Archive for the ‘Tar Baby’ Category

President Obama, Doug Lamborn, and Dealing with the Wonderful Tar-Baby Story

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This week Brer Rabbit seemed to take President Barack Obama by storm.

First, Representative Doug Lamborn (R-CO) likened the president to a “tar baby.” Then, Pat Buchanan said “don’t throw me in that briar patch” shortly before referring to the President as “boy.”

The terms stem from “The Wonderful Tar-Baby Story” and “How Mr. Rabbit Was Too Sharp For Mr. Fox” recorded by Joel Chandler Harris. In case you’re rusty, here are both stories told together (as they usually are) by Akbar Imhotep:

The phrase Akbar uses in the story and the phrase we heard from Rep. Lanborn are different.

The tar baby of Akbar’s story didn’t carry a derogatory connotation when it was told over the course of generations between enslaved Africans. Nor did it carry that connotation when Harris first heard the story while working on a plantation, nor when he wrote the story down at the Atlanta Constitution.

“Tar baby,” however, has evolved into a derogatory term when used in an insulting way. In fact, its connotation reaches so far and so far afield of its original definition that it’s difficult to say in conversation without whispering.

Just so we’re clear — I think Rep. Lamborn’s comment was offensive and intended to be offensive. Enough politicians have used the term (Mitt Romney & John McCain, for instance) that Lamborn knew the whirlwind of criticism and publicity he was entering. It’s shameless to insult President Obama through racist epithets and unfortunate to further hold America’s greatest folklore hostage with political rhetoric. (I’m less sure about Buchanan’s bumbling.)

Most media outlets that I know about have covered either the “tar baby” story or the “briar patch” one. Miss Nannie saw the story on The View, and then 50 Cent let loose on his twitter account.

While I’m thrilled that Brer Rabbit is getting a lot of attention, I’ve gotta say it’s near impossible to combat so much negative misinformation. If you run into 50 Cent, politely refresh his memory on Brer Rabbit.

You can imagine the “tar baby” is a bizarre problem to have for a small house museum dedicated to preserving the legacy of Joel Chandler Harris and the heritage of African American folklore Everyone knows it’s bad, but few are clear on its origins.

We’ve come up with two strategies at the Wren’s Nest to set the record straight about this particular Brer Rabbit story and the 190 Brer Rabbit folk tales that Harris collected —

(1) Tell our entire story. Be it through storytelling performances or research like Everything You’ve Heard About Uncle Remus Is Wrong, we won’t shy away from the controversy or the awesomeness of Brer Rabbit

(2) Change the story that’s being told by bringing the legacy of Joel Chandler Harris to the 21st century. This means instituting the KIPP Scribes Program, which pairs professional writers with the 5th graders to record an important family story. It also means collaborating with the Atlanta Opera to develop their first ever commissioned work and uplift African American folklore in new ways. Or partnering with StoryCorps to record the stories of our neighbors.

Other, less publicized strategies include “drinking beers at key moments,” “sighing quite a bit,” and remembering that sometimes controversy can be a good thing.

Otherwise, I can only describe this particular situation as “a difficult problem that is only aggravated by attempts to solve it.”

What else can we do? What else should we do? What would you do?

MARTA’s Controversial Yellow Line

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Photo courtesy of Hyku / CC BY 2.0

Yesterday the AJC reported that MARTA is in some hot water with the Center for Pan Asian Community Services regarding its (relatively) new “yellow” line that terminates in Doraville. Since part of the yellow line runs through an area with a sizable Asian population, some have taken offense.  Here’s MARTA’s rail map, for reference.

Creative Loafing contributor Andisheh Nouraee has taken the opportunity to tweet about the controversy (1, 2, 3):

This reminds me of two things –

1. The time my friend criticized this blog for use of the phrase “calling a spade a spade.”
2. The time that “tar baby” has been appropriated as a racial slur.

Did you know that “spade” is derogatory in some circumstances?  I didn’t.  Did you know that “tar baby” is derogatory in some circumstances?   Probably so.   Does that mean I’m insensitive for calling “a spade a spade” or retelling the most famous African-American folk tale or riding the yellow line to Doraville?

Unless my token asian friends tell me differently, I’m just going to assume this is being blown way out of proportion.  As the article points out, MARTA isn’t exactly blameless here and had some warning about potential unease, but let’s be reasonable: does this mean the stop lights along that same corridor are red, racist, and green?

What about when we tell “The Wonderful Tar-Baby Story” in our (predominately African-American) neighborhood — is it more racist here than if we told it in (mostly white) Avondale?  No — that’d be like saying the crackers at Kroger in Alpharetta are more racist than the crackers at Kroger on Cascade Road.

Yellow is a primary color, y’all.  It’s also a Coldplay song.  And, yes, it’s also a slur.  But just because a word is sometimes hurtful doesn’t mean we should banish it to the depths of the Disney vault, never to see the light of day again. It’s a slippery slope, folks.

