It is not only WB. Disney made some classic cartoons that are rarely seen today. For example “Der Fuhrer’s Face” (which won an Oscar and whose theme song became a standard among funny songs) is not shown as much because it depicted Donald Duck as an ex-Nazi, uniform and all.
Disney also edited “Fantasia” In the segment where the centaur girls are primping up for the centaur guys there used to be a little girl centaur, black, white lips, little “Pickaninny” braids all over her head, that helped the big girls as a maid.
Disney made a half-dozen or so wartime cartoons that they won’t show either. I’ve seen “Victory Through Airpower” and the scene with the Axis Octopus fighting the Allied (or USA) Eagle is intensely powerful and I’d kill to see Reason and Emotion (The personification of Reason ends up in a Concentration Camp) or even more “Education for Death” which follows the adventures of a cute little boy who is indoctrinated into becoming a Hitler-Youth and ends up dead. Apparently Disney considers anti-Nazi propaganda to be “insulting to Germans”(?!) (I really, really want to see “Education”)
Fenris
E-mail me. 
To me, these images of how casually blatant racism was accepted in the not-so-distant past provides a valuble lesson in learning to police your own thought patterns. As long as we assume that the ‘racist’ of the first half of the certury was a 300-lb drooling 3-toothed redneck who pulled out the lynching rope at the drop of a hat we can tell ourselves “I am not that!” And we aren’t. It is seeing how casually these things were accepted and seen as innocent fun that teaches us that we are capable of the same sort of assumtions. Nice people used to be racists–really nice people. Being fundamentally decent does not prevent your brain from falling into patterns of bigotry.
I am just aghast at the idea of Bugs Bunny being racist…
I seem to recall that in a thread in the BBQ Pit, I was fiercely chastised because of my comments about movies. One poster brought up the subject of South Park, which even Cecil himself deplored. Good God, is this what the “politically correct” people want kids to see, rather than the brainless interaction between Bugs & Daffy & Elmer, or Tom & Jerry, or Donald Duck & anything, or Moe, Larry & Curly (or even the Marx Brothers or Laurel & Hardy, or even Our Gang)??!
If South Park and that genre, supposedly the role model for people today, is what the politically-correct forces would foist on me–I tell them, Take a flying leap for the moon and get bent!
Hey, Big Brother was Politically Correct! Or, Who needs the First Amendment anyway? :mad:
:: bangs head against wall ::
No one’s saying “Bugs Bunny is racist”. I and some others are saying "Some Bugs Bunny cartoons (12 out of what…350+) ARE racist.
Look up the phrase “False Dilemma”. I’d rather kids watch most Warner Brothers cartoons then either the Censored 11 (+ 11 more that the Cartoon Network is uncomfortable with) OR South Park.
I’m not politically correct, but dammit, some Warner Brothers cartoons are racist. Look, just follow the link to the censored 11 that I put in a previous message. Look at the the way the black kid was drawn in “All This and Rabbit Stew”. Trust me when I tell you that I’ve seen the cartoon and the kid shuffles when he walks, his lips hang open (slack-jawed), I believe there’s a watermelon or spare-ribs joke, he has a “lazy drawl” (not a southern drawl, a “weeeelllll mis’ raaaaaabiiiiittt, AAhmmm uh siiiiimmmplletonnnn” drawl. The kid is played as lazy, shiftless and superstitious. Bugs eventually beats him by distracting him with dice! (A common trope in WB cartoons of the era)
Saying this is racist is NOT politically correct the way I’d define the term. It’s not hypersensite to say that having Bugs beat the snot out of a lazy, “wuthless” black kid who’s only interested in getting out of work, playing dice and eating watermelon is different than having Bugs take on Giovanni Jones, Opera Singer.
I think whether “Mammy Two-Slippers” from the early Tom and Jerry cartoons is rascist is something that reasonable people can disagree about. I don’t think the same thing about the kid from “All This and Rabbit Stew”.
Fenris
I have “Herr meets Hare”! It’s quite a romp through the Schwarzenwald, and appears on a collection titled “Bugs Bunny: Hollywood Legend”*. Almost-five-year-old Michaela calls it “The Spirit of Bugs Bunny,” which you don’t realize is hilarious unless you’re aware of a certain compilation of cartoons featuring a certain Mouse.
*Released in 1991 through the good offices of Turner Entertainment and MGM/UA.
May I suggest that anyone who would like to see Warner Brothers release all their cartoons (including the racist ones) in a format that will allow adults to see them check Jerry Beck’s page? He’s been lobbying WB to release 'em all for a while now.
Fenris