About this Site
In the late 1800‘s, Joel Chandler Harris published his first anthology of the plantation folklore he heard growing up, Uncle Remus: His Songs and Sayings. Though several others had published these same stories before, his was the first to bring the tales of Brother Rabbit, or Brer Rabbit for short, to popularity among the general public.
In the middle of the 1900‘s, another visionary known as Walt Disney would again introduce Brer Rabbit and his neighbor woodland critters to the public mindset via another hot medium: the silver screen.
Both men played a key part in immortalizing the stories that once served as a means of an outlet for the oppressed: Harris with books, and Disney through motion picture. Today technology has advanced probably beyond anything either men ever could have imagined. Unfortunately, however, the Brer Rabbit stories have all but slipped from the public conscience.
Today the stories often face criticism, accused of racism and portraying the Old South in too romantic of a light. Disney’s Song of the South hasn’t seen the light of day on American shores since the mid-eighties, and disappeared from international shelves around the turn of this century. Harris, who Mark Twain was so impressed by he publicly sang his praises more than once (and it’s likely Harris influenced Twain’s work), is a name many students today haven’t even heard of. It’s tragic how Brer Rabbit is disappearing, despite the impact he has had on society — in many ways you may not even have realized.
In the early Nineties, my older sister dragged me kicking and screaming on Splash Mountain for the first time. It was the beginning of a beautiful relationship. We’re lucky the popular attraction is around, as it remains perhaps the only exposure to Brer Rabbit many kids today will ever have. And I’m living proof it can leave them curious for more.
Just as Joel Chandler Harris and Walt Disney before me, it is my hope that I can utilize the new mediums of today to further preserve and keep alive the legacy of this character. Even close to twenty years after first discovering Brer Rabbit, he and his tales still never fail to lift my spirits, and often provide me a much needed laugh. My goal is for this site to become the ultimate resource for all things Brer Rabbit: from analysis of stories, to reviews of movies, to humorous anecdotes, and everything in between.
If you have any interest in these stories at all – say, perhaps, you grew up with a relative regaling them to you, or perhaps you remember seeing Song of the South in theaters, I invite you to take a look around, and continue to watch as this site grows. Please feel free to subscribe to our RSS feed, follow us on Twitter, become a fan on Facebook, and most of all, comment on entries. I look forward to hearing from anybody who holds some kind of interest in Brer Rabbit.
