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Yabba Dabba Doo! *cough cough* Back when The Flintstones was a primetime program, Fred and Barney appeared in a TV commercial for Winston cigarettes. As the 1960s progressed, The Flintstones was aimed more and more at children and so Fred and Barney endorsed breakfast cereals and vitamins. It's unlikely that this commerical will ever be included in a Cartoon Network retrospective. This screenshot is used to illustrate the essay and is within the limits of the Fair Use Policy. The poor quality of the scan reflects the graininess of the Quick Time Video of the commercial. |
Imagine, if you will, the following scenario: A critically acclaimed studio releases an animated film to a wide theatrical audience. When the film turns up on American television, censors have cut several scenes of violence and suggestive innuendo, along with some politically incorrect depictions of minorities. Anime, perhaps?
Actually, the film in question could be any number of animated short subjects from Hollywood's Golden Age.
Short subjects were the bread-and-butter of the American animation scene until the 1960s. They were cheaper to produce than feature films, came out on a more regular basis than features, and provided Golden Age animators with the bulk of their work. Starting in the 1950s, they also gave television programmers cheap, easy animation, and created a loyal fanbase which hunted down uncut 16mm prints of these films. Until the advent of quality TV animation, Warners, Fleischer, and MGM short subjects provided the only true competition with Walt Disney. And, until the Hanna-Barbera factory went into overdrive in the 1960s, virtually all the beloved cartoon characters - from Mickey Mouse to Bugs Bunny to Felix the Cat - were created in short subjects. Over the years, several shorts have assumed mythical status among animation fans as classics. The Three Little Pigs, Duck Amuck, and Bimbo's Initiation are titles with which every animation fan should be familiar.
Yet other shorts have assumed an infamy. In fact, these shorts are proof that many Hollywood products weren't child-friendly at all. We seldom see them except in a highly edited format, if at all. Uncut, they have assumed a minor cult status. Their violence and sexual innuendo have more in common with the alternative comics scene than with most people's ideas of children's entertainment. Their racial stereotyping is shocking by virtually any standard. Amazingly, most of these shorts were created after the Production Code of 1934! Ironically, despite their infamy, they are often glossed over in general histories of animation: Maltin's otherwise outstanding Of Mice and Magic and Adamson's Tex Avery minimizes the offensiveness of these cartoons, while Solomon stands virtually alone by including references to offensive cartoons in his History of Animation.
Censorship in animation is an extremely tricky, elusive topic, full of contradictions and hypocrisy. Classic Tom and Jerry shorts from the 1940s may be edited for cartoon violence while more contemporary TV cartoons like Sam and Max or Animaniacs are allowed greater latitude in depictions of violence. Despite general guidelines for appropriate on-air standards, the final decision often falls to individual censors. Acts censored for one network may be allowed in syndication or on other networks.
As all the short subjects described in this essay are American in origin, it is essential to clarify the United States Government's role in the censorship of these works. Contrary to popular opinion outside North America, the United States Government rarely gets directly involved in censorship issues, save during wartime. The First Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees freedom of expression within certain limits defined by the Supreme Court. Senators and congressmen are loathe to create censorship laws, as virtually every attempt to do so has been struck down as unconstitutional. The FCC is more concerned with conflict-of-interest cases and the abuse of broadcasting privileges than with regulating the content of television programs. The Communications Decency Act has been struck down as unconstitutional and the demand for "V-Chips" seems to have abated.
On the other hand, congressional hearings regarding potential censorship frequently occur. These hearings usually result in the industry pledging to police itself. Examples of these outcomes are the Production Code of 1934 , the establishment of the Comics Code Authority, and the recent introduction of ratings systems for both feature films and television programs. Since the entertainment industry is in charge of regulating itself, there is often little logic in their choices for self-censorship. Even elaborately worded codes such as the Production Code of 1934 require a certain amount of "interpretation" and it is often amazing how much entertainers can get away with under censorship codes. It's equally amazing how once-shocking acts become mainstream and how once-acceptable acts become taboo.
