Uncle Remus
Encyclopedia
Fictional character
A character is the representation of a person in a narrative work of art . Derived from the ancient Greek word kharaktêr , the earliest use in English, in this sense, dates from the Restoration, although it became widely used after its appearance in Tom Jones in 1749. From this, the sense of...
, the title character and fictional narrator of a collection of African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
folktales adapted and compiled by Joel Chandler Harris
Joel Chandler Harris
Joel Chandler Harris was an American journalist, fiction writer, and folklorist best known for his collection of Uncle Remus stories. Harris was born in Eatonton, Georgia, where he served as an apprentice on a plantation during his teenage years...
, published in book form in 1881. A journalist in post-Reconstruction Atlanta, Georgia, Harris produced seven Uncle Remus books.
Structure
Uncle Remus is a collection of animal stories, songs, and oralOral tradition
Oral tradition and oral lore is cultural material and traditions transmitted orally from one generation to another. The messages or testimony are verbally transmitted in speech or song and may take the form, for example, of folktales, sayings, ballads, songs, or chants...
folklore
Folklore
Folklore consists of legends, music, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, fairy tales and customs that are the traditions of a culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared. The study of folklore is sometimes called...
, collected from Southern United States
Southern United States
The Southern United States—commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or simply the South—constitutes a large distinctive area in the southeastern and south-central United States...
blacks
Black people
The term black people is used in systems of racial classification for humans of a dark skinned phenotype, relative to other racial groups.Different societies apply different criteria regarding who is classified as "black", and often social variables such as class, socio-economic status also plays a...
. Many of the stories are didactic, much like those of Aesop
Aesop
Aesop was a Greek writer credited with a number of popular fables. Older spellings of his name have included Esop and Isope. Although his existence remains uncertain and no writings by him survive, numerous tales credited to him were gathered across the centuries and in many languages in a...
's fables and the stories of Jean de La Fontaine
Jean de La Fontaine
Jean de La Fontaine was the most famous French fabulist and one of the most widely read French poets of the 17th century. He is known above all for his Fables, which provided a model for subsequent fabulists across Europe and numerous alternative versions in France, and in French regional...
. Uncle Remus is a kindly old slave
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
who serves as a storytelling device, passing on the folktales to child
Child
Biologically, a child is generally a human between the stages of birth and puberty. Some vernacular definitions of a child include the fetus, as being an unborn child. The legal definition of "child" generally refers to a minor, otherwise known as a person younger than the age of majority...
ren gathered around him.
The stories are told in Harris's version of a Deep South
Deep South
The Deep South is a descriptive category of the cultural and geographic subregions in the American South. Historically, it is differentiated from the "Upper South" as being the states which were most dependent on plantation type agriculture during the pre-Civil War period...
slave dialect (Gullah language
Gullah language
Gullah is a creole language spoken by the Gullah people , an African American population living on the Sea Islands and the coastal region of the U.S...
). The genre of stories is the trickster
Trickster
In mythology, and in the study of folklore and religion, a trickster is a god, goddess, spirit, man, woman, or anthropomorphic animal who plays tricks or otherwise disobeys normal rules and conventional behavior. It is suggested by Hansen that the term "Trickster" was probably first used in this...
tale. At the time of Harris' publication, his work was praised for its ability to capture plantation negro
Negro
The word Negro is used in the English-speaking world to refer to a person of black ancestry or appearance, whether of African descent or not...
dialect.
Br'er Rabbit
Br'er Rabbit
Br'er Rabbit is a central figure in the Uncle Remus stories of the Southern United States. He is a trickster character who succeeds by his wits rather than by brawn, tweaking authority figures and bending social mores as he sees fit...
("Brother Rabbit") is the main character of the stories, a likable character, prone to tricks and trouble-making who is often opposed by Br'er Fox and Br'er Bear
Br'er Fox and Br'er Bear
Br'er Fox and Br'er Bear are fictional characters from the Uncle Remus folktales adapted and compiled by Joel Chandler Harris....
. In one tale, Br'er Fox constructs a lump of tar and puts clothing on it. When Br'er Rabbit comes along he addresses the "tar baby
Tar baby
The Tar-Baby is a doll made of tar and turpentine used to entrap Br'er Rabbit in the second of the Uncle Remus stories. The more that Br'er Rabbit fights the Tar-Baby, the more entangled he becomes...
" amiably, but receives no response. Br'er Rabbit becomes offended by what he perceives as Tar Baby's lack of manners, punches it, and becomes stuck. Using the phrase "tar baby" to refer to the idea of "a problem that gets worse the more one struggles against it" became part of the wider culture of the United States
Culture of the United States
The Culture of the United States is a Western culture originally influenced by European cultures. It has been developing since long before the United States became a country with its own unique social and cultural characteristics such as dialect, music, arts, social habits, cuisine, and folklore...
in the mid-20th century.
