Read on Twitter
I swear I wrote this (and many thanks to my ‘beta readers’ - @davecobb, Craig Hanna, Eric Hoff, and Nkenge Cameron) prior to yesterday’s Op-Ed. But now seems like a great time to dive a little deeper in light of that. 1/ https://twitter.com/ThinkwellGroup/status/1283446485556887552
I wrestled with how much to lean in on this - how much oxygen to give the Op-Ed that caused a strong response in the themed entertainment corner of the Twitterverse. Staying quiet, though, doesn’t dismantle the supremacist view it came from. 2/
So buckle up. This is going to be a long thread (understatement) because there’s a lot to unpack from that Op-Ed. We’re going to dig into stereotypes in media, cultural appropriation, and the meaning of redemption, among other things. 3/
One of the key premises of the Op-Ed is that the original source material of Song of the South, the Uncle Remus stories ‘compiled and adapted’ by Joel Chandler Harris in 1881, were rooted in racial reconciliation in the wake of the Civil War. 4/
This is problematic on a couple of levels (points for buying the myth of racial reconciliation post Civil War). But let’s get right into an ugly one. Go read this article about Spike Lee’s talk at Yale on Feb 21, 2001: http://archives.news.yale.edu/v29.n21/story3.html 5/
The trope of the (inevitably ‘lesser’ in status, a prisoner, a freedman, a servant, etc) Black man whose sole character purpose is to teach lessons to white people is profoundly damaging. It deprives Black characters of agency, interior lives and reduces them to plot devices. 6/
Nice white folks like to think of this usage of Black characters as a ‘good’ thing - see, we’re not portraying them all as bad - but it’s still racist. Just not you know, racist in a white hood. It’s systemically racist: it makes Black characters exist FOR WHITES. 7/
Spike Lee’s talk was 19 years ago and yet, the trope persists, by the way. See this Teen Vogue article about Best Picture Winner, Green Book, just 1.5 years ago: https://www.teenvogue.com/story/green-book-best-picture-oscars-2019-made-white-people-feel-good-about-themselves 8/
We see some Black authors explore how the persistence of this trope damages them and the Black community. Morgan Parker’s National Book Critics’ Circle Award Winner poetry book, “Magical Negro” is a must-read. https://bookshop.org/books/magical-negro/9781947793187 9/
Uncle Remus, especially as expressed in Song of the South, dispensing pearls of fable-ish wisdom to a white child, is the quintessential expression of this trope. It’s not ok. Just because we ‘know better’ now (which we demonstrably don’t) doesn’t make it acceptable. 10/
But even deeper is how the books were written. Even if you buy the argument that Harris did it out of a desire for ‘racial reconciliation’, #1 he portrayed Blacks as disempowered & subservient which is not equitable & #2 white dude took black stories & made them his own. 11/
This issue of cultural appropriation, and of white authorial or curatorial voices claiming and repurposing stories of marginalized and oppressed groups isn’t new. And - hold on to your hats, folks - it was racist and patronizing and disempowering then, too. 12/
Cultural appropriation is, ultimately, rooted in power and oppression. Members of a dominant group take elements of a culture (food, fashion, language, accent, hairstyles, art, music, etc) from a group they have systematically oppressed and marginalized as they wish. 13/
Often, the majority/dominant culture use these elements in stereotypical ways which are offensive to members of the oppressed minority culture - who, I’ll add, have no say or sway in how their heritage is being used. 14/
Joel Chandler Harris took the stories of Black people in the south and amalgamated them into a new whole, viewing the stories and experiences of them as hot-swappable regardless of where they were from or the storyteller's life experiences. 15/
So that’s problematic as well - and if you’d like a very good read which deals in part with the diversity and vibrancy of Black culture and that enslaved people were not a monolith, go read The Cooking Gene by Michael Twitty ( @koshersoul go follow him too!) 16/
Moreover, Harris used and manipulated their patois. He appropriated their stories and their voice. And it is deeply problematic for the dominant culture to argue that it’s being done out of respect, or admiration, or was meant as loving homage. 17/
By claiming their voice & their stories, Harris stripped Black southerners of their agency & originated that ‘Magical Negro’ trope Spike Lee would rail so eloquently against 120 years later. He made Black southerners tools for whites, just in a different, more insidious way. 18/
But let’s dig deeper into the eras we are dealing with here. As a reminder, Harris published in 1881. Song of the South was released in 1946. The animated portions of the movie, which Splash Mountain pull from, are only a fraction of the movie’s total run time, fyi. 19/
Reconstruction ended in 1877, 4 years before publication. His book came *after* progress - in voting rights, treatment under the law, economic independence - Black Americans made during Reconstruction began to be systematically &cruelly not just rolled back but obliterated. 20/