It's also important to remember that the censorship issues described here are post-hoc. This means that the films were edited after being released. This is a very different mechanism than what is prescribed by the Production Code of 1934 or by the Comic Code Authority or any other in-house censorship policy. Usually, a script or storyboard is sent to the censors before actual production is allowed to begin, and is then sent back with the necessary revisions. In this way, the craftsmen involved have the opportunity to revamp their ideas and create a final product that reflects their vision as much as the existing code will allow. Post-hoc censorship does not allow the artist to participate in the editing of his material, which helps to create a legacy of unhappy artists and fans who bemoan the tampering with of the artist's vision.
Post-hoc censorship opens the debate to a wider arena - post-hoc editing. Film buffs have complained since the 1960s about how movies are routinely butchered for broadcast and interrupted for commercials. They have also noted that widescreen films are impossible to show on televisions with conventional screen dimensions and thus the film is either "panned and scanned" or sliced so that the edges are missing, in either way a violation of what the cinematographer intended. One of the most passionate debates was against colorization in the 1980s, a battle which ended with the requirement that all videotapes contain a preface stating in which way the film has been edited or reformatted for video release. Post-hoc censorship, like colorization or panning and scanning, can be regarded as a violation of the artistic integrity of the original film. This is the reason why many animation fans get so upset over, say, Disney's 1980s decision to remove Leopold Stokowski's score from a reissue of Fantasia, or the removal of smoking references from the videotape of Melody Time, or the way Chuck Jones and Friz Freleng repackaged their classic animated shorts into such dreadful patchwork features as The Bugs Bunny/ Road Runner Movie and Daffy Duck's Movie: Fantastic Island. Even if the original artists are consulted (which is rarely the case), there are many fans and critics who feel that the historical integrity of a film must be respected.
This essay began life as a review of a Goodtimes video compilation of oddball Hollywood cartoons entitled Cartoon Scandals: A Study of Violence, Racism, Sex and War in Cartoons. The 1986 video is sufficiently obscure for me to have doubts about placing it on the Reviews page. Some selections were also poorly chosen; it looked like Goodtimes simply plucked the first available cartoons, rather than choosing better examples. Furthermore, most of the cartoons look as though they came from grainy 16mm TV station prints (others were taken from Castle Films home movie prints which were never intended to be shown for profit) and the overall sound is terrible. It also appears that the video is out of print, and unlikely to be reissued. In any case, Cartoon Scandals is a hastily prepared package made for a quick buck.
Even the title Cartoon Scandals is somewhat misleading. Despite the title Cartoon Scandals: A Study of Violence, Racism, Sex and War in Cartoons, there is no "study" presented - commentary is absent apart from an opening on screen crawl. There's little evidence that any of the shorts contained on the videotape provoked an outcry when initially released. None of them were accompanied by the kind of hysteria that forced the United States Senate to conduct hearings on comic books in the 1950s. Incredibly, Goodtimes did not include the most infamous cartoon of them all (Bob Clampett's Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs). Until the late 1950s, animated cartoons were not universally considered to be solely children's entertainment; therefore there was little worry about corrupting young minds. The "dangers" of these cartoons, unlike that of the Japanese Pocket Monsters series, were psychological rather than neurological. Dr. Wertham took the ramifications of comic book subject matter seriously from the late 1940s onward, but no one in the 1940s and 1950s seems to have taken cartoons equally seriously.
I decided to use the video as a springboard for an essay on "forbidden" aspects of Hollywood cartoons, and the ramifications of censorship. Due to the nature of my webpage, which is clearly geared towards reviewing feature-length movies and anime, short subjects were not given the amount of space they deserve. Yet they are historically important, continue to influence current generations of animators, and many of them are still enjoyable today. This essay is intended to help remedy the lack of attention shown to shorts. Hopefully the reader will forgive me any self-indulgence. Rather than review the Cartoon Scandals shorts contained one-by-one, I've grouped them into four overlapping groups. I've also decided to include references to shorts that Goodtimes did not include in the compilation, but which illustrate some points quite nicely. It's entirely possible for you to find some if not all of the shorts mentioned below, if you're willing to sift through hours of low budget video releases of questionable quality - the sort of cartoon packages on sale for less than five dollars; all of these cartoons are also available on bootleg videos for sale at comic book conventions. I conclude the essay with some thoughts on the future of cartoon censorship, and ask whether these cartoons should remain "forbidden".
