Warner Bros. favorite smart alleck, Bugs Bunny, used to be a racist bully. While he may have overcome his prejudice against other cultures in recent years, no one can deny his seedy past. The Warner cartoons in question go a little beyond an uptight group of people with too much time on their hands trying to ban Speedy Gonzales.
You won't see the Bugs cartoons with questionable content in regular rotation these days. It's not politically correct for a station such as Cartoon Network to feature the episodes on its airwarves (although they have shown clips and some of the shorts in a wartime cartoons special).
Last year, the Cartoon Network was going show the racy shorts—about 12 in all—late at night with a disclaimer: "Cartoon Network does not endorse the use of racial slurs. These vintage cartoons are presented as representative of the time in which they were created and are presented for their historical value." However, Warner Bros., Cartoon Network's parent company, put a stop to that one very quickly. Why run the risk of insulting a big part of your audience while simultaneously jeopardizing merchandise sales, right?
"We wanted to please the animation community," Cartoon Network president, Betty Cohen, told the Wall Street Journal at the time. "I don't like sweeping things under the rug. I wanted to honor the intense interest that animation fans have for us, but I can't deny we're a mass medium."
I'm of the opinion that if it gets to the point where you need to edit something, you should give it up and leave it in the vault. Why even try and salvage it for children today? Is it because the networks have a responsibility to the viewers, or is because they'd like to continue to shove franchise characters down our throats? Some people say the racist episodes should be shown as a reflection of the nation's views at the time. But do you think some 5-year-old kid is going to understand that what he's watching is meant as an educational tool or to show how openly racist Hollywood used to be? I don't think so. If he sees Bugs mocking a black person, it'll likely enforce negative stereotypes in the lad.
Here are a few of the questionable shorts that I managed to hunt down [Credit the Funhouse]:
"Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips": If you couldn't already tell that this 1944 WWII propaganda piece was racist by its title, then all you had to do was watch it. In the short, Bugs "defeats myopic, bucktoothed Japanese soldiers by dispensing grenade-filled ice cream bars accompanied by racist quips."
"Any Bonds Today?": In this episode, Bugs does a blackface Al Jolson imitation. Blackface is makeup applied to a performer whose imitating a black person. You'd usually see this type of stuff in plays all the time, with the people acting like exaggerated racial caricatures.
"Frigid Hare": This short, made in 1949, features a dimwitted, bucktoothed Eskimo, who Bugs calls a "big babboon."
"Bushy Hare": An aborigine is cast as the spear-throwing foil to Bugs in this 1950 cartoon. It's the same type of exaggerated stereotypes in this one.
"All This and Rabbit Stew": In this 1941 short, Bugs outwits a black hunter by challenging and beating him to a game of craps, winning the guy's clothes in the process. This, apparently, is racist because it features a black person who isn't all that bright. Elmer Fudd is a dopey white guy, so maybe I need to start lobbying for him to be banned from television? It's a thought.
Blacks, American Indians, the Japanese and Germans were all equal-opportunity punching bags to the animators who drew up the racy Bugs 'toons. But before you start organizing boycotts of the venerable little hare, note that other cartoons also negatively depicted some cultures. Yes, my friends, even Disney.
Take Fantasia, for example. Even though Disney advertised the DVD release as the uncut and "original theatrical version," it wasn't. (But hey, this is the same company that's currently advertising Tarzan & Jane as an "all-new adventure.") Disney has censored, panned or completely reanimated scenes in Fantasia involving the black centaur servants assisting white centaurattes. Check out a picture of this here (you'll have to scroll down a bit).
Another form of editing happened in 1992's Aladdin. Some Arab Americans were angry over a song in the movie that said, "Where they cut off your ear if they don't like your face/It's barbaric but hey, it's home." Disney eventually changed the lyrics ... the cowards. They DO cut of your damn ears over there. And your fingers, too. I guess the truth hurts.
It's acually quite ridiculous to me that studios are now starting to edit anything that might offend anyone. I don't think it's right to modify someone's original piece of art because it's racist. If Disney can't handle what it might see as an embarassing past, then it shouldn't release the movie—and fill its bank account with money—to an unknowing public who think they're getting the definitive version of something. There were white centaur servants in Fantasia as well, and in fact, you can still see them in it. I guess Disney will eventually have to edit them red when a Greek civil rights group starts complaining that Greeks were enslaved for millions of years and the depicition of the centaurs offends them.
Many episodes of Tom & Jerry are noticably spliced to edit out racist connotations as well. You had your typical circa-1940s blackface that transpired when Jerry got dipped in ink to be used as shoe polish or when Tom stuck his head in a hole with dynamite that blew up in his face. But Tom & Jerry featured milder antics that were also changed. The house maid's dialogue was completely redubbed so she didn't have the southern drawl. In some scenes, she's not even black anymore, but Irish.
Here are some other examples of racism in the cartoons:
"Puss 'n' Toots": This 1942 short features Tom's face as a Chinese caricature when a Chinese record is played.
"The Milky Waif": This 1946 episode removes a scene with Jerry and Nibbles as black mice completely. The editing here is laughable. Cartoon Network shows the mice running into a room and then cuts directly to Tom getting a frying pan slammed into his face.
Hell yeah, Tom & Jerry has offensive scenes, but it's a tragedy for it to be edited so fully, especially when uncensored DVD's aren't offered. Sorry, but I can't see anything wrong with Mammy's stereotypical way of speaking in the cartoon when movies featuring blacks in that same era, like The Color Purple for example, speak in the same freaking manner. A little oversensitive, are we?
Someone will always be offended. So cuts like the ones in Fantasia are needless. The overly racial stuff in Bugs and Tom & Jerry, shouldn't be censored either. It deserves to be left off the airwaves. If you aren't going to show something in its raw form, then don't make millions of kids around the world fall in love with characters that have racist roots.
Chris Douvalas
Extras:
- Bugs was an equal-opportunity hater, you know? He wasn't just racist, he was sexist as well. A 1954 short called "Bewitched Bunny" features Bugs at odds with a witch. He turns her into a vivacious female rabbit with some magic powder and walks off into the sunset with her, but not before winking to the audience and saying, "Ah, sure, I know! But aren't they all witches inside?"
- You can still find some of the unedited Tom & Jerry and Bugs Bunny cartoons on the Internet, especially with the advent of Ebay. Check out some auctions here and here.
- The Censored Cartoons Page has a huge archive of ... what else? Censored cartoons.
- Here's a big list of censored Tom & Jerry episodes: Click here.
