Essay Week 6: Brer Story Retold

For this week I wanted to see the African take on an old favorite of mine - Brer Rabbit. Not many people know this but Disney actually made a movie about Brer Rabbit, it’s called “Song of the South.” It was my favorite movie as a child. Unfortunately the movie was banned in the United States for reasons I am not too sure about. Just about everyone knows the song Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah, so it was interesting seeing where an old favorite originated. 

What I find to be so interesting about these tales is their slave origin. They are African-American tales that are spoken in a certain dialect and framed by “Uncle Remus” who is an old African-American man, then he his telling the stories to a young white boy in Georgia. While reading the stories it felt as though Uncle Remus was in the room telling the stories to you because he would make references to things in the present at times. It would be as if I were telling you about someone who saw a Native American statue and then said that it was like the one on Oklahoma University’s campus near the clock tower. This allows the reader to feel present in the storytelling.

The dialect was what I found to be most difficult when reading these. Sometimes it seemed impossible to understand what it was talking about. It was like slang on steroids! However, I understand that these are classic tales and are written this way due to the culture of the time. That was how these stories were originally told and spoken. For one, after each character would talk it would say “sez” then the characters name then “sezee.” I found that to be incredibly interesting because that would be the equivalent to saying, “said Jessica, said she.” It was difficult but all very interesting and fun in the end. 

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by NarnMindWalker