Song of the South dvd

DevoVamp · Post by **DevoVamp** » Thu Dec 07, 2006 12:39 am

Hey, guys! I know I've been MIA for ages and ages, and I promise to put up a note to let you know all the gorey details (and I mean that literally, oddly enough!) asap.

But, just in haste, I wanted some advice. I wanted to buy a dvd copy of Song of the South (the Disney dvd) for my sister for Xmas. She doesn't have a region free dvd player, and I understand that there are lots of places on the 'net that are selling them cheaper than on ebay, but I don't know of a legit site where I could buy a copy.

What sites would you recomend? I'm back in Canada now, by the way.

THANKS!!!!!

Cloud · Post by **Cloud** » Thu Dec 07, 2006 12:39 am

Have you asked her about it?

DevoVamp · Post by **DevoVamp** » Thu Dec 07, 2006 12:41 am

I can't, Cloud. After all, that would kind of ruin the fun, wouldn't it?

Cloud · Post by **Cloud** » Thu Dec 07, 2006 12:41 am

wELCOME cONSUMER · Post by **wELCOME cONSUMER** » Thu Dec 07, 2006 9:41 am

Song of the South is a movie that Disney will never allow to be printed onto DVD in any country, due to the potentially racist subject material. Any versions you see for sale online are bootlegs people have ripped from a long lost out of print VHS. The picture and sound quality reflect this. Everyone online is selling basically the same version, burned onto a DVD-R. If you're DVD player can play that medium, then you're fine. Modern DVD players shouldn't have a problem playing DVD-Rs, which are non-region coded. Sellers, in an effort to appear legitimate, label their product as "region 1."

I bought my own from a comic convention vendor who was selling bootlegs of old movies and TV series not officially released on DVD. My recommendation would be to pick who you feel to be the best seller of the bunch and order it. When it comes in, test it immediately. It will most likely play, but check it for quality of play. If the DVD is burned poorly, then it might skip and show artifacting issues.

Disney will also never release the original version of Fantasia. The ironic thing about Song of the South is that most of Disney's iconic songs come from this movie, such as "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah."

Good luck! Let me know if you need more assistance.

Cloud · Post by **Cloud** » Thu Dec 07, 2006 9:41 am

Do you like and sound quality reflect this?

wELCOME cONSUMER · Post by **wELCOME cONSUMER** » Thu Dec 07, 2006 10:10 am

This is a prime example of someone selling something that, 1) they know to be fake or 2) they honestly don't know it's fake. And a lot of misinformation is fostered because of sellers like that. That DVD is a bootleg, Song of the South has never been on DVD and never will be.

Bootleg on eBay

eddiefb3 · Post by **eddiefb3** » Fri Dec 08, 2006 12:45 am

well said wc. I have seen lots of bootlegs of the movie on ebay...Howver i havent bought one...Something about buying something illegal doesnt feel right to me. But the way you said it makes me want to go and buy one, just to go against disney

hehe

Cloud · Post by **Cloud** » Fri Dec 08, 2006 12:45 am

And. Which way is that?

Belldandy · Post by **Belldandy** » Fri Dec 08, 2006 2:53 am

wELCOME cONSUMER wrote:
Disney will also never release the original version of Fantasia.

http://disneyvideos.disney.go.com/movie ... 26803.html

They did for the 60th anniversary. Also in a 3 disk SE with Fantasia 2000 (I have that one =) )

wELCOME cONSUMER · Post by **wELCOME cONSUMER** » Fri Dec 08, 2006 9:58 am

Belldandy wrote:
wELCOME cONSUMER wrote:
Disney will also never release the original version of Fantasia.
http://disneyvideos.disney.go.com/movie ... 26803.html

They did for the 60th anniversary. Also in a 3 disk SE with Fantasia 2000 (I have that one =) )

No. The original version of Fantasia will never be released and here's why:

http://www.widescreen.org/commentaries/ ... _apr.shtml

If you don't want to read the article, just look at this image

The blue box is the pan & scan method they used to fix this scene. Another scene involving Bacchus was changed as well.

