Buttmunker

In Fresh Hare, Bugs is facing a firing squad, and is asked if he has a special "last request." To which Bugs replies, in song: I wish I was in Dixie, horray-horray!, and the cartoon ends. Is there something about Dixie that's considered taboo?

Such is the take with Southern Fried Rabbit - this is a short I've seen on TV growing up in the 70's all the time, yet its on one of the "banned lists" and only available on Public Domain DVD's. Yosemite Sam is defending the South, and no yankee's a-gonna cross it. Yosemite is a confiderate soldier who doesn't know the war between the states is over. Bugs is considered a "yankee," so you can figure the rest. Now, for a "southern" cartoon, there aren't any black people depicted, so it isn't banned for that reason - so is it considered bad because of Dixieland?!

What's with Dixieland?

Chooch

IIRC in Southern Fried Rabbit there is a scene where Bugs pretends to be a slave being whipped (saying "don't whip me massa) and then Bugs walks by dressed like Abe Lincoln and scolds Sam for whipping a slave.

Chooch

ShagMan

Isn't this the same sort of stereotyping problem that has kept "Song of the South" on Disney's blacklist?

devilpants

When Bugs starts singing "I Wish I Was In Dixie" Elmer, the firing squad and Bugs all morph into minstrel singers. I wouldn't doubt that this ending will come back after seeing "Does Anyone Have Any Castles?" (guessing the title) on the latest box set which freely showed old school black stereotypes (among other minorities). Disc 4 also had a great Cab Calloway (with dreadlocks!) tribute.

Mondo Kane

As soon as Bugs gets done singing, Elmer/The Firing Squad,and Bugs suddenly appear in blackface and break into "Camptown ladies". The current version of the toon just fades out on the Dixie song.

cultshock

Yep, I saw this cartoon many times when I was a kid and I definitely remember a scene like that. It went something like this:

Bugs as slave: "Don't whip me massa, don't beat this tired old body"

Bugs zips away and returns dressed as Lincoln: "What's this I hear about you whipping slaves?"

I can't remember what happened after that.

BigT

While Warner has made it plain that the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melody cartoons they release will be uncensored, they have not made it plain that they will eventually release all the cartoons. My opinion is that the above cartoons plus several others will never see release on any format ever again, at least in this country (maybe Japan?). I hope I'm wrong.

Fresh Hare is available uneditied on the laser disc box set The Golden Age of Looney Tunes, Volume 2, side 2. I can't find Southern Fried Rabbit on any laser disc, domestic or Japanese. What's available on tape or bootlegs, I have no idea.

PatrickMcCart

They'll probably take a while. Neither is that remarkable, although, Fresh Hare has a couple of good gags.

The banned/heavily edited cartoons that are more likely to hit DVD soon are terrific ones like Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs, Clean Pastures, Tin Pan Alley Cats, and the first few Inki the Caveman cartoons.

snorlaxnut

I think "Fresh Hare" is a public domain title because I have seen it on those VHS tapes of public domain cartoons that they sell at dollar stores. It's on this DVD release:

Classic Cartoons

info:
http://66.212.113.170/movies.htm

available at amazon.com

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...v=glance&s=dvd

These DVDs that have public domain cartoons, like this one, usually have the cartoons uncensored. I just bought at Walmart last week a copy of "Cartoon Classics, Volumes 1 & 2" by Brentwood Home Video, and it had several Little Audrey cartoons, and they did not cut out the black maid character.

JIF

I have "Fresh Hare", "Southern Fried Rabbit", "Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips" and "Mississippi Hare" (among others) on a bootleg vcd. I hardly doubt Warners will release these again. They're racist, no doubt about it. A child (despite any race) would be confused to see some of these insensitive images.

I own the vcd as a remembrance of how things used to be...I won't let Warners sweep these cartoons under the rug.

