Shebrew in the City
Shebrew in the City is a podcast exploring all things Jewish. Combining interviews and informational episodes, join Nicole Kelly as she discusses her journey with motherhood, spirituality, and everything from Hanukkah to the Holocaust. Giving a voice to modern Jews and spreading love and joy, whether you're Jewish, Jew-ish, or not anything resembling Jewish at all, there's something here for everyone.
Shebrew in the City
"Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah!" - Debunking the Antisemitic and Racial Myths of Walt Disney
Embark on a nuanced exploration of a legend's legacy with us as we sift through the layers of history surrounding Walt Disney. Discover the truth behind the myths of anti-Semitism and learn about Disney's controversial rendezvous with Leni Riefenstahl, juxtaposed against the hallowed adoration many have for the magic of Disneyland. Reflect with us, Southern California natives who've grown up under the spell of Disney's cultural phenomenon, on how these controversies have shaped our perceptions and the broader narrative of this entertainment empire.
Hollywood's golden era wasn't just about glitz and glamour; it was a time riddled with complex dance between race, politics, and the silver screen. From Clark Gable's stand with black actors to Disney's own entanglement with the Motion Picture Alliance, we unpack the intricate web of celebrity involvement in political movements. Delve into the lesser-known corners of Disney's history, such as his philanthropic efforts within the Jewish community and the iconic Sherman brothers' musical genius, as we strip away the layers of rumor to reveal the man behind the mouse.
Confront the discomfort of history's racial insensitivities head-on in our candid discussion about "Song of the South" and other cultural artifacts. Join us as we grapple with the ethics of retroactively judging historical actions, examining Disney's wartime propaganda cartoons and controversial character depictions. It's a journey through the past that questions our modern perspectives and invites a thoughtful dialogue on the complexity of cultural legacy. Share your thoughts as we continue this important conversation on social media and Patreon, where the exploration of these intricate topics extends beyond the airwaves.
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Visiting a city maybe for the second time and don't want to visit the same tourist traps? Check out Top Dog Tours. We have lots of different options for walking tours of neighborhoods and attractions that everybody will love. We are in Boston, Philadelphia, Toronto and New York City. You can visit us at topdogtourscom and check us out on social media for offers and discounts. Hi, this is Nicole Kelly and this is Sheeper in the City. So first off, I just wanted to apologize that this episode has taken a little bit longer to go live. One of our dogs unfortunately passed away around the time that we were set to record this, so we weren't really in the headspace to kind of delve into, well, Disney and anti-Semitism. We wanted to kind of mourn together. So I apologize for that and I wanted to dedicate this episode to our doxin, George, who was a foster fail and who we loved dearly.
Patrick Kelly:Yeah, George was the happiest doxin you would ever meet. He was just always wanted love and will be sorely missed.
Nicole Kelly:So kind of pivoting. Let's talk about Walt Disney, Walt.
Patrick Kelly:Disney.
Nicole Kelly:So the idea for this episode actually came about because we were watching it up episode of Family Guy where they made a joke about going to a place that Walt Disney built and Lois goes no, it's a place that Walt Disney loves. And they were at Auschwitz and in usual Family Guy fashion, it was very offensive but also a little bit funny at the same time. Well, you said we were going to a place Walt Disney built. No, peter, I said supported, by the way, don't go on the train ride.
Patrick Kelly:I mean all the good comedians and jokers tend to be a little offensive, but also funny.
Nicole Kelly:Yeah, but we were started talking about the idea of Walt Disney being anti-Semitic, and this is something that I feel like I definitely pushed this when we would talk about and say, well, I've heard this and this is what happened, and he was absolutely anti-Semitic, and you would have pushed back and say, well, I don't think that's true. So I decided to do some research and I've come to a conclusion, so I'm excited to talk about why this myth began, a little bit about whether it's true or not.
Patrick Kelly:Yeah, I'd love to know. I mean, I think the general consensus, at least in the sphere of pop culture, is that Walt Disney was a bit of an anti-Semite or at least grew up in an era where being anti-Semitic was just more acceptable and was just more a part of the everyday conversation.
Nicole Kelly:And it always made me kind of sad because we're both originally from Southern California so we had Disneyland passes for a long time and I love Disneyland and I love showing our daughter Disney movies. So the idea that all this kind of was started by somebody who had anti-Semitic feelings kind of always felt a little weird.
Patrick Kelly:I've always been a big Disney fan. My dad worked for Disney when.
Nicole Kelly:I was young.
Patrick Kelly:I know yours did too. He had one of those silver passes. Have you ever heard of those?
Nicole Kelly:You've talked about it before.
Patrick Kelly:I don't know, maybe it's changed now, but back in the early 90s my dad had one of these passes where he could take us into the park, basically whenever we wanted, and we used to go. You know, go in, have dinner, ride one ride.
Nicole Kelly:Yeah, like what we would do when we had passes.
Patrick Kelly:Yeah, and it was, I think, very informative. It was something that you know I always kind of grew up as, disneyland being secondary safe space.
Nicole Kelly:Yeah, and we would go like once a year and then when I was in high school and performed with the band, we would actually perform in the parade and got to go backstage.
Patrick Kelly:So you know I want to make it very clear, though I'm very much not it I don't think either of us are like Disney adults.
Nicole Kelly:I know adults that will go to Disney World multiple times a year with their family, and I'm like you could go to Europe for a fraction of this cost but the amount of like religious. You know it is a cult and we've discussed this because Patrick is obsessed with cults the way that I am obsessed with World War II history. He will watch all the cult documentaries.
Patrick Kelly:That's true, I do, I do believe, and I might be misquoting, but there is some doctoral thesis basically about how Disneyland could be considered, or at least Disney culture could be considered a religion.
Nicole Kelly:Yeah, because there's like a figure, there's pill regimages, there are ritual objects there's mythology stories.
Patrick Kelly:you know right and wrong. Yeah, yeah, yeah I feel like.
Nicole Kelly:What do we say now? All the villains in the Disney movies recently are generational trauma.
Patrick Kelly:Yeah, or like your like, or your parents just being neglectful.
Nicole Kelly:Yeah, it's generational trauma is the Disney villain instead of an evil queen.
Patrick Kelly:but anyways, getting back on the subject, so so is Walt Disney and anti-Semite, and why do we have that perception of him?
Nicole Kelly:So all of this goes back to my favorite subject, world War II history. So apparently the first accusations of anti-Semitism started because Disney gave a tour of the studio to Nazi propagandist Lenny Riefenstahl a month after Kristallnacht. So Lenny Riefenstahl was the director of Triumph of Will, which is like the ultimate Nazi propaganda film, and it covered the 1934 Nazi Party Congress in Nuremberg.
Patrick Kelly:I think it was on Netflix for a short while you could.
Nicole Kelly:you could actually watch it, and it's, and I'm taking a class next semester which is about political film and it's the first time that we are gonna talk about, so I'm interested to kind of delve into that. But it's, she is like the super Nazi propaganda filmmaker. She also did Olympia, which is a documentary about the 1936 Berlin Summer Olympics, and apparently this is this was also on Netflix. Capra's why we Fight was directly inspired by Triumph of Will, so I you'll definitely be able to find that if you're interested. Now, just kind of jumping into like her a little bit, you know it's. I just find it really interesting that she was one of Hitler's premier propaganda directors because she was a woman. If you're not familiar with kind of Nazi ideology, a woman's role is to be a mother and a homemaker and have lots of Aryan children. So the idea that a woman was being a director and being a Nazi director I think was kind of interesting in general.