Controversy and Legacy
The animal stories were conveyed in a manner in which they were not deemed as ostensibly racist by many among the audiences of the time. By the mid-20th century, however, the dialect and the "old Uncle" stereotypeStereotype
A stereotype is a popular belief about specific social groups or types of individuals. The concepts of "stereotype" and "prejudice" are often confused with many other different meanings...
of the narrator, was considered politically incorrect and demeaning by many black people, on account of what they considered to be racist and patronizing attitudes toward blacks. Providing additional controversy is the story's context in the Antebellum south on a slave owning plantation, a setting that is portrayed in a passive and even docile manner, contrary to modern attitudes that slavery was a terrible travesty in United States history and should be portrayed as such. Nevertheless, Harris' work was, according to himself, an accurate account of the stories he heard from the slaves when he worked on a plantation as a young man. He claimed to have listened to, and memorized, the African American animal stories told by Uncle George Terrell, Old Harbert, and Aunt Crissy at the plantation; he wrote them down some years later. He acknowledged his debt to these storytellers in his fictionalized autobiography, 'On the Plantation' (1892). Many of the stories that he recorded have direct equivalents in the African oral tradition, and it's thanks to Harris that their African-American form is preserved.
Harris himself said, in the introduction to Uncle Remus, that he hoped his book would be considered:
...a sympathetic supplement to Mrs. StoweHarriet Beecher StoweHarriet Beecher Stowe was an American abolitionist and author. Her novel Uncle Tom's Cabin was a depiction of life for African-Americans under slavery; it reached millions as a novel and play, and became influential in the United States and United Kingdom...
's [author of Uncle Tom's CabinUncle Tom's CabinUncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in 1852, the novel "helped lay the groundwork for the Civil War", according to Will Kaufman....
] wonderful defense of slavery as it existed in the South. Mrs. Stowe, let me hasten to say, attacked the possibilities of slavery with all the eloquence of genius; but the same genius painted the portrait of the Southern slave-owner, and defended him.
Mark Twain
Mark Twain
Samuel Langhorne Clemens , better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist...
read the Uncle Remus stories to his children, who were awed to meet Harris himself. In his Autobiography Twain describes him thus:
He was the bashfulest grown person I have ever met. When there were people about he stayed silent, and seemed to suffer until they were gone. But he was lovely, nevertheless; for the sweetness and benignity of the immortal Remus looked out from his eyes, and the graces and sincerities of his character shone in his face.
Twain wrote that "It may be that Jim Wolf was as bashful as Harris. It hardly seems possible...." Jim Wolf being a person from the first humorous story Twain ever told—the story recorded in "Jim Wolf and the Cats".
Film and music adaptations
Feature film
In the film industry, a feature film is a film production made for initial distribution in theaters and being the main attraction of the screening, rather than a short film screened before it; a full length movie...
s. The first and best known is Walt Disney
Walt Disney
Walter Elias "Walt" Disney was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon, and philanthropist, well-known for his influence in the field of entertainment during the 20th century. Along with his brother Roy O...
's Song of the South
Song of the South
Song of the South is a 1946 American musical film produced by Walt Disney and released by RKO Radio Pictures. The film is based on the Uncle Remus cycle of stories by Joel Chandler Harris. The live actors provide a sentimental frame story, in which Uncle Remus relates the folk tales of the...
, released in 1946
1946 in film
The year 1946 in film involved some significant events.-Events:*November 21 - William Wyler's The Best Years of Our Lives premieres in New York featuring an ensemble cast including Fredric March, Myrna Loy, Dana Andrews, Teresa Wright, and Harold Russell.*December 20 - Frank Capra's It's a...
. The film was a combination of live action
Live action
In filmmaking, video production, and other media, the term live action refers to cinematography, videography not produced using animation...
and animation
Animation
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...
. Disney hired vaudeville and radio actor James Baskett
James Baskett
James Baskett was an American actor known for his portrayal of Uncle Remus, singing the song "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" in the 1946 Disney feature film Song of the South, for which he was given an Honorary Academy Award, making him the first male performer of African descent to receive an Oscar.- Career...
to portray Remus, saying: "We want [the audience] to see 'Uncle Remus' and not some actor whose personality is already known to them through other screen roles." Baskett's appearance, a large black man with a round face, contrasts with the appearance of Uncle Remus in earlier book illustrations by Frederick S. Church, A. B. Frost
A. B. Frost
Arthur Burdett Frost , was an early American illustrator, graphic artist and comics writer. He was also well known as a painter. Frost's work is well known for its dynamic representation of motion and sequence. Frost is considered one of the great illustrators in the "Golden Age of American...
