SEPT 14 — Last weekend I went on my usual foray into the wonderful world of the Amcorp Mall flea market where I’d just walk in not expecting to buy anything and later walk out with a bunch of stuff in my bag.

Being an avid DVD collector, I already have some favourite sellers there and that is where my feet will usually take me first.

A particular favourite is an auntie who sells used and ex-rental DVDs from Australia, at RM5 a pop (unless labelled otherwise on the cover).

There’s not much in terms of arthouse films in her boxes of delights, and the ones that do somehow turn up are ones I already own like Abbas Kiarostami’s Certified Copy or Jacques Tati’s Mon Oncle, but last weekend I had a super pleasant surprise when I managed to score a copy of an extremely rare Disney film called Song Of The South. Notorious for being a racist film, it’s a film that Disney has kept in its vault since its last reissue in 1986.

That reissue yielded a few official VHS releases in the UK and Japan, but other than that (outside of illegal downloading and Youtube, of course) it’s a film that’s quite hard to see, and even harder to own on legit, factory pressed physical media.

Those VHS releases fetched up to almost 200 pounds when I was studying in the UK and isn’t available for rental anywhere, so it’s a film that I’ve only known by reputation and have so far failed to see (I don’t do downloads or watch films on Youtube).

So imagine my surprise when, lo and behold, a DVD of Song Of The South stared me right in the eye when I was rummaging through the auntie’s boxes.

It’s released by a company called Bo Ying in China, and I don’t think anyone’s sure how legit their releases are, but you can actually find their releases in stores that sell original DVDs, even in Singapore! But who cares, right?

All I know is that I now have in my possession an at least semi-legit factory pressed DVD of it, and that I’ve finally got the chance to watch the film.

Years of reading articles about the film has left me with the impression of it being embarrassingly racist in its depiction of African Americans.

Now that I’ve seen it, I’m starting to think that the whole hoopla surrounding the film is another example of white guilt.

Much has been said of the awfully stereotyped accents and dialogue used by the African American and cartoon characters of Brer Rabbit and Brer Fox, but to these ears they’re no worse than the Jar Jar Binks’ accent in the Star Wars prequels.

How is this any different than the accents used by Boomhauer in the cartoon series King Of The Hill or the many stereotypical Southern accents used to make fun of rednecks in movies?

Then there were also complaints about how the depiction of the happy lives of the African American workers or cotton farm hands smack of being insulting.

First of all, the movie is set somewhere after the Civil War, which means that slavery has ended in the South, and this can also clearly be seen by the kind of farm life depicted in the film.

The African Americans in the film were mere workers for the landlords, and there’s even a white family living amongst them as farm hands as well.

If a fiction film can’t depict a fictional scenario where there’s a nice landlord and boss with a bunch of happy workers in tow, then maybe we should stop making films already.

Besides, it’s a Disney musical which even blends in animated sequences with real "live" footage, reportedly the first time it’s done in a feature length film (in 1946 mind you, way before Who Framed Roger Rabbit?).

I honestly thought it was going to be a horribly racist film, judging by people’s reactions to it and Disney’s apparent embarrassment at having such a film in their stable.

I’m not saying that I didn’t cringe when I saw it and heard the accents, but this was a film made in a time where the African American actors couldn’t even attend the film’s premiere because segregation was still in place at the movie theatre where it was held.

To even have the African American actors agreeing to star in the film must have meant that they didn’t find the script and movie to be racially insulting.

And if they didn’t find themselves insulted, who are we to get our knickers in a twist? It’s like we sometimes go around getting easily offended (for other people, mind you!) and immerse ourselves in a world of self-inflicted butthurt.

You know when bullied people say that sometimes the best way to fight back is to just not react, to not give them an excuse to bully us, to take away the power and satisfaction from them?

Sooner or later they’ll get tired of it and stop because, where’s the fun in bullying when the bullied doesn’t give a hoot about what you’re doing?

I think it works the same way with racism. Just don’t get easily offended, and take that power away from them. Leave the self-inflicted butthurt to self-righteous liberals who want to add one more cause to their privileged lives and let’s just get on with our lives.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.