Related: Tar Baby in Classic Saturday Night Live Sketch

President Obama Born, Raised in the Briar Patch

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At least, that’s what The Economist reckons, in regard to delaying immigration reform until an election year –

The conventional wisdom now seems to be that Mr Obama is hesitating to go ahead with a “controversial”, “polarising” bill that will doubtless engender “fierce opposition”. As Brer Rabbit would say, please, don’t throw me in that briar patch!

So if President Obama is playing the role of Brer Rabbit, what does that make Fox News?

I’d also like to point out that the title of this post has nothing to do with birth certificates.  I am certain there are briar patches in Hawaii.

For more context, here’s one of our storytellers, Donald Griffin, telling the famous story about Brer Rabbit, the Tar-Baby, and the Briar Patch.

The Wonderful Tar-Baby Story

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Slavery Mural at the Georgia Department of Agriculture

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Yesterday’s AJC featured an article on the slavery mural that’s prominently featured at the Georgia Department of Agriculture.

The mural is part of a visual timeline that commemorates the history of agriculture in Georgia.  Many have questioned the appropriateness of this particular image, completed in 1956.

The article is well-worth your time, but I’ll go ahead and give you the central question — if the history is painful, should it be treated differently than the history that’s not as painful?

My answer is: of course, dummies!*  This argument is all about context.  If you’re going to, say, the new Illinois Holocaust Museum or the pending Center for Civil and Human Rights Museum, you know what you’re getting into.

If you’re looking to talk to someone about peanuts (or whatever a visitor might do at the Department of Agriculture), an image of slavery might (understandably) be jarring.

This problem would be easily solved with a respectful, permanent, and visible explanation on display nearby instead of a photocopied handout.

In a parallel vein, if our museum didn’t explain anything about the phrase “tar baby,” folks might also infer that the term “reinforces an image of blacks’ subservience to white people.”  But when our storytellers explain that the tar baby stories descend from the African “sticky hair” stories via enslaved Africans, it presents a totally different perspective.

Thanks for the link, jamieg.  And photograph courtesy of Kimberly Smith for the AJC.

* I am, of course, referring to the royal “dummies.”

Wren’s Nest Visitor Drops Brer Rabbit Album With Dialect

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Today a gentleman visiting from California stopped in for our Buy-1-Get-1-Free Spring Break (Woo!) Storytelling Extravaganza.  Naturally, he was delighted.

After the tour, he handed me a CD’s worth of Brer Rabbit stories that he recorded. Here, take a listen –

Stephen Allman – The Wonderful Tar-Baby Story

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I was surprised to find out that Stephen isn’t a professional storyteller.  The production quality is great, he has a wonderful voice, and he can tell a good story.  The folks that heard his versions here were disappointed he didn’t have CDs for sale.

Stephen was struck by the Brer Rabbit stories he heard as a child, often told to him in Gullah or Geechee dialects.  So unlike our storytellers, Stephen has employed dialect in these versions, like Joel Chandler Harris did when originally recorded the stories.

To some, this is the most controversial aspect of Harris’s work.

The argument goes something like this — Harris’s use of dialect is insulting and stereotypical, especially from someone who has essentially hijacked and homogenized an important portion of African-American culture.  He stinks.

Stephen Allman – The Briar Patch

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To others, employing dialect is one of the most important parts of Harris’s work.

Their argument goes like this — Harris carefully preserved a vital part of culture, speech, and history, while also becoming one of the first Americans to present black culture to a wide audience with respect.  He should have a halo when you picture him.

What do you think of Stephen’s stories?  Think we should sell his CD at the Wren’s Nest?

What about the dialect in the stories?  Does it make you smile?  Does it make you cringe?

Does it matter that Stephen is white?  Would your perception be different if he were black?  Is the presentation politically correct or politically incorrect?  Does that matter?

Previously:

• Is Uncle Remus Racist?
• Gullah Geechee in the Economist and the Super Bowl Pandas

Illustrations and Music from Jump! — the Brer Rabbit Adaptation by Van Dyke Parks and Barry Moser

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Have you heard of Van Dyke Parks?

He’s the musical genius from Mississippi who wrote and recorded SMiLE with Brian Wilson.  He turned down joining The Byrds.  He’s arranged for Danger Mouse …and just about everyone else.

Parks also wrote the score for a musical and children’s book (along with Malcolm Jones) called Jump! based on the Brer Rabbit stories in the early 1980s.  He followed Jump! (the book) with Jump Again!

Both books have been at my mom’s house ever since I was little, but I never bothered to pick them up.  I grew up with enough Brer Rabbit, okay?

On Monday I was at my mom’s house in a hazy, food-poisoned delirium and I stumbled across both books.  Renowned illustrator Barry Moser provided the water color illustrations.  And boy howdy, these are easily my favorite Brer Rabbit illustrations.  I can’t believe these books have been staring me in the face for all these years.

I’ve included 9 illustrations below, but there are plenty more where these came from.  Make sure you click ‘em for full size versions.  Listen to the title track from Jump! while you take a gander to really do it up right.

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Miss Meadow’s Place is my favorite.  You just don’t see houses of ill repute with big Coke signs out front anymore.

