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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   34129 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 29, 2024

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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".

For those who haven't seen it, "When I See An Elephant Fly" and, while not as well-remembered or about the African-American men in it, "Song of the Roustabouts". The original released in 1941, and while I don't remember if it explicitly writes out the time of the setting, it's clearly post-1920 (there are prominent electrical lights in a non-urban area, airplane are drawn with metal, not cloth).

The dumb critique (eg, the version you get if you try to watch the show in Disney+) is that the crows are minstrel show references. And while they're not Sambo-level stereotypes, even giving the worst interpretation of their beaks, minstrel shows did have African-American characters with spats and pronounced AVEE, giving Life Lessons in with overstated emotion. I don't think that is my problem with minstrel shows, but for some people the cooties are enough (when they want them to be; the same people will carefully ignore much more overt connection when it's costly).

The steelman is that the work as a whole tried to say something, but to do so in 1941 meant compromises with evil that are no longer necessary in 2024. The African-American characters in "Roustabouts" are explicitly compared (and arguably drawn like, though Dumbo's animation in general was a little rough) to apes, are gleefully happy in their work, can't read or write, blow all their pay the day they get paid -- because their cash pay is so little that sending their kids to the circus they work at consumes it all, their room and board is a windowless carriage car, and do I need to spell out Segregation-era education? While I'll admit it's neither the only possible interpretation or intent, I think it's a very plausible read they are dehumanized in the sense that this is showing that they are treated like animals, in-setting, but they're more human and dedicated than the (implicitly and paintedly white) actors who make up the clown posse.

The treatment of the Crows in "When I See an Elephant Fly" is a continuation of that theme: they're not especially smart or formal, but they're clever, reasonably skeptical, and extremely sympathetic. They are, along with Timothy the Mouse (and Dumbo's mother), the only people to care about Dumbo, and they have less cause to do so. This is a more subtle critique, but I think it was still a critique; at a time where segregationists thought whites and African-Americans were the same species only as a fault (Loving v. Virginia wasn't until 1967!), this was to say even if African-Americans were different species, even if all the stereotypes of behavior and mannerism were true, that wouldn't be what mattered compared to what sort of people they were.

But in doing so, it had to play along with those stereotypes. That probably made it a lot more internalized at the time! (And a lot less likely to be protested or banned, though see Song of the South for where playing too far into the stereotypes got a protest movement in turn.) Aaand it meant today, there's not much there but the stereotypes. "Judge people by the content of their character, not the color of their feathers skin" was a meaningful slogan when Martin Luther King said it, and now it comes on ice cream wrappers; it's room temperature to say an African-American (-coded) character could be a hard worker or insightful. All that's left is the compromise.

I think it's still worth recognizing that, but I'm an outlier.

((That said, the crows were highlighted as a Good Example that should be brought forward into new pieces as recently as 2017, in no small part highlighting this perspective... and then infamously weren't, and by 2020 were taboo to mention.))

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.

On its face, sure, one could argue that it isn't racist. But once you add in the cultural context of the time period, especially in the South, I think its harder to make the case that it wasn't an intentional decision to stereotype Black people. I remember taking a course in high school called, "Male/Female Literary Perspectives," and we spent a whole unit talking about gender and racial stereotyping in the Disney animated canon. The crows Dumbo did come up in discussion, as well as the hyenas in The Lion King, as examples of possible racial stereotypes and how those stereotypes could become associated with their character -- in particular, the hyenas being aggressive and dangerous towards Simba and Nala while all having Black and Hispanic accents.

Though its interesting now in current year, how you have people in social justice circles decrying how whitewashed Disney animated films were, and now we have all these remakes with much more diverse casts.

I mean, so? The crows are black, but they're not, like, being made fun of. They're not portrayed negatively. They happen to be wrong about the object level question of whether an elephant can fly, but so would anyone else be.

Is portraying an italian-accented man as a chef wrong? Ethnic stereotypes in entertainment aren't axiomatically evil.

My mum watched this movie with us when we were children, and was quoting the line "ears only a mother could love" for years afterwards.

"Heavy Traffic" from 1973 (and even more so its followup "Coonskin" from 1975) is kinda like that too, although less famous. It has a lot of scenes of ghetto black people from 1960s New York, who talk and act, well, about like you'd expect (exaggerated a bit since it's an edgy cartoon, but no more than everyone else in that movie). Some people criticize it saying that it's racist, but the guy who made it was just drawing on his own life experiences from growing up in those neighborhoods. It's certainly an uncomfortable movie to watch, for many reasons, but it's a lot more interesting than the modern Hollywood movies where the black characters are all Mary Sues who act squeaky clean, talk like white newscasters, and have no flaws whatsoever.

It is interesting. I also watched Dumbo recently, and my only thoughts on the movie were how refreshingly short it was.

Yes. The length and pacing did astound me, too. I remembered wanting to fly and needing the magic feather as a crutch, and learning to overcome it, as being the main crux of the movie. It turns out the feather and flying were introduced as plot points in the last 6 or 7 minutes of the movie! And Dumbo overcame his need for the feather in the last 3 minutes of the movie. They really moved things in a way modern movies don't, and I've also felt this about other Disney movies from that era that I'm currently rewatching with my family right now.

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)

Isn't Song of the South a Brer Rabbit retelling?

