my joking - there really are copies on ebayâŚ
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Itâs on fucking youtube. Seriously. I mean⌠itâs not like itâs hidden from sight.
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I saw it in the early 80s, and I think that was on a VHS? It was available in my lifetime⌠they rightfully decided to pull it from further circulation.
But the Disney-gestapo is stopping god-fearing Americans from re-living the gentile south!!! /s
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Itâs strange how Disneyâs lawyers havenât taken care of thatâŚ
As I said earlier, I havenât seen the whole movie, but based on the clips I have seen, I can tell that, even if it werenât racist, I would still think it sucks. It just looks boring.
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Of course there are.
Of course it is.
No matter how horrible, thereâs a market for pretty much everything.
Same here; though I saw it on cable tv when I was about 7 or 8.
Iâm guessing it was probably on the first iteration on the Disney Channel, back before they realized what a liability that film is to their brand.
Which makes a person of apparent privilege clamoring for itâs needless âre-releaseâ even more suspect.
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Your confusion is understandable, because I am calling Disney cowardly and would like to see the film released. (Although not necessarily on streaming, but it is not officially available in any format in the U.S.).
To the first point, Disney is being cowardly in keeping it locked away. Itâs not like this is the only film of theirs that isnât racist (last I saw, those damn crows are still in DUMBO.) They could put together a special edition with features including discussions about the film in context. As you might guess, I would love to see them add a documentary about the entire sordid arc of the production. And it is possible to do â WB had the same problem when releasing Looney Tunes on DVD, so they put the problematic ones in a single box set with a video forward piece/warning by Whoopi Goldberg (who, I hasten to add, would also like to see this film released.) So yes, maybe not on streaming where all of that context is easily lost, but not mothballed in a Vault of Shame (Europe excluded) until the sun burns out.
To the other point, yes the film is clearly racist. (I would argue with your assertion that it is pro-Confederate, since the Civil War is well over before the film; I would instead say that it is pro-post-Reconstruction, which indicts not only the South but the GOP for ending Reconstruction in exchange for the Compromise of 1877. Regardless, the film does not delve into this aspect of history.) But certainly for its time it isnât racist, and thatâs kind of the point; at the time it was made, the US Army hadnât even been desegregated. That discomfort people feel about it, even having not seen it, is a sign of seven decades of progress.
But I think itâs unfair to those in it and who made it to condemn the film for not being wildly ahead of the curve. It should be seen and appreciated, warts and all.
Maybe tell that to all the people who protested it AT THE TIME.
This film was racist then and itâs racist NOW. Given that itâs easily accessible, itâs not âlocked away.â
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ITâS ON YOUTUBE.
What is your point of wanting an âofficialâ Disney release?
Sure⌠we should totally âappreciateâ a piece of racist-ass revisionist sugar-coated bullshit, because thatâs what you personally think is best⌠never mind all the countless Black people and other minorities like myself who would inevitably feel disrespected, exploited and dehumanized by a pointless reissue that would have far more negative consequences than any positive ones.
Thanks so much for so distinctly demonstrating the concept of obtuse White privilege in action; kudos.
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should we have a separate song of the south thread? all the cat from outer space and kurt russell comments are getting buried. ha.
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Considering that petitioning for the reissue of a bigoted film isnât the topic, perhaps it should be.
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Youâre right, saying âfor its time it isnât racistâ is a misstatement on my part.
My statement should have been that it was not progressive compared to America, especially film culture, of the time. Or, as I said later, it was not ahead of the curve.
The crows are not a central part of the movie, unlike SOTS.
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Other films were. Some were in fact made by African AmericansâŚ
http://dhbasecamp.humanities.ucla.edu/afamfilm/whatis/history/
They very much could have a made a better film, and they decided instead not to do that. They could have talked to scholars of the day (WEB DuBois would have been willing to help), but instead they decided to glorify the antebellum south.
There is no reason to release this film. None. They wonât do it because itâs not economically viable, because it would most certainly cause a backlash as it did at the time. You can get the film quiet easily, if youâre really interested in reliving that piece of propaganda.
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And those films that survive should absolutely be preserved and made available.
It must be glorious to live in a world where media does not play an active role in stirring up racial tensions and/or is used as a vehicle for recruiting and fostering extremism.
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It IS available! Which youâve been told several times by several people here on this thread, but youâve managed to ignore.
Do we need to have reissues of the Eternal Jew, too, meticulously restored to all itâs anti-Semitic glory, on blu-ray and DVD? Because we donât need that. Scholars can access it if they need to view it to study it or show it in a class in an appropriate setting, and there are likely samzidat copies that circulate around the anti-Semitic underground, much like this film.
But none of this needs to be reissued. There is no reason for that. None what so ever.
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