12 Classic Movies That Got Away With Problematic Scenes

Dumbo is bookended by racism, and while that certainly fits with the sensibilities of 1941’s society, it doesn’t make it any better today.

The movie starts with a group of large, faceless black men setting up the circus tent in the rain. The lyrics, sung by the workers themselves, mention how they’re happy to ‘slave until they’re almost dead’ and compare themselves to ‘hairy apes’.

They’re kind of fishing for a self-deprecating, almost ironic tone to the lyrics, but at the same time you can tell it was written by white men with no real idea what life is like for these workers.

Then of course there’s the crows. Being called Jim Crow, they don’t even try to be subtle about it, speaking with almost impossibly stereotypical southern black grammar.

Disney has a few bits of racism in their back catalogue, but with the Roustabouts being more subtle and the crows being sympathetic characters, they tend to get away with Dumbo more.

Certainly, it’s survived the edits unlike Fantasia, and hasn’t been confined to storage like Song Of The South.

Burton’s recent remake treads carefully, avoiding the racist mistakes of the past without needing to completely transform the script.