I have seen references to cartoons produced during the war years that featured Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck et al. in anti-Axis Powers propaganda. These cartoons are, understandably, not available for public viewing anymore because they are insulting to Germans, Japanese, etc. My question is, is there any way to get one’s hands on these cartoons? I think I could handle the stereotypes and other offensive content without my brain being affected %^P
Live a Lush Life
Da Chef
I would be really suprised if you couldn’t find these available on video somewhere. I’ve seen all of them on TV during children’s hours back in the 70s. The one I remember most is one in which Bugs faces off with a liederhosen-wearing Hermann Goering. I think the WWII propaganda shorts are a lot more accessible than cartoons with Black stereotypes, which I’ve also seen available in video stores…
BTW - Just yesterday I saw a Bugs Bunny cartoon in which a Scotsman is depicted as being so stingy that he goes around picking up his bullet after he has shot it at Bugs: “It’s been in the family for years!”
Try these great-old-video outlets:
Grapevine Video (602) 973-3661
LS Video (www.lsvideo.com)
Moviecraft (708) 460-9082
Something Weird (206) 361-3759
If these people don’t have it, it doesn’t exist!
Who says they’re offensive anyway? I grow weary of everyone taking offense at the slightest thing… I’m as German as they come, in terms of heritage, and I think they’re hilarious.
A lot of these are in the public domain now and can be found in “no name " cassettes at WalMart, supermarkets,and other places. Some of the ones I have have names like “cartoon classics”, “Silver star video”,Cartoon Favorites” and my personal favorite “Kartune Klassiks”, which is six hours long. The art work on them is crude to the point of disgusting and there are some bad “Kartunes” mixed in , but there are some “Klassiks” too.
Hop on over to http://toontracker.com / I can be as intrusive and obnoxious on his message board as I can here. They know EVERYTHING there is to know about cartoons.
Signitorily yours, Mr John
" Pardon me while I have a strange interlude."-Marx (Melissa Gilbert is in the rest room right now or she would have a snappy comeback)
Isn’t it interesting how that which is generelly considered “offensive” changes with the times? During the 40s–and the 30s, too–when these cartoons were shown, along with “Amos 'n Andy” being played on the radio, and the Our Gang shorts with Farina, Stymie, or Buckwheat, the verbal snottiness and vulgarity we see these days (South Park, etc.) would be unthinkable! Maybe 50 years from now people will read about “political correctness” and how “South Park” and Howard Stern, to give a few examples, flourished, and wonder what all the fuss was about.
True, True about the changing idea of offensiveness over time. I can recall my grandmother being shocked that some of her black friends – people she knew, liked and respected as equals – were offended by her referring to members of their race as “darkies.” That was a term she grew up with as generic and without connotation. Over time it became, and with reasons I certainly can understand, viewed as offensive.
I myself have seen “black” change from a term positively associated with the “black is beautiful” movement, and a “good” alternative to “negro” to one with about a 50/50 shot of drawing offense from those who prefer the term African-American. Mind you, the other 50% of my friends with dark brown skin and descent from Africans somewhere back along the line find ‘African American’ offensive and want to be called black – especially those of carribean background.
I myself, while not offended by, don’t subscribe to the term “german-american” to represent my heritage. My relatives came over from Germany in the late 1600’s and while genetically I’m about as aryan & germanic as it gets; culturally and societally, I’m no more German than my neighbor from Kashmir, Mr. Gupta.
These things are truly descending to the point of ridiculousness. Why we feel the need to define people beyond “American” is beyond me.
If we have much more “progress” along those lines, saying “hello” will constitute a major risk of being branded offensive for some reason.
There was a collection some time back called “Cartoons for Adults” that, I believe, contained some of the WWII propagando toons (including the Private Snafu series). Leonard Maltin put it together.
“Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarves” is not available in any form that I’m aware of, which is too bad. While I realize that this cartoon is based on awful African-American stereotypes, it is also supposed to be very funny in spite of that.
I know, and there’s a great laserdisc collection of Tex Avery Cartoons that includes my personal favorite, “Red Hot Riding Hood.” But what I was referring to are cartoons that Warner Bros. has removed from circulation and kept in the vaults, to be viewed only by academic researchers and the like.
Live a Lush Life
Da Chef
I’ve seen an MPEG on the web somewhere of Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarves. The quality (of the MPEG, not the original cartoon) is pretty bad, but it will let you see what the fuss is about.
I can’t recall exactly where it was; I found it at the end of a series of “well, that looks interesting” clicks on Yahoo.
A friend of mine got a tape of cartoons like this at some kind of comic convention. The basic theme of the tape was black stereotypes. They included WB cartoons and a few Popeye ones as well. I have a dubbed copy somewhere.
I seem to remember that almost every one has some reference to dice games. One was just like a standard Bugs Bunny/Elmer Fudd cartoon but had a Little Black Sambo-type character in place of Elmer Fudd. In another one, a really fat cat drinks too much and goes to “Wacky Land” and sees a carictature of Stalin kicking the butt of a carictature of Hitler, among other things. Those are the only ones I can remember now. Having seen these, I can fully understand why WB would not want these in wide circulation. The thought of these running in a theater, even 50-60 years ago is unreal.