For the benefit of the vast majority of you who haven't access to the video, here is a list of
cartoons contained on it, so you can track them down yourselves:
Daffy the Commando -Warner Brothers
Scrub Me Mama With a Boogie Beat - Walter Lantz
Tokio Jokio - Warner Brothers
All This and Rabbit Stew - Warner Brothers
Uncle Tom and Little Eva - Unknown
Superman and the Eleventh Hour - Famous Studios
Sheep Shape - Famous Studios
Little Black Sambo - Ub Iwerks
Be Human - Fleischer
The Three Little Kittens -Unknown
Mad Doctor - Walt Disney
Jungle Jitters - Warner Brothers
In addition the tape contains a partial clip of a World War II bond selling advertisement featuring Bugs Bunny and Thank You Mask Man an independent short based upon a Lenny
Bruce routine and certainly never intended for a children's audience.
During the second World War, all branches of American media pitched in with their support, and this included the world of animation. Heroes such as Captain America and Wonder Woman
(whose very costumes were based on American symbolism) fought against the Axis in the pages of comic books. Warner Brothers created a special series of animated cartoons called Private
Snafu for the entertainment of Allied troops. Walt Disney created several patriotic cartoons with Donald Duck including The Spirit of 43 (1943) and Der Fuhrer's Face(1942). We could describe the majority of these efforts as benign propaganda. Rallying the American people behind the war effort and present a united front was essential. Remember, America was an essentially isolationist country until that point. It wasn't until the Japanese threatened United
States soil that the USA finally joined Britain and the Soviet Union against the Axis forces.
An example of "benign propaganda" is the Daffy Duck short Daffy the Commando (1943). In the film, the Germans are presented as bungling fowls and Daffy is the looney duck
assigned to fight them. The humor isn't too different from other Daffy cartoons, save for the fact that the heavies have German accents and wear Swastikas: the very first image we see in the film is the Nazi flag. Somewhat more shocking to today's audience is the rotoscoped footage of Adolf Hitler at the end of the cartoon. Yes, Friz Freleng clearly portrays Hitler as a villain but it is disturbing and confusing for modern viewers to see a realistically drawn portrait of a dictator in a Warners cartoon.
A funnier wartime Daffy Duck cartoon not included on the tape is Plane Daffy. In this Frank Tashlin-directed gem, a curvy villainous pigeon named Hatti Mari is seducing the Allied
carrier pigeons. Daffy Duck, the division's resident Woman Hater is called in, and the rest of the cartoon contains classic Warners hijinks. Again, Nazi symbolism is abundant (the Swastika
even turns up on a garter belt) but Hitler appears as a caricature and not as a realistic image. The WWII references are sure to puzzle younger viewers. Parents of today would understandably be concerned that their children be sheltered from such symbols of hatred.
Our confusion results in part because the Warners cartoons were so contemporary. Unlike Disney, whose cartoons had luxurious preproduction periods, Warners cartoons had strict
budgets and were animated quickly. Instead of using "timeless" expressions, the Warners characters used the slang of the 1940s as their first language. Phrases such as "Is this trip really
necessary?" and "Lights Out!" popped up in many cartoons, along with references to food rationing. Those of us who were born after WWII were unlikely to understand what the characters meant unless we asked our grandparents. For example, in the closing scene of Robinson Crusoe Jr (1941), Porky Pig is seen alongside a card imprinted with the letter "V" and with the first four notes of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony on the soundtrack; today's child is completely unaware that during WWII, "V for Victory" was a slogan and that Allied propaganda
made use of the happy coincidence that the Morse Code symbol for "V" (three dots and a dash) corresponded to the rhythmic pattern of Beethoven's Fifth. Looney Tunes slapstick may be universal, but if those cartoons relied more on verbal and topical humor, they might be impossible for subsequent audiences to understand.
Captain America could get away with battling the Nazis in the Marvel Comics of the 1960s because Stan Lee went to great pains to explain to the younger readers who the Nazis were and
why we must defeat them. Looney Tunes, however, contained no such preface. In the 1970s and 1980s, Roy Thomas regularly scripted adventures of the Justice Society of America and the
Invaders, superheroes from the Golden Age, because the targeted audience of such WWII era comic books consisted of adolescents and adults. By contrast, the targeted audience of virtually
all cartoons consisted of preteens and children. As such, cartoons with overt WWII themes were typically not included in syndication packages.
