Dear Disney, please restore controversial scenes in upcoming Fantasia Platinum DVD/BD (1 Viewer)

[Timothy E]

I hope they do treat us to an uncensored restoration. Sleeping Beauty on Blu-Ray is exceptional and I would love to see Fantasia given the same treatment.

 

[Brian Borst]

Just make the controversial scenes available with seamless branching and add an introduction by Leonard Maltin, and it should be fine. Make sure the censored version is played by default, so nobody could see it by accident or something.
And in the worst case scenario they could just change their colors. I'm not an advocate for revisionism, but it's better than the extremely obvious zooming in the picture the way the current version does.

 

[MatthewA]

There has been controversial material available with warnings and no one has made a stink about it. IMO Disney chose to make it an issue by calling attention to it.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

For any potential re-release, I might be in a minority here, but it would be cool if they could use seamless branching to present us with the edited version of the film that shortened the narrative sections between musical segments, the version that was the one in circulation for many years and eventually released on VHS. I don't even know if I'd still enjoy seeing it that way, now used to the version that's out on DVD, but it would be a cool extra.

 

[Bob_L]

David: Do you have a source for the information that Disney, himself, was the source of the Fantasia racial edits? Considering that the scene was put on TV several times during Walt's life and he could have stopped it at that point -- and didn't -- makes me doubt its veracity. I'd be more inclined to believe that it's a latter-day fabrication of the Disney marketing department.

FWIW, having been a producer at Disney, my instinct is that you will never see Fantasia in its original form again, just as you will never see "Song of the South" in this country again. I can't imagine the Disney executive that would stick his/her neck out and green light either of these. Disney is the world's biggest PC target and an army of people watch them closely, waiting for any opportunity to be loudly and publically offended. And those people have no sense of art, no sense of history, no sense of context, and no sense of original intention (not unlike many Disney executives, in fact.)

The objective at The Walt Disney Company is to make money and they'll make just as much money with an expurgated version of "Fantasia" as with the original version, and they won't incur the "6 o' Clock News" wrath of the PC police in releasing it.

ADDITION:

And, while I generally condemn latter-day PC censorship, fact is, the positive qualities of Fantasia are there whether or not it contains pickaninny stereotypes that are, frankly, offensive in today's world. (They were offensive then, too, of course, but it was a different time, so it got a pass.) I would hope that an unaltered print of Fantasia continues to exist in the Disney archives, but I don't think they need to foist it upon the 21st century in its original form; and particularly not for this sequence. Some of Fantasia IS art, but the Pastoral Symphony section, on the whole, is kitsch.

 

[Patrick McCart]

Fantasia was edited to remove the offensive bits only after Walt's death. It even appeared on an episode of Disneyland uncut in the 1960s. If anything, if Walt did approve alterations, it would have been re-animating "Sunflower". He would have never approved physically cutting out footage, zooming in 200% or erasing characters resulting in a carpet rolling up stairs by itself.

Disney had absolutely no backlash in releasing the uncut Walt Disney Treasures sets (barring the cases with Clock Cleaners and Three Little Pigs). If they can show Mickey in blackface without a single complaint known to the public, I think it's safe that they can show Fantasia just with a disclaimer and an option to view a tastefully re-animated version of the scene.

Has anyone stopped to think about the reason Sunflower was added? It always came off as an attempt to put some humor is the almost pretentious feel of the segment. I think it's funny that such a ridiculous stereotype appears while all other characters are drawn in a classical style.

 

[ahollis]

Patrick, you are absolutely correct in that it was cleaned and made PC friendly after Walt's death. It was for the 1982 re-release. I was in the exibition end of the movie business at the time and remember the articles about the changes.

 

[MatthewA]

With Three Little Pigs, the wolf posing as a Jewish peddler was reanimated to remove the stereotypical material and the lines were rerecorded. Ironically, I saw the original uncensored (but dubbed) version on TV in Vienna.

If Walt had wanted to change it he probably would have redone the shot. We're talking about a guy who noticed little things like a minor defect in a shot Snow White that was uncorrected until 1993 because Roy wouldn't allow any more money to do so.

 

[Patrick McCart]

According to the version history on the "Legacy" disc, it was first edited for the late 1969 re-release. Apparently, they just cut out or shortened shots with Sunflower.

The 1982 version seems to be the first to just use zooms and cropping.