Patrick Kelly:Actually, I don't think I ever realized it was a woman.
Nicole Kelly:It is a woman, she was an act. She I did, I did. I looked at her Wikipedia page. She was an actress and I guess her father was very much like against that, but her mother kind of pushed it and then she decided to start directing and, fun fact, apparently the film she made after she was, quote-unquote, done making Nazi films, the. It was like some story that had that had a lot of extras and they used some Romani from a concentration camp as the extras and they died in Auschwitz.
Patrick Kelly:Geez like this is during the war. This is during the war, wow.
Nicole Kelly:So like she, basically, I'm sure somehow kind of got permission from the higher ups to use Romani from concentration camps as extras and then after the movie they were sent to Auschwitz and killed.
Patrick Kelly:To literally just like, just pull them out.
Nicole Kelly:Yeah like pull them out and use them as extras, which is kind of crazy, but we're not talking about her. So three months after this Disney disavowed this, he's saying he was unaware who she was when he gave the invitation. So my the moral of the story is it's always a good idea to know who you're giving a tour of your business to. That's fair, I think.
Nicole Kelly:I mean, let's be honest, fascism was very popular in the 30s and I understand that. But why would you have been giving a tour to this woman to begin with?
Patrick Kelly:I guess that's what I was about to ask.
Nicole Kelly:This all gets back to money. So it's suggested that Rief and Stahl's visit was likely financially motivated, because Disney wanted to recover about 135,000 Reichmarks, reichmarks, reichmarks, I don't know how you said that.
Patrick Kelly:I think it's Reichmarks.
Nicole Kelly:Reichmarks owed from his German film distributor and to get the ban on Disney films lifted in Germany, because at this time, for whatever reason, disney films were banned. So it's weird to me that they were banned because we know that Hitler loved Snow White and he considered it one of the best films ever made.
Patrick Kelly:I mean it makes sense, snow White's, a German fairy tale, it was very innovative too, and I was thinking about Hitler and Snow White.
Nicole Kelly:And apparently there is a Norwegian museum director who said he found a drawing of Snow White characters, as well as Pinocchio, that were signed by an AH. He bought like a bunch of art from a German auction house and they're dated in the 1940s, so he believes they were actually drawn by Hitler. So, as we know, hitler the infamous artist.
Patrick Kelly:In the, in the style of Disney.
Nicole Kelly:Yeah, in the style of Disney. So he was like copying Pinocchio and Snow White and signing it as an artist but he can't prove it because it's not, doesn't say you don't have Hitler, just as an. Ah, but the timing is right and it's a little convenient. That's like in. Always Sunny in Philadelphia they have the Hitler, the Hitler painting of the.
Patrick Kelly:German Shepherd.
Nicole Kelly:Yes, yes. So going back to the money, like there's a book I read a while ago. It's about the American ambassador non-sea Germany, william Dodd. It's called In the Garden of the Beast. It's by Eric Larson. I highly recommend it. And they talked a lot about how America wanted to play nice with Germany since Germany owed them so much money, and it's one of the reasons we weren't kind of disavowing Nazi Germany in the beginning because of money. So it's possible that Walt Disney gave this tour because he was trying to play nice with the German film community to get money back and get his films unbanned. That totally makes sense also.
Patrick Kelly:You know, walt wasn't really the money guy, his brother was the money guy. So I mean his brother might have been like hey, give us people a tour, we need to get a picture.
Nicole Kelly:But again, I think the moral of the story is like always know who you're giving a tour to of your business.
Nicole Kelly:Yeah do some research. Historian Neil Gabler, who was the first writer to gain unrestricted access to the Disney archives, concludes that the available evidence does not support accusations of anti-Semitism. And Disney largely got that reputation due to his association with an organization called the Motion Picture Alliance for the preservation of American ideals, which was an anti-communist organization. So this was a kind of a conservative group of people involved in Hollywood. It was formed in 1944 and they had anti-Semitic undertones.
Patrick Kelly:Well, a lot of communism or anti-communist, you know, sentiments also borderline into anti-Semitic, in.
Nicole Kelly:Germany is. They were the Bolshevik Jews and you know all that fun stuff. I said that communism cost most of the problems of the 20th century a couple days ago and I stand by that statement. If you want to argue with me, you can message me on Instagram and we can talk about that, but I stand by my statements.
Patrick Kelly:She doesn't have a Twitter to argue with.
Nicole Kelly:No, I don't, and I will be, and I threads is a cesspool, so you can message me on Instagram if you have comments on communism being the cause of most problems of the 20th century.
Patrick Kelly:You were gonna get like all of these red. No, you know what, whatever.
Nicole Kelly:I had relatives. My dad likes to always say this whenever he talks about his mom's family, that she had relatives who literally wrote for the daily worker. They were like real communists, yeah. So, like I'm not saying that, like I don't have I don't have connections to that, I'm just saying I think in general, communism caused most of the problems of the 20th century.
Patrick Kelly:I mean, we would be in a very different world. If you know, marx never wrote the manifesto, so yeah, so kind of going.
Nicole Kelly:Going back to Walt Disney, gabbler says that though Walt himself, in my estimation, was not anti-Semitic, nevertheless he willingly allied himself with people who were anti-Semitic and the reputation stuck. He was never really able to expunge this throughout his life. So there were a couple of other really famous people of the era who were members of the party John Wayne, clark Gable and Ginger Rogers but some of the other members were accused of being privately anti-Semitic and in general it kind of had a reputation of being reactionary. So it's very anti-communist, very conservative, low-key anti-Semitic. So I just wanted to kind of give a shout out to John Wayne in general and his racial insensitivity and racism, because he was super problematic and he said once I believe in white supremacy until the blacks are educated to a point of responsibility. I don't believe in giving authority and positions of leadership and judgment to irresponsible people. Oh, that's a lot.
Nicole Kelly:And then he goes on to talk about Native Americans. I don't feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from them, if that's what you're asking, or so-called stealing of this country from them was just a matter of survival. There were great numbers of people who needed new land and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves. So this kind of reminds me of that idea of Germany needing living space I don't remember the name of it and I think in German, off the top of my head, I should know this but the idea that they needed more living space since why they kept going east and setting free these racial Germans who were living in places like the Sudetenland and Poland. So this kind of rings true of that. We had people who needed a place to live and we took it away.
Patrick Kelly:Well, I mean, there's very much in. America, the idea of manifest destiny of the country stretching from coast to coast, and it's a very 19th century belief system.
Nicole Kelly:John Wayne was saying this. I think this was an interview in the 1970s.
Patrick Kelly:No, of course I'm saying it's a 19th century system that we needed the land that formed what America's not just domestic policies but foreign policies become until today. And you know, I think that's one of the reasons Hitler modeled a lot of his racial laws out of American ideals and American laws that were meant to, you know, strike down the others, yeah, discriminate against. We're looking at you, Jim Crow. Yeah, other people are, you know, minorities, we'll talk about that a little bit later.
Nicole Kelly:So Clark Gable, on the other hand, I know was very supportive of the rights of black actors and Gone With the Wind, I believe. The story is that they had segregated bathrooms and that he demanded that they got rid of them. And he actually was very close to the Hattie McDaniel who won the Oscar for playing Mammy. So clearly he just hated communists and he wasn't actually really racist.
Patrick Kelly:Maybe that scans. I mean, or at least he was as accepting as a white successful man in Hollywood could be in the 1930s and 40s.