This kind of thing was extremely common in old cartoons, primarily from the Disney and Warner Brothers camps. Both companies would die before they released these kinds of properties on DVD, so I know for a fact you don't own the original Fantasia on DVD. It was never released and never will be. It would effectively destroy the reputation of the company because what was acceptable in the 1940s is not acceptable now.

Eddie, don't feel bad about bootlegs. Sometimes it's the only way you'll ever get certain things, like Song of the South.

The quality is such that if it were officially released, I'd buy it in a minute! But that's never going to happen, so I have to settle for a "decent" bootleg. Nothing compares to an official DVD taken from a master tape or scanned film.

Belldandy · Post by **Belldandy** » Sat Dec 09, 2006 3:16 am

wELCOME cONSUMER wrote:
Belldandy wrote:
wELCOME cONSUMER wrote:
Disney will also never release the original version of Fantasia.
http://disneyvideos.disney.go.com/movie ... 26803.html

They did for the 60th anniversary. Also in a 3 disk SE with Fantasia 2000 (I have that one =) )
No. The original version of Fantasia will never be released and here's why:

http://www.widescreen.org/commentaries/ ... _apr.shtml

If you don't want to read the article, just look at this image

The blue box is the pan & scan method they used to fix this scene. Another scene involving Bacchus was changed as well.

This kind of thing was extremely common in old cartoons, primarily from the Disney and Warner Brothers camps. Both companies would die before they released these kinds of properties on DVD, so I know for a fact you don't own the original Fantasia on DVD. It was never released and never will be. It would effectively destroy the reputation of the company because what was acceptable in the 1940s is not acceptable now.

Yes, I knew of the edits, but it's a bit more released then Song of the South. They won't release the original Rescuers, Aladdin, Who Framed Roger Rabbit and I'm sure a host of others, but at least they have SOME sort of DVD release from Disney.

wELCOME cONSUMER · Post by **wELCOME cONSUMER** » Sat Dec 09, 2006 10:13 am

My mention of Fantasia was directly related to the issue of stereotypical black characters in cartoons.

Jessica Rabbit being naked and Aladdin saying "all good teenagers take off your clothes" are urban legends. Aladdin was never altered. The thing about Jessica Rabbit is tricky. A frame was removed to fix the problem but they did not intentionally animate her to be nude. It's a mistake akin to the Little Mermaid "penis" cover/poster. People see and hear what they want to and sometimes Disney is forced to correct things that don't actually need it.

As far as the Rescuers, the topless woman is there and I believe Disney when they say that was done post-production and not by their studio. Just think Fight Club. I have serious doubts that Disney would single handedly undo everything they worked so hard to create. That film was obviously tampered with, especially when you consider it's a real woman inserted into an animated feature. It's never been acceptable to show nudity in a G rated cartoon, whereas the offensive "black face" jokes were acceptable at one point in our history.

Fantasia is a special case where the edits were extensive in an effort to correct something Disney did intentionally. Things that were common place then are not politically correct now. Which is why I mentioned it in this thread, because of its similarity to Song of the South. It's not the same as the examples you mention (mostly because those things are not true to begin with).

My point was, the original versions of certain films are not accessible legally. If you want to find them, out of morbid curiosity to see the actual product Disney intended for you to see, then you have to look elsewhere. Fantasia is an example of something where more than just one frame was removed or the film was tampered with by outside parties. I wasn't trying to suggest that some kind of release did not exist in some form, but the original Disney vision is gone.

DevoVamp · Post by **DevoVamp** » Sat Dec 09, 2006 8:16 pm

See, now, I was under the impression that Song WAS avaliable in Europe, since it wasn't seen in such negative terms as it would be here in North America. Some of the vhs tapes and dvd's say they are offical copies from Europe.

