Bad old cartoons

[McDuffies]

How do you guys feel about those old politically incorrect cartoons? You know, that WWII stuff that got banned right after the war, or those that played up minority stereotypes... Stuff like this.
Are they still offensive? Were they offensive enough to grant banning in the first place? Do you like them or not? What is the right measure of avoiding ofensiveness?
I find myself wondering, how does a modern African-Americal look at things like "Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs" or for that matter, "Inki and the Minah Bird".

[Deathbringer]

Thier offensitivity makes them entertaining in a different way than that originally intended.

BUT you'll always get scummy bandwagon jumpers ready to call for blanket bans. Like that lot in Britian who called for "Tintin In The Congo" to be banned (and thereby increased it's sales by around 900%, a fact which i must admit gave me a glow of pride). They said it ought to be put in a museum with a big sign saying "HEY LOOK AT THIS OLD FASHIONED RACIST CLAPTRAP". When it was actually being sold in bookshops, with an essay in the front saying "HEY LOOK AT THIS OLD FASHIONED RACIST CLAPTRAP".

It's not like somebody's going to take a 1912 children's book as a serious political essay and start saying Belgium really ought to take over Africa though, is it?

(incedentally - a book of reprinted Sexton Blake stories is coming out soon, one of the stories is about a Fu Manchu style criminal mastermind called Wu Ling who wants to take over the world, expect some "Committe Against Sinophobia" that nobody's ever heard of before to crawl out of the woodwork and have a go - and make sure you buy it as soon as it comes out, just in case!)

[RPin]

I think labelling them "politically discrepant" is better fitting than "incorrect".

[Kramerthebird]

I have a cheap DVD full of old cartoons, including "Jungle Jitters," one of the censored eleven. It had some pretty silly caricatures of African tribesmen, which I guess some people would find offensive. But this is a form of entertainment that caricatures everything, so I don't know if I agree that a ban was necessary.

[Kisai]

Just watch stuff with the open mind of when they were published and the context of what time they are supposed to take place in.

They may be offensive, but I think culture has "grown up" to be less offended at stuff. Look at South Park, or Drawn Together, or any number of "after 9pm" cartoons. If we could go back in time and shown them what we air now (eg, intentional racist, violent or sexual,) on tv, there would probably outrage.

Animation, and comics, are not real, and if you are easily offended, why are you watching anyway?

[Mercury Hat]

They should be commercially available, but not marketed to children or shown during regular children's programming. A kid doesn't need to be watching TV and see Bugs Bunny calling a slant-eyed buck toothed barefoot Japanese man "monkey face" without context.

Of course the thing to remember is that in the States, these haven't really been 'censored' since censorship implies government intrusion. It's the companies that are self-editing their own works and the companies' decisions to stop circulating certain things.

Pretending these things aren't racist is the wrong way to deal with it. But pretending they didn't exist is worse. Disney's pretty good at that: http://www.thememoryhole.org/arts/sunflower.htm and that Disney hasn't made "Song of the South" available commercially in the States.

[McDuffies]

Just watch stuff with the open mind of when they were published and the context of what time they are supposed to take place in.

They may be offensive, but I think culture has "grown up" to be less offended at stuff. Look at South Park, or Drawn Together, or any number of "after 9pm" cartoons. If we could go back in time and shown them what we air now (eg, intentional racist, violent or sexual,) on tv, there would probably outrage.

Animation, and comics, are not real, and if you are easily offended, why are you watching anyway?

I think that's all kinds of wrong reasoning. Behind every comic or animation, stands a person who created it, and these works are inevitably projections of it's creator, and the creator is the real person. Besides, something doesn't have to be material to be offensive, or even dangerous. If I start naming examples of actual damage that came out of wrong and misguided ideas, I might invoke Gowind's law or something.
It is known that sometimes, ideas are the most dangerous of all. Also, you don't always get to choose what you are watching, if, for instance, some program planner decided to stick Drawn Together in the middle of otherwise tame animation block, or if they decided to put it in the term when children could see it. And then, even if you don't watch it, influence it's ideas has on other people might still be reaching you.

