I'm not big on speechifying, but I do have opinions. Opinions are like arm pits; everyone has a couple, right or wrong is up to them that are on the receiving end of the opinion.
I found a copy of Song of the South...the original 1946 version while searching for a fiddle tune on the Tube. I watched the whole thing with bated breath to see if I remembered right the story. It was pretty innocuous, considering it has been banned for years!
I was in first grade at Chase Street Elementary School in Athens, Georgia. the whole school walked Uptown to the Georgia Theater to see that movie. I LOVED it.
It is with sadness I say that political correctness and censorship have stormed the libraries of America, deciding who can read what.
I love Uncle Remus stories. I have all of them including one that I probably owe $100,000 in overdue fines ri the Chase St. School library. I recently found and bought another copy of Joel Chandler Harris' Uncle Remus, His Songs and Sayings. I have two copies, but who knows when the book burnings might begin.
My mother and grandmother read them in dialect, something I strove to do early on. I can read a pretty good version of the dialect that Joel Chandler Harris gleaned from his black plantation contacts from middle Georgia cotton plantation to the rice plantations in Costal Georgia. His dialect is still the "standard" today. I use poetic license in my telling of these stories.
I was a musician working in rural schools of Braxton County WV. My Mama had read us the Jack Tales and Grandfather Tales collected by folklorist Richard Chase in the hills of Kentucky.
singing for hours a day in classrooms takes its toll on the voice, and to rest my voice, I began to tell them, Kids were mesmerized. They told their parents about the Story Man that came to school. Parents and grandparents began to come on the days I was scheduled at a school. They enjoyed the stories as much as kid!
I was running out of material. I decided to try Uncle Remus' Brer Rabbit and the Wonderful Tar Baby. The teachers even laughed. Later, an older teacher said it brought back memories of her grandfather telling her that story when she was a girl in WV.
Storytelling is a fact of life in the South. A good storyteller can transform us to a place in our head called imagination...TV and movies can't do that. Those mediums fix and image in your mind that is indelible for life. The story may be captivating, but the images are fixed. No imagination needed. Try to remember the images that were conjured up in your brain when you heard the story of Hansel and Gretel...
Song of the South is a Disney movie and does depict the Old South, but on closer examination, after Miss Sally told Remus he couldn't see the little boy anymore in the movie, Remus decided to pack his belongings and leave the plantation. An enslaved person wouldn't have that option
Many stayed where they were...on the plantation after the Emancipation. There was stability, a roof over your head and food. You workedat what you knew, yes, but you were free.
I was cautioned not to tell Brer Rabbit stories at public places as they were racists, degrading, offensive to everyone who heard them. A family member was horrified that I even knew them. Well, fact is I loved other black books that were banned ie Nicodemus, Little Black Sambo, and the Grimm Fairy Tales,
My objection to banning books is that children, young adults and adults watch TV. There are far worse scenes of murder and mayhem in a Marvel "Superhero" movie than were depicted in Song of the South. Get over yourselves, people.
When Dr. Suess books came on censorship chopping block, as they are now, something has gone weirdly wrong with this country. The Lorax movie offended the timber industry? PLEASE tell me lumber jacks are not that sensitive.
My favorite Suess book, printed in the late 40's is "Who Knows What You'll Catch in McElligot's Pool". most people have never heard of it. It's no longer on library shelves because it depicts a fish one might catch in McElligot's Pool with a fur hooded coat...and Eskimo Fish. It is considered as offensive to Eskimo people (opps) as they are Native American, and the image is degrading. Hmm.
I leave you with this question; would you rather hear a good storyteller weave images in your mind or watch yet another murder mystery on TV?
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