![]() ![]() The film was a financial success, winning two Academy Awards - including a special award for Baskett, the first African-American man to win an Oscar, though not a competitive one. It’s chock full of African-American stereotypes, and looks so generically fondly upon the postbellum plantation lifestyle that it's easy to conflate it with the antebellum plantation lifestyle. Set in the wake of the Civil War, the film is an adaptation of several “Uncle Remus” stories, and sees white boy Johnny visiting his grandmother’s idyllic plantation to be entertained by Remus (James Baskett) with a variety of tall tales. The more obviously problematic of the two is Song of the South (1946), a technically ambitious live-action/animation hybrid that has the unfortunate distinction of being the single most visibly racist piece of entertainment created by the Walt Disney Corporation. Two titles really rule the roost when it comes to problematic Disney history. (So much for Jojo Rabbit being too provocative for the company.) Disney also produced a number of educational films, some of which have racist undertones in hindsight (the Spanish-language Insects As Carriers Of Disease comes to mind) and some of which wouldn’t play in an America ruled by religious conservatism (such as Walt Disney’s The Story Of Menstruation). One such film, Der Fuehrer’s Face, cast Donald Duck as a Nazi and won an Academy Award for it another, Commando Duck, saw Donald wipe out an entire Japanese airfield. Disney produced several World War II propaganda films for the United States government that would raise eyebrows over their depiction of the Japanese, or over their mere inclusion of explicit Nazi imagery (even though it was presented negatively). ![]() Most of them, you will not find on Disney+, or indeed, anywhere in Disney's public-facing literature at all. Throughout the nearly century-long history of the company, Disney has produced a great many films that either don’t work outside historical context, or that simply have not aged well. What any eagle-eyed Disney historian would have been looking out for in this salvo of announcements is a set of titles whose existence is rarely if ever acknowledged by Disney. Check out the three-hour sizzle reel, if you have that much disregard for your well-being. David Lynch’s The Straight Story did not make the cut, nor did many titles from the Buena Vista era - perhaps those will come later. Boogedy to Kurt Russell’s early output to cult classics like The Black Hole. Even a solid number of Disney’s live-action genre oddities make the grade, from failed pilot Mr. Disney has also opted to include an impressive quantity of its capacious back-catalogue of straight-to-video trash, both in the form of unnecessary animated sequels and quickie tween-oriented titles that, to adult audiences, often seem made-up. Most of the selections are what you’d expect: classic pieces of family entertainment both animated and live-action, with the addition of most Marvel and Lucasfilm titles (and some Fox titles that Disney has quietly slapped its logo on). But the functions of the announcement thread did were twofold: one, to get audiences excited about the new service and two, to unwittingly reveal which parts of its history Disney will be covering up on it. For many, it was a trip down nostalgia lane. The official Disney+ Twitter account this week tweeted an impressively long thread of thumbnails announcing “basically” every title that will be available on the streaming service at launch. ![]()
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