Frying Pan Attack: Okay. Smoking: Not Okay.
By Erick Posted in Culture — Comments (18) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Webblogs, Inc. has a new site up called That's Fit. Yeah, it's a healthy living site (yuck). But I stopped by to check it out (web surfing is exercise, you know) and ran across a link to this idiocy as reported by the BBC.
Children's TV channel Boomerang is to edit scenes from Tom and Jerry cartoons where characters are shown smoking. The move follows an investigation by media watchdog Ofcom into a viewer's complaint that the vintage animations were not appropriate for young viewers.
The watchdog recognised the "historic" cartoons were made at a time "when smoking was more generally accepted".
However, Boomerang will only edit those cartoons where smoking appears to be "condoned, acceptable or glamorised".
Two such cartoons include Texas Tom from 1950 and Tennis Chumps from 1949.
Now, Evelyn and I watch Tom & Jerry every morning after breakfast. We both love it (that and "The Batman"). I suspect that the gratuitous use of frying pans to leave knots on Tom's head, and the use of hedge clippers to take of Jerry's head are much more harmful than a cat and a mouse smoking a cigar. But that's just me. I guess my priorities are screwed up.
First they came for the Goodnight Moon illustrator. Now they're coming for Tom and Jerry. Next? Perhaps Speedy Gonz . . . oh wait, they already got to him too.
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Frying Pan Attack: Okay. Smoking: Not Okay. 18 Comments (0 topical, 18 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
Porky Pig and the stutterers of America outfit. Interestingly my father stuttered for most of his life and still laughed at those who did so on tv.
Was there not some similiar soccer mom fit over the soldier in Fallujah picture that showed a cigarette hanging from his mouth? Needless to say the whole smoking issue has gotten ridiculous, especially with the "second hand smoke kills" crowd.
Once upon a time in this country people were allowed to laugh at themselves as well as others.
John
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Why would God invent a thing like whiskey? To keep the Irish from ruling the world of course.
The 'Truth' commercials and those new and even more idiotic 'wudafugsup' (or whatever they call it) and the little man inside my head starts trying to claw his way out again :(
Cartoons created by animators who smoke in private, of course.
What percentage of the classic cartoons are now off limits, never to be seen again? It has to be close to 50% now with all the politically correct banning of anything that might seem to be stereotypical. I'm surprised they haven't banned the Bugs Bunny cartoons where he appears in drag as being offensive to the GLBT community.
The most questionable old Warner Brothers cartoon was a heck of a lot better than just about any of the stuff they put on Nickelodeon now.
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"I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more I have of it." -- Thomas Jefferson
but I don't think anyone is talking about "banning" anything. It is a decision made by the corporation regarding its bussiness practice. That is not banning or censuring, rather it is marketing and bussiness decisions. Had the government decided to impose a law requiring TV channels to ban such and such scenes, than I'd understand your concern and be pretty pissed off as well.
Basically my point is that there is a wealth of difference between broadcasters trying to attract new customers and the government trying to censure them through laws. I certainly may not agree with this particular case of Tom and Jerry editing, but after all it is a private company, so they're free to do what they wish. Our own FCC however deserves a huge kick in the nuts, as far as I'm concerned, regarding its attempts to regulate cable TV.
Does not automatically mean government action. Any business can ban something from their premises. Any person can ban something from their home. For example, here we have signs that say "
Now, they can ban whatever they want, but I don't have to applaud them for their most excellent level of sensitivity, either.
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"I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more I have of it." -- Thomas Jefferson
Should've been "(Company Name) bans guns on these premises."
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"I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more I have of it." -- Thomas Jefferson
just the stupid kind. But is Boomerang really doing this to attract new customers? Is there a valid marketing reason to censor Tom & Jerry in this way? Not unless the network suits are afraid that a huge amount of people are going to be turned off by Tom smoking a cigar. And if they are afraid, they're just falling for the hype, or watching too many Truth.com commercials. I agree that they do have the right to do what they want. They're just stupid to do it, and actually are depriving the majority of the fans of this stuff of what they want to see. The number of cartoons that have been removed from circulation for PC reasons continues to grow and grow, and eventually bootlegs of the stuff will gain a wider audience. A lot of money will change hands over that material, and none of it will go to the companies who make this kind of stupid censorship decision. Plus, if they whittle down their broadcast material to the weakest, least offensive stuff, they'll lose viewers, then advertisers, then their subscription fees. So I don't think it's even a wise business decision, in the long run.