BTW, I remember a reference to “Hitler Cartoons” on The Simpsons. I think it was the episode with the Itchy and Scratchy Movie. They were watching a Itchy and Scratchy retrospective on TV and it showed Itchy cutting the head off Hitler, and then FDR comes out and starts kicking the corpse. I think this segment has been deleted from the syndicated version, because I’ve only seen it once. I’ve also heard that the producers of The Simpsons also produced a 5 minute short along these lines, but it’s never been aired.
Warner Bros. has removed from circulation and kept in the vaults,
Mostly this locked away thing is not true. Maybe the originals are, but too many copies were out there. Once the copyrights lapsed anybody could copy them. I don’t have many WB "offensive’ ones. mostly Bugs and "japs’ more of Popeye and the ‘japs’. The Japanese got more of the racial treatment. Again these are cheap copies and the quality is not always even up to average. The ones that I REALLY like are pre-Hayes Office Betty Boop. And Tex Avery was always great especially the Red Riding Hood series.
"AUOOOGA!! BOING BOING BOING! WAP WAPWAPWAP!
HUBBAHUBBA ! BING BANG! WHOOOOHOOO! BOINGBOING! melllllllllllllllllllt
Oh, I’ve also heard that there are some Three Stooges episodes that are rarely shown due to racial stereotypes, mostly Japanese.
WB’s “Russian Rhapsody” has some stereotype of Hitler, which I can’t see bothering anyone these days.
WB also had the “Inki” cartoons, directed by Chuck Jones. Inki was a caricature of an African native, complete with big lips and bone in his hair. Inki was usually harrassed by a mysterious Mynah bird, who who made an appeareance in one non-Inki cartoon (one of the “Two Curious Dogs”).
Check out some of the wartime Superman cartoons, produced by Max Fleischer, for embarrassing Japanese stereotypes.
I’ve put this link in another thread a while back but I’ll put it on again anyway just because it creeps me out.
This is a link to info about “Der Fuerher’s Face”, a Disney short with Donald Duck living (unhappily) in “Nutziland”. It includes a still shot from the short of Donald wearing a Nazi uniform.
http://www.geocities.com/~eutychus55/specialpages/derfuehrersface.htm
The site sez:
Heh. Thought something was vaguely familiar about the URL…
BTW, the toontracker site you gave before is a beauty, Euty. Especially the cartoon theme song section. The soundtrack to my childhood…
> “Hitler Cartoons” on The Simpsons. I think this segment has been deleted from the syndicated version,< I don’t think so I have seen it a few times. We get the Simps. 2 or 3 times a day here so I will be looking.BTW Not everything that gets edited out is because of political reasons. FCC regs allow X minutes of comercials time for 1st run network broadcasting. As an episode enters re-runs the comercial time increases. Then another encrease when it is syndicated. So some editing occurs. The producers of some shows ,and the Simps is one, put some ‘fluff’ in that doesn’t affect the storyline. (Story line on the Simps?)
Three Stooges episodes that are rarely shown due to racial stereotypes,
mostly Japanese. Seems like 3 stooges are rarely shown anymore anyway. At least around here. I have seen one in which Moe is Hitler, Larry is a Japanese ( Tito ?), and Curly is Mussolini. Curly is perfect as El Duce Of course they are all bufoons, but Larry’s characterization is extremely offensive.
Thanx for all the links everybody. Toontrackers is one of my favorite places , which is why I posted it, ahem.
Signitorily yours, Mr John
" Pardon me while I have a strange interlude."-Marx
ARROW? Officer, I didn’t even see any Indians
You are probably thinking of the 3 Stooges short “They Stooge to Conga.” The main story line is that the Stooges have been admitted into a house to fix the doorbell; as it turned out, the occupants of the house were Axis spies (“Column Fives!” Curly calls them.) They only assumed the disguises at the end, once Moe saw the poster of Hitler–so they could get out undetected. (They overheard the spies planning to shoot them.) Larry’s dialogue in his Japanese Overlord getup was the word “So?”
In another, “Gents Without Cents,” the Stooges, auditioning for an agent, did a short routine in which two of them did the rhythm while the other one imitated one of the Axis bigwigs.
Moe (as Hitler), “Ja-wohl! Ja-wohl!”
Larry (as Tojo) “So sorry, bomb Tokyo, oh my…”
Curly (as Mussolini): “Poosh 'em up! Poosh 'em up!”
(Curly’s dialog imitated, not Mussolini, but New York Italians who cheered on their favorite, Yankee slugger Tony Lazzeri; the exhorted him to “drive it out,” but because of their poor command of English–the most common feature of immigrant English is wrong idiom–led them to holler “Poosh 'em Up!” and that became Tony’s nickname, sort of.)
Naturally, the Stooges’–or anyone else’s–use of broken/immigrant English makes for immediate identification to the audience, who didn’t care for Italians, Germans or Japanese during the war; perhaps the alternative would be for Larry to carry a sign saying “Im Japanese” and speak English without an accent, and be otherwise unidentifiable to the audience. How could they tell he was imitating a Japanese if he didn’t imitate the accent? (The Japanese equivalent of Ÿou will see me tomorrow" is “I shall hang from your honorable eye tomorrow.”)
"(Curly’s dialog imitated, not Mussol
