100 by 30 Book 63 - Who's Afraid of Song of the South?

Who's Afraid of Song of the South? by Jim Korkis

As some of you my know, my wife and I get pretty geeky about Disney. I've seen and blogged about the theatrical animated releases, we collect pins and vinylmations, and we've been known to travel to Disney World as often as possible because they have the best staff and the most immersive vacation experience I've ever found. It's awesome.

I'm also not a blind idiot. I know Disney isn't perfect, and that they've been accused of some shady things over the years. That's sort of what this book is about. Jim Korkis is a Disney historian and former employee of the Disney Company and he has a wealth of knowledge about even the most mundane details of the empire. In this Book, he explores some of the more infamous stories about Walt Disney and his company, shedding some new light on old assumptions, but sticking to a neutral tone. It is this neutral approach that makes the book a little dry at times since Jim refuses to do any editorializing or deeper examination. That is left for the readers to do. It's almost like he's encouraging you to think for yourself...

The biggest section of the book is devoted to the controversial film, SONG OF THE SOUTH. This movie has been locked away in the Disney vault since 1986 and will likely never again be legally released in any context. So what's the big deal? If BIRTH OF A NATION is freely available and heralded for it's technical achievements while being almost universally accepted as disgusting racist propaganda, what horrendous imagery is being kept from us?

The plot of the movie is that of a young white boy who comes to visit relatives in the south after the Civil War. His parents are getting a divorce and he's not to happy about that. In his wanderings, he meets Uncle Reemus, a black man who befriends the little boy and helps him with his troubles by teaching him the stories of the animals, namely, Brer Rabbit, Brer Bear, and Brer Fox. The stories were wildly popular in the south and were a combination of American folktales mixed with African and Native American themes and lesser animated versions can be found on Netflix. The boy makes friends with a little girl and a black boy, he hears more stories, and he runs away from home at one point and is injured by a bull. While the boy is laid up on the verge of death, the farmers in the field sing a mournful song. The boy gets better and the movies ends with his parents getting back together, I think.

What seems to be the biggest contention about the movie is that Walt failed to make it abundantly clear that the movies takes place AFTER the Civil War and that all the black characters are free people and not doting slaves. From the stories in this book, it seems that Walt let his devotion to storytelling and a naivete dissuade him from fixing this problem with the story. It also didn't help that one of the writer's hired for the script was not exactly enlightened about race relations, or much else by the sounds of it. Combine the taint of a suspect author, an unclear setting, and a number of people in the growing civil rights movement, and you have a recipe for disaster. Oh, and Paul Robeson, and amazing civil rights pioneer, turned down the role of Uncle Reemus due to concerns about the depictions of African Americans.

It should be noted that the foreword to this book is by an African American animator who knew Walt Disney personally and worked on this movie and believes it is a good and decent film with many good depictions of black people. Walt even fought for James Baskett, the actor who played Uncle Reemus, to be given an Oscar for his performance. Does this mean it's not at all racist? of course not, but it does mean that there is more than one way to view this film.

After reading this book, I was saddened that I am unable to watch this movie for myself. I think it would be very valuable for people to watch and reasses. Maybe it is just as bad as people say and, regardless of time period, Uncle Reemus is just an ugly Uncle Tom caricature. I also think the Brer Rabbit stories deserve to be told, if only so I can stop listening to dumb teenagers ask who the characters on Splash Mountain are.