Nicole Kelly:But I think it's nice of him to want the black actors on set to be comfortable. It's just kind of weird to be like I'm not racist in this way, but screw the communists. But I guess we don't. We're not old enough to remember how scary communism was to America for a long time. That you know, I was three years old when the Berlin Wall fell, so it wasn't really a thing.
Patrick Kelly:Well, not the same way. I think throughout the nineties there were still a little bit. Russian villains and other things.
Nicole Kelly:They're back again. Oh, they are back again. So were the Nazis. It's like we're getting to relive the 20th century over again with our villains.
Patrick Kelly:I do enjoy the Indiana Jones movies where he fights Nazis more than the ones where he doesn't. Nazis are the perfect villain, yeah.
Nicole Kelly:So, going back to Walt Disney Gable, continues Walt in joining forces with the MPA and its band of professional reactionaries and red baiters also got tarred with their anti-Semitism. Walt Disney certainly was aware of the MPA's purported anti-Semitism, but he chose to ignore it. The price he paid was that he would always be lumped not only with anti-communists but also anti-Semites. So this brought this quote that I remember reading Actually it was an interview with Sasha Baron Cohen about things that are going on in Israel right now. Ian Kershaw, an English historian who focuses on 20th century Germany, points out the road to Auschwitz was built by hate but paved with indifference. So associating with people and being indifferent to their racism does not make you necessarily innocent. So I don't necessarily think that Walt Disney himself was anti-Semitic, and we'll talk a little bit more about that as well.
Patrick Kelly:but surrounding yourself with people who are not benefiting from anti-Semitism or racism or any sort of system. It's not a good look. It's not a good look.
Nicole Kelly:And I think he tried to amend that in some way lead on his life. He did distance himself from the MPA and had no involvement after 1947, but again, he was never really able.
Nicole Kelly:Well, that seems early, though too Well that would have been that if he was a member when it was first founded, it only would have been three years, so that makes sense. But it also, I kind of reminded me a little bit of like remember how Lucille Ball had to go to the McCarthy hearings because she was a registered communist and the kind of thing that, like anything you do politically, kind of stays with you when you have to be careful about that.
Patrick Kelly:Yeah, she was married to a Cuban man. I know Well, I can't remember correctly.
Nicole Kelly:She registered as a communist because her grandfather did and she it was like as a way of respect and I don't think she necessarily knew what she was doing.
Patrick Kelly:She wasn't attending the meetings.
Nicole Kelly:Yeah, the joke was is the only thing that's read about Lucille is her hair, and even that's not real. Yeah. So were these allegations true? I do not think they were. In the research that I've done it's kind of indicated that it was that being associated with the MPA. So Disney was actively involved in production of military training films with the US government and they contained highly class-kite information and required the highest level of security clearance. So any previous sympathies towards Nazi Germany that he would have had would have disqualified him for making these films. So we know that the US government at least determined he had no sympathy with the Nazis. So the reef install visit was clearly just about money.
Patrick Kelly:Well, aren't there also those Donald Duck cartoons that make fun of Naziism and Hitler and all that? Yeah.
Nicole Kelly:Yeah, those are you can. You can YouTube those. Those are really funny. He has like a nightmare that he he's basically working in in like a German factory, I think.
Patrick Kelly:Yeah, it's been a long time since I've seen them, but I distinctly remember the Donald Duck kind of making fun of the Nazis.
Nicole Kelly:Well, that was very popular at that time.
Patrick Kelly:During editing I came across a video of Leonard Malton very eloquently explaining the Donald Duck Nazi movie. It apparently went in the Academy Award, but I'll let him explain it, since he's the expert.
Leonard Maltin:In time of war, it's typical, sometimes even useful, to demonize your enemy. We still see this today. Whenever a dictator or despot comes to power anywhere in the world, caracatures and jokes not always in the best of taste rise to the forefront because it's our way of relieving aggression. So it was in World War II. Some people feared Adolf Hitler, others mocked him.
Leonard Maltin:The Disney staff came up with the idea for a cartoon to be titled Donald Duck in Nazi land, giving the all-American duck a nightmare that he was living in a country run by Nazis. The title changed when a song written for the cartoon by Oliver Wallace became a runaway hit and a now classic recording by Spike Jones. It then became essential to change the name of the cartoon to DeFuhrer's face. It's easy to see why the film was so popular. It's very, very funny, reducing the serious tenets of Hitler's Nazism to slapstick absurdities, and it gave audiences a chance to think, as Donald does, about the freedoms they might have taken for granted. Defuhrer's face, directed by Jack Kenny, won the Academy Award as Best Animated Short Subject of 1943.
Nicole Kelly:Disney donated regularly to Jewish charities and was named 1955 man of the Year by the Benet-Breuth chapter of Beverly Hills, which is a Jewish social and volunteer organization, and the organization itself said they found no evidence of anti-Semitism on Disney's part and they gave him a plaque which read for exemplifying the best tenets of American citizenship and intergroup understanding and interpreting into action the ideals of Benet-Breuth. Defuhrer's face, directed by Jack Kenny, won the Academy Award as Best Animated Short Subject of 1943. He, the father who was basically a Nazi, him who was accused of this. I think this was Disney's way of trying to amend any sort of rumors about him being anti-Semitic. But I was unaware that he actually would have donated to these groups, and it wasn't just Benet-Breuth.
Nicole Kelly:So Goebler, that same historian, revealed that Disney frequently made unpublicized donations to various Jewish charities, including Jewish orphanages, jewish old age home, yeshiva College, which is now Yeshiva University here in New York, and the American League for a Free Palestine. So this would have been a Zionist group at the time. So again, I think you know these rumors would have started very early on and everybody was very hypersensitive after World War II for obvious reasons. So I think this might have been his way of trying to amend that and as far as people who worked for the company and what they said about him, disney had numerous Jewish employees, many of whom were in influential positions, and none of Disney's employees on record, including an animator named Art Babbit, who apparently really hated Disney, which is weird. Like working for a man you hate.
Patrick Kelly:I don't know People do it all the time. I'm curious why he hated it.
Nicole Kelly:I mean I tried to look into this. There's no information. It's just kind of like an aside's like who disliked Disney intensely, this guy, but even said he never accused him of making anti-Semitic slurs or taunts. And there was a story man named Joe Grant who's really interesting. If you want to Google Joe Grant, he basically created a lot of the characters we grew up with, as well as a lot of the original characters. He worked closely with Disney in the 30s and 40s and said as far as I'm concerned, there was no evidence of anti-Semitism. I think the whole idea should be put to rest and buried deep. He was not anti-Semitic. Some of the most influential people in the studio were Jewish. It's much ado about nothing. I never once had a problem with him in that way and he once joked that Disney's New York office had more Jews than the book of Leviticus which I think is a fun little sound bite.
Nicole Kelly:There's another screenwriter who worked for a little bit on Song of the South, which we are going to talk about, named Maurice Rapp, who said Disney was not anti-Semitic. He was just kind of a very conservative guy.
Patrick Kelly:He was from Missouri. Yeah, he was Midwest.
Nicole Kelly:Born in the early, early 20th century, he might as well have been in the music band. I mean, that is the world he grew up in Well that's what it feels like when you walk into Main Street USA, Not the one Walt Disney World, because it's different but the one at Disneyland. It's very music man and they play music man music too, which is fun.
Nicole Kelly:And Oklahoma and Oklahoma and Hello Dolly, they play the musicals which I always love, kind of thinking back to the generation of my great aunt and uncle. They grew up much later, like they came up in their in the 50s, but there's like a certain kind of attitude I think people had that people leaned more conservative and traditional and you think, very traditional America family when you think of Walt Disney and that's how he presented himself. So it makes sense that he would be a more conservative leaning person. But that definitely doesn't make him an anti Semite.