I'm not sure how you tell Brer Rabbit without the story with the tar baby. It's the most famous Brer Rabbit story by a wide margin, isn't it? When I read Brer Rabbit when I was a small child, I genuinely didn't realise it had any connection to African-Americans at all. It wasn't until I was in my 20s, in an unrelated context, that I discovered the stories that had delighted young-Olive came out of an African-American folk tradition. At the time, then, I took the story about the tar baby entirely at face value - it was an effigy made of tar and dressed up that Brer Rabbit genuinely mistook for a child, hit, got stuck on the tar, and thereby was trapped for Brer Fox.

Wiki tells me that the story predates any use of 'tar baby' as a slur, so... I don't know, it seems silly, to me. It is actually a story about a baby made of tar, and nothing in the story has anything to do with race.

Maybe I'm naive here, but... there is just genuinely nothing in the story of Brer Rabbit and the tar baby that involves race. It's a pretty classic trickster archetype story - the fox traps the rabbit, and the rabbit cleverly tricks his way out of it.

'Bear Necessities', incidentally, is from The Jungle Book. Nothing to do with Song of the South. I thought the famous ear worm from Song of the South was 'Zip-a-dee-doo-da'?

I'm not sure how you tell Brer Rabbit without the story with the tar baby. It's the most famous Brer Rabbit story by a wide margin, isn't it?

I would guess it's similar in familiarity to the briar patch story.

It is the briar patch story. The tar baby is how Brer Rabbit was captured - "please don't throw me in the briar patch!" was the trick he used to escape.

Enough B'rer Rabbit stories start with him escaping capture that you sometimes see it separated from the Tar Baby story, and it's probably a little more famous because it's been transposed to so many other settings and works where the tar-mix wouldn't. But at least in the Uncle Remus stories version, yeah, it's very explicitly two separate halves of the same incident (cw: it's... a 1880s Southern work).

Correct on the song. My mistake.

As for Tar baby, I haven't checked the etymology of when it came to be considered a (rather dated now) slur, but as early as the 70s.

(edit: spelling)

Bear Necessities is Jungle Book not Song of the South.

You're right! I hang my head in shame.

There was some stereotyping, but the primary complaint was that it depicted a black sharecropper in the post-reconstruction era who seemed basically content with his lot in life. In my mind that's not that bad. There are plenty of people who live in unjust and meager circumstances who still manage to find happiness, and it doesn't imply an endorsement of the whole social system. That said I haven't actually seen it, I'm mostly going off the many many critical articles from the early 2010s.

There was some stereotyping, but the primary complaint was that it depicted a black sharecropper in the post-reconstruction era who seemed basically content with his lot in life.

In my experience, this is the complaint in the motte, and the complaint in the bailey is that it depicts a black slave in the antebellum era who seemed basically content with his lot in life. (The people complaining are historically illiterate and do not understand what the film is about.)

To be fair, Song of the South is really vague about its time; the Hays Code reviewers supposedly asked for explicit statement in-film that it was set post-Civil War, but in the released work you end up having to read tea leaves and styles of clothing to nail it down. Yes, Remus's family are clearly sharecroppers rather than slaves, but Georgia did have a (tiny, heavily exploited) number of free African-Americans pre-Civil War (though almost all closer to cities); Johnny's family's behavior toward the African-Americans is way too familiar to have been acceptable in antebellum Georgia, but sanitizing treatment of 'the help' in media was absolutely common to antebellum writing and post-Reconstruction writing about pre-war behaviors.

Supposedly one of the scriptwriters wanted to make it more explicit, and there's probably something interesting to say about what a film closer to his version would have looked like, but given that one of the other guys wrote stuff such that the Hayes Code thought it was too racist for the time, and he's the one with more obvious fingerprints on the final work, I don't think it's an unreasonable complaint.

I do find the crows mildly uncomfortable to watch, I think because they're basically a group of poorly-educated black men, probably unemployed since they have nothing better to do with their morning than hang around making fun of the hung-over white guys who passed out drunk in their neighborhood the previous night.

These kinds of racial tensions are like spontaneous emotions, you can't reason through them. It's not really about racism. Being black in a white society always causes tensions and upsets because that's consequent of being a minority. You can change all the surface dressings, but that doesn't fix the tension itself. So some previous generation made positive (positive?) depictions of black people, but they were made by white people, and that leads to all sorts of invisible frictions. These may be positive (?), but they're depictions of black people as animals, or in a separate category from white people, etc. etc. etc. (There's always a reason ready-at-hand.)

To my way of thinking, I predict that many positive black representations current today will eventually be seen as racist.

(There's always a reason ready-at-hand.)

To my way of thinking, I predict that many positive black representations current today will eventually be seen as racist.

I noticed recently that, at least prior to 2017 (The Problem With Apu), it was absolutely industry standard for people making cartoons not to care too much about voice actors' races. People are trying to enact a taboo today on cross-race voice-acting (at least in the case of less-white characters voiced by more-white actors), but even aside from the moral depravity of the principle in a vacuum, I don't think the people advocating for the taboo understand just how widespread the practice was before (because voice actors are "invisible", at least if they're doing their job right - people typically don't notice when white VAs are playing black cartoon characters, and so on). If all media breaking this rule becomes seen as dirty and worthy of purging, then it'll get a pretty significant chunk of pre-2017 animation.

You can't watch a lot of Robin Williams' comedy now without imagining the ways it probably pisses people off. The guy did a lot of accents and was good at it, and got a lot of (not only white) laughs. In this clip with Martha Stewart you can hear the enthusiastic response to his "brown sugar" riff, and, just like I know ChatGPT's "juniper" voice is modeled after a black woman voice, I can hear the black womenfolk's laughter here.

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