Another thing that’s interesting about this scene is that none of the men have faces. Even in transition scenes, we see white men sitting on top of the trains, animals moving around, and even clowns making random noises, but we never see the black men again. Throughout the whole movie, we never hear a black man talk-and actually, we never see a black man at all outside this musical number. We also never hear a black man speak throughout the whole movie, but we do hear almost every single white man speak, thus convincing me that a white man is giving these black men commands offscreen. With happy hearts, ‘It’s circus day today'”Įach line gets progressively worse until the song eventually ends with an off-screen man yelling “Grab the rope you hairy ape!” There is no doubt in my mind that it’s a white man yelling at a black man, given the fact that the man yelling has a higher-pitched voice than the rest, and we see a black man catch a rope. The cigar part gets brought back up later during the Jim Crow scene-yes Jim Crow. And, even when they do get paid, the writers imply that they waste it on random items, spending their money on alcohol and cigars.
We know that work without pay is slavery. The lyrics only get worse from here: The men continue to sing about how much they love their “work.” I say “work” in quotations here because the men mention later in the song that they don’t get paid, nor do they care. I don’t believe that the word “slave” here was accidental, given the fact that it’s all black men singing, who we know were used to doing the heavy-lifting during slavery. The next few lines talk about how the men work tirelessly throughout the night but are totally fine with it because that’s what they love to do, apparently, so there is no problem with it.
Jim crow dumbo how to#
It was a well-known assumption that many black people didn’t know how to read or write in the 1940s because they were never taught, and the writers of this song used that knowledge as a “cute” added rhyme for their song. While they start to set up the tent for the upcoming circus, a beat and melody start to work their way into the scene using the sounds made from construction, titled “The Song of Roustabouts.” As soon as you hear this song, it will throw you off because the opening line states a well-known black stereotype. Approximately 13 minutes into Dumbo, a group of burly black men exits the back of a train cart.
Jim crow dumbo movie#
For most people, this meant-spoiler ahead-skipping over the scene when Bambi’s mother is shot or the scene when Mufasa dies, but for me, that meant skipping the scene in the 1941 movie Dumbo where faceless black men sing about how much they loved slavery. But, when we went to summer camps, we would finally see those scenes in all their glory-or lack thereof. Many kids can remember that, at some point, their parents skipped certain scenes from a movie with little to no explanation why. At some point in everyone’s life, we have all seen at least one classic Disney movie, ranging from Cinderella to Peter Pan.
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