Or maybe it's because Uncle Remus comes off to some people as the silly singing black slave, and they are insulted by it. I find it interesting that the rest of the world is able to see this film, but the people of the US are too, what? Backwards? to understand the deeper meaning. It would be like removing all artistic and literary references of the Holocaust.Īs a child I loved Song of the South, but due to today's hyper politically correctness Disney is refusing to re-release it in the United States. It's like saying there was never a racial divide in United States and the struggles that minorities have been through were never there. The remaking of cartoons or removal of certain scenes, or the banning of certain books to support today's standards is more insulting to me than the original works themselves. I can't even imagine what a remake of Gone with the Wind would look like. On the surface you could look at it like that, but if you really take a look at the film and the book all of these people are quite a bit more than what they seem. The characters of Mamie and Prissy would be relegated to dumb negro slave stereotypes. I do not get offended when I watch Gone With the Wind, but I imagine if it were to be analyzed by today's standards Scarlet would be the spoiled psycho boiling Ashley's bunny, Melanie would be the the dumb, trusting girl who is to stupid to know that she is being picked on by the mean girl, and Rhett would be a misogynist, rapist, bastard. Or the day while surfing when someone said to me that they didn't know black people could swim. I was more insulted when a colleague was surprised to find that I spoke three languages, and actually said that she was unaware that someone who had dropped out of college had the intelligence to learn to speak other languages. She was just raised and brought up in a different time. Not because I am too dumb to understand the insult, but because there was no insult intended. Michelle was mortified and constantly apologizing to me about it, but I was never bothered.
Because of her upbringing she constantly called me that lovely colored girl. One of my very best friends was raised by her grandmother who is a tried and true, born in the deep, south southern belle.
Maybe it's because intellectually I understand that people are not necessarily being mean when they say things that are not considered politically correct. I understand that many find these images and videos racist, and maybe they are when looked at in this time, but one must remember that in that time political correctness was unheard of, and what we consider racist today wasn't then.Īs a woman of mixed race I can find a numerous examples of racist interpretations in past works of art, fiction, and literature, but all of it should be taken into context as to where the world was during the time that it was made.