Now, I'm not saying that people in Europe are racist or something!! I've just realized that some words &/or images that are heavily loaded here aren't so much so over there. One example is the show that aired on A&E called "MI 5" about the British secret service. The original title in England is "Spooks" and while I'm not sure why it's called that (unless because those in MI5 are kind of like ghosts who 'haunt' their own lives, that's something I thought of) clearly A&E realized that that particular title would have a not of negative associations over on this side of the pond and so they changed it.

I also know that there are some torrent downloads for Song, are they from bootlegs as well?

By the by, sorry if this thread upsets anybody, for whatever reason. But, I think a rational, calm discussion about this stuff is the quickest and best way to combat racisim.

Something else: WC: I didn't know Fantasia had been altered, but now that you showed us the clips, I do have a vague memory of the black centaurs when I saw it in the theatre as a child. Wouldn't it have been easier to digitally edit the black centaurs to change their appearance, (making them purple or blue or something, and possibly changing the hair on the one polishing the hoof of the girl centaur) and then change some of the bigger centaurs to a more reasonable image of an african-american centaur? (African-centaur? Maybe that's a better word! Haha!) I would think it would be easier and more true to the original rather than cropping it. After all, they can do so much with computers, surely to do something like that wouldn't be all that hard!

wELCOME cONSUMER · Post by **wELCOME cONSUMER** » Sat Dec 09, 2006 9:20 pm

The bootleg, from what I can tell, was taken from a PAL version VHS. There was never a home version of any kind released in the US. As far as European DVDs, I honestly have no idea about that. I've never seen one but it's possible. I know the movie was shown recently on TV in the UK. If they did exist, they would be out of print now either way and you'd still have to resort to bootlegs. Otherwise, you could simply buy it at Amazon, right? The problem with sellers sometimes is that "import" is usually code for "bootleg."

Robert Iger stated not too long ago that Song of the South, despite being slated for possible American release, would not be coming out in the near future. I think as long as he's CEO, it won't see the light of day. It may never, but who knows.

The torrents are more than likely bootlegs as well. It just so happens to be the most readily available version of the film on the internet (for sale or otherwise) so it would stand to reason. The bootlegs are not horrible quality, they're just not DVD quality as we come to expect it now. But it's as nice as a VHS can look.

When you receive your DVD, if you do end up buying one, look at the menus. If it's a bootleg, those poorly constructed homemade menus will be obvious. The cover is another thing to look at closely. The compression of the images used is a dead give away, the printer (inkjet or laser) should also be an indication.

As far as how Disney went about editing their properties, I couldn't tell you why they went with the methods they did. Recoloring or even re-animating might've made more sense, but things like time and budget probably dictated their course of action.

My personal recommendation would be to download the torrent, if it's easy to find, seeded well and safe (virus free). Then you can see the quality for yourself. Any DVD you buy will be a copy of some other source material because the original is out of print.

Despite all of the controversy, Song of the South was the very first film produced by Walt Disney to employ professional actors. James Baskett, a black man, was the first live actor to ever be hired by Disney. The ride Splash Mountain remains one of the best known and popular attractions at Disney theme parks. The ride features all of the characters from the animated segments and several songs from the original soundtrack, like Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah. For all of the people who have ridden the ride, few have seen the movie it's based on.

The biggest problem people cite with the movie is the idyllic "master/slave" relationship it portrays. Many felt Disney missed the point of Joel Chandler Harris' original stories. Personally I like the movie and see it as no different than The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain or The Nigger of the Narcissus by Joseph Conrad. The language used prevents these great literary works to be taught in schools, which is a real shame.

You bring up a very important point. The fact that this property is available in Asian and European nations, but not America. The US is still a sensitive culture when it comes to issues of race. For example, my mention of Conrad's novella just now was probably a bit jarring. That's just something American culture still has to struggle with, but that's true for other nations too. The races may change, but the sensitivities and political issues remain the same.