Speaking of superheroes, Superman appears in The Eleventh Hour (1942), battling the Japanese in Yokohama. Like all the Fleischer/Famous Studios Superman shorts, this one has
a rather simple storyline: Clark and Lois are doing a series of reports from Japan and one night, the Japanese kidnap Lois. The twist comes from the way Superman fights the Japanese. In the
film, Superman conducts acts of terrorist sabotage against the Japanese government. The acts of sabotage, though they are directed against an enemy, are clearly out of character for Superman. His actions here are ignoble, and from the looks of the film, Superman is risking the lives of Japanese civilians. He seems less the Siegler-Shuster creation and more the Nietczhe
conceptualization, doing whatever it takes to win the war, even if it means playing dirty. Moreover, Superman's actions prompted the Japanese to kidnap Lois Lane. Given that Americans traditionally think of Superman as a Boy Scout-like role model for children to emulate, the objectionable nature of this short is easy to understand. (Not too surprisingly, this version of Superman as an American superweapon turned up in Frank Miller's disturbing graphic novel The Dark Knight Returns.)
Tokio Jokio (1943), a black and white Norman McCabe-directed Looney Tune included on the tape, could just as easily fall into the "Racism" category. A parody of newsreels, the film opens with a rooster about to crow as the sun rises on Japan, the Land of the Rising Sun. The rooster turns into a sinister, slant eyed vulture with a thick Oriental accent. The rest of the movie contains typical Warners sight gags mixed in with horrible caricatures of the Asian race. Social psychologists have long noted that dehumanization of an enemy is a component of wartime propaganda, and the intent of the film is to present the Japanese as a subhuman race. This is disturbing; this is race hated; this should not be allowed for children's broadcast.
World War Two
Transvestism
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I scanned the image to the left from the back of the Cartoon Scandals Goodtimes video. Blackie the Lamb is a character created and owned by Paramount Studios. The scan is used to illustrate this section of the essay and is within the limits of the Fair Use Policy |
Sex sells, and this is just as true in cartoons as in advertising. Depending on your political leanings, you may regard several examples of cartoon imagery either sexy or sexist - the topless Betty Boop in Popeye the Sailor (1934), the lizard strip show in Cross-Country Detours(1940), Tex Avery's series of Red Riding Hood antics. The risque content of such shorts has occasionally been overemphasized by critics who misleadingly suggest that Jessica Rabbit-like characters were quite common in animated shorts in the 1940s, or that Tex Avery's Red is a stripper, or that any number of subliminal messages were planted in Disney's feature films. According to Solomon's History of Animation, most of the racy World War II-era shorts would only belong in the PG category today, and based on my viewing I would have to agree.
Cartoon Scandals includes none of the well known racy cartoons. Rather, it points towards a little known cartoon dealing with transvestism.
The Goodtimes video includes Sheep Shape a 1946 short starring an obscure character from Famous Studios called Blackie the Lamb. Famous was the Fleischer Studio minus the Fleischers, who were fired from Paramount Pictures. The rest of their crew continued to do cartoons in a mainstream Hollywood fashion, moving away from Yiddish surrealism into a style indebted to MGM and Warner Brothers. These cartoons contained gorgeous colors, superior backgrounds, silly slapstick, and extremely repetitive stories. Famous Studios created several lasting characters, including Casper the Ghost and Baby Huey, which they later sold to Harvey Publishing. Needless to say, Blackie the Lamb was not one of Famous' successes.
In Sheep Shape, Blackie (here called Blackie Sheep) attempts to outwit a thieving wolf by posing as a sexy Latin singer in a nightclub. One can immediately draw a comparison to Tex Avery's Red Hot Riding Hood (1943), in which a wolf is unable to control his libido due to a gorgeous singer. There are a couple of Avery-style gags in Sheep Shape, including one scene in which the wolf turns into a rocket, but the intended humor clearly derives from Blackie's transvestism.
