LogFAQs > #932898098

Why did they have to pick Song of the South for the thumbnail, though? There are plenty of wartime cartoons like Looney Tunes that featured extreme racism, and with those you can look at the circumstances around them to add meaning to them. They're absolutely fucking horrible, but they exist within a valid historical context that's worth talking about.

Song of the South is Disney basically depicting black people as being happy with slavery, laughing and being jolly at their lot in life, while their stories are repackaged for a white crowd with a noticeable lilt of ebonics in the voiceover.

I just mentioned Looney Tunes and how their wartime cartoons had additional meaning through the circumstances of their creation that made them worth discussing, but one cartoon that didn't have to exist was an Elmer Fudd/Bugs Bunny cartoon where Elmer Fudd was replaced with an extremely racist depiction of a black man. He drawled like he had 50 IQ points or lower, he had a massive forehead, his lips were massive. The only humor this character offered was "look at how stupid black people are! What a slow buffoon!" - and it's disgusting. You might have people defending something racist if it's funny, but this character drags the cartoon to a standstill - his antics, whether he was black or white, slowed the cartoon down to a fucking crawl. The only selling point was to have a grossly stereotyped black person, and it's a shitty cartoon because of it.

Song of the South is trash at best. It paves over the injustices that black people suffered by depicting a jolly, smiling black man who serves as a guilt-free depiction of happiness in servitude. After all, that's his standing in life, right? Might as well be jolly about it. There's no greater context except "white people wanted to enjoy black folklore without acknowledging slavery or racism, so they created a black figure who was okay with it to feel better". It's wrong, and there's no circumstances that make it worth talking about except as a product of racism. Just like that trash cartoon that took a perfectly serviceable Elmer Fudd story and replaced it with severe racism.

---

Now Playing: Borderlands 2, Skyrim, Assassin's Creed