Thursday, February 9, 2012
The Plantation Tradition in Children's Literature
I though that our discussion today in class brought up some interesting topics regarding the Uncle Remus stories and their portrayal in children's books and the Disney movie Song of the South. When I was growing up, I remember reading the book Br'er Rabbit Saves His Skin and thinking it was just another storybook telling a story about rambunctious forest creatures. The Br'er Rabbit story we analyzed in class today could be looked at in the same way, but the metaphors it contained about the relationship between master and slave in the South prior to the Civil War sheds new light on the subject. When I was researching Br'er Rabbit and Song of the South, particularly looking at clips of the film on YouTube, many of the comments were incredulous as to how the film could be seen as racist. It makes me think that people either aren't aware of the race issues at play, or simply write them off because of the context. The fact that the film is perpetuating the "happy slave" stereotype and casting the Old South in a nostalgic light a la Gone With the Wind isn't necessarily something that a viewer might peg as blatantly racist, but I think it's a problem if people simply allow themselves to be spoon-fed entertainment and don't put any effort into looking deeper into the details. Looking back at Br'er Rabbit, one element in particular, the tar pit and referring to a character as "tar-baby," stood out to me as an obvious racist red-flag. I'm hesitant to say that children shouldn't be exposed to this kind of material, because when I read the story as a child I did simply take it at face value, and didn't end up a racist bigot. It's like how in elementary school we celebrated Columbus Day as the day that America was discovered, and it's not until later in our education that we learned how awful Columbus really was to the Native Americans (at least that was my experience). It's a knotty topic, but the reality is that these kinds of stories and events are a part of our country's history whether we like it or not. I think that the best thing to do is to not necessarily pretend like they're evil or that they don't exist, but just be honest about their origins and history.
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Talon, the "tar-baby" story has a complicated history. In the Uncle Remus tales, the Fox tricks Brer Rabbit into holding the tar baby, and the story we read is in response to that. It's true: sometimes racism is difficult for majority populations to see until it is pointed out to them.
ReplyDeleteIt is a muddy subject as to how to tell our youth about our past. They are young so we don't want to frighten them with inappropriate topics, yet we want them to learn from the past and realize our history is full of racism and aggression. The problem I have with things such as "The song of the south" is that it institutionalizes racism. No it is not blunt racism, but portraying a happy slave and nostalgic South, when not everyone thinks when viewing film, can result in some not realizing just how monstrous slavery was.
ReplyDeleteSuper interesting points. I definitely look back at my child and think "how did I not know what they were actually saying?!", because you're right, kids do take it at face value, and even adults live in denial that things like this represent a racist stand point of view. This I think, is perhaps because they lack any perspective, and they weren't fortunate enough to gain it in their own education and reading. It sad to find that many people think a rabbit is a rabbit, and how could it be anything else?
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