Analysis Of Bonnie R Smolko's

The essay written by Joanna R. Smolko discusses the musician Stephen Foster, his songs and their roles in the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies from the 1930’s to the 1960’s. Also discusses the unison of Carl Stallings, the music director for Warner Bros. and Stephen Foster. Smolko argues that their music and cartoons influenced race and place in the United States. Smolko discusses three cartoons that best displayed cultural norms and stereotypes of their time period, “Confederate Honey”, “Mississippi Hare” and “Southern Fried Rabbit”.

Stephen Foster is known as the “father of American music”. He lived from 1844 to 1864, he surprisingly never actually lived in the south; he lived in multiple northern states including New York, Pennsylvania

and Ohio. During his active years, he wrote many well-known songs for films and cartoons and two of his songs are official state songs, one of Kentucky, the other of Florida.
Smolko writes an essay in which she makes a strong argument that Stephen Foster’s songs and the cartoons of Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes promoted a sense of race and place in society. Fosters songs were combined with cartoons that depicted the antebellum south, slavery, racist stereotypes and blackface. The cartoons during the 1930’s to the 1960’s expressed the racial attitudes of many during that time, pre-civil rights movement.
These offensive visuals, Smolko argues, molded the younger generation’s attitudes on race. The music that Foster composed provided the audience cognitive connections between visuals and the music. Events on screen were reinforced by the music, especially in silent film and cartoons. Children were brought up with these cartoons, Fosters music was no doubt ingrained in their minds.
Smolko brings up a man by the name of Carl Stallings, who directed music for warner Bros. Stallings used many of Foster’s compositions, sometimes with samplings from multiple pieces. These tunes were used to define characters and were used often during landscape scenes. Stallings knew that these catchy songs would be easily recognizable and this gave certain characters or landscapes a certain image. He believed that using short pieces of music would get his point across and give a memorable representations to a character, Stallings method worked really well.
A leitmotif is a short musical idea that is usually associated with a person, object or event. Smolko explains that these leitmotifs give characters and scenery personality. This is why cartoons are so memorable, because these catchy leitmotifs are easily memorized and correlated with people in the cartoon. Therefore stereotypical cartoon characters, such as, blackface characters and representative characters of slavery are ingrained in the minds of the audience.
As stated, Foster never lived in the south and he only traveled south once in his life. Even still, Foster had an obsession with the agrarian life of the antebellum south. Fosters affinity for the south then spreads west, having his music involved in cartoons depicting the south and California. For whatever reason Foster the northerner was in love with the south and this was depicted in the cartoons he composed music for. This supports Smolko’s argument because depictions of the antebellum south in a positive way promotes racism.
Many of the cartoons depict slaves that are cross dressing in order to achieve a certain image or to make a punchline. This is also a common occurrence with Bugs Bunny in these cartoons, he wears many costumes in order to express various stereotypes. Smolko argues that the cartoons show these images to display that gender sometimes trumps race. Meaning, in society, gender is a more important factor than race.
I fully agree with Smolko’s argument. Stephen Foster’s songs, later added to cartoons made by Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies were clearly racist and added to a sense of race and place in society at the time. Foster’s songs enhanced the racist qualities of the cartoons in a few ways, the use of leit motifs, pairing sounds and instruments with visually racist scenes, using historically significant music, like the African American spiritual to promote stereotypes and the use of famous musicians and blackface musicians to play Foster’s music and express more stereotypes onscreen.
An example of this would be Foster’s song, “Camptown races” (1850).

In the cartoons that Foghorn Leghorn appear in, Foghorn is constantly humming “Camptown Races”. “Camptown Races” was commonly performed by blackface minstrels and is associated with the antebellum south. Also Foghorn would constantly use language that was historically used by slave owners like the repetition of the word “boy”.

Some of Foster’s songs used lyrics that described life in the antebellum south. The text uses racist language that was common during the time of slavery. In one of his songs, “Lou’siana Belle” (1847) Foster writes lyrics that describe a slaves feelings after his love is sold on the slave market. “My masa took my lub one day, He put her up to sell, I thought I’s pine my life away, for de Lousiana belle.” Lyrics like these support the argument that Foster was writing songs that influenced race and place in