Patrick Kelly:Also being a conservative back in the 1930s, 40s and 50s is a very different thing than being conservative today? No, I agree you know sense of political party solidification, which really didn't happen until well into the 60s In.
Nicole Kelly:Lyndon Johnson.
Patrick Kelly:There was a lot more fluid movement amongst the idea of liberal, conservative back then. Then there wasn't like a this side and that side. Yeah, at least not as much, not as not weird as divided as the civil war right now.
Nicole Kelly:I keep reading articles about it. Someone else, a man named Douglas Brode who is the author of a book which sounds very interesting Multiculturalism and the Mouse Race and Sex in Disney Entertainment In my free time. I'll pick that up after I'm done reading all those World War II books you just got me.
Patrick Kelly:Yeah.
Nicole Kelly:So he says that this is my fun fact, that I love this fact that Disney used more Jewish actors than any other studio of Hollywood's golden age, including those run by Jewish movie locals. So obviously if he didn't like Jews, he wouldn't have contracted Jewish actors.
Patrick Kelly:At least Jewish actors to the degree that he did. No, yeah.
Nicole Kelly:Yeah, you would assume that these big, famously Jewish movie moguls would be employing Jews, but not necessarily the case. Right, moving on to talking about the Sherman brothers, who we love because our daughter loves all those movies, robert Sherman recalled that when one of Disney's lawyers made anti-semitic remarks towards him and his brother, richard Disney defended them and fired the attorney. So I think this actually shows a lot of Character, because I think back to like what I talked about in the first episode about someone saying something Anti-semitic to me and no one doing anything. So obviously this is somebody who worked for him instead of just Not doing anything or even standing up for them. He fired this person, so obviously had no tolerance for that kind of hateful rhetoric in the workplace.
Patrick Kelly:Yeah, I, if you don't. If you're not familiar with the Sherman brothers or their extensive Musical library, some of the big hits are Mary Poppins, chitty-chitty, bang bang, one of our daughter's favorites, the happiest millionaire wrote it's a small world, which is apparently the most played song of all time.
Sherman Brothers Medley:So time. Welcome to our tropical hideaway. You lucky people, you, If we weren't in the show starting right away, we'd be the only ensue All together in the tiki-tiki-tiki-tiki-tiki room. In the tiki-tiki-tiki-tiki-tiki room, all the birds sing words and the flowers go.
Sherman Brothers Medley:Tipping the hundred acres where Christopher Robin plays, You'll find the enchanted neighborhood of Christopher's childhood days. They're going to Brown, they're not going to Hither, they're out to Rome up there, far. They're near, they're gone, they're here. They're quick and slick and sincere.
Song of the South Medley:Beware, beware be a very, very bear. A heffa-lump or whoozle is very confused. A heffa-lump or whoozle is very sly, sly. They come in ones and two-zles, but if they're so choosles before your eyes, you'll see them bump into us Now.
Sherman Brothers Medley:I'm the king of the swingers. Oh, the jungle VIP. I've reached the top and had to stop, and that's what's bothering me. I want to be a man, man cup.
Song of the South Medley:Fortunosity that's my byword. Fortunosity a twinkle in the eye word. Sometimes castles fall to the ground, but that's where fally clovers are found. Fortunosity, look at each.
Sherman Brothers Medley:Together. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Why don't you and I confine? Let's get together. What do you say? We could have a swing in time. We'd be a friend. A gentle breeze from Hushabye Mountain softly blows, oh lullaby bay. It fills the cells. It's supercalifragilistic, expilidocious. Even though the sound of it is something quite atrocious, If you say it loud enough, you're always something cautious, Supercalifragilistic, expilidocious. Amelie.
Nicole Kelly:And then we have his daughter, diane Disney Miller, who said her sister, sharon, dated a Jewish boyfriend for a period of time, to which her father raised no objections, and even reportedly said Sharon, I think it's wonderful how these Jewish families have accepted you. So again, I don't think if you hated Jews or didn't like Jews you would allow, not like. Allow like you would encourage your support support your children dating somebody Jewish. So we've decided that he's not anti-Semitic but is well at least casually.
Nicole Kelly:Casually anti-Semitism, is he a racist? And we can't talk about Disney and racism without mentioning Song of the South. So Song of the South.
Patrick Kelly:Well, let's preface this with I had never I was very familiar with Song of the. South. I had never, until we were talking about doing this episode and kind of going this route I had never actually seen. Song of the South. Nor was it ever available, I think in our lifetime, no, I think by the time we were able to buy movies.
Nicole Kelly:VHS tapes. We're dating ourselves.
Patrick Kelly:Maybe. I think there was a VHS release. There was a.
Nicole Kelly:VHS release, but it's been burned. It's one of those things that you can't find, yeah it's one of those things that's been banned.
Patrick Kelly:I think if you order it, you have to order it internationally.
Nicole Kelly:Yeah, it didn't sell in the US.
Patrick Kelly:It's one of those movies that is almost impossible, at least to own. I was able to find at least most of the film online in small clips.
Nicole Kelly:Yeah, on YouTube.
Patrick Kelly:On YouTube and other things.
Nicole Kelly:I was fascinated watching it because Well, let me talk a little bit about what it is first, and then I want to kind of go through the plot of the movie. So Song of the South has been criticized by contemporary critics and the NAACP and a lot of other people for its portrayal of black stereotypes. So Song of the South is a live-action Disney movie that has animated clips in it, so a little bit like Mary Poppins, where there'll be animated and then there's people in the animation.
Patrick Kelly:So from a production standpoint it's actually pretty impressive for the time it's a live-action into animation, back in the live-action and crossover into both, which was a very Disney way of filming things.
Nicole Kelly:Yeah, yeah. So Song of the South starts with a little boy who's played by Bobby Driscoll, who would go on to voice Peter Pan, and I think he lived, he died and they put him in like a potter's field somewhere, don't ask me why.
Patrick Kelly:I know that that's horribly sad, it's terribly sad.
Nicole Kelly:So he's a little boy and he's with his white parents and Hattie McDaniel is clearly some side of nurse. She's basically playing Mammy from Gone with the Wind, but this was several years after she'd won an Oscar, so she's just kind of playing the same part.
Patrick Kelly:Identically the same part.
Nicole Kelly:Like the outfit looks the same, the handkerchief, the whole thing.
Patrick Kelly:Well, that was what kind of took me back watching the movie, even though it's a band quote unquote band film that you can't buy anymore. You can't really find it. Watching it. I didn't see anything in the movie that was more offensive than something like. Gone with the Wind or other movies depicting this mythical south, either pre or post civil war.
Nicole Kelly:I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that it's a Disney film and it's supposed to be for kids.
Patrick Kelly:I agree with that and it's also. It came out what a decade after Gone with the Wind 1949.
Nicole Kelly:So yeah it was a decade after Gone with the Wind.
Patrick Kelly:Yeah, so it came out a decade after Gone with the Wind.
Nicole Kelly:So we're watching this kind of opening carriage scene and I'm trying to figure out when this takes place. So I Google it and it's supposed to be right after the civil war.
Patrick Kelly:So we're talking 1870s.
Nicole Kelly:Yeah, so, and that's very important to this. So the little boy and the mother stay with the grandmother and the father has to leave. For some reason, I'm not sure why they never explain.
Patrick Kelly:He works for a newspaper in Atlanta.
