Jungle Book DRAMA! — Page 2

Once again, King Louie was designed to sound (musically and speaking) like Louie Prima, a popular musician who was Italian, not black.

Smokescreen. And a deliberate casting choice so someone could say, "No, he's not Black."

John there was no "casting"; The part was WRITTEN for LOUIE PRIMA. There was no "King Louie" in the books.

Now's a good time to watch the King in action- and Keely Smith is just amazing- what a beautiful voice!
Louie being Louie

It's not like Prima was directed to "sound black."

He didn't need to be. He already does ("did" - may he rest in elegant peace).

Updated On: 6/12/13 at 03:22 PM

It was pretty clever of them to express all that racism towards black people through that part they wrote for the Italian feller.

Yes, it was! As I wrote a little earlier, I'm also impressed by the lyrics of I wanna Be Like You.

Also, I'm not so sure they were "expressing" racism, so much as pointing it out.

Updated On: 6/12/13 at 03:26 PM

The Disney Studios were well aware of the ****e they got over the Dumbo crows, and deservedly so. Even the very first line of the Wikipedia entry about King Louie says it plainly:

"King Louie is a fictional character in Disney's 1967 animated musical adaptation of The Jungle Book. He is voiced by Louis Prima in the film. Initially, the producers considered Louis Armstrong for the role, but to avoid the likely controversy that would surround casting a black person to voice an ape, they instead chose Prima."

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So Disney, by not wanting to appear racist, is racist?

I know you're being willfully obtuse, but the mouse factory was never what one could call progressive about racial issues before and in the immediate aftermath of Uncle Walt's deep freeze. Yes, it was a different time. But it was still problematic.

Ditto Kipling and the colonialism. Deciding not to deal with it because it's not deal-withable is probably the only conclusion a Zimmerman could come up with. The problem comes in articulating it at all. She ends up sounding like Marty Short's Nathan Thurm, "I'm not racist, you are."

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Instead of getting a black guy to voice the monkey, they got a white guy that merely SOUNDS like a black guy to voice the monkey.

They could've made King Louie sound like a Southern bumpkin, or a Brooklynite, or a Canadian. Or something. After all, as Joe pointed out, they created the character.

But it seems they wanted a distinctive sound for the character.

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Updated On: 6/12/13 at 03:43 PM

Deciding not to deal with it because it's not deal-withable is probably the only conclusion a Zimmerman could come up with.

When someone decides to present a work like this, I wouldn't want to see it changed or altered. I think it's important to present it as it was written so that an audience can be outraged, or "meh", or whatever.

But I would be more impressed if Zimmerman chose to find a way to "make a statement" about the material, in some fashion/facet of the production. Of course she doesn't have to, but I can understand the upset when her statements imply, "I'm gonna pretend it isn't there".

(Did we say the same thing?)

Updated On: 6/12/13 at 03:53 PM

I don't think that's why.

And Pocahontas was accused of racism because there was a song called "Savages," ignoring the fact that the natives sang it about the white men. (The white men sang it about the natives, too -- that was the point of the song, that BOTH groups were ignorant and fearful of the other.)

Lots of things are accused of racism by people who have no idea and are making assumptions, and really just want to be angry about something (THE SCOTTSBORO BOYS, anyone?).

Disney himself may have been racist (how many white men born at the turn of the 20th century weren't, honestly?), but that doesn't mean the entire studio felt that way, or continues to feel that way, and it bugs me every time I see or hear the accusations all over again.

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Updated On: 6/12/13 at 04:00 PM