The Tar-Baby is a doll made of tar and turpentine used to entrap Br'er Rabbit in the second of the Uncle Remus stories. The more that Br'er Rabbit fights the Tar-Baby, the more entangled he becomes. In modern usage according to Random House, "tar baby" refers to any "sticky situation" that is only aggravated by additional contact.
The expression tar baby is also used occasionally as a derogatory term for black people, or a particularly dark-skinned person. As a result, some have suggested avoiding the use of the term in any context.[1]
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In one tale, Br'er Fox constructs a doll out of a lump of tar and dresses it with some clothes. When Br'er Rabbit comes along he addresses the tar "baby" amiably, but receives no response. Br'er Rabbit becomes offended by what he perceives as the Tar Baby's lack of manners, punches it, and in doing so becomes stuck. The more Br'er Rabbit punches and kicks the tar "baby" out of rage, the worse he gets stuck. Now that Br'er Rabbit is stuck, Br'er Fox ponders how to dispose of him. The helpless but cunning Br'er Rabbit pleads, "but do please, Brer Fox, don't fling me in dat brier-patch," prompting Fox to do exactly that. As rabbits are at home in thickets, the resourceful Br'er Rabbit escapes. Using the phrases "but do please, Brer Fox, don't fling me in dat brier-patch" and "tar baby" to refer to the idea of "a problem that gets worse the more one struggles against it" became part of the wider culture of the United States in the mid-20th century. The story was originally published in Harper's Weekly by Robert Roosevelt; years later Joel Chandler Harris wrote of the tar baby in his Uncle Remus stories. A similar tale from African folklore in West Africa has the trickster Anansi in the role of Br'er Rabbit.
Walt Disney Studios released Song of the South, which contains the Tar-Baby story, in 1946. The film was never released on VHS in North America due to issues relating to race. The ride Splash Mountain, which is in three of the Walt Disney theme parks, is based on the stories by Uncle Remus. However, instead of the Tar-Baby, Br'er Rabbit is captured in a beehive. The changes may have been made to avoid similar racial controversies that prevented Song of the South from being released on home video.
The Tar Baby was featured as one of the guests in House of Mouse.
Tar Baby also appears in the Toontown countryside in Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
Variations on the tar baby legend are spread among the folklores of more than one culture. In the Journal of American Folklore, Aurelio M. Espinosa examined 267 versions of the tar baby story.[2] The mythical West African hero Anansi is recorded as once being similarly trapped.[3] In a Spanish language version told in the mountainous parts of Colombia, an unnamed rabbit is trapped by the "Muñeco de Brea" (tar doll). A Buddhist myth tells of Prince Five-weapons (the Future Buddha) who encounters the ogre Sticky Hair in a forest.[4]
The Tar Baby theme is present in the lores in various tribes of Meso-America and of South America : it is to be found such stories[5] as the Nahuatl (of Mexico) "Lazy Boy and Little Rabbit" (González Casanova 1946, pp. 55–67), Pipil (of El Salvador) "Rabbit and Little Fox" (Schultes 1977, pp. 113–116), and Palenquero (of Colombia) "Rabbit, Toad, and Tiger" (Patiño Rosselli 1983, pp. 224–229). In North America, the tale appears in White Mountain Apache lore as "Coyote Fights a Lump of Pitch" (Erdoes and Ortiz, American Indian Myths and Legends, pp. 359-361). In this story, white men are said to have erected the pitch-man that ensnares Coyote.
According to James Mooney in "Myths of the Cherokee",[6] the tar baby story may have been influenced in America by the Cherokee "Tar Wolf" story, which is unlikely to have been derived from similar African stories: "Some of these animal stories are common to widely separated [Native American] tribes among whom there can be no suspicion of [African] influences. Thus the famous "tar baby" story has variants, not only among the Cherokee, but also in New Mexico, Washington [State], and southern Alaska—wherever, in fact, the pine supplies enough gum to be molded into a ball for [Native American] uses...". In the Tar Wolf story, the animals were thirsty during a dry spell, and agreed to dig a well. The lazy rabbit refused to help dig, and so had no right to drink from the well. But she was thirsty, and stole from the well at night. The other animals fashioned a wolf out of tar and placed it near the well to scare the thief. The rabbit was scared at first, but when the tar wolf did not respond to her questions, she struck it and was held fast. Then she struggled with it and became so ensnared that she couldn't move. The next morning, the animals discovered the rabbit and proposed various ways of killing her, such as cutting her head off, and the rabbit responded to each idea saying that it would not harm her. Then an animal suggested throwing the rabbit into the thicket to die. At this, the rabbit protested vigorously and pleaded for her life. The animals threw the rabbit into the thicket. The rabbit then gave a whoop and bounded away, calling out to the other animals "This is where I live!".
Although the term's provenance rests in African folklore (i.e., the gum doll Anansi created to trap Mmoatia, the dwarf), some Americans now consider "tar baby" to have negative connotations revolving around pejorative images of African Americans.[7] The Oxford English Dictionary indeed lists "tar baby" as a derogatory term for a black or a Maori.[8] Due to this perception of racial overtones behind the term, several United States politicians--including presidential candidates John McCain, John Kerry, and Mitt Romney--have received public criticism in recent years from civil rights leaders, members of the popular daily media, and fellow politicians after using the "tar baby" metaphor.[9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19] This racist connotation has been said to be largely restricted to parts of the United States [20]. In other countries the phrase continues in mainstream use to refer to problems of an intractable nature worsened by intervention [21].
The Wiktionary entry for tarbaby Works related to Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings/The Wonderful Tar-Baby Story at Wikisource
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