In this aspect, we can compare the film to a variety of shorts (such as Corny Concerto(1943) and Mississippi Hare (1948)) in which Bugs Bunny dresses as a woman to fool Elmer Fudd or another bumbling heavy. What makes them mildly controversial isn't the cross dressing; instead, Bugs Bunny seems to enjoy the female persona a bit *too* much, even flirting with and kissing his enemies. Chuck Jones denies that there are any intended homosexual implications of the Bugs Bunny character, so perhaps we'd better pursue a "Don't ask, Don't Tell" policy. In any event, none of these films are included on Cartoon Scandals.
The problem with Sheep Shape is not simply that Blackie has dressed as a woman; the problem is that he looks too *much* like a woman. Bugs Bunny, whatever his costumes, always clearly appears as himself. The drag is funny and harmless because it is obvious, just as the drag of Monty Python is obvious. Blackie, on the other hand, has shaved legs, a bustline and a feminine figure. Until he loses his wig, we have no idea that he *isn't* a woman, or that he is even a sheep! In fact, the design for the "female" Blackie more than slightly resembles Betty Boop. Is this a prefiguring of the "furry" style underground comics? Or possibly a prefiguring of the gender-bending that lets some anime fans enjoy pinups of the female version of Ranma in bathing suits?
It's impossible to say. If it wasn't for the transvestism, Sheep Shape would hardly be worth mentioning today. Blackie the Lamb, unlike Bugs Bunny, is a poorly developed character incapable of holding our interests, and not supported by either strong voice talent or strong writing. The Avery ripoffs are painfully unfunny, easily as unfunny as the current Dic versions of Avery's cartoons, and the female animation is stilted compared to either Avery's Red or Fleischer's Betty Boop. The wolf's poses aren't nearly as extreme or exaggerated as those in Avery's movies, and the animation is perilously close to the "rubber hose" style of animation of the 1930s. The Famous studio was best known for formulaic cartoons, such as the Popeye and Casper series, and dealing with novel situations was probably beyond their talents.
Violence is a staple of animated shorts, and of concern to parents and child psychologists. Generally, cartoony violence is acceptable by broadcasting censors. More realistic violence involving acts which children could imitate are typically not allowed to be broadcast. Whether or not *any* violence should be permitted at all is a topic constantly debated and perhaps beyond the scope of this page. During his public appearances in the 1970s, Tex Avery told audiences that had he been making cartoons exclusively for children he would have toned down the violence; Chuck Jones has been questioned about violence so many times he prefers to rephrase the term as "slapstick comedy." Regardless, the shorts included in Cartoon Scandals cross the line from funny slapstick violence to cruelty.
Three Little Kittens, an early 1930s short of unknown origin included in Cartoon Scandals, is perhaps the most succinct example. A rather annoying Paul Terry-like cartoon, it suddenly veers into sadism territory when a huge rat threatens to put a kitten in a meat grinder. It's a good example of why we should be grateful that many cartoons of the 1930s are obscure, and not just because of the violence. Simply put, there's no story and it looks like the animators made up the plot as they went along until they'd filled their six minutes worth of screen time.
Given that Betty Boop is usually associated with sex, it's ironic that the Betty Boop cartoon included on the tape is intended to illustrate violence. (For more on Betty Boop, read my essay on the Production Code or my review of Boop-Oop-A-Doop). It's also ironic that Goodtimes chose Sheep Shape as an example of a sexy cartoon when far more risque cartoons from the Warners and Fleischer's studios exist;Cartoon Scandals isn't a particularly well chosen anthology.
Be Human (1936) is an outing from Betty's "spinster" period. In the cartoon, a bullying farmer abuses his animals by whipping, punching and beating them and is later whipped forced to run a treadmill to provide for the same animals he tortured. It's a simple matter of primitive justice. The film is disturbing not only for the on screen cruelty, but also for the reactions of Betty and Grampy to the farmer's punishment. Betty and Grampy actually *enjoy* watching the bully get whipped. Sadism, it seems, is acceptable if you're on the winning side.