Not that I object to existence of cartoons such as "Drawn Together" and I certainly advocate everyone watching things to his own taste - but "just ignore it" line simply doesn't have any effect.

Pretending these things aren't racist is the wrong way to deal with it. But pretending they didn't exist is worse. Disney's pretty good at that: http://www.thememoryhole.org/arts/sunflower.htm and that Disney hasn't made "Song of the South" available commercially in the States.

They could at least patch up animated parts somehow, because they're some of the best Disney work. Mind you I think that the case was one of badder examples of empty moral panic, reading of something that just wasn't there, and film just had a problem of appearing in wrong time. I don't think that in 90ies it would cause such controverse.

I haven't had much personal experience with racial issues so I'm kind of impartial on that. Plus, most of cartoons which were banned for racist portrayal seem to have had genuine and affectionate fascination and adoring of the black culture.

But it's war cartoons that kind of piss me off. They were tools of propaganda and indoctrination, and I think that using cartoons for such means is very, very low. Mocking Hitler is one thing, but for such grotesque caricaturing of entire German and Japanese nation, I don't think it was justified. It was telling how these cartoons dissapeared suddenly as if entire nations suddenly changed. But effects of propaganda were far reaching and entire generations were permanently poisoned with xenophobia.
Of course as soon as the new conflict arises, institutions promptly retreat to the same propaganda strategies they had back then. In 1992, Serbs and Croatians promptly started making propaganda-art, and really once you see your favourite childhood character shown wiping out your nation, you can never look at it in the same light. I mean, shouldn't at least children's cartoons or books be excused from that?

[RPin]

Marvel and DC must've learned the lesson, because those War propaganda comics didn't stand the test of time. They look really silly to us now.

[Deathbringer]

I remember watching "song of the south" when i was really young and... nothing happened. It was just a silly song with a cartoon bird, several of the words in the chorus aren't even real words!

As for war propaganda, well i always find WW1 / Just pre-WW1 story papers interesting. The 1908 Sexton Blake story "The Case of the Naval Manouvres" being a great thriller about a German conspiracy to sneak an invasion fleet into Britain. And one of my own SB stories, set in 1900, is going to unashamedly feature a German paying off criminal gangs to wrest control of Hong Kong back from Britain. The Boers will get a look in too, in a brief passage.

Oh, and several future stories (Sexton Blake never aged, by the way) are going to feature Al Queda and the Taliban in numerous plots, like trying to alter the weather, or flood Britain with cheap drugs and overwhelm the police. Though conversely a story in which everybody assumes a muslim who walked into a council office shortly before an explosion will instead turn out to be about a conspiracy by rival councillors to bring back feudalism.

[Terotrous]

Pretending these things aren't racist is the wrong way to deal with it. But pretending they didn't exist is worse. Disney's pretty good at that: http://www.thememoryhole.org/arts/sunflower.htm and that Disney hasn't made "Song of the South" available commercially in the States.

Disney doesn't even show Steamboat Willie in its entirety, so I don't know what you were expecting from them.

Anyway, Warner Bros is dealing with this problem as they release all the old Looney Toons cartoons on DVD. The way they've chosen to handle it is with a disclaimer along the lines of "The views expressed in some of these cartoons are no longer considered acceptable and may be racially offensive", but they're otherwise uncensored.

[Dr Legostar]

they were created, they were aired, people watched them, people might still watch them if they can. They may be racist, hateful or otherwise, but they still existed, and ignoring their existence also ignores the effect they had on people. "Let's ignore every racist comment ever made" is just one step from "let's ignore racism." It should be recognized that these things were racist and that they might be offensive to people, but that by no means should mean we destroy them, people still have a right to free speech and i guess free animation, though widely circulating them would amount to a bad idea. Gee.. now that i've started going on about this I'm not even sure which side I fall on. I guess "you don't have to watch it if you don't want to." I find "Drawn Together" fairly offensive, but that's not why I don't watch it, I just don't find it entertaining, however I'm not going to complain to the creator or the network and get it removed from the air because it's offensive, obviously someone finds some humor and merit in it and they can enjoy that, there are other things for me to do.

There might be a thesis statement somewhere in that mess, not sure where it is though.

