One of the best things about Disney+ is its content library. The streaming service offers its subscribers a wealth of movies and television, including the vast catalog of Disney movies. Fans can get on Disney+ and queue up almost every Disney-made movie you can imagine from recent offerings to classics from decades ago, making it a delight for fans of the House of Mouse. However, even with the platform having the ability to add just about any and every Disney movie you can imagine or recall to the service, there is one Disney movie you will never see streaming there. It’s a film that may hold a significant spot in history but it’s not one that Disney wants to celebrate.
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Produced by Walt Disney and released by RKO Radio Pictures, Song of the South debuted on November 12, 1946. The live action/animated musical film was based on the Uncle Remus stories, a collection of African American folktales originally adapted by Joel Chandler Harris and published in 1881. The film had a successful theatrical run in its time and even won the 1947 Academy Award for Best Original song for “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah”. However, the film has always been controversial for its portrayal of African Americans. The film has never been released on any form of home video in the United States and has never been made available on Disney+ — and likely never will be.
Song of the South Has Been Criticized As Being Racist From the Very Start
In Song of the South, seven-year-old Johnny (Bobby Driscoll) visits his grandmother’s plantation during the post-Civil War Reconstruction era and befriends Uncle Remus, a black man working on the plantation. Uncle Remus tells Johnny about the adventures of Br’er Rabbit, Br’er Fox, and Br’er Bear, with Johnny learning from the stories and using the lessons to help him deal with the challenges he’s experiencing living there on the plantation. There is a lot to unpack there from the jump as even before we get to Song of the South, Harris’ Uncle Remus stories were controversial, specifically for how they present African American folktales through a romanticized lens of plantation life. The framing glosses over the fact that the African Americans on those plantations were enslaved people and, in the process, perpetuates racist stereotypes. Those same criticisms came into play with Disney’s Song of the South.
When the film was initially released, there were critics who specifically called out the film for its depiction of Black people. One major concern was that, while the film is technically set after the Civil War and therefore none of its African American characters are slaves at that point, that’s not necessarily clear in the movie itself. Additionally, the African American characters in the movie are presented as being subservient and with an over exaggerated accent and dialect, both of which were seen at the time as reinforcing negative stereotypes. Even the NAACP called out the film at the time for its perpetuation of dangerous stereotypes, acknowledging that the film was a great achievement in terms of art, but that it glorified slavery in the process.
Eighty years later, those same criticisms and concerns remain. All of the Black characters in the film are depicted as caricatures that reinforce racist stereotypes. It’s also troubling how the film has an overall romanticization of slavery and plantation life. Uncle Remus, even as he tells folk stories to white children who are likely the descendants of the same people who owned him not too many years before, is presented as content and good-natured, as though plantation life where he didn’t have the same rights or opportunities as while men was somehow good.
Other Problematic Disney Films Have Been Added With Disclaimers — But That Won’t Work For Song of the South
Song of the South is by no means the only controversial Disney movie. Dumbo notably contains racist stereotypes which earned it a content warning on the platform, alerting viewers to the outdated depictions seen in the film. However, such a disclaimer isn’t something that will work for Song of the South. With films like Dumbo, the questionable elements are smaller — a character with a problematic name, one or two scenes with some questionable stereotypes. Song of the South is entirely built around problematic depictions of African Americans and Reconstruction era South that cannot get a simple label and hope people don’t take them too seriously. Song of the South is built on its prejudice — which is why we will probably never see it on Disney+.
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