Unfortunately, we will likely never see it because of the pressures placed on the studio that made it. This is a studio that, because it is the biggest fish in the sea of family entertainment, is constantly scrutinized over every move they make. The internet is filled with posts by dumb hipsters listing the terrible lessons in Disney movies. (mostly these lists focus only on the end result and come to conclusions that don't really stand up to 5 seconds of examination. Just because a man and a woman fall in love in a children's story does not make that woman less of a character. Especially Belle. She's awesome and I will fight anyone to tries to reduce her to a victim of Stockholm Syndrome. She's the smartest and most awesomest person in a world full of superficial morons, but I digress) One can only imagine what would happen if this film saw the light of day. The actually content of the film and any attempts at educational discourse would be lost in the din of knee-jerk, reactionary vitriol. And since Disney hasn't exactly been the poster child for racial sensitivity, a lot of these arguments will seem to carry real weight. But the questions are more nuanced than that. Despite what the Supreme Court would have you believe, corporations are NOT people. They are made up of people. And many of them are brilliant and complex and are honestly doing everything they can to bring some quality art and joy into the world. And some of them work in marketing and want to know if it's cool if they make your meticulously thought out Heroine into a pretty pretty princess costume for little girls to wear and idolize. Those people suck. But it's just a reminder that the story and intentions behind a piece of art and they way that art is presented is a messy and contradictory business. At the end of the day, my hunch is that Disney tried to make a delightful film showcasing some of Walt's favorite characters from his childhood, and the end product is neither wholly good or wholly evil. I believe it should be open to discussion though.

As for the rest of the book, we get a series of other urban myths and rumors about Walt Disney and his studio. We learn about how Walt became quite conservative in his later years, but also managed to ruffle the feathers of Joe McCarthy by poking fun at the FBI. We also get a fascinating tale of the moment of childhood cruelty that haunted Walt his whole life and may be the reason the Walt Disney company continues to work toward wildlife education and preservation. Some of the stories are quite interesting and other are a rather dull recitation of facts about the casting and development process, but on the whole, I would recommend this book, if only because the author offers you no neat answers or judgements about any of these stories. You just have to work it out for yourself.

8/10

100 by 30 Book 62 - FREE COMIC BOOK DAY EDITION

So I went to my first ever FREE COMIC BOOK DAY celebration at one of the local comic book store. Free Comic Book Day is exactly what is sounds like: you go to a participating store and they give you a bag of free comic books. Let's take a look at this year's haul:

DC's New 52: Futures End #0 - This is a prelude to what is looking to be the next big event in DC comics. It begins in the distant future as all of the DC heroes are slowly being assimilated into a borg-like collective. If you ever wanted to watch all of the DC characters die horribly in 15 pages, this is the book for you. Eventually we get some good old fashioned time travel and it's up to Batman Beyond to save the future. It' looks quite promising
7/10

The Avengers - I'm not sure what continuity this is in, but a lot of low level heroes are running around, trying to stop some A.I. collective from taking over the world. I honestly barely remember anything about it.
2/10

Wolverine: Killable Part 1 of 6 - I'm sensing a pattern here. Wolverine has lost his healing power to a sentient virus that is assimilating heroes and taking over their minds before eliminating their powers....so the same basic plot of the past two comics. Character is key though, and the presence of Wolverine, Storm, and her ex-husband Black Panther go a long way towards making me care about this plot. Of the superhero related comics, this one is my favorite.
8/10

Mouse Guard amd Other Stories: The final book I got was a very nice hardcover sampler of the different titles from Archaia comics (a branch of BOOM! comics) Each story is just a little sample, but the artwork is more varied and creative than that of the Marvel and DC comics. You also can't go wrong when one of your stories takes place in the world of Jim Henson's Labyrinth. This was my favorite book and gave me a lot of fun indie titles to keep an eye out for.
9/10

Overall, Free Comic Book Day was a blast and it's always fun to read stories or titles you might not get exposed to otherwise.

100 by 30 Book 61 - White Trash Zombie Apocalypse

Diana Rowland's latest foray into the weird and wacky world of Angel Crawford feels more like a middle section of a larger story than a complete book. There is a lot of set up here to suggest that the world is about to undergo some massive expansion. I have a feeling that we will be leaving the small corner of Louisiana very shortly as things start to get global. It's just a hunch, but the corporate spy stuff and government conspiracies are moving closer and closer to the center of the action. We also get an answer to the burning question about how long the zombies in this world can live. (it's a LOOOOONG time)

The biggest signifier to me though is the revelation that Angel is something much more important than just another white trash zombie. She pulls something off in this book that apparently only the oldest zombies can do. That said, this book was more of a promise of things to come than a satisfying and complete story due to the way it just sort of ends....like this post

