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I remember showing that late eighties release of SotS back when I was a projectionist. There was a lot of press at the time about the potential for controversy, but the matinee-hungry public, including more than a few African-American patrons, ignored it and came to see the movie anyway.
When I started working at the Disney-MGM Studios back in 1989, I used to get asked about the video release of this movie a lot. I had several black guests tell me it was a favorite movie of theirs when they were kids.
So true about Holiday Inn. I almost fell off my chair during the Abraham Lincoln number. There's nothing even close to that level of lunacy in SotS.
There is one quick bit in which Uncle Remus sings an off-the-cuff song (Who Wants To Live Like That?) in which he defends laziness as a lifestyle. ("When other folks is worryin', I'm sleepin' all day long) This struck me as the closest the movie gets to the "Sleep N' Eat" stereotype.
I suppose one possible criticism is that the movie makes attractive an image of blacks that ought not to be. It worked on me. I saw this movie as a kid and I wanted to live with Uncle Remus. I wanted to go raid Hattie McDaniels kitchen and hang out at the fireside with all those singing, jolly people. (Of course, all the mean-spirited characters in the movie are white - the two bullies and the boy's horrible mother.) Those simple, happy folk, romanticized to the point of abstraction, were mighty appealing. It was an attractive fantasy, especially to a kid without any reference points to reality.
Then, a couple of years later, ROOTS came along, and my little idyll was vanquished.
ADDED NOTE - LSPoorEeyorick is right. You will notice that there is no Tar Baby in Splash Mountain.
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