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Song of the South’s most successful re-release came in 1972, at a time when Hollywood was dealing with race by making two very different kinds of movies: Blaxploitation films, which gave black audiences a chance to see black characters triumph against white authority figures; and movies like Dirty Harry, which were emblematic of a concurrent cultural and political shift away from the Civil Rights Movement and toward Reagan-style Republicanism.
SHOW NOTES:
Sources for the whole season:
Walt Disney by Neal Gabler
Disney's Most Notorious Film: Race, Convergence, and the Hidden Histories of Song of the South By Jason Sperb
Birth of an Industry by Nicholas Sammond
Stony the Road by Henry Louis Gates Jr.
White Screens/Black Images by James Snead
Slow Fade to Black by Thomas Cripps
Making Movies Black by Thomas Cripps
Bright Boulevards, Bold Dreams: The Story of Black Hollywood by Donald Bogle
Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films by Donald Bogle
Joel Chandler Harris: A Biography and Critical Study by Bruce R. Bickley Jr.
Sources specific to this episode:
Framing Blackness: The African American Image in Film (Culture And The Moving Image) by Ed Guerrero
Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films by Donald Bogle
Disney's Most Notorious Film: Race, Convergence, and the Hidden Histories of Song of the South by Jason Sperb
“The Campaign to Suppress ‘Coonskin’” by Stephen Farber, The New York Times, July 20, 1975
“Whites like ‘South’ Pic, But do Blacks?” Variety, February 23, 1972
Music:
The music used in this episode, with the exception of the intro and outro, was sourced from royalty-free music libraries and licensed music collections. The intro includes a clip from the film Casablanca. The outro song this week is “Pusherman” by Curtis Mayfield.
Excerpts from the following songs were used throughout the episode:
Serene Pastoral Folk Blues - Alexandre Stephane Rusian Toukaeff, Baptiste Vayer
Cotton Flower - Paul Martin Pritchard
Yacht Club - Alain Francois Edouard Bernard
Whimsicality - Laurent Dury
Reflections Underscore - Jack Richard Pierce
Converted Livestock Farmers - Baptiste Francois Guillaume Thiry
Hanging Tree - Wayne Anthony Murray, Tobias Macfarlaine, Elmore King
Rattle Them Chains - Wayne Anthony Murray, Tobias Macfarlaine, Elmore King
Free Stylin - Daryl Neil, Alexander Griffith
Memory Echoes - Hiroki Ishikura
Foxy Brown - David Oliver Rieu
Black Gumshoe - David Oliver Rieu
Blue Sophisticate - Marian McPartland
Ain't No Money in the Blues - Eric John LaBrosse, Jason Michael Carter, Joshua Phillip Cass Matthew Robert Danbeck, Adam Patrick Tremel
Gumshoe Blues - Paul Martin Pritchard
Nightly - Ilan Moshe Abou, Thierry Oliver Faure
Monsieur Taxi - Renaud Vincent Garcia Fons
Fancy Footwalk - Daniel Horacio Diaz
South Border - Olivier Jean Roger Samoillan
Credits:
This episode was written, narrated and produced by Karina Longworth.
Editor: Andi Kristins.
Research and production assistant: Lindsey D. Schoenholtz.
Social media assistant: Brendan Whalen.
Logo design: Teddy Blanks.