7/10

100 by 30 book 60 - Even White Trash Zombies get the blues

Even White Trash Zombies Get the Blues by Diana Rowland

The continuing adventures of Angel Crawford and her new life as a zombie/coroner's assistant prove that the first book wasn't just a cute one-off. The universe expands as Angel realizes that her new boyfriend's uncle may be the Don Corleone of the zombie world, which is a good thing if he likes you, not so good if he wants to use you as a pawn in some corporate espionage. Angel continues to grow and evolve, moving further away from her white trash past and closer the being downright respectable. My favorite part of this series so far is Angel's continuing ability to find her own sense of self worth. She starts to demand better treatment from those around her, including her police man/zombie sire of a boyfriend. It's refreshing to see a female character initially fall in love and then pull away of her own volition when her boyfriend acts like a condescending tool. It's a complicated relationship in a good way. Angel has finally gotten some control over her life and she's not going to let anybody take it away.

The main plot involves a secret government plot to create zombie soldiers or 'Zoldiers' (cuz it wouldn't be a good evil project without a stupid name) Some very bad stuff goes down, but we get to see Angel unleash her inner monster and create a lot of carnage. So far, this series continues to hold it's place as one of the more unique approaches to the genre. Plus they always err on the side of more gore than romance, way more gore.

9/10

100 by 30 Book 59 - Buffy, Season 9: It gets better!

Holy Cow you guys, Buffy Season 9 is really, really good! Joss kept his promise! I lieu of a paragraphed format, I'm going with a bullet point format today.

*The stories have become much smaller and more intimate. No more cosmic nonsense

* While the previous season got pretty stupid, it did lead to some interesting consequences like:
* no more connection to magic means no more demons inhabiting humans when a new vampire is made. This has created a race of Vampires that have all the higher brain functions of fast zombies (yes, they call them Zompires, and I love it)

* The new big bad is a being that is absorbing the residual magic left in the world. Basically he is sucking the life force out of the Slayers.

*Also, Willow is like, super bummed.

Finally, there is a really interesting story where Buffy thinks she is pregnant and wants to get an abortion. It's a pretty heavy topic and I thought they were handling it very well, but I was disappointed that they dodged the consequences by making Buffy not actually pregnant. I wasn't necessarily cheering for an abortion, but Buffy's struggle with the decision was one of the most gripping story lines she's ever had, and I really wanted to see what was going to happen. The story they went with turned out to be pretty entertaining and fun, but I would have liked to have seen how they would have handled Buffy actually having gone through with the procedure. Oh well, at least they are back to making stories that are at least worth having thoughts about.

8/10

100 by 30 Book 58 - Buffy and Batman

You guys totally thought I quit didn't you? Well, I didn't. I'm just a world class procrastinator and a lover of doing things at the last possible minute, So you can expect my debut novel to come out sometime around 2064.

Anyway, back to the reading. I actually finished this and the next 4 books like a month ago, but have been too lazy to write anything. But when you're dealing with something as monumentally disappointing as the conclusion of season 8 of Buffy, it's very easy to put it off. Seriously, this season is so bad that Joss Whedon writes an apology at the end. Basically he says, "Look guys, we got really excited about being able to do anything and then we got really drunk and wrote a scene were Angel is kind of the bad guy or something and then Angel and Buffy become demigods and just fly around and have sex in outer space and at the bottom of the ocean and make a new universe that goes evil when they leave it and Angel kills Giles and all magic is destroyed. Ok, so maybe we did a little mushrooms too...it was a weird couple of days. Anyway, sorry the series totally sucked for awhile. We promise to better next time.....we're very sorry"

1/10 - it's an awful, unreadable mess

Batman - Night of the Owls
I'm really loving the new Court of the Owls storyline in Batman, but the library never has the second volume so I can't catch up. This book is instead a bringing together of all the Night of the Owls stories that appeared in all of the Gotham-centric titles. It' a mishmash of events, but it is still far more coherent and engaging than Buffy was, and it was drawing from half a dozen titles.
7/10