Mad Doctor (1933) is far more entertaining, and far less offensive. It is proof that not all Disney cartoons were sunny and cheery. Much of this Mickey Mouse cartoon evokes both Bimbo's Initiation (1931) and The Skeleton Dance(1928). Throughout the cartoon, Mickey searches a haunted house for Pluto, whom a mad scientist has kidnaped for non-PETA approved research. The film contains a lot of cool (if ghoulish) skeletal graphics; stairs become stacked coffins, a skeleton reforms himself into a ghostly spider. There is plenty of imagination and fantastic animation. In fact, the influence of Bimbo's Initiation is pretty surprising given that the Fleischer and Disney studios are portrayed as radically different in animation histories.
The questionable scene in Mad Doctor occurs near the end, when Mickey is strapped to a table and a rotating saw lowers to cut him in half. Mickey awakens from the Fleischeresque dream at that point, but not before the saw appears to slice his belly in half. The scene is disturbing because it is so vivid. This isn't a case where the cartoon violence is funny slapstick; we are genuinely worried about Mickey's welfare.
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To the left is a typical scene from All This And Rabbit Stew, featuring Bugs Bunny and a black version of Elmer Fudd. Both characters are created and owned by Warner Brothers Studios. The scan is used to illustrate this section of the essay and is within the limits of the Fair Use Policy. The poor quality of the scan reflects the graininess of the video box. |
In Maltin's Of Mice and Magic, Walter Lantz gave this quote regarding TV censorship:"The first thing that happened was the elimination of all my films that contained Negro characters; there were eight such pictures. But we never offended or degraded the colored raceand they were all top musical cartoons too."
After viewing the Lantz cartoon included on the Goodtimes tape, I'm glad that Lantz didn't purposely try to "offend or degrade" anyone; he did enough damage without thinking about it. Virtually every stereotype one could apply to African-Americans is used in Scrub Me Mama With a Boogie Beat (1941). According to the imagery of the film, Blacks are lazy, shiftless creatures a step or two removed from monkeys until they hear music or see an attractive woman. Then they suddenly possess endless energy, albeit directed more towards dancing and singing than working.
So that no one could miss the implication, Lantz set Scrub Me Mama With a Boogie Beat in a town called Lazy Town on the banks of the Mississippi. The woman who animates the entire town's populace is a mulatto, while the rest of the town are far darker, with exaggerated thick lips. If you live in Lazy Town, you're too lazy to scrub your clothes, fight, or work but you have enough stored energy to bop away to jazz and ogle the ladies.
This is a deplorable movie unredeemed by either comedy or decent animation. Lantz wasn't the only offender, however. Ub Iwerks left us with Little Black Sambo(1935) wherein after a Black baby's diaper is changed he is powdered with black baby powder. Of course, Little Sambo's mother is an Aunt Jemima type, and Sambo looks more like a monkey than anything else. Uncle Tom and Little Eva (date and studio unknown, most likely a Van Buren cartoon from the 1930s) not only has an offensive title and imagery, but also a slave auction with happy-go-lucky whistling slaves. Goodtimes included both these cartoons in Cartoon Scandals. Missing from action was Warner Brother's first cartoon success, a series about a little Black boy named Bosco; as a more realistic caricature, he continued in a later series at MGM. Also missing was I'll Be Glad When You're Dead You Rascal You (1932) a Betty Boop short in which Louie Armstrong is sadly portrayed as an African cannibal. Unlike Disney's Uncle Remus, these characters cannot even be construed as affectionate but misguided portrayals of minorities.
All This and Rabbit Stew(1941), the Bugs Bunny cartoon included on the tape, is a different story. The Black version of Elmer Fudd is a caricature, but no more so than Fudd himself is a caricature of a Caucasian. The humor in the cartoon is not really that different from that in other Tex Avery-directed Bugs Bunny cartoons of the period; basically, Bugs outwits and sasses a not-too-bright hunter. Many of the gags resurface in a faster paced format during Avery's later stay at MGM. Mel Blanc's Southern dialect may be offensive to some, but is really no more offensive than Blanc's redneck Foghorn Leghorn or even the Brooklyn/Bronx voice of Bugs Bunny himself. This cartoon is a judgement call. I didn't see anything truly offensive about it but then again, it may appear less offensive in the company of Walter Lantz' racist cartoon than it really is.
