Uncle Remus

[jjefferies]

My park ranger wife just told me that Uncle Remus, remember Walt Disney and the Uncle Remus tales about Brer Rabbit, Brer Fox and Brer Bear?, is politically incorrect today. So a black story teller who tells stories in African American Vernacular English is politically incorrect. Is it the use of AAVE, the stories or the idea of a black story teller that would cause these to be politically incorrect.

In days gone by I had friends who titled themselves "The story tellers" who made something of a living performing at fiddler conventions, concerts, and other public venues telling country/Appalachian stories in dialect. One wonders if they would be politically incorrect today.

Inquiring minds and all that wondering about the changes in the world.

[the ancient one]

Here is the twist.

Uncle Remus was the invention of Joel Chandler Harris, who was not black.

http://www2.gsu.edu/~wwwelf/elfjch.html

[jjefferies]

Yeah, I looked it up on Wikipedia (quote)
[Uncle Remus is a fictional character, the title character and fictional narrator of a collection of African American folktales adapted and compiled by Joel Chandler Harris, published in book form in 1881. A journalist in post-Reconstruction Atlanta, Georgia, Harris produced seven Uncle Remus books.

Uncle Remus is a collection of animal stories, songs, and oral folklore, collected from Southern United States blacks. Many of the stories are didactic, much like those of Aesop's fables and the stories of Jean de La Fontaine. Uncle Remus is a kindly old slave who serves as a storytelling device, passing on the folktales to children gathered around him.

The stories are told in Harris' version of a Deep South slave dialect. The genre of stories is the trickster tale. The term "uncle" was a patronizing, familiar and often racist title reserved by whites for elderly black men in the South, which is considered by some to be pejorative and offensive. At the time of Harris' publication, his work was praised for its ability to capture plantation negro dialect.]

Still as a child I liked the stories and one wonders if they will be resurrected in a more "politically correct" form in the future. And perhaps Harris will be resurrected as a preserver of Afro American culture. Be interesting.

[erooMynohtnA]

http://www.cracked.com/article_15677...haracters.html

#2

[mrbiggs]

First Birth of a Nation is "racist", now Uncle Remus? Honestly, what is this nation coming to?

[Inquartata]

Harrison Bergeron could tell you.

[Musicfencer]

The movie went in to the disney vault...



















































































forever.

[rdg]

My park ranger wife just told me that Uncle Remus, remember Walt Disney and the Uncle Remus tales about Brer Rabbit, Brer Fox and Brar Bear?, is politically incorrect today.

If you can't start trouble you just aren't happy.

Yeah Uncle Remus is racist. Like it matters. We have a black president with a white mama. Now what?

I just want to grow my business big enough to get bailed out. Oh Brair Fox don't throw me in that brair patch of incompetence with GM and the other Big three. No, no don't let me get bailed out.

Lordy, Lordy.

Sam

[Hyena]

I remember when I was little (yeah, yeah, I'm a youngin'), I had a sing-along tape with something from this on it and I always wondered where it was from. Hmm. Guess I know now. o_o

[Epee_Pox]

Not sure what's racist about it... it's a collection of African folk tales (mostly Anansi stories) as told by people who actually were slaves here. Political correctness does not require us to ignore the fact that people really were enslaved, nor does it require us to ignore the storytelling that they brought with them and enjoyed, even if it happens to be written down later on by a white guy.

Racism would imply that the slaves of African descent were somehow inferior. But the Uncle Remus stories (as well as the movie, IIRC) don't say or imply that in any way. Uncle Remus is the character of wisdom, who teaches and tells the stories.

If the claims to racism are the use of African-American dialect in the antebellum South -- a fairly accurate transliteration of that dialect, as it happens, and not used for humorous or denigrating effect, but rather to give authenticity to the stories -- I'm not sure how it's any more racist than a film by Spike Lee accurately depicting nonstandard African-American speech in urban New York.

[Philistine]

Here's a Snopes article on the movie, giving an idea of what is controversial about the film (the film is actually called "Song of the South").

--Philistine