It would certainly break a lot of kids' hearts to know that Bugs spewed racial epithets.

garolo

Oh, today's "role models" should be cannonized? (not to say the BB is a role model)

1. Where was it decreed that Bugs Bunny shorts from 40's were intended for kids.
2. Is it any less an issue that John Wayne, Erroll Flynn, Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney and any other movie icon from the 30s, 40s and 50s "spewed" the same racial epithets at that time?
3. It all has to do with context.

You can not rewrite history by censoring 'historical' items with today's sensiblities.

If the powers that be think it will make them money without much backlash, WB will release the "race" cartoons without hesitation.

Buttmunker

Bugs Bunny shorts may not have been intended for kids, but let's face it, kids watch them. Growing up, I watched them, every morning, faithfully.

Personally, I had a father who spouted racial prejudices with religious fevor, and while I've joked as a kid with my friends against other races, I never really was prejudice. So if my father couldn't convert me, certainly a cartoon couldn't.

devilpants

What he said!

JIF

I'm not saying that these Bugs Bunny shorts would make racists out of children...my point is that they would have a negative impact on the self-image of those being ridiculed (i.e. Blacks and Asians).

Despite being intended for an older audience, Bugs Bunny is beloved to children today...Certainly the insensitive imagery in "All this and Rabbit Stew" (Black stereotypes such as lazy, gambling, shuffling & inarticulate buffoons run rampant) and "Bugs Bunny Nip the Nips" (Bugs calls the Japanese "Japs", "bow legs", "monkey face", and "slant eyes") are unsettling to both young and old.

And if these cartoons are meant to be for adults, it begs the question...just what kind of adult would appreciate these images?

UAIOE

I would enjoy seeing them just to see how bad were back then in contrast to now.

But when it comes to anti-Japanese cartoons...thats a difficult issue.

On the one hand i have grown up in a time where the Japanese are a really close ally to the US, i know that the images shown are wrong.

However, I was not alive when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and as such I don't really have the right to criticize someone for feeling angry about the event.

The Disney and Looney Toons anti-war cartoons are a product of people's opinons at the time. Good or bad, they really should just be viewed as a window in the thoughts of people who made them.

Besides, these stereotypes are just as dated as Bugs dressing up as a popular movie star from that time period.

grune

Wal-Mart is selling a DVD for $1 with Fresh Hare and All This and Rabbit Stew. Its Vol 14 Cartoon Craze Presents: Bugs Bunny: Falling Hare

PatrickMcCart

By the way, it looks like Warner isn't THAT worried about racial stereotypes...

Have You Got Any Castles has a long clip from Clean Pastures (which is one of the Censored 11) and also has an Uncle Tom's Cabin gag. Here's some screenshots:


(This is a reference to The Little Colonel's famous stairway dance between Bill Robinson and Shirley Temple. This is a characture of Robinson.)


(Cab Calloway characture from the "Clean Pastures" clip.)


(Fats Waller characture from the "Clean Pastures" clip.)


(Uncle Tom punches Rip Van Winkle near the end.)

Also, the Bob Clampett documentary has a few clips from Tin Pan Alley Cats, which was banned:





(I'm not sure who the trumpet player is supposed to be, but the cat in the 2nd capture is a characture of Fats Waller. This cartoon was NOT made as any sort of racist cartoon, but rather a tribute to the jazz at the time.)

JIF

Yes, I have "Clean Pastures" and "Tin Alley Cats" which are perfect examples of how Looney Tunes negatively portrayed Blacks as Mame singing, Revival clapping, two-step dancing, craps shootin' sinners all destined to go to hell.

But it's "Uncle Tom's Bungalow" which particularly punctuates the racist sentiment at that time. After a white slave trader whips Uncle Tom into submission, the poor slave retorts, "my body may belong to you, but my soul belongs to Warner Bros."

PatrickMcCart

Maybe some aspects, but both Clean Pastures and Tin Pan Alley Cats were meant as tributes to the black jazz musicians of the time. Bob Clampett went as far to get a jazz group to do the music for the short (even though Carl Stalling was credited, as part of his contract). Clampett also hired black voice actors to voice