Can true racial reconciliation happen via a set of appropriated stories that foundationally place the Black characters in a subservient, iniquitous role? Can it happen via the dominant culture not engaging directly with the oppressed culture but rather their dominant voice? 21/
(Now is a great time for me to reboost this fantastic cartoon by @sketchshark from 3 years ago, ) 22/
Let’s consider Splash Mountain, which in its usage of only the animated sequences avoids much of the overt racism of the live-action portions of Song of the South - it, bluntly, sanitizes the movie to an extent. 23/
This article from SF Gate lays out many of the problems with the movie - and disabuses the notion that people were less ‘sensitive’ in 1946 (also a claim in the Op-Ed, which all but bemoans cancel culture)- AND the ride. 24/ https://www.sfgate.com/sf-culture/article/Its-inspiration-is-so-racist-Disney-s-buried-it-15350268.php
Just b/c Splash Mountain doesn’t have Uncle Remus right there serving only to help Johnny the white kid, doesn’t mean it’s not racist. Not problematic: racist. The music of Song of the South, so iconic & central to the ride, is rooted in minstrelsy. Which is HELLA RACIST. 25/
As an aside: I do not think it’s impossible to create new experiences based on problematic source material, but it requires honesty and intentionality rather than pretending not repeating the problem is sufficient. 26/
For a great example of this, the original Watchmen graphic novel is visionary and progressive in a variety of ways but not when it comes to women (see https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1052&context=tdr ) but the new Watchmen series hits gender and race head-on. 27/
Back to Splash. So the source material is racist and the ride does little, if anything, to address that. It utilizes music which is rooted in racism, as one example. But all of this - the past 27 tweets worth of stuff - is not what made me nearly throw my laptop yesterday. 28/
The social media boost used the word ‘redeems’. That Splash Mountain redeems Song of the South. It’s the thrust of the article. Hear the dogwhistle? This article by Henry Louis Gates, in part, discusses ‘redemption’ in post-reconstruction South. https://time.com/5562869/reconstruction-history/ 29/
As a reminder, political parties today are radically different than they were in that era (heck, GOP today is different from GOP of 40 years ago). The Redeemers were a political wing of the ultra-conservative Southern Democrats virulently dedicated to white supremacy. 30/
Legislatures dominated by Redeemers passed Jim Crow laws and were instrumental in the revitalized oppression and terrorizing of freed Blacks and their descendants in the south. Redemption stood in ideological, political, and legal opposition to Reconstruction. 31/
Words mean things. Redemption, in the context of the experience of Black Americans in the post-Civil War south, means A WHOLE LOT. Irony or purposeful that they used this word? Historical Redemption is all about justifying & enshrining white supremacy in every possible way. 32/
And I haven’t even touched on our responsibility, as entertainment creators, in this twitter thread to not subtly or overtly reinforce white supremacy. If you play happy-clappy minstrel music and you’re a trusted brand, you communicate that this is ok and fine, for instance. 33/
Free speech doesn’t protect you from the natural repercussions, it doesn’t guarantee you a platform. Publications can, in fact, choose what to publish, including Op-Eds. Publishing a piece that so thoroughly defends white supremacy was a choice. 34/
If you’d like to see the fruits of ‘whataboutism’ & ‘we need to hear out the other side’, I direct you to literal decades of sessions at Association of Science &Technology Centers annual conference where we can trace the arc of this re evolution & global climate change. 35/
And now we have a society that is so thoroughly science illiterate and, in many cases science-denialism, we have workers installing 5G equipment being attacked by conspiracy theorists. Giving oxygen to hateful bullshit isn’t being 'fair'. It’s stoking a destructive fire. 36/
When we, as people in positions of power (whether that's designing an exhibit, selecting what to publish, choosing who to amplify) stoke that fire that burns *people other than us*, we are reinforcing systems of oppression and cruelty. 37/
Top to bottom, from the ‘goodness’ of the source material to the expression in the ride, sanitized though it is, Splash Mountain does not & cannot save Song of the South from itself. There is no salvaging it w/o the kind of reckoning that a flume ride is incapable of doing. 38/
Had Disney chosen to maintain the ride, they would have been giving oxygen to the destructive fire of racism. They are absolutely right to change it. 39/
To discuss Splash in terms of Redemption - the concerted, organized effort to reassert white supremacy & oppress, terrorize, disenfranchise, & traumatize southern Blacks - is a sinister wink-and-a-nudge level of ignorance at the VERY best, bone-deep systemic racism at worst. Fin/
