Ralph Bakshi’s ‘Street Fight’ Film Revisited
Three decades have passed since my original viewing of the animated film ‘Street Fight.’ I still hate it almost everything about it.
Originally released to movie theaters as Coonskin in August 1975, Ralph Bakshi’s controversial animated feature (later renamed “Street Fight” for the video rental market) was duplicitously shopped to Paramount Studios as an updated take on the 1946 Disney movie Song of the South. But set in the more contemporary slums of Harlem, New York.
For those who’ve never seen the questionable Disney classic that inspired Bakshi’s take, Song of the South was a sweetly animated slice of cinematic Americana that offered kids of all ages a romanticized glimpse into dirt-poor life on a post-Emancipation slave plantation. Centered in its narrative is an obliging old former slave called “Uncle Remus,” who sits on the porch of his dilapidated former slave quarters and tells rosy-cheeked white ‘chillun’ stories about a clever critter by the name of Br’er Rabbit.
The most troublesome of those shared is the double entendre-ish folk tale of the Tar-Baby.
Today, Song of the South is mostly known as the film that Disney keeps locked in the studio vault, where it’s been quietly kept now for nearly…