Nicole Kelly:Yeah, he's like a newspaper writer and he's like I have to leave. So basically he's kind of assigned a little boy to play with who is black. They're like take care of him. So he's got like this guard person who's supposed to keep an eye on him but be his friend at the same time.
Patrick Kelly:Yeah, they're about the same age. He's clearly living on the property.
Nicole Kelly:Yeah, like in the house.
Patrick Kelly:In the house or in the, you know.
Nicole Kelly:In the little shanty town that they show later.
Patrick Kelly:Right and he's meant to entertain the wealthy white child that has come to live in the house with the grandma.
Nicole Kelly:Yeah. So there is a again I can't say slave, because this is right after the civil war there is a gentleman named Uncle Remus who is a storyteller and it's a very big deal to listen to his story. So basically they're sneaking off to listen to Uncle Remus and he tells these folk tales, and that's where it kind of jumps into the animation.
Patrick Kelly:With Brer Rabbit, Brer Fox and Brer Bear.
Nicole Kelly:Who are themselves ridiculous stereotypes of black people.
Patrick Kelly:Yes.
Nicole Kelly:Like it's very obviously racist.
Patrick Kelly:Very minstrel show.
Nicole Kelly:Yeah, for sure, for sure.
Patrick Kelly:And though the Brer Fox and Brer Rabbit and those stories come from old African folk tale.
Nicole Kelly:Yeah.
Patrick Kelly:And, I believe, old poems that were written kind of around that same era.
Nicole Kelly:Yeah, I mean they're legitimate history, but the way that they're being portrayed is very racist.
Patrick Kelly:Absolutely.
Nicole Kelly:So throughout the course of this the little boy also makes friends with like the poor white trash family and these two boys are like gonna drown a puppy for some reason, and their sister gives him the puppy and we were horrified, they were gonna drown a puppy. We're like this is a kid's movie.
Patrick Kelly:Well, yeah, I guess the puppy's the runt, but at the same time it looks like a full grown puppy Like it doesn't need to nurse anymore. So, it seems like they just needed to like. These kids wanted to drown a puppy for no reason.
Nicole Kelly:Yeah, so he makes friends with the sister and he eventually has a birthday party and for some reason he's not allowed to see Uncle Remus anymore. And then he ends up like running after somebody has to go through a field that has the bull in it.
Patrick Kelly:Well, Remus is leaving.
Nicole Kelly:Yeah, remus is leaving, so he tries to-.
Patrick Kelly:Because the mother wanted him to return the puppy and he gave it to Uncle Remus instead and the boys came and snitched to the mother and the mother in retaliation-.
Nicole Kelly:Said Uncle Remus has to leave.
Patrick Kelly:Uncle Remus has to leave Because he's a bad influence on these stories or a bad influence on you.
Nicole Kelly:So, as he's leaving, he runs into the field with the bull. Oh yeah, he runs across the field and there's a bull and he gets attacked by the bull. And this part was not on YouTube. I had to look on Wikipedia that he's very sick. But Uncle Remus comes and tells him a story and he magically gets better. And then it cuts to him and the little girl and the boy he was kind of assigned to, and they're singing Zippity-Doo-Daw, walking barefoot around a field, and then the animated characters roll in too.
Patrick Kelly:Well then, brer Rabbit comes and interacts, and even Uncle Remus has taken the back that Brer Rabbit's actually shown up.
Nicole Kelly:Yeah, in addition to this, there are scenes where they show what would have probably been during prior to the Civil War slave quarters and people cooking and just being all sorts of happy and singing and dancing and living their best lives.
Patrick Kelly:Yeah, reconstruction South was. A lot of former slaves basically were turned into indentured servants and slaves all over again. All in but name for numerous reasons.
Nicole Kelly:But it shows them being so happy. It reminds me of that, oh and that is the myth of the.
Patrick Kelly:South right.
Sherman Brothers Medley:That's what Uncle Rima said. That's what.
Sherman Brothers Medley:Uncle Rima said Listen now to what I say.
Sherman Brothers Medley:That's how the critters got their way. The lamppost batman got the gun from he to my spake-o-chug. His mammoth peeped off over dots. That's how the leopard got his spots. That's what Uncle Rima said. That's what Uncle Rima said spake-o-chug their polka dots. That's how the leopard got his spots. That's how the leopard got his spots.
Song of the South Medley:Oh, rare possum got a trick. How come he gets so afraid when trouble come along he plead like dead, not lost, and live like that. Well, I do, I show you do. I can't see nothing wrong, while mother most is worried I'm sleeping all day long. Well, I do, I show you do. It's funny, but it's true. That's what I am so positive, I really was too.
Sherman Brothers Medley:In the morning when the ding-a-ring look up word now to the kitchen room it's the same old thing. Wanna get up? Buy us something for the hungry.
Sherman Brothers Medley:look, look up, stick your finger in the dumpling, get your trouble with the cook, let the rain pour down, let the cold wind blow gonna stay right here in the home.
Sherman Brothers Medley:I trouble, trouble, trouble fly away.
Sherman Brothers Medley:Where we trouble with, the weavers never get like that, look up got the cotton full of weavers like an hypocrites hat, when the weavers is the color.
Sherman Brothers Medley:Everybody feels old. Look up, there is nothing on the table. Hello, Uncle Ringman.
Song of the South Medley:Good morning, miss Nellie.
Sherman Brothers Medley:How do you do? How do you do? How do you do say hello to me? How do you do with everyone you meet pretty good, sure, as your born. What goes up?
Sherman Brothers Medley:is sure to come down. Pinning north is a pinnifalm. And how do you, you howdy back this far? That ant hid for a tap.
Sherman Brothers Medley:How do, you do.
Song of the South Medley:Fine, how are you?
Sherman Brothers Medley:How do you come over? Pretty good, sure, as your born.
Song of the South Medley:Stop jumping rabbit. You run out of breath. Why don't you sit down and calm yourself?
Song of the South Medley:Well, to grab a jump, so do the flea. I'll do what I like and I'll sooch me how do you do?
Sherman Brothers Medley:Fine, how are you? How you come over? Pretty good, sure as your born.
Song of the South Medley:The weavers. Good, the fish is fine. Now what do you do with all your money? Knock on my door you've done it before.
Song of the South Medley:Matter of factly, I don't know exactly when, but sooner or later you're gonna be hanging around and won't mind cooking again you're gonna, I think about my life in place.
Sherman Brothers Medley:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, everybody's got a laugh in place. A laugh in place. Take a frown to the left side down, then you'll find your land. Ha ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha ha ha, ha, ha, ha ha ha.
Nicole Kelly:It reminds me of that guy when we were in Colonial Williamsburg, that tour guide.
Patrick Kelly:Yeah, nicole took me to Colonial Williamsburg for my birthday. I very much enjoy Colonial American history and we were walking around and, of course, we own our own tour company so we're highly aware when other tour groups are walking around and listening to whether their tour guides are saying and how they deliver history and information. And this older tour guide was giving a tour to older people as well. Clearly, a bus tour that was pulled through and they were from the south.
Patrick Kelly:They were from the south. Based on the dialects that they were, you know how they were speaking and the town lives perpetually in. I believe it's 1772, or 1773, it's one of those two years, but it's kind of right before the.
Nicole Kelly:American.
Patrick Kelly:Revolution breaks out and the town population of that era was around 50% white people and 50% black slaves. So when he was going into a conversation talking about what the other 50% of the population of this town was living like, he basically goes into the old south kind of history book. Redrick of these people got fed three meals a day, they got Sundays off, they were taught to read the Bible. They enjoyed being slaves. The whole argument is always like they got all these great things but they were slaves.