, and E. W. Kemble
E. W. Kemble
Edward Winsor Kemble was an American cartoonist and illustrator. Born in Sacramento, California, his family moved to New York when he was young....
. Ralph Bakshi
Ralph Bakshi
Ralph Bakshi is an Israeli-American director of animated and live-action films. In the 1970s, he established an alternative to mainstream animation through independent and adult-oriented productions. Between 1972 and 1992, he directed nine theatrically released feature films, five of which he wrote...
's 1975 film Coonskin
Coonskin (film)
Coonskin is a 1975 American animated film written and directed by Ralph Bakshi, about an African American rabbit, fox, and bear who rise to the top of the organized crime racket in Harlem, encountering corrupt law enforcement, con artists and the Mafia...
is a satire
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
of the Disney film that adapts the Uncle Remus stories to a contemporary Harlem
Harlem
Harlem is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan, which since the 1920s has been a major African-American residential, cultural and business center. Originally a Dutch village, formally organized in 1658, it is named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands...
setting. The Adventures of Brer Rabbit
The Adventures of Brer Rabbit
The Adventures of Brer Rabbit is the title of book, a play, and a film inspired by the Uncle Remus stories. The central character's actual name is Br'er Rabbit, but the title is simplified as "Brer." The film also has the distinction to be the second film to be released by Universal Studios under...
is a 2006 direct-to video production which has hip-hop influences.
Loudon Wainwright III
Loudon Wainwright III
Loudon Snowden Wainwright III is a Grammy Award-winning American songwriter, folk singer, humorist, and actor. He is the father of musicians Rufus Wainwright, Martha Wainwright and Lucy Wainwright Roche, brother of Sloan Wainwright, and the former husband of the late folk singer Kate McGarrigle.To...
wrote and recorded the song "Black Uncle Remus" in 1972. Frank Zappa
Frank Zappa
Frank Vincent Zappa was an American composer, singer-songwriter, electric guitarist, record producer and film director. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa wrote rock, jazz, orchestral and musique concrète works. He also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed...
also recorded a song called "Uncle Remus" which appears on the album Apostrophe (')
Apostrophe (')
Apostrophe is an album by Frank Zappa, his eighteenth, released on March 22, 1974 in both stereo and quadraphonic formats. An edited version of its lead-off track, "Don't Eat the Yellow Snow", was Zappa's first chart single, reaching position 86. Apostrophe remains Zappa's biggest commercial...
(1974). The Zappa song was also recorded by band mate George Duke on his album "The Aura Will Prevail".
The Uncle Remus tales are also the basis for the 1984 Van Dyke Parks
Van Dyke Parks
Van Dyke Parks is an American composer, arranger, producer, musician, singer, author and actor. Parks is perhaps best known for his contributions as a lyricist on the Beach Boys album Smile....
album Jump.
The Boondocks
The Boondocks (TV series)
The Boondocks is an American animated series created by Aaron McGruder on Cartoon Network's late night programing block, Adult Swim, based on McGruder's comic strip of the same name...
, a comic strip and animated show, adopted the likeness of Uncle Remus in creating the character Uncle Ruckus
Uncle Ruckus
Uncle Ruckus, also known as Rev. Uncle Ruckus and Rev. Fr. Uncle Ruckus, as well as Uncle Rukus while serving at Robert Freeman's Soul Food restaurant "The Itis" , is a fictional character from the Boondocks comic strip and animated television series The Boondocks...
.
Don Williams
Don Williams
Don Williams , is an American country singer, songwriter and a 2010 inductee to the Country Music Hall of Fame. He grew up in Portland, Texas, and graduated in 1958 from Gregory-Portland High School. After seven years with the folk-pop group Pozo-Seco Singers, he began his solo career in 1971,...
refers to "Uncle Remus" putting him to bed in the song Good Ole Boys Like Me
Good Ole Boys Like Me
"Good Ole Boys Like Me" is a single by American country music artist Don Williams. Released in 1980, it was the second single from the album Portrait. The song reached #2 on the Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks chart.-Chart performance:...
.
External links
- Full text of books by Uncle Remus from Project GutenbergProject GutenbergProject Gutenberg is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks". Founded in 1971 by Michael S. Hart, it is the oldest digital library. Most of the items in its collection are the full texts of public domain books...
- Theodore Roosevelt autobiography on Brer Rabbit and his Uncle
- Short biography of Joel Chandler Harris with photograph {article by the Eatonton Literary Festival, Eatonon, Georgia)