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Abstract
A Frown Upside Down rethinks the historical and political contexts for the modern era of "convergence"--the cultural and economic logic by which new media and synergy have allowed industry producers and audiences to expand narrative universes and intellectual properties across a wide range of media platforms. To do so, I offer a close history of Disney's Song of the South, looking at both how the company recirculated the film, and how audiences responded to it, across multiple venues. Released in 1946, Song featured a ground-breaking mixture of cartoon and live-action, but became more known for its problematic, even racist, images of plantation life in the American South. While some admired the animation, most everyone dismissed the film overall. Yet this was not the end--Disney continued to recycle parts of the film through television, children's books and soundtracks. By 1972, Song was the biggest reissue in company history. This project examines the cultural, political and technological contexts for Song's circulation over seven decades to show how the Disney Corporation reconstructed the film's critical and commercial reputation, while also offering a particular history of the American media's negotiation of race across the 20th Century.