Looking back at the DVD, I'm noticing sort of a patchy video master. Most of the film looks great. The Sorceror's Apprentice is obviously sourced from the Fantasia 2000 digital master since it's absolutely spotless and has no color artifacting. Tocotta & Fugue, Nutcracker, Rite of Spring, and Night on Bald Mountain look just as good, but they went much lighter on removing filmed-in artifacts. However, the Pastoral, Dance of the Hours, and Ave Maria all look like they were from inferior materials and had little to no dirt/scratch removal. There's a lot of color fringing "bumps" between splices in the first half of "Hours'. Grainy, too, compared to the more "silky" look of the other segments. The Pastoral has a lot of problems with contrast, with a "xerox" haloing effect. It's not present on the other segments besides parts of "Hours". Ave Maria seems to have the worst in terms of print damage, possibly because of the long dissolves.

Anyways, I decided to take a look at the one part that Disney opted to use digital work to remove Sunflower. It's the shot of Bacchus being helped up the stairs, followed by the next. In the wide first shot, they freeze-framed the background, then used mattes to cover up parts. You can see a "ghost" going up the carpet where the two zebra centaurs and Sunflower once were. When they go around the chair, you can see a ghosted outline of the matte.

In the following, it looks like the used clone stamp in Photoshop. If ou go frame-by-frame, you can see weird splotches. At one point, they ended up erasing the top of a faun's horn.

Here's two consecutive frames that reveal the bad clone stamp job:
[url=https://static.hometheaterforum.com/imgrepo/b/b4/htf_imgcache_35420.gif] [/url]

and they did a poor job of re-painting Baccus' cup since it was behind Sunflower for a few frames:

[url=https://static.hometheaterforum.com/imgrepo/a/ad/htf_imgcache_35421.gif] [/url]

And they didn't complete repainting one frame of his face:

[url=https://static.hometheaterforum.com/imgrepo/f/fb/htf_imgcache_35422.jpeg] [/url]

 

[Dave Mack]

[url=https://static.hometheaterforum.com/imgrepo/9/97/htf_imgcache_35423.jpeg] [/url]


wow.

 

[Stephen_J_H]

For those who have never seen any of the segments, a few are viewable at the end of this link: widescreen.org - The Letterbox and Widescreen Advocacy Page

Scroll down to the bottom of the page for the links.

 

[justinslot]

Yeah. There's no way a disc that contains this scene is going to be released by the contemporary Walt Disney company.

 

[CRyan]

And while I would love to see the original uncut (I never have), I swear I dont blame them.

 

[Dave Mack]

me neither.

 

[SilverWook]

Keep in mind the character doesn't actually do anything offensive, unlike some "banned" WB cartoons of the era I've seen.

If Disney could muster the courage to release the WWII propaganda shorts, (with intros that put things in their proper historical context) they can find a way to present Fantasia intact.

 

[Jaxon's Dad]

It's history. I don't like it, but it is what it is. Never forget, lest we repeat it.

 

[David (C)]

No. It won't repeat. I'd rather they release SOTS with a "Maya Angelou" introduction/rant than restore this for a vocal minority of home video snobs.

 

[Jaxon's Dad]

I don't make enough $$ to be the Home Video snob I want to be... Seriously, Disney ought to restore the scenes to Fantasia and release SOTS. I think your Maya Angelou idea is great. If they could pull that off, I say bring it on.

 

[Roogs Benoit]

Di$ney can do whatever they want to these films because they created them and they own them. The dvd's and Blu-ray's aren't sold as historical artifacts they are home video playable media. If you want it exactly as it was originally presented then you would need a projector, screen, Film, and sound console because it was originally a road show production and mixed live every time. Every presentation was different (audibly). Then they created a version that was for mass consumption with a pre-mixed audio track.
Maybe Di$ney would release the un-cut version in theaters but I doubt you will ever see the version you are actually asking for.
If you will not buy the Blu-ray because it bothers you so much that it's not a version that you probably have never seen before, you are only cheating yourself and your kids if you have any.

I have seen the original version, and Walt was right when he said that it just doesn't belong. The scenes are odd and now distracting to me.
I don't miss a thing the way it's currently presented.

I'm looking forward to the BD.

 

[DeeF]

Here's a related point: in the current television series Mad Men, which is set in about 1960, black actors play train porters, maids, and elevator operators.

Politically incorrect? or just true to life?