[Rkolter]

I have seen Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips on television, exactly once, during a cartoon hour when I was a young teen. I remember thinking "How are they getting away with showing this?"

What do I think about these cartoons? I don't think they should be aired publicly for entertainment. I don't think they should be gotten rid of either though. They are a part of our history. I don't have a problem with them being sold on DVD.

There is a clear difference in my mind between a cartoon that was not offensive when it was made but is offensive now, and a cartoon that was made to be offensive.

I am generally against editing cartoons to keep up with public opinion. An older cartoon where a character is smoking is just that - an older cartoon made when smoking was acceptable in cartoons. Instead of editing it, don't show it during times that children are likely to watch it.

[Isukiyomi]

I cannot speak to war or propaganda cartoons because I don't recall seeing them before. The Looney Era stuff (in America) that depicted minorities as people to caricatured as a way of mockery was offensive then as it is now. People who viewed these cartoons when they first came out and chuckled along I *think* knew full well that these "caricatures" (and this isn't even the appropriate word to use) were anything but. If your society says it's okay to be a racist and laugh at such things, it doesn't diminish the wrongness of the entire thing.

That said I would certainly not censor these cartoons because it's historical proof that American (and British) society viewed it as their right to belittle and put down the "Other". I wouldn't watch these cartoons again unless I was running a class on portrayal of races in animated media to actually discuss the history behind it, certainly not for my "entertainment".

Cartoons depicting acts that are viewed negatively by public policy (smoking, sex, violence etc) are less serious in my mind so normal tv ratings should apply to those.

[McDuffies]

I find "Drawn Together" fairly offensive, but that's not why I don't watch it, I just don't find it entertaining, however I'm not going to complain to the creator or the network and get it removed from the air because it's offensive,

They would probably say that "you didn't get the joke" anyway.

[Dr Legostar]

I find "Drawn Together" fairly offensive, but that's not why I don't watch it, I just don't find it entertaining, however I'm not going to complain to the creator or the network and get it removed from the air because it's offensive,

They would probably say that "you didn't get the joke" anyway.

that's also pretty likely.

[Rkolter]

I cannot speak to war or propaganda cartoons because I don't recall seeing them before. The Looney Era stuff (in America) that depicted minorities as people to caricatured as a way of mockery was offensive then as it is now. People who viewed these cartoons when they first came out and chuckled along I *think* knew full well that these "caricatures" (and this isn't even the appropriate word to use) were anything but. If your society says it's okay to be a racist and laugh at such things, it doesn't diminish the wrongness of the entire thing.

I think these weren't really offensive back then, because if they were, people would not have let their kids watch them, and they would not have been made. People took offense to things back then too just as they do today - that they didn't take offense to these cartoons suggests they weren't as offensive then as we find them now.

I think these cartoons were more funny back then, instead of offensive. We can (and do) watch a JibJab flash-toon where George Bush talks about nuking the towel-heads. We laugh at Stewie Griffin when he stops Johnny Quest's muslim friend from boarding an airplane. We giggle when South Park has a chinese character who disarms crowds of angry people by reminding them that asian penises are small.

I think that so long as the funny overwhelms the offensive, society accepts the cartoon. It's only now, when the humor has been lost, that the cartoons reveal how ugly their offensive side was. Probably in 20 years, some of the things society laughs at now won't be tolerated either.

[Deathbringer]

Exactly, back then the acts that were "negatively viewed by public policy" that are "less serious" included these stereotypes. People either didn't see them as as offensive, or else the level of agreement with such stereotypes was so big in society the makers of the cartoons simply saw mocking "what people know" as a way of gaining popularity and money.