Having said all that, there are times - albeit few and far between - where something that was acceptable to the mainstream fifty or 60 years ago is just embarrassing now, and really ought to censored. One example I can think of off hand is a scene from Fantasia. There is a bit in the Beethoven "Pastoral" Symphony segment where the female centaurs are dressing up getting ready to hook up with the males. The centaurs, both male and female, come in different hues, and at the end of the segment, they hook up in same-color couples. That's okay because it's obviously an artistic decision about what looks better visually, and Disney hasn't touched it. What has been censored is a scene where the black centaurs - with very un-PC Little Black Sambo features and stereotypical pigtails - attend to the non-black females and dress them up to go meet the men. Sometime in the early '80s Disney cut and/or cropped out all of that. You won't see it in a copy you can buy anywhere today. All that's left are the birds that fly in with ribbons and stuff.
Now, in my view, that is acceptable censorship. Sure, it's a reflection of the mores of the period in which the film was made, but so what? It's just a reflection of some rather ugly attitudes that, more than anything else, casts a pall over the whole segment. Removing what are essentially "house negro" attendants in no way diminishes anything about the piece as a whole. There is absolutely nothing about them that is intrinsic to the scene. So no integrity is really lost. Overall, the scene is left intact, the narrative is uninterrupted, and the art is not obviously altered in any way (unless you know where to look).
Yes, there is something to be said about keeping a work of art in its original form, the way the creator(s) intended, etc. (I don't count the cuts Stokowski made to Beethoven's original, because that was a choice made by the original animators, and the movie isn't really about the music anyway). But there is no artistic value, visually or in the story-telling, in having the black centaurs in the scene that way. If these were ante-bellum centaurs on a plantation, on the other hand, then there would be every reason to leave in the house negros. But that's not what's going on here.
But I would agree that censoring smoking in Tom & Jerry is stupid. Those scenes, and the act of smoking in them, are entirely different.
Marketing or attracting new customers. It's about Political Correctness. Nothing more. Nothing less.
like this one? Obviously an educational product of members of the NEA, easily P Oed and advocates violence against our governmental, regulatory institutions. OK, so he's not all bad.
Envisioning when all that is Left is the Right.
is buried so deep that its even deeper than some of the potholes on the FDR --- and that's deep.
John
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Why would God invent a thing like whiskey? To keep the Irish from ruling the world of course.
I mean, when I was growing up I always wanted to blow things up with dynamite, but once those who "knew better" excised those scenes from all those Looney Tunes, that impulse went right away.
Because, you know, those cartoons were made in a time when blowing people up was more generally accepted.
Is Foghorn Leghorn. Hands down. They come after Fog, they'll have a problem!
'I always keep mah feathers numbah'd, fooor jus such an emerrrrgency!'
That they'll be the next target in the great tobacco witch hunt. I thought Ashcroft had put an end to the DOJ tobacco lawsuits, but I guess he didn't get all of them.
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"I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more I have of it." -- Thomas Jefferson
I was looking at some old home movies from the mid-sixties of my family. Every seat had a little table next to it, and on every table was an ashtray. Good thing too, because everyone over the age of 18 had a cigarette.
No one was swinging frying pans though.
Ashtrays are one of those things that used to be really common... but outside of a bar (in places where you can still smoke in bars), I don't know where you'd ever see one any more. I wonder if it is still OK for kids to make ashtrays in art class, or if that is now grounds for expulsion (and calling child protective services on the parents)?
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"I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more I have of it." -- Thomas Jefferson
in the morning is OK in my book :-)
John
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Why would God invent a thing like whiskey? To keep the Irish from ruling the world of course.