In Joe Adamson's Tex Avery, it's reported that Warners later rotoscoped footage of Elmer Fudd over the Black hunter so that All This and Rabbit Stew could be shown on television;it's entirely possible. MGM turned a Black maid on the Tom and Jerry series into an Irish maid when the shorts aired on television, and Warners colorized many of the 1930s Looney Tunes by sloppily painting over actual frames of film, so who can say? The real danger is that censors may mistake all mention of race for racism; it is possible that one day, cartoons like Fat Albert might be considered offensive caricatures.
Cartoon Scandals also includes Jungle Jitters, a 1938 outing directed by Friz Freleng. It features racially based humor of a slightly different stripe, namely the Hollywood myth of savages ruled by a White princess. This myth is the foundation of Tarzan movies and still turns up in TV shows and movies today, with slight modifications. The humor of the cartoon, unlike other films with caricatured Blacks, derives more from situations than stereotypes. The African cannibals manage to make a Goofy-like traveling salesman's life quite difficult during the picture. Similar stereotypes appear in Robinson Crusoe Jr (1941) in which Porky Pig finds himself on a desert island populated mainly by thick-lipped cannibals.
Minstrel-style entertainment (in which Whites darkened their faces with makeup and sang stereotypical Black songs) was featured as the punch line in the Bugs Bunny short Fresh Hare(1942) in which Bugs' last wish before a Canadian firing squad is that he were in Dixie. Native Americans were sent up in Big Heel-Watha (1944), a Tex Avery gem in which Red got to play an Indian Princess. Neither cartoon was included in Cartoon Scandals and both represent further judgement calls. The further we get from the pure racism of Tokio Jokio and Scrub Me Mama, the more difficult it is to ascertain if the depictions are offensive or not. Contemporary censors prefer a rather conservative approach; if it can vaguely be considered racist, the scene will be dropped entirely.
Unlike the standard Hanna-Barbera Saturday morning fare, this essay cannot end with a neat and tidy moral. Rather, it leaves the author and reader with some rather disturbing and bewildering observations.
The Comics Code and the Production Code of 1934 both required a priori censorship. By this I mean that scripts and artwork had to be approved by censorship authorities before the finished product was placed on the market. The type of censorship described most often in this essay, however, is post hoc. Finished product was removed from distribution or edited without the consent of its creators. There are many moral, ethical, artistic and legal ambiguities related to this issue which are violently debated among animation fans and scholars.
The consensus, however, is that censorship in cartoons is applied only sporadically and somewhat hypocritically. It is indeed ironic that current episodes of Batman: The Animated Series are nearly as violent as prime-time police dramas, yet are aired in time slots that are intended for children. The more realistic violence of Batman is permitted, while the comic, cartoony violence of the Roadrunner is often sliced. (At the time of this writing, both Batman and a Looney Tunes package air on the Kids WB! Network virtually back-to-back) It is equally ironic that The Simpsons can get away with foul language and unsympathetic openly gay characters at the same time that Bugs Bunny's innocent cross dressing antics raise a few eyebrows.
The lack of a uniform standard of judgement is unsettling because animation is typically considered either children's or family entertainment. Children have only a nebulous form of morality, and as adults, we need to protect the rights of children and also limit their access to potentially harmful material. Unfortunately, the general public seems to pay little attention to children's issues unless they are roused into action by a forceful social activist. Protection against potentially harmful viewing material is spotty, children are submitted to program-length commercials such as Transformers: Beast Wars and Power Rangers. Most frighteningly, the quality of educational programming created for children has dropped dramatically. Shows like 3-2-1 Contact and The Electric Company have been replaced with bland, vague infotainment like Barney and The Teletubbies, and Sesame Street is as gross a merchandiser as George Lucas or Walt Disney.
Our complacency on these issues is a reflection on the poor regard we have for our children. Since animation is considered a children's entertainment form, adults have rarely tuned into such shows, and the result is that animation companies have been able to get away with the shoddiest craftsmanship imaginable. One reason why foreign studios like TMS and Toei look so good is because for decades the American-produced product (Hanna-Barbera, Filmation,Depatie-Freleng, Ruby-Spears) was so incompetant. Character design was redundant, objects were animated moving side-to-side rather than in perspective, stories were simple-minded, and whole sequences were recycled. Children would watch these now-forgotten series on Saturday mornings, which existed solely as material to be placed between blocks of commericals for toys and cereals. Parents didn't care about the way the cartoons looked, so why should they care about the erratic nature of content censorship?
