Song of the South (1946) [Restored]

Wow!

Thank you, Jon. I never saw this film until today. What a treat.

Well, it looks like Disney is continuing not to acknowledge the existence of this movie by not allowing it on their streaming service, Disney plus, as well as other choice edits to classics. Like removing the Stinky Pete blooper scene near the end of Toy Story 2 because of #metoo and the crows from the original Dumbo animated film. These revisionist actions are a disservice to history and stunting future generations from learning from the past. If we want to remove any bad thing that has happened on and behind=the-scenes of films, you might as well remove a huge swath of anything produced from Hollywood then and now.

And this is coming from a millennial which is the usual scapegoat for the PC censorship you find in most clickbait articles. I’m sure there are some within my generation that are overly PC but from a guy who lived in the suburbs when wooden and metal slides and jungle gyms were my recess, number munchers was the primary edutainment computer game in the classroom, watching R-rated movies under the legal age and not losing my mind to the violent video games of Mortal Kombat coming out into the arcades at the time, I find it hard to believe that my generation would turn into the one learning from history about the atrocities of the Nazi’s and degrading that word to in an insult you use for people who disagree with you on the internet. Maybe I’m just the outlier but I’m hoping we can get back to a sense of normalcy and understanding instead of the crazy stuff I keep hearing about every day in entertainment.

Can we get out of this slump of safe, mediocre and rehashes of films that can’t offend anyone that happens to complain on Twitter and start producing actual works of art again that push some boundaries? How many franchises must bomb before you realize who your actual audience really is and not be protected by pop culture journos for cinematic failures who constantly throw fans under the bus to keep their media access? For entertainments sake, they better change their ways soon or they will collapse onto themselves, especially with Disney owning about 33% of the box office at this time.

Bobby Driscoll’s starring role reads like Denton Welch, a child groomed in velvet and lace, prancing through an idealized Reconstruction Era. The young actor captures a perfect cocktail of confusion and utter trust in adults there in his squished face: what would become the poster-face of childhood for post-WW2 white America.

When the character he plays, Johnny, runs headlong across dangerous territory, we can see a perfect allegory for the years that lie ahead for Driscoll, fraught with the perils that live on the seedier side: Driscoll in LA pool halls with Hollywood badboys, Robert Blake and Dean Stockwell. Beatnik-Driscoll, Driscoll the jailbird (charged with drug possession, assault, burglary, and check kiting), and a Driscoll hanging out in the Warhol Factory.

In Song of the South (spoilers ahead) Johnny wakes from a fever dream to a room full of impossible adult promises. They tell him this story will have a happily ever after. In real life, the fever dreams that Driscoll experienced were induced by heroin, and the adults didn’t hang on. Bobby Driscoll died not only alone, but in an abandoned building, unrecognizable. His unclaimed body was buried in an unmarked grave.

Reimagine then the closing sequences of this film, where the fantastic stories of Uncle Remus surround the children living under the memory of the Antebellum South, as a sort of afterlife. Mr. Bluebird is on Bobby’s shoulder.

Awww Jon, thank you for this. My late father who read me the UNCLE REMUS stories when I was little took me to see this when I was a bit more grown up. Happy memories!

I love seeing people rant into the void! OR, type into the back end comments section that no one will see. Are we all THAT lonely and unable to express ourselves in public that we have to all end up here whining about a film no one remembers? smh