Being at war probably also helped the popularity of anti German and Japanese cartoons grow. Pearl Harbour was, after all, that generation's 9/11 (though was "at least" against a military target, i suppose), they were angry at Japan and wanted a 'release'. One of the "Anti-German" cartoons i have heard about, though, i beleive should still be broadcast, as it was really against Nazism (in the same style as The Great Dictator). It showed some character, i think it was Bugs Bunny, dreaming he was living in Nazi Germany, and was forced to work in a weapons factory screwing shell heads on, except they make him work faster and faster, and occasionally a picture of Hitler would be on the conveyor belt, and he'd have to remember to salute it. There's no better way of "deflating" the evil power of such people (even if they've been dead 60 years) than by making them look ridiculous and petty.
I'm sure, if they had any balls, cartoons would be ridiculing the current state of North Korea, where they fly empty airliners to China and back every day just so they can say "we have an airline! and people are free to come and go as they want". And thier obviously-faked footage of parades for the great leader that just recycle the same loop of 20-odd people marching past him, whilst fake crowd noise is dubbed over.

[McDuffies]

I cannot speak to war or propaganda cartoons because I don't recall seeing them before. The Looney Era stuff (in America) that depicted minorities as people to caricatured as a way of mockery was offensive then as it is now. People who viewed these cartoons when they first came out and chuckled along I *think* knew full well that these "caricatures" (and this isn't even the appropriate word to use) were anything but. If your society says it's okay to be a racist and laugh at such things, it doesn't diminish the wrongness of the entire thing.

I think these weren't really offensive back then, because if they were, people would not have let their kids watch them, and they would not have been made. People took offense to things back then too just as they do today - that they didn't take offense to these cartoons suggests they weren't as offensive then as we find them now.

I think these cartoons were more funny back then, instead of offensive. We can (and do) watch a JibJab flash-toon where George Bush talks about nuking the towel-heads. We laugh at Stewie Griffin when he stops Johnny Quest's muslim friend from boarding an airplane. We giggle when South Park has a chinese character who disarms crowds of angry people by reminding them that asian penises are small.

I think that so long as the funny overwhelms the offensive, society accepts the cartoon. It's only now, when the humor has been lost, that the cartoons reveal how ugly their offensive side was. Probably in 20 years, some of the things society laughs at now won't be tolerated either.

I'm not so sure about that. It is possible that back then, there were less offensive for (speaking, for instance, about racist cartoons) white audience because white audience was less concerned about problems of black people, but for black people they might have been as offensive as they are now - it's just that opinion of black people didn't matter much, and they probably weren't considered important target audience for that kind of production. Certainly those things have more effect on the one that is the target of the stereotype (which is kind of the reason why I started the thread - to see how much those things offend people that were their targets, and to test my hypothesis on why war cartoons offend me more than racist cartoons).

There are other examples, of course. "Coal black and sebben dwarfs" is the most notorious example but it is actually intended to be affectionate portrayal - specially if you count a number of black artists, particularly musicians, participating in it. That might have been the case where perception of stereotypes just changed over time, or perhaps it's juse that Clampet, who was in on entire jazz culture, allowed himself more liberal use of stereotypes than it'd seem desirable. Similarly, with Bugs Bunny cartoon which was controversial because it ends with a bunch of angels performing as blackfaces, which in my view was a bit overzealous, cause... well like it or not, blackface performers existed.

But there are other cases, like Betty Boop cartoon where black mother quiets her baby with a giant slice of watermellon, or others where black men were represented as notorious gamblers. Those are cases that, even for that time, seem like rather malicious representations.

I'm sure, if they had any balls, cartoons would be ridiculing the current state of North Korea, where they fly empty airliners to China and back every day just so they can say "we have an airline! and people are free to come and go as they want". And thier obviously-faked footage of parades for the great leader that just recycle the same loop of 20-odd people marching past him, whilst fake crowd noise is dubbed over.

I think that that has no place in otherwise non-political cartoon. Political cartoons are another thing, but those are expected to turn the same critical eye to all governments and political issues, not just a few selected. If you're suddenly pushing political issues into a non-political cartoon, then I can't see it in any other way than as indoctrination of people by catching them when they're unprepared, while they're trying to watch a harmless cartoon.

[TheSuburbanLetdown]

The maid in the old Tom & Jerry cartoons has the voice dubbed over. She no longer sounds like The Mother Brain from "Captain N: The Gamemaster."

[Mercury Hat]

The maid in the old Tom & Jerry cartoons has the voice dubbed over. She no longer sounds like The Mother Brain from "Captain N: The Gamemaster."

I feel like they've changed some of the script in some episodes to imply she owns the house, too.