User:Lindseybean27/Song of the South/Bibliography

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'''Korkis, Jim (2012). Who’s Afraid of Song of the South? and other Forbidden Disney Stories. Theme Park Press.''' (Wikipedia link has been disabled)

Jim Korkis, reputed Disney historian, discusses the development of and controversy surrounding the 1946 Disney animated film Song of the South. The book offers a behind-the-scenes history of the film’s production using interviews with many of the artists and crew members who worked on the film, and attempts to challenge the notion that Song of the South itself is a racist enough entity to warrant it remaining locked up in the Disney Vault. Additionally, Korkis includes a number of other stories Disney doesn’t want you to hear, though only the portion of the book detailing Song of the South’s production history is included in the Wikipedia article. Before his passing in 2023, Korkis published over forty informational texts pertaining to the Walt Disney Company. Wikipedians cited Korkis’ ''Who’s Afraid of Song of the South? and Other Forbidden Disney Stories'' fifteen times over the course of the production and reception portions of the article. While the book is properly cited throughout the article, Korkis was a white man, and was 61 when he published this text as a critique of anti-racist efforts to ban the film. I believe that in order to have a more comprehensive understanding of the impacts and implications of the film, it’s important that more POC/ Black perspectives and sources are highlighted and cited as key sources on topics of racism such as this.

'''Bernstein, Matthew (1996). “Nostalgia, Ambivalence, Irony: Song of the South and Race Relations in 1946 Atlanta”. Film History, Volume 8 (no. 2), pp 219-236.'''

Emory Film professor Matthew Bernstein reflects on the social conditions and timely discourse that both created and surrounded the infamously polarizing 1946 Disney film, Song of the South, and its grand premiere in Atlanta, Georgia. Atlanta’s west side was home to the Uncle Remus Tales author, Joel Chandler Harris, who initially published the stories in The Atlanta Constitution, of which he was a frequent editor and reporter. Harris sourced his Uncle Remus’ Tales as an amalgamation of stories and fables he had been told by slaves as a child on a Georgia plantation. Harris was so renowned that the “Uncle Remus Association” of Atlanta were among those suggesting to Disney that the film’s premiere be held in Harris’s landing place, even donating their end of the proceeds towards the refurbishment of his west side residence, “The Wren’s Nest”; so there was a sense of hometown pride in Atlanta about Harris’ film being produced by Disney. This feeling of hometown pride couldn’t go unaffected however by a series of lynchings and other racially victimizing incidents taking place in the area weeks before Song of the South’s premiere. In the time since its release, and it’s been characterized by Black Film scholar Thomas Cripps as a prime example of Hollywood’s post World War II ‘Thermidor’(post heat-of-wartime efforts to continue its inflammatory depiction of African Americans onscreen. Cripps noted that Walt Disney resisted any and all suggestions to give Remus and other slave-coded characters a sense of complexity and humanity, whether from Alaine Locke of Howard University, the NAACP, and even his own screenwriters. The anticipated audience of this piece would be film of African American film students. This would be useful in my application to the Wikipedia article because it’s a scholarly article which shines light on the conditions that created and cultivated Song of the South, allowing it to grow into the problem we know today.

'''Tobias, Scott (2019). Song of the South: the difficult legacy of Disney’s most shocking movie. The Guardian.'''

Tobias Scott of The Guardian analyzes the lasting impacts of Disney’s 1946 film Song of the South, which the company has deemed too problematic to be featured in their extensive Disney+ catalog. The article opens with the ethical variety present in the Walt Disney Company’s film collection, and the company’s most recent methods of handling its past insensitive content; typically using gentle disclaimers to preface films such as Dumbo and Lady and the Tramp. Song of the South, however, has proven itself unworthy of any attempt to clean it up. The author describes the short history of the Walt Disney Company’s ties to the Antebellum South through their ethically questionable depictions of the Reconstruction Era using both live-action actors, and caricature-esque critters such as Br’er Rabbit. While the film itself never includes the words “slavery”, the presence of black subjugation and ‘nostalgic’ southern sentiments is too overwhelming to be written off. The article explores the questionable dynamics between black and white characters in the film, the racial themes present in the animated portions of animals in the film, and the overall vein of joy present throughout that is uncharacteristic of the Reconstruction-era South. The author concludes that keeping Song of the South out of the reach of the next generation is a wise decision, despite any arguments made in its defense.

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