Sheet Music? Song of the South

IMDB is reporting that Disney may at long last be releasing Song of the South on video/DVD, despite years of objections that the film perpetuates racial stereotypes. As Patricia A. Turner has written: "Disney's version [as opposed to the source material by Joel Chandler Harris] seems to take place during a surreal time when Blacks lived on slave quarters on a plantation, worked diligently for no visible reward and considered Atlanta a viable place for an old Black man to set out for."

Disney, however, claims it merely wants to survive as a corproate entity in the Age of Bush and please the very Red South. Tentative release date for the DVD is Martin Luther King Day, 2006.

Disney did say that to soften the possibly offensive subtext of the film, it would ask for a viewer of the DVD to end the experience as follows:

1) hold hands in the air above your head;
2) scream;
3) toss a glass of water into your face.