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I just watched the 1941 Dumbo movie with my family. It's probably the first time I've seen it in about 35 years. One thing that stood out to me were the crow characters. All my adult life I've heard about how horrible and racist they were, and Disney is censoring them to this day in multiple ways. But upon watching them, I really have a hard time understanding what may be considered to be racist about them.
They are obvious caricatures of black people, no doubt. They talk in AAVE, they scat, they banter, they dance in stereotypically black ways (albeit circa 1941). But I'm not certain that most leftists these days would consider any of that to be a bad thing. I think the modern day leftist would probably call it "representation"; it's highlighting and drawing attention to race, and inserting it into a movie that would otherwise be without any particular spotlight on race. Most of the actors voicing the crows were actually black, also.
So why does this have such a bad reputation? Maybe because it was demonized back in a day when it was bad to notice any race at all, and those reputations are stickier than the taboos themselves? Maybe because one of the voice actors was white? But I chalk this up as another data point in the perhaps beaten to death category of "modern day leftist mores around race look very similar to the racism of yesteryear".
It's because Disney had much, much worse racial stereotypes in some of their earlier cartoons and comics, so when the 90s PC wave rolled around they went on a panicked spree to remove anything that could be deemed remotely offensive. It was probably a good idea for them: you see how much overexaggerated criticism Disney got for the Song of the South, and that was about in the bottom tenth of Disney racism.
Yeah, I've never seen Song of the South, but this is making me wonder if it deserves the criticism it gets. I know little about it, but is the problem once again mostly that it depicts black people acting like black people of the time?
For example, you'll never see certain episodes of the original broadcast of Tom and Jerry because many of those episodes feature a sassy black maid who doesn't take any shit from Tom. Why was that deemed worthy to never be broadcast again? I don't know. I guess because we are not allowed to ever see a black maid on TV. In certain broadcasts, the black maid was even replaced with a white teenage girl. That's representation for you!
I've seen it. Saw it as a kid, once in the theater I think. I remember a character named Tar Baby, a pretty pejorative term to the modern ear. "Bear Necessities" was a memorable song. (edit: a memorable song that had nothing to do with that film, thanks for the corrections, I got it. Please insert Zip a dee doo dah)
Bear Necessities is Jungle Book not Song of the South.
You're right! I hang my head in shame.
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