Nicole Kelly:Yeah, it doesn't really matter how great your life is if you don't have any autonomy of any kind?
Patrick Kelly:I have a distinct memory. I was thinking about this the other day. I don't know why, but I was in eighth grade and I had a really great eighth grade history teacher.
Nicole Kelly:You talk about this person a lot. We have to track him down.
Patrick Kelly:I think he's actually passed away.
Nicole Kelly:Yeah.
Patrick Kelly:I think I remember reading like an article that he passed away, but I still, honestly, he was an amazing teacher. I don't necessarily, in hindsight, agree with all of his takes on what that history that he taught us was, and one of the things I very distinctly remember in class he made it a point to say that the civil war was not caused by slavery.
Nicole Kelly:This was a big thing in the 90s. I remember, yeah, he wanted. It was about money and states rights.
Patrick Kelly:Well states rights. But he wanted us to say, at least on a test you know that we had to take, that the civil war was caused because of the secession of the states from the union.
Nicole Kelly:I mean, that's what started the civil war. That's literally the reason it started.
Patrick Kelly:The literal reason the war happened is because the states left the union. But the reason they left is because of slavery so of course, as a 12-year-old or however old you are, in eighth grade you know you're not going to have 13,.
Nicole Kelly:The 13 eighth grade because you have your bar on butts bow in seventh grade, so you're 13 or 14 in eighth grade.
Patrick Kelly:So 13,? You're 13, 14 years old. You clearly don't have the knowledge or the wherewithal or the ability to have a argument.
Nicole Kelly:Yeah, you're not going to argue with your teacher, unless you're me, because I would do that frequently with my teachers.
Patrick Kelly:You know, if I knew enough about a subject, I probably would too, but at least at 13 or 14, however old I was when I was in this class I didn't have the core knowledge of civil war reconstruction America.
Nicole Kelly:How dare you? Do you have like a debate you mean, you weren't a doctoral level student when you were 14 about reconstruction America?
Patrick Kelly:Well, of course and I think that's really the problem with the American education system you have a lot of teachers teaching the subjects from these either points of view or political points of view to a bunch of kids who don't have the ability or the strength to be able to probably question or argue maybe a different point of view when it comes to some of this stuff. But I just have a real distinct memory of him being like well, it wasn't slavery, this is not why we fought the civil war.
Patrick Kelly:Sure, Jim, Sure Jim you know, and it just feels really.
Nicole Kelly:No, I get it. I remember I was kind of taught the same thing, that it was more about money and states rights, but it was because of slavery.
Patrick Kelly:Well, but yeah states rights to own slaves.
Nicole Kelly:Correct, correct, because people wanted to.
Patrick Kelly:You can't ever get away from the whole thing about slavery you know, within the argument of civil war.
Nicole Kelly:So let's go back to what we originally talked about. So was he a racist, you know, if he wasn't anti-Semite?
Patrick Kelly:Was he a racist so?
Nicole Kelly:during filming of Song of the South, disney became close friends with the actor who played Uncle Remus, james Baskett, describing him, in a letter to his sister Ruth, as the best actor I believe to be discovered in years. They stayed in contact long after the film's production was over, with Walt even sending him gifts. When Baskett was in poor health, disney not only began financially supporting him and his family, but also campaigned successfully for him to win an honorary Academy Award for his performance, making him the first black actor who was honored this way. Baskett died shortly after receiving his Oscar, and his widow wrote Disney a letter of gratitude for his support, claiming he had been a friend indeed, and we certainly have been in need.
Nicole Kelly:So I don't think this sounds like someone who's racist. However, I want to go back to like the idea of well, I'm not racist. My best friend is black or my attorney is Jewish. This is something that you know. I mentioned that the Nazis all had, like the Nazis had their Jew. So I don't think it necessarily says that he wasn't racist because he was friends with this specific black person, but I think going out of your way to support him and his family financially you know if you have some sort of disdain for people who aren't white. You're not going to do that.
Patrick Kelly:Yeah, I think it was. Look, you can't watch a Disney movie that was produced before probably 1975. That doesn't have racist stuff.
Nicole Kelly:Dumbo, we're looking at you, dumbo. My sister always likes to point out.
Patrick Kelly:Of course Dumbo. You know, of course Song of the South, lady in the Tramp, lady in the Tramp with the Siamese cats. You know you have all of these tropes of not just black people but Asian people, mexican people. You know different groups all being at least pushed to a certain type of stereotype to the forefront, and part of that was just American entertainment, that is what was popular. Was Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney racist because they did blackface in a couple of movies? I think there might be an argument for yes, there might be an argument for now.
Nicole Kelly:I think it's important to have these conversations. I remember watching kind of a short. Tcm does these like short things between the movies, which I absolutely love, and there was a black film historian talking about the history of blackface and why TCM chooses not to take it out. Because, they want to acknowledge that this is something that happened, but also learn from it, to show why it's not acceptable anymore, because if you erase that bad history, we don't have anything to learn from.
Patrick Kelly:Well, right, of course, which?
Song of the South Medley:I think is appropriate.
Patrick Kelly:Well then you get historians walking around saying how much they loved it and how happy it was, and they got Sundays off.
Nicole Kelly:I know you got to be, you got to, you got to show that the bad stuff happened. So, going back to Gabler, the historian says Walt Disney was no racist. He never, either publicly or privately, made disparaging remarks about blacks or asserted white authority. Now this is what I think is really important, especially talking about people of the time. Like most white Americans of his generation, however, he was racially insensitive, and I really like that phrase because it really encapsulates, I think, white men and women of the early 20th century. They weren't necessarily racist, but they were racially insensitive and would say things like Oriental rug, you know things that we don't say now. You know, I think it was just.
Nicole Kelly:You don't need to say what I think you're going to say, but I'm not going to say that, but I mean but I like the term racially insensitive because I think it acknowledges that there was a time when people were insensitive about racism, but they weren't racism racist themselves.
Patrick Kelly:Right, I will. I think if you could put things like racist tropes or things on a scale, you know, and Nazi or Ku Klux Klan members on one end of the scale and Rachel Dozel's on the other end. I feel like you have a definitely levels of insensitive you know, insensitive speech or insensitive thoughts, but they aren't necessarily superiority.
Nicole Kelly:Yeah, no, there's a difference and I but that's, I really like that.
Patrick Kelly:You get to that argument with what is our systematic structures in our society that build up white supremacy, that creates these kind of institutions that we live in right now. Yeah, that people are benefiting from these institutions the way that they're built. Yeah, so that already you might not be racist, but you're definitely benefiting from structure of racism, right?
Nicole Kelly:So you know one thing, I think, that if you can't find song of the south, or you don't want to watch it, or you're concerned about being offended by it, if you've been on the ride at either Disneyland or Disney World and I don't know if it's any of the parks- At least in the iteration.
Patrick Kelly:Well, I know they. It's now closed at Disneyland.
Nicole Kelly:Yeah, and at Disney World. So if you've been on Splash Mountain, which opened in the early nineties, I remember, do you remember who was like?
Song of the South Medley:an.
Nicole Kelly:Ernest.
Patrick Kelly:Ernest, ernest.
Nicole Kelly:Ernest went on Splash Mountain.
Patrick Kelly:Yeah, they did a whole. They did a whole special when they were opening it where Ernest was the like dummy. I know like like test test writer.
Nicole Kelly:I remember this. To go and write the thing oh to be a millennial.
Patrick Kelly:So he was apparently like a Shakespearean actor. You know, like good for him, good for him.
