I just found the souvenirs that I got when I visited the Uncle Remus Museum in Georgia a few years ago. I'd forgotten that I ever went. I was traveling for work when I heard about it. I thought it sounded strange and so I decided to stop in and see it.
Here's the museum's website: click here
The only context that I have for the Uncle Remus stories is from Disney's "Song of the South"-- of which I watched a bootleg copy from Japan some years back. The movie has never been released in its entirety in America because a lot of people believe its content to be racist. If you read through the museum's website, you'll see that an argument could be made either way-- either Joel Chandler Harris was mocking black slaves, supporting racist ideas, and profiting off of stories told to him by people who tended not to have a voice in the popular literature of the time... or he was documenting an important part of American history and creating a valuable anthropological record (even if he did personally believe in white supremacy).
Interesting stuff, in my opinion. Some of the stories are on the museum website, if you want to read them.
2 comments:
I love Uncle Remus stories. My dad did the best voices. The 2 places I used to ask to go to when I was little during our family trips to Georgia were Uncle Remus cabin and the Cabbage Patch museum. Great memories! I still have a cassette tape from the Remus museum.
-Amber
oh! i never went to the Cabbage Patch museum! i remember hearing about it, though. maybe my kids will want to go some day and i can live vicariously through them.
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