I couldn’t find these books on any publishers’ website, so I don’t think they’re still in print.  Stinks.  We would make a fortune selling them.  They’re just wonderful.

Also, how do we get Jump! the musical produced in Atlanta?  Or, even better, how could we get Van Dyke Parks to play a concert in our back amphitheatre?  Maybe we could bring Barry Moser to the Decatur Book Festival?  Got any schemes to share?

For more on Van Dyke Parks and Jump! check this article from Musician magazine in 1985.

The Blagojevich Tar Baby

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If there’s a more apt description of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, I can’t think of it.

I wonder if the cartoonist, Pat Oliphant, will hear any criticism about using the phrase tar baby.  Though the use of tar baby is spot-on in the Joel Chandler Harris connotation, readers of this blog know how folks can flip out whenever someone says it.

Thanks for sending the cartoon along, Deb.

Related:

• Tar Baby Is Alive and Well on the Internet
• Tar Baby in Classic Saturday Night Live Sketch
• The Black Addams Family

The Howard School Brings the Adorable and the Brer Rabbit Stories

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First of all, Happy Halloween!  I hope you’re having a spooktacular day.  We totally are.

The Howard School visited today, and brought a hearty amount of awesomeness in the form of 21 second graders (we think).  They were a hoot.

Nannie and Jeri gave them a tour of the Wren’s Nest, Donald gave them a performance of the Brer Rabbit stories, and I provided them with a mess of Brer Lion t-shirts.  Lain sat around and put his feet up.

In return, the kids performed their own versions of the Brer Rabbit stories on our stage.

The children had crafted papier-mâché masks of various characters and “acted along” as their teachers read from The Classic Tales of Brer Rabbit.

Here’s one of the masks, up close and personal.

Below is Brer Rabbit (and family–you can understand the need for poetic license when you have 21 fidgety players) stumbling upon the tar baby.

Pretty convincing, if I do say so.

My favorite part of the performances were when the students, instructed to repeat after their teacher, would boisterously yell stage directions.  For example:

TEACHER: (with repeat-after-me emphasis) And then Brer Fox said, puffing up his chest, “I’m–”

2-3 CHILDREN: (with passion) PUFFING UP HIS CHEST!

TEACHER: (chuckling) I’m going to cook you in a stew!

1 CHILD: (timidly) I’m going to cook you in a stew?

I loved it.  Thanks for a great day, Howard School!

Disney’s 1956 Joel Chandler Harris Tribute

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This tribute to Joel Chandler Harris aired on the television show “Disneyland” on January 18, 1956 to coincide with the theatrical re-release of Song of the South.  Walt Disney himself hosted the program.

The video concludes with the Song of the South version of “The Wonderful Tar-Baby Story” (37:45).

Items of note–

1.  Young Joel Chandler Harris is played by David Stollery, who went on to design the Toyota Celica A40 series in 1978.  Thank you, David.

2.  Joseph Addison Turner is depicted as Colonel Sanders himself.  In reality he was probably 35 or so when he hired Harris.

See what I mean?

3.  My apologies if this video gets taken down.  If I go to jail for posting this, please call my mom.

Tropic Thunder Starring Uncle Remus, I Mean Robert Downey Jr.

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On Friday Tropic Thunder, the action-satire directed by Ben Stiller, opened in theaters.

Robert Downey Jr. stars in the film and plays Kirk Lazarus, an absurd method actor who undergoes skin pigmentation treatment to better portray a black man on screen.

My “Uncle Remus” Google Alert has been blowing up ever since.  From CNN, and echoed by a few others (1, 2):

“Downey’s blackface performance is an appalling mixture of Mr. T and Uncle Remus, but at the same time he endows the actor with enough straight critical intelligence to appreciate the severity of their situation.”

Downey’s character, Kirk Lazarus, creates a seemingly tough (like Mr. T) and sagacious (like Uncle Remus) onscreen persona.  But since Lazarus is method acting (and rarely shooting the movie-within-the-movie), he’s ridiculed for failing to stop acting like a black war hero when the cameras aren’t rolling.

So that part of the comparison is fair.  But it’s unfortunate that the CNN journalist ignores the intelligence of Uncle Remus.  No offense, Mr. T.

I doubt it was a choice–Uncle Remus is so often connoted as shuffling and dimwitted, no matter what was originally written.  It’s not unlike what’s happened to the connotation of “tar baby” recently.

When Joel Chandler Harris wrote the Uncle Remus stories in the late 19th Century, Remus was a significant departure from other black characters in popular fiction.  Uncle Remus was a philosopher revered by the author, not a minstrel presented only for cheap laughs.

In 1986 Ralph Ellison wrote:

“Aesop and Uncle Remus had taught us that comedy is a disguised form of philosophical instruction; and especially when it allows us to glimpse the animal instincts lying beneath the surface of our civilized affectations.”

Reading about Uncle Remus in movie reviews, you’d have no idea what Ellison was talking about.

Film critics and historical characters aside, if you like extremely inappropriate jokes and meta-fictional hijinks (like the staff of the Wren’s Nest), Tropic Thunder is for you.