![]() The film has been criticized both for “making slavery appear pleasant” and “pretending slavery didn’t exist,” even though the film (like Harris’ original collection of stories) is set after the Civil War and the abolition of slavery. Although some Blacks have always been uneasy about the minstrel tradition of the Uncle Remus stories, the major objections to Song of the South have had to do with the live-action portions. Song of the South consists of animated sequences featuring Uncle Remus characters such as Br’er Rabbit, Br’er Fox, and Br’er Bear, framed by live-action portions in which Uncle Remus (portrayed by actor James Baskett, who won a special Oscar for his efforts) tells the stories to a little white boy upset over his parents’ impending divorce. Harris’s Uncle Remus was a fictitious old slave and philosopher who told entertaining fables about Br’er Rabbit and other woodland creatures in a Southern Black dialect. These stories - many of which Harris learned from an old Black man he called “Uncle George” - were first published as columns in the Atlanta Constitution and were later syndicated nationwide and published in book form. Harris, who had grown up in Georgia during the Civil War, spent a lifetime compiling and publishing the tales told to him by former slaves. Song of the South, a 1946 Disney film mixing animation and live action, was based on the “Uncle Remus” stories of Joel Chandler Harris.
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