Nicole Kelly:He played Slinky Dog, which we love, that's true. He played Slinky Dog. He was Ernest. He saved Christmas.
Patrick Kelly:Yeah.
Nicole Kelly:That was what the movie is right.
Patrick Kelly:I think I don't. I never really watched the Ernest does whatever movies.
Nicole Kelly:Anyways.
Patrick Kelly:I always remember seeing them in blockbuster, though.
Nicole Kelly:I never watched any of that.
Patrick Kelly:There were always like 30 VHS tapes of an Ernest movie that nobody was watching.
Nicole Kelly:Well, clearly they were making them for somebody.
Patrick Kelly:It was not, that seems like a weird deep, like rabbit hole to fall down to watch all the Ernest.
Nicole Kelly:I don't have time for that. I have. I'm going back to school, patrick, I don't have time for that out of everything that Netflix and Hulu and all those like services. I have not seen one Ernest there might be a licensing thing, um so anyways. So Splash Mountain, which opened in the early nineties with Ernest, is the dummy is based off of Song of the South, so it's not actually the racist former slave part, but it's the bear rabbit, bear Fox and bear bear.
Nicole Kelly:So it tells the story and you've heard these songs and the most famous one being Zippity-Duda yeah. So the most famous song being Zippity-Duda and I just looked it up that Splash Mountain is still at Tokyo Disneyland in Japan. Oh okay, I'm not a Disney World or Magic Kingdom anymore, because I want to say like maybe five or six years ago people started a petition because they were like this is racist, so we have to get rid of it. So they got rid of Splash Mountain last year, I think.
Nicole Kelly:Yeah, I'm not sure, and I read somewhere that people were going on the ride and taking water from the ride and selling it on eBay.
Patrick Kelly:Out of all the things to save on that ride. I don't know if the water.
Nicole Kelly:No, because if you were on the ride, like you couldn't take pieces with you, like it was like guests going with like a jar and taking water from the ride. Taking the green chlorine water and selling it on eBay.
Patrick Kelly:Yikes.
Nicole Kelly:So it was a beloved ride and apparently what they're doing with it to, I guess, in some way make amends for the racism of the ride, even though it was just the animal part.
Patrick Kelly:Well, I mean admittedly the animal part is also steeped in racism.
Nicole Kelly:Here. Having watched the movie now, I would agree with that. Like I remember being like I don't understand why it's racist, but like, having seen the movie now, I'm like, okay, this makes sense because they're minstrel characters, so they are turning into. I think it's still a log flume, but it's going to be Princess Tiana themed.
Patrick Kelly:Yeah, so it'll be like New Orleans. I don't know how you put in the drop part.
Nicole Kelly:You'll have to tell me, because I won't be going on it.
Patrick Kelly:Maybe it's going to be the.
Nicole Kelly:Great Depression.
Patrick Kelly:That is how I felt after I saw that movie, the stock market crashing. You got this great restaurant and then, five years later, the depression starts.
Nicole Kelly:I remember you said that so the drop was going to be the stock market crash.
Patrick Kelly:Yeah right, it's going to be. What's his name? The villain the voodoo character, maybe getting pulled down into hell.
Nicole Kelly:Maybe you'll have to tell me because I will not be going on that road. I don't do those rides.
Patrick Kelly:I got you on once.
Nicole Kelly:It's true, I went on a one time and it was terrifying.
Patrick Kelly:We have a picture.
Nicole Kelly:It's great.
Patrick Kelly:You should post it on your Instagram.
Nicole Kelly:I'll post it on my.
Patrick Kelly:Instagram. Yeah, it was good times.
Nicole Kelly:So we were just talking about, are there any anti-Semitic depictions of characters in Disney films? Because we obviously have racism against black people showing up in films like Dumbo and Song of the South. So we did a little research and apparently in the 1932 cartoon the Three Little Pigs, which we all know the story of that, the big bad wolf he disguises himself as a Jewish peddler. Now I have never seen this cartoon, but I know the story of the Three Little Pigs I'm pretty sure.
Patrick Kelly:I've seen it, but it was probably like seven, not this version, not when it came out, but when I saw it.
Nicole Kelly:So when it came out, you look pretty good for it.
Patrick Kelly:I mean, I have a good cream regimen. To tell me about that, yeah.
Nicole Kelly:So we Google imaged this and the image was changed. I think it's what, 16 years after the original film?
Patrick Kelly:Well, I mean, if you look at the years, the original movie came out in 32, then they did a revised animation version in 48.
Nicole Kelly:So you can Google image this just like we did, and the original version looks like an anti-Semitic advertisement out of magazines like Disturber, which is the Stormer, the Stormtrooper. It was a really anti-Semitic magazine or newspaper that was in Nazi Germany, so it's pretty. I would say this is pretty anti-Semitic actually.
Patrick Kelly:I mean look, he's got a giant nose. He looks like.
Nicole Kelly:Gonzo from the Muppets. Yeah, I mean, and he's wearing glasses and he's got like, he's going like he's got a beard and he's got like it's that. I mean it's a hat, but it looks like a skull cap.
Patrick Kelly:He's wearing what looks like a small yarmulke with a bill on it.
Nicole Kelly:Yeah, and he's fat and he's kind of going er, er, er and he was like you know, you could just hear the noise that he's making.
Patrick Kelly:Right.
Nicole Kelly:I just it's so weird.
Patrick Kelly:Well, his shoulders are shrugged and his hands are out, like like he's. He's asking a question, yeah.
Nicole Kelly:No, this is like legitimate, like looks like Nancy propaganda. If you would show this to me, I said, oh, this is absolutely something that would have been in Nazi Germany. I just want to know why the big bad wolf wanted to be a Jewish peddler Like. Why is that? Why is that? I mean maybe we'll have to try to find the original version to watch it. Yeah.
Patrick Kelly:Um, clearly there was, you know, pushback some pushback or you know, hey look. The Holocaust affected a lot of people's opinions on anti-Semitism and its depictions and media and entertainment. And maybe they saw this and went, hey, we should revise it.
Nicole Kelly:And so clearly they did a new version of the little wolf with some like granny glasses on.
Patrick Kelly:And yeah, I mean the revision is basically whatever mask or thing he's wearing over his head for this costume in the. In the original one it now just looks like the wolf's face with some glasses and a little hat.
Sherman Brothers Medley:Nothing.
Nicole Kelly:He's nothing that looks overtly anti-Semitic. But this is pretty problematic. I it makes. I mean, I guess, because Song of the South wasn't an animated thing, they like the whole thing. They couldn't just going to go back and fix it like they did with this.
Patrick Kelly:Well, I don't think. I mean, there's no way.
Nicole Kelly:No, they couldn't. They had to change the entire movie.
Patrick Kelly:Well, also, I don't think it's. It's a cartoon about the three little pigs. This was clearly some gag or bit within it, not the core story. It wasn't about the wolf being a Jewish peddler.
Nicole Kelly:I mean, maybe that's his villain, villain origin story that nobody wanted to buy his, his goods because his little brushes his little brush. He's got brushes, I don't know what.
Patrick Kelly:He's wearing a. It looks like a like over around his neck with a rope, a board, and attached to the board are these looks like brushes and scrubbers.
Nicole Kelly:He's a peddler.
Patrick Kelly:Yeah, oh my God, this is so so he's like a door-to-door salesman trying to sell brushes.
Nicole Kelly:He's got like a big beard it's, so this is terrible.
Patrick Kelly:Yeah, I mean it's, it's pretty bad, that one's pretty bad.
