Jungle Book DRAMA! — Page 3

I think Song of the South is actually a very progressive take on race, considering the time it was made. Uncle Remus is a much more sympathetic and good character than the boy's white family and portrayed as the only real friend and caretaker this boy has.

Taz, the character of King Louie is not in the book, per se, but the scene in which Mowgli is kidnapped by the troublemaking monkeys is, and was the basis of the sequence in the film.

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Thanks Yero.

John, I think your point is quite salient, and the way films reflect where we are at a given time is my favorite thing about the medium.

It's a time capsule of sorts.

This of course is a double edged sword because movies by nature are, in the slang du jour, unreliable narrators.

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Updated On: 6/12/13 at 04:17 PM

I think Song of the South is actually a very progressive take on race

Song of the South gets criticized for what it didn't portray... Plantation workers' lives were really that easy and carefree?

Updated On: 6/12/13 at 04:23 PM

the half-evil hyenas were mostly multi-culti.

But they were all minorities.

very kind to the black race

I honestly can't remember and it's very hard to find he movie anywhere, but who was kind to the Black race in that movie? I don't remember any any characters that weren't Black.

The idea that she freely uses culture and people as influence or even dressing is hardly offensive.

Unless you're a member of that culture and consistently feel "invisible" when portrayed in someone's work.

To be fair, he specifically said that he'd always been tolerant of how she incorporated Asians and South Asians in her work - until this interview when she implied that she was going to put blinders on to any examples of racism or misogyny.

Updated On: 6/12/13 at 04:30 PM

The movie is on YouTube. You have to watch it in parts, but the entire thing is there. That is how I saw it.

The little white boy who is the main character in the movie, is bullied and beaten by the other white children and mostly ignored or scolded by his white family. He finds a friend and caretaker in Uncle Remus, the plantation worker. The movie portrays the black characters (Remus and the other workers) as the good guys, who actually treat the boy with kindness, unlike the white characters.

Yes, jolly plantation workers are insulting and offensive by today's standards, but by 1946 standards, the movie was progressive.

Not to mention, Walt personally described James Baskett (the actor who played Uncle Remus) as the best actor he ever knew and campaigned hard for him to be honored by the segregated Hollywood community. Partly because of Walt's campaigning, Baskett was awarded an honorary Academy Award for Song of the South, becoming the first black man to receive an Oscar.

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Yes, jolly plantation workers are insulting and offensive by today's standards, but by 1946 standards, the movie was progressive.

I'm just not sure that's right. For sure, in 1946 anyone (particularly African-American) who was displeased with it would have less of a platform to vent about it.

Namo, not contesting your main point, but somewhere on here I read that Mary Zimmerman is actually half-Asian.

But that doesn't make it progressive.

For its time, it does. A film made in white Hollywood by a bunch of white men portraying the black characters as the sympathetic good guys?

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Which is exactly what systematic racism looks like. Of course the white audiences didn't find coon shows offensive, they enjoyed laughing at the black stereotypes.

Well, yeah, of course, but they didn't realize why they enjoyed it.

I am not defending minstrel shows. Of course they were offensive, even if people didn't quite recognize them as such then. I'm just saying that you have to judge any piece of pop culture as a product of its time.

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