Zip-A-Dee-Doo-WHAT?!!

Disney’s Song Of The South is a movie universally condemned by those who’ve never seen it.  The assumption that a movie set in a plantation located in the postbellum South… well, actually that’s one of the biggest misconceptions about the movie.  “How come all the blacks look happy?  They’re slaves!!!” No, no they’re not.  Slaves, that is.  As to the happy and singing part… you know this is a Disney movie, right?  The only people in any Disney movie who aren’t singing and happy are the bad guys.  And they’re usually singing and happy as well.  Happy in their own way, namely perpetrating evil until they get their inevitable comeuppance.  Have I mentioned this is a Disney movie?

Anyway, since the movie doesn’t depict in gloriously gory detail each black character as noble and longsuffering at the hands of their evil white used to be slave but now reduced to task masters, obviously it’s racist.  Never mind how the movie shows white and black kids playing together with no consideration except having fun, or that the main black character, the masterful storyteller Uncle Remus, has so much more rural street smarts than the rest of the cast put together he’s lapped the field three times before they’ve so much as flipped on the ignition switch.  No, since it’s not what people who: 1) have ever had the slightest association with children, having apparently never been one themselves, and 2) wouldn’t know their laughing place is actually where everyone else gathers to laugh at them consider PC, the movie is hidden well out of sight.

Sort of.

Although the movie has never been released in the United States in any format of home video, it did see the light of day during the ’80s and very early ’90s on videotape in Europe and laserdisc in parts of Asia.  Disneyphiles (a/k/a devoted Disney collectors), being the insanely passionate lot they are, have lovingly preserved as many copies of these releases as possible, spending whatever it takes to do so.  Need to shell out big bucks for a VCR capable of playing the PAL format of European VHS tapes?  Not a problem.  Throw around mind-boggling amounts of cash for a laserdisc plus a player that actually still works?  Money is no object.  Nothing stands in-between a Disneyphile and the prize they seek.  Or at least it won’t stand for long.

Now, to say Disney is both thorough and aggressive when it comes to protecting its material ranks right alongside “I hear you like Sarah Palin, Jerry” in the understatement of the millennium category.  This explains why ten seconds on Google will get you ten different sites selling Song Of The South copied from either the aforementioned laserdisc or VHS tape onto a DVD.  Some of the sites are so brazen they use “songofthesouth” as part of their Web address.  They couldn’t be any more blatant about what they’re doing than if they set up shop on Main Street USA.

Disney’s response?

“Hey, did you know we’re re-releasing Snow White in November?”

It’s difficult not to believe Disney is deliberately turning a blind eye to overt piracy because it gets them out of having to genuinely deal with the demand — over 120,000 people have signed a petition asking Disney to give the movie a proper release on DVD — of at bare minimum the collectors for a copy, hoping the public at large will gradually forget the movie exists.  Why?  Apparently they’re so deathly afraid someone will scream racism they’re too chicken to, oh, tell the truth about the movie and give a truly wonderful film (yes, I have a copy) the release it deserves.  In the meanwhile, every kid who’s ever heard “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah” will continue to not have the slightest notion where the song came from.  And that’s no laughing place for anyone.