SV: Brer

[bror.hellman@partena.se]

> Hi all, So the dialogues were written in southern dialects which may 
> offense the blacks. One question, why did the writer write in that 
> dialect then? If he/she's some kind of racist, i think he/she wouldn't
include 
> the dialect.
> Maybe IMO the writer was living in the southern which he/she 
> oneself used spoke in that dialect too???


Well, it's written in southern dialect because Bre'r Rabbit and the 
other folks are what usually is known as "southern hicks" or farmer/
country folks. It's an old cliché.  Even Goofy speaks similarily in
films.

It's used to depict uneducated, unsophisticated country people, 
I don't think anyone could think that Bre'r Bear is ridiculing
"black" people.


I think Disney deliberately took away that accent and stopped 
further Bre'r Rabbit stories of two reasons:

1) It's not generally nice to depict people as being more
stupid than others, at least it's not politically correct to
do so for a big multinational company with desperately tries
to uphold some sort of "correct" image.

So, in order to streamline EVERYTHING, almost ALL dialects 
and accents are toned down.

2) Bre'r Rabbit, Bre'r Bear and Bre'r Fox originally comes from
the feature film "Song of the South", which in it's turn is based
on a collection of folktales, etc. called "Uncle Remus Tales".

Well, the narrator in this movie is an old black man. Depicted in
the fashion of the time, which today is much more controversial, 
and is - in my opinion - very stereotypical.



Now, I live in Sweden, so I might have got some facts wrong, 
but this is how I understand it.

Yours:

         Bre'r Hellman