It is set in the post-slavery era. There are lyrics that the chorus sings about how you should be happy where you are and how lucky you are if your old master lets you stay. And they all sound so happy after working their fingers to the bone in the sun all day and going back to their little shack that's barely standing.
IIUC, that kind of stuff is the main objection. Not the mere depiction of workers on the plantation in the post-slavery era, which everyone agrees there certainly were.
And I don't see what the big deal is with that kind of stuff that you mentioned. The idea of being thankful and content in whatever lot you find yourself is an idea that's been around for ages. If you find yourself in a sucky situation, you can either be bitter about it, or you can learn to be thankful for what you
do have and to make the best of your current situation.
I think part of the problem is that we, in America, have become spoiled. We have our easy life in our recliners with our remote control digitial TV's and our surround sound systems. We have our nice cars and our refrigerators just a few steps away from the TV, and we can drive home from our nice job back to our nice house, take off our pants, kick back in the recliner, turn on some tube, and not have to move until it's time to go grab a drink from the fridge or run to the bathroom, which is indoors by the way. So we think that anyone else who doesn't have it so good is supposed to pine away in bitterness and self pity, because we can't conceive of anything less than the life of ease that we have.
But all through history, there have been people in all parts of the world that don't have the cushy life that we enjoy over here, and there are still lots of places in the world today where people have it really rough. Whether we're talking about oppressed minorities in Nazi Europe, or Soviet Russia, or black slaves in the American South, or poor, starving people in Africa, there have been those people in all these groups who have managed to keep their chin up and be happy and thankful even under these circumstances. I don't see what's wrong with SoTS portraying Uncle Remus and his friends in this way.
Especially when you consider that many of the slaves, once freed, had no skills other than hard labor, and had nowhere to go. So I'm sure many of them were happy and thankful to be allowed to live in their former masters' home. They had food to eat, a roof over their head and, in some cases, even had a close relationship with their masters. And even though the North was adamant about ending slavery, when it came down to it, they didn't want the blacks up there, so the former slaves couldn't just get their freedom and then move into a nice apartment and start work at Walmart the next morning. Many of them were better off staying on the plantation where they had worked so many years.
Oh well, I've rambled enough. The simple question asked was "should SoTS be released on DVD" and I vote yes.
