I caught some flack about a post I put on Fb about wanting a copy of Tar Baby. I wanted to talk more about that. A friend of mine suggested that we go to the Uncle Remus Museum. We went to Flannery O'Conner's place together a few months ago, remember?
So, we pulled up and I didn't really know what to expect as Uncle Remus is a fictional character. There was a statue of Brer Rabbit on the lawn. We made our way down the path to the heavy hand honed front door. It creeked open and a lovely lady welcomed us in and began to tell us about the building. It used to be slave quarters around 1860. It was 2 buildings that were put together to make one. The original quarters were very small. There were various tools, shadow boxes and period items in the house, but the story the woman tells is a lesson every one should know.
Joel Chandler Harris was the son of a Plantation owner with many slaves. Joel played with the slave children and were friends with them which made him privy to the stories that thier parents passed down to them. There was always a lesson to be learned. These stories stayed with Joel Chandler Harris all of his life until adulthood. Having never come across these stories in his well read life, he knew they should always be preserved as each story taught valuable lessons to children. Joel Chandler Harris also knew that these stories shouldand could not be told by a white skinned man. He invented Uncle Remus a wise, old, soft spoken black skinned man as the character of the story teller. This was so touching to me that he was so insightful.
The story of Tar Baby is a sticky baby made of tar type sticky stuff. A fake baby, a decoy so Brer Fox could Catch Brer Rabbit. He knew Brer rabbit would get all tangled up and stuck to the fake baby made of tar that he would be easy to catch. I just don't see anything racist at all about his method of catching his enemy.
As I read up on the situation I seem to have gotten myself into, I found more facinating facts about this. The same story was told all over the world during early days 1800's. This was even more important that slaves were telling stories from around the world to the children. You can't keep education down no matter what you do. That makes me happy.
In India the story was told to discourage greed. They believe restraint from picking up things one is simply attracted to is when enlightenment can be achieved. In another circumstance the tar was used to slow down monkeys who were thieves. with sticky hands they could not escape with the goods quickly.
That is not to say that these Uncle Remus stories are not extreme and violent as many childrens tales were before hollywood tamed them down. That is what makes these stories truly classics. They are in the broken english he first heard them in and the survival aspect was left in each story. So, It was in this spirit that I wanted Tar Baby. I am not interested in the watered down hollywood version of Song of the South.
And that's all I have to say about that.
TTFN~