From the standpoint of one who believes that the creators of animated cartoons deserve the same amount of respect as the creators of live action films, the way that the entertainment industry treats animation is deplorable. Cartoons edited for content are seldom (if ever)prefaced with the 'Edited for Television' byline that is a courtesy that is extended to other broadcast entertainment. When shown as part of a package, directors are often listed en masse in the final credits making it impossible to know which directors were responsible for which sequence. The original title sequences are routinely refilmed or stripped entirely from cartoon shorts to make room for more commercials. Even when an animated feature film has been edited for video release, no mention is made either on the video box or the tape itself. This is even true for the Walt Disney Company, perhaps the ultimate animation studio in the world. This shows a lack of respect for the directors and artists involved in the production of such films, and a condescending attitude towards fans as well.
As we approach the year 2000, audiences have diminishing opportunities to view animated short subjects. In the 1950s and 1960s, packages of Hollywood shorts frequently turned up on television. Neither commercial TV nor cable promote such packages anymore. True, the Turner-owned networks broadcast MGM and Warners shorts, but the Cartoon Network and its various imitators primarily show half hour blocks of cartoons created specifically for TV, as in Hanna-Barbera's library of product. Syndicators show the latest offerings from Warner Brothers and Disney. Saturday mornings are given over to adult and teen-oriented showings, infomercials, and first-run animation.
The animated short has all but vanished from American television. Black and white films in general are rarely broadcast on commercial TV nowadays, and many shorts were black and white. Audiences are possibly burned out from decades of overexposure to the same Terrytoons and Walter Lantz shorts. It's ironic that audiences are finally aware of who Tex Avery and Chuck Jones are but have less of a chance of watching their work on television than ever before. The current cartoon renaissance itself is a factor in the scanty number of shorts aired; with so many interesting high quality programs available, why waste what little time is allotted on cartoons to films made fifty years ago?
The question then arises: Should we still be concerned with the content of these shorts?
The censorship utilized by the Cartoon Network and other broadcasters of cartoons is not governmental censorship; it would not be illegal for anyone to broadcast these cartoons. (Teletoon, on the other hand, answers more directly to the Canadian government). Rather, censorship of cartoons is very similar to the Comics Code as originally written in 1954; to assure parents that certain types of material will not be present in comics and that comic books will uphold the morality of society. While adult fans might try to argue that they are the proper audience for cartoons, the public (not to mention the cable companies) would vehemently disagree. For better or worse, In this sense, children should be protected from coarse expressions and vulgarity, particularly if those actions are easily imitated.
Given the current political climate in the United States, it is unlikely that any animated film will contain overt racist sentiment again. Sponsors would be reluctant to advertise on a program with known potential to offend a large portion of its viewers and since most animated films are made for television, the opinions of sponsors are all-important. Despite the recent visibility of homosexuals in feature films and television, it is also unlikely that we will see Sheep Shape Part II. The gay community appears to be currently redefining itself, and seems unsatisfied with any portrayal of homosexuals in film. Again, sponsors aren't going to support a program that will offend potential patrons, and will stay out of the fray (The Simpsons may be an exception). Should another major war occur, we can bet that Hollywood will once again help the government turn out pro-war films; expect to see films like Daffy the Commando if World War III ever occurs. As for violence, we can argue that today's popular animation is more violent than ever; Beavis and Butthead and South Park have taken violence and gross out humor to levels unscaled in classic Hollywood cartoons even if Ren and Stimpy and Ralph Bakshi's remake of Mighty Mouse have paid the price for going too far. It is indeed ironic that cartoon shorts are censored while mainstream prime-time entertainment is bawdier than ever.
Perhaps the reason why we should care about the censorship of these shorts ultimately has little to do with animation itself. Censorship is a reflection of our society, determining what we do and do not permit as entertainment. The most disturbing lesson these shorts have taught us is that we have not truly made up our minds on the approriateness of certain types of entertainment.
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