To this day I don’t get what everyone freaks out over about this movie.
Yes, it takes place in Reconstruction Dixie and shows it in an idyllic light; the POV character is a nine year old Yankee who simply loves nature and is trying to keep his mind off his parents divorce, of course he sees it like Arcadia. Should any historical fiction set in a time and place were inequality was rampant make a big stink over it and portray the setting like a YA dystopia? Would it have been less racially charged to show Klansman riding around and harassing random black bystanders?
Yes, there’s some broad African-American coding and stereotypes present in Remus’ fables; they’re real stories made by Blacks for a Black audience. Run off and tell an old-school rapper he’s really a white supremacist propagandist for making songs talking about life in the ghetto. The only reason I wouldn’t pay to see that is because I would be arrested for commissioning a snuff film.

Whatever unwholesome bits it might have from modern standpoint, it is still a part of our history and culture and should not be simply shoved under the rug. What of our modern-day movies and comic books and such would then be similarly liable to be ignored and scrubbed away, as some secret shame, by the coming of the next century?