Song of the South

Zip a Dee doo Dah! Zip a Dee Day! I don’t even know if this is spelled correctly or the full version of the song. I do know that the song is released from my head at the same frequency as It’s a Small World. With a song as catchy as this it must be deeply routed in the Disney Kingdom. So, if we go through the check list. Song, Check, Ride, Check, Movie… Erm where has it gone!!

Song of the South has been “deleted” from Disney History or has it.

Author Jim Korkis, has just released his latest book covering this potentially controversial topic. The book is titled “Who’s Afraid of the Song of the South: And Other Forbidden Disney Stories” and is available from the Amazon link below.
Who’s Afraid of the Song of the South? And Other Forbidden Disney Stories

The book is divided into sections covering (in depth) the Song of the South film / Animation, Other stories and spin off from the Song of the South, then onto the Other Forbidden Stories.

Jim covers the controversy and where the film was going, where it was reigned in and where it ended up in great details. How different advisory groups had been involved in the “bad press” and view points of the film, but also how their opinions were formed before the film was released with faulted information. The view points of presented in a factual manor and allows you the reader to decided if the end result was justly formed. Jim suggests that some of the controversy stems from the timing and unclarity of the period of the film. The film is based after the Civil War during Reconstruction, while a lot of reviewers saw it as being set during the plantation days of slavery.

An eye opening read that fills in a lot of blanks, which is ideal for us Disney fans.

In Part 3 of the book Jim Korkis covers “Sex, Walt and Flubbed Films”. This alone is a big selling point for the book. Firstly sex sells and by simply mentioning it your ears have pricked up. So, lets see if these topics will an Orgy, a Suicide attempt, Venereal Disease, J. Edgar Hoover and edited history!

This section of the book ties up all those loose ends, with correcting the miss-information you may have heard or confirming it as fact. My favourite debunking is of the birth place of Mickey Mouse’s Name. I can vaguely recall watching on television a UK chat show called Wogan, hosted by Terry Wogan (a popular radio and television broadcaster). Mickey Rooney was being interviewed and one of the stories he recalls is of meeting Walt Disney and Walt offering to call this “new” character after him. The new character was Mickey Mouse and was named after Mickey Rooney…. Fact! It has to be because Mr Rooney himself said it on TV. Sadly this turns out to be an embellished story that people dine out on for years to come, until the physical facts just don’t line up.

As always Jim Korkis is a great Author and story teller and has done it again with a detailed, factual, readable story of Disney History. Available from here.

By Alan

Alan has been part of the Disney fan community since early 2000. He has worked on and built many fan websites including hiddenwdw.com and hiddendlrp.com. So If your looking for the best secrets of Walt Disney World or Secrets of the Magic Kingdom You can currently join him, Adam and Juz on the Disney Brit Podcast.

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