[Willbegone]

One of my cousins told me over the weekend that he heard Disney was going to relrease Song of the South on DVD. He also went on to say that the release was to have a prologue with James Earl Jones stating how the movie is not racist as many portrayed it originally. Has anyone else heard anything like this???

[wdwspider]

I've heard Leonard Maltin is pushing for it to be released as a Treasure, but nothing concrete and not this year for sure. I think it's a matter of time before demand dictates Disney release this movie in some format.

[alextina]

I have been waiting forever for this. I have seen a couple of VHS copies for sale on ebay but hesitated to buy becuase I am under the impression that it has never been released before. I would much rather have it on dvd, but does anyone know if it was released at some point on vhs? Or are these bootleged copies?

[LuvWDW]

My father in law has a boot legged copy. He says it's so dark that you can't see anything and you can hardly hear the voices and songs.

I don't think it has ever been released so I would definetly be leary of buying a copy on EBAY.


Hope they will release it . You can go to this web site and request it. Maybe if we at Disney Central bombarded them with requests , they might release it.:p

http://disneyvideos.disney.go.com/moviefinder/

[alextina]

I went to the site and voted for them to release it. When I did the search for the song of the south it came up as VHS so I wonder if it was released at some point:hmmm Maybe someone here knows for sure. BTW thanks for the link.

[geeman]

No, it wasn't released on VHS. At least not in the US. I did once own a laserdisc player, and own an imported Japanese Laserdisc version of the movie. It's in English with subtitles. In case you don't remember, laserdiscs were the large album sized compact disc looking things that used to play on a laserdisc player- before DVD's took over.:cry:

[wdwspider]

Originally posted by alextina
I went to the site and voted for them to release it. When I did the search for the song of the south it came up as VHS so I wonder if it was released at some point:hmmm Maybe someone here knows for sure. BTW thanks for the link.

I know for sure... it was never released in America. Most of the Ebay copies are from Japanese Laserdisc with english tracks or some other countries version. Currently I do not believe Song of the South is available anywhere legally. Most are copies of copies and are in so-so quality.

[tinkerbell]

Song of the south is legally for sale in England .. I have a PAL copy that was a gift from Dixie .. it can be rented in Canada but not sold and that version is NTSC format. I know this because I asked a canadian friend if she could purchase and send me a copy but she said they couldnt be bought only rented :(
a very good link for info on Song of the South is

http://www.uncleremuspages.com/sosp.html

I had my PAL copy converted to NTSC

[alextina]

Great site tinkerbell. Thanks!:D

[StormyTink]

Virtually all of the Song of the South videos on eBay are in PAL format. Our American VCRs only understand NTSC format, so if you were to buy one of the eBay copies, unless you have an international VCR and a converter for your television, you couldn't even watch it.

Juliane

[TroyBoy]

i have found a dvd-r version of this great movie. it does play in english but it has what seems to be japanese subtitles during the songs only. i think it is only 10.00 and it is of very good quality for viewing. it is found at http://www.lordsmurf.vzz.net/. take a look i think it is worth it.

[jedijson]

This is one of several movie's I'd love to see go to DVD. I've missed seeing it--I remember going to the movies to see it and the Golden Condor (if I remember that name correctly--probably not, but that's what I think it is) in a double-feature. I'd also love to see Candleshoe come out on DVD, as well as Dr. Syn, The Scarecrow. It's been FOREVER since I've seen those movies.

I still don't understand why people think that SOTS is racist... Doesn't make sense to me. Of course, I was only a child when I saw it last. Maybe 7 or 8???

[skwak]

FYI there is another SOS post about 6 below this one. Asp8tis has a great contact to get a real good copy of SOS on DVD. I did it and it has quickly become a family favorite. If you PM her, she will give you the contact.

[BWSmith]

Originally Posted by jedijson

I still don't understand why people think that SOTS is racist... Doesn't make sense to me. Of course, I was only a child when I saw it last. Maybe 7 or 8???

Here's the skinny on SOTS and racism from snopes.com:

Although some Blacks have always been uneasy about the minstrel tradition of the Uncle Remus stories, the major objections to Song of the South had to do with the live action portions. 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. Still, as folklorist Patricia A. Turner writes:


Disney's 20th century re-creation of Harris's frame story is much more heinous than the original. The days on the plantation located in "the United States of Georgia" begin and end with unsupervised Blacks singing songs about their wonderful home as they march to and from the fields. Disney and company made no attempt to to render the music in the style of the spirituals and work songs that would have been sung during this era. They provided no indication regarding the status of the Blacks on the plantation. Joel Chandler Harris set his stories in the post-slavery era, but Disney's version seems to take place during a surreal time when Blacks lived on slave quarters on a plantation, worked diligently for no visible reward and considered Atlanta a viable place for an old Black man to set out for.
Kind old Uncle Remus caters to the needs of the young white boy whose father has inexplicably left him and his mother at the plantation. An obviously ill-kept Black child of the same age named Toby is assigned to look after the white boy, Johnny. Although Toby makes one reference to his "ma," his parents are nowhere to be seen. The African-American adults in the film pay attention to him only when he neglects his responsibilities as Johnny's playmate-keeper. He is up before Johnny in the morning in order to bring his white charge water to wash with and keep him entertained.

The boys befriend a little blond girl, Ginny, whose family clearly represents the neighborhood's white trash. Although Johnny coaxes his mother into inviting Ginny to his fancy birthday party at the big house, Toby is curiously absent from the party scenes. Toby is good enough to catch frogs with, but not good enough to have birthday cake with. When Toby and Johnny are with Uncle Remus, the gray-haired Black man directs most of his attention to the white child. Thus Blacks on the plantation are seen as willingly subservient to the whites to the extent that they overlook the needs of their own children. When Johnny's mother threatens to keep her son away from the old gentleman's cabin, Uncle Remus is so hurt that he starts to run away. In the world that Disney made, the Blacks sublimate their own lives in order to be better servants to the white family. If Disney had truly understood the message of the tales he animated so delightfully, he would have realized the extent of distortion of the frame story.

The NAACP acknowledged "the remarkable artistic merit" of the film when it was first released, but decried "the impression it gives of an idyllic master-slave relationship".

Was Song of the South ever released on VHS?

Do I personally think SotS is racist? No, not at all. Just about every film produced in this time period that looked back on earlier times idealized those times to some extent, and SotS is no exception.

Unfortunately, in this day and age, it is not politically correct to idealize antebellum relations between any blacks and whites in any positive way. That is SotS's crime, in the minds of its opponents.

Were there any blacks before, during, and after the Civil War who accepted their perceived lot in the cultural hierarchy and had relatively peaceful relations with white masters, even strong friendships? I'm no expert, but there almost certainly had to have been some who lived on good terms, and to me, SotS represents that kind of triumph of the love between individuals in the face of a great institutional and cultural evil.

[MerlinMatt]

I'm so sick and tired of policital correctness. It's like we're afraid of our own shadow.

Slavery existed. It was wrong. Racism still exists. It's wrong. We all know that. Most of us work against it, but it's hard not to be prejudiced. Fear of the unknown is a natural human inclination. The key is to educate, not to legislate.

Give me a random selection of a dozen movies and I'll find at least one example in every movie where someone or something was either disrespected or demeaned in one way or another.

People need to get over themselves.

Maybe if all these people obsessed about political correctness focused more on getting to know their neighbor, regardless of creed, color, or whatever instead of looking for people who mis-speak, we'd have a much happier world to live in.

We're all God's creatures. Why does it need to be any more complicated than that?