Nicole Kelly:We also didn't talk about Peter Pan.
Patrick Kelly:Peter Pan is.
Nicole Kelly:Very problematic because they're literally red, like the, the Native American chief is literally red. And did they sing a song? They sing a song called what makes a red man red.
Patrick Kelly:Yes, what makes the red man red other than tiger Lily? Tiger Lily is not red.
Nicole Kelly:No, but the other Native Americans are red.
Patrick Kelly:Tiger Lily is also the only girl that's true In the in the in the movie that lives in Neverland.
Nicole Kelly:That is true. Yeah Well, Tinkerbell's a girl, but she's a fairy.
Patrick Kelly:Right, well, human girl.
Nicole Kelly:Yeah.
Patrick Kelly:I mean I then again I'm assuming that the they're considering the Native Americans human in Neverland.
Nicole Kelly:I would hope so, you know.
Patrick Kelly:Um other. I guess you could also count the mermaids, but I don't count them as humans.
Nicole Kelly:They're not humans, yeah.
Patrick Kelly:And then you could go into, you know, of course, with our era of Disney films, with the Disney villains, which a lot of.
Nicole Kelly:I did not realize this until I spoke to somebody who's gay, that they're all gay.
Patrick Kelly:Well, yes, or, as as I've read online, gay coded. You know characters, it's just. But I never, I never realized this.
Nicole Kelly:And someone was like oh yeah, like I definitely as a kid was like, yeah, that that's yeah.
Patrick Kelly:I was actually having a conversation with, uh, someone today about this, and I think that there are times when art parallels life, but not necessarily intentionally.
Nicole Kelly:Do you think it's because a lot of the animators would have been queer at this time, or the writers?
Patrick Kelly:No, I, but then again, you know we're talking about villain characters, who I think are inherently more flamboyant than a villain in a story is just, I think, inherently more flamboyant than other characters in the same story. So I think that already lends itself to that, but I think of this within the context of comic books. If you're reading as a straight person the Batman comic book, you're not seeing.
Nicole Kelly:Are you talking about Batman and Robin's relationship?
Patrick Kelly:Yeah, if you're especially the original from like the original, or he's like a child. Well, yeah, and there he's his ward. Yeah, they share the same bed together.
Nicole Kelly:And all of these. They share the same bed.
Patrick Kelly:They at one point shared the same bed together. They would like have sleepovers and stuff.
Song of the South Medley:Okay.
Patrick Kelly:And as a straight kid, what reading that comic?
Nicole Kelly:book.
Patrick Kelly:you're like, that's whatever You're just like, yeah, well, they're like brothers and they're fighting crime together and dressing up in costumes and having a great time. And if you're reading it in the 1950s, 60s, you know, lead up to, you know campy, Adam West, era Batman, You're probably you're reading that stuff. You're not seeing any of the homoerotic relationship there. But if you're gay and reading this stuff, or queer and reading this stuff, you see all of that and it's not necessarily wrong. You reading into that and seeing that stuff is true, but it's also true that they're not those things.
Patrick Kelly:At the same time, I think a great quote comes from Mark Hamill when he was asked very early on if Luke Skywalker was gay and he said maybe. He said I think if you see him as gay, he's gay. If you see him as straight, he's straight. It's never distinctly said what he is. So if you're watching this and that's what you take away from my performance or the storyline that we're trying to tell I think right, run with that. I think people can see a lot of things in stuff that's not necessarily created distinctively at that moment by that creator.
Nicole Kelly:I think the exception is Ursula, because she's clearly based off of Divine.
Patrick Kelly:Well, yeah, but that's because of Alan Menken and Howard.
Nicole Kelly:Ashford no, but I think that's the exception. Clearly, this character is supposed to be a drag queen.
Patrick Kelly:Yeah, they specifically wanted that character to look and be like that, but also Ursula was the archetype, I think, for the modern Disney villain.
Nicole Kelly:That's true. It was kind of like the beginning of the new Disney renaissance in. I think Little Mermaid was 89.
Patrick Kelly:Yeah, but I mean think of all the villains that came after Scar.
Nicole Kelly:Hades.
Patrick Kelly:Jafar.
Nicole Kelly:Very flamboyant.
Patrick Kelly:Well, yeah, it also kind of leans into that.
Nicole Kelly:Well then, why did Jafar want to marry Jasmine? Oh, because he wanted to be king.
Patrick Kelly:He wanted to be Sultan.
Nicole Kelly:He wanted to be a lavender marriage, so he could be Sultan.
Patrick Kelly:Yeah, I mean, I don't think it was because he, because he liked Jasmine.
Nicole Kelly:See I always thought it was like because he wanted to get with Jasmine.
Patrick Kelly:Well, there was something a little like kind of you know dirty about the whole thing.
Nicole Kelly:Well, didn't she were like a like her, her outfit turns red at one point. It's very sexy.
Patrick Kelly:Well, that's the whole thing. I mean. She does come on to him to distract him.
Nicole Kelly:Yeah, I don't, I don't. I mean, she's kind of like a person who plays into it.
Patrick Kelly:It didn't. Yeah, I mean look maybe, maybe.
Nicole Kelly:Jafar's, you know bisexual, he likes both.
Patrick Kelly:Yeah, I mean, maybe he's just an equal opportunist when it comes to that.
Nicole Kelly:So just to kind of sum up, someone who worked with Walt talking about racism, floyd Norman, the studios first black animator, who worked closely with Disney in the 50s and 60s, said Not once did I observe a hint of the racist behavior Walt Disney was of after his death. His treatment of people and by this I mean all people can only be called exemplary. So to kind of sum up what I discovered, he was not anti-Semitic, he was not racist. He was, if anything, kind of a product of his time and racially insensitive.
Patrick Kelly:So you can all go to Disney, yeah, but I would say you could probably argue that was 98% of most Americans of that era Not making excuses for that, but that was it's really we talk about this a lot.
Nicole Kelly:it's really hard to judge people in the past by today's social norms and what's acceptable, Because if we're looking at people in like the 1500s or the 1600s and trying to judge, you know their actions based on 2024, and that's really weird to say now, because it's 2024, that you can't do that.
Patrick Kelly:No, you can't. I think that is to return this back to the opening subject of Nazism. That is what is so horrifying about things like the Holocaust.
Patrick Kelly:Because it was in modern times, because it was in modern times and Western culture should have known better at least by that time. Yeah, and hence why it is so reprehensible and deep, dark stuff that I think takes a long time to lessen and wash away. And it's important to, I think, not just know the history unabashedly, where you don't need to sugarcoat things, you can say exactly how it happened and what happened. But in that context as well, you need to put yourself in that situation and that empathy for that. I remember hearing a sociologist say once that you were living in Nazi Germany in the 1930s and you think you wouldn't have been a Nazi. Then you're fooling yourself.
Nicole Kelly:Which is scary especially with everything that's happening right now. So my conclusion is that you can go to Disneyland and watch Cinderella without feeling guilty that it was created by somebody who had anti-Semitic views. I am very relieved that I don't have to feel guilty about that. So this has been Sheebrew in the city and I'm Nicole Kelly.
Patrick Kelly:And I'm Patrick Kelly.
Nicole Kelly:Thank you for joining us. If you like what you listen to, please subscribe and follow me on Instagram, and I'm on TikTok now.
Patrick Kelly:Great and Patreon.
Nicole Kelly:Patreon don't forget Patreon.
Song of the South Medley:Zippity-A. Wonderful feeling, wonderful day. Yes, Zippity-Doo-Dah, Zippity-A.