society.
The banjo is used in many of Foster’s songs and at the time was a symbol for African American culture. Especially in the song “Old Black Joe” (1860) used in Confederate Honey, Smolko explains that the banjo is a representation of the idea of a slave being a “noble savage”, particularly in the book Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Ivey, Johnson, Kelly and Smith state “Blackface minstrelsy was performed by white entertainers who masqueraded as black people and played bogus "Negro" songs that were influenced mainly by the banjo tunes of blacks on southern plantations” (Ivey et al, n.d). Using the same thought process, this romanticism of slave musicians makes them slaves that are also obedient to their masters. The use of the banjo in Foster’s music further supports the fact that he was seeking to romanticize the antebellum, agrarian south even though he expressed racist ideas in his music.
“My Old Kentucky Home” (1853) is a song written by Foster that is now the state song of Kentucky. The original version of the song displays more of Foster’s crude lyrics, “The head must bow and the back will have to bend wherever the darky may go a few more days and the trouble all will end in the field where the sugar canes grow.” This quote shows how slaves were treated, hoping to be murdered by their masters, rather than taking the abuse. This same song with obvious racism is the state song of Kentucky, with some modification, “But that archaic language is deeply offensive to modern ears. In the 1980s, Carl Hines, the only African American in Kentucky’s General Assembly, introduced a law that substituted “people” for “darky” any time the song is sung at state functions” (O’Grady, n.d).
The cartoon Mississippi Hare features Foster’s song “Swanee River” (1851) (“Old Folks at Home”). This song is now currently the state song of Florida. This song also has the word “darkeys” and expresses the need to be in the agrarian south, a clear representation of Foster’s needs. Sanford Phippen explains that this racist song displays the growing conflict between the agrarian south and the industrial north and the controversy behind assigning it as a state song (Phibben 1997: 1).
The cartoon Southern Fried Rabbit has many songs in it, multiple written by Stephen Foster. This fast paced cartoon uses a variety of leitmotifs to describe landscapes and characters. The conflict of the cartoon is between Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam, which can be seen as a metaphor for the conflict between the north and the south. The songs used are made into short leit motifs, played when the barren landscape of the north is shown or when bus bunny changes costumes. The songs used are racially controversial and paired with visuals that displayed stereotypes.
These examples where Foster’s music is either used in minstrel shows or in future cartoons support the stated argument that his music, especially when combined with certain cartoons, was racist. Even still there are other viewpoints on this issue and others argue that Foster was sympathetic to the north and was an abolitionist.
There is a strong argument stating that Stephen Foster is an abolitionist and was sympathetic to slaves.

First of all, he lived in the north his entire life and he wrote his songs to make money. He did not necessarily believe in minstrel shows, but he was a struggling artist in need of money. An article from PBS argues that Foster believed slavery was wrong …“though like many Northerners and Democrats he may have opposed slavery but still believed African Americans to be an inferior race” (PBS.org).

This group of people is a minority but they put forward a strong argument. While Foster was alive there was great tension in The United States, a few abolitionists believed that Foster was on their side, while more southerners thought he was on their side. Noah Adams, a radio talk show host said this about Foster’s music …“who brought the rhetoric of the Abolitionists into America’s middle-class piano parlors” (Adams n.d)… Meaning that Adams believes Foster was an abolitionist and that he was creating music to support the movement by raising awareness on the living conditions of

slaves.
The idea that Foster was sympathetic towards slaves is an argument made by those that believed he supported the Union. Some of his lyrics depicted the hardship of slave life and told stories about their lives. For example, in his song “Old Uncle Ned” (1848) Foster’s lyrics describe the sad life of a slave, “Den lay down de shubble and de hoe, hang up de fiddle and de bow; no more hard work for poor Old Ned, he is gone whar de good niggers go.” Although these lyrics may sound racist, some believed that this was a sympathetic song showing Foster’s distaste for slavery.
Another point this group argues is that the censoring of the cartoons that Foster’s music is in is racist itself. Meaning that they believe censoring racism is racist because it hides the past and makes people forget the obstacles we overcame as a nation. Also because it allows people to act as if slavery and the civil war never happened, this is why many people with ancestors that were slaves actually advocate for the publication of these cartoons.
Smolko’s essay, Southern Fried Foster: Representing Race and Place through Music in Looney Tunes Cartoons has a few shortcomings that effect the quality of her work. One thing that stands out is the constant overuse of citations, she has no choice, she has to cite her sources but there are so many that it takes away from the message of the essay. She could avoid this by using a different method of citing or she could use less sources.
Another aspect of Smolko’s essay that can be seen as a shortcoming is the detail she provides in her descriptions. She describes the cartoons in great detail, explaining every aspect of the plot and conflict. She does not, however, describe Foster’s songs in great detail, Smolko only uses them as examples to improve her argument. The essay is about Foster’s music, but she uses it minimally and rarely references its lyrics. This forces the reader to look up the songs, which is not worth it for the average reader.
This essay written by Joanna Smolko analyzes a highly important and interesting topic that still holds significance to this day. As with all issues there are two sides to the argument surrounding it. In this case, some believe that Stephen Foster was a racist composer, obsessed with the antebellum south, while others believe that Foster was an abolitionist trying to make money off of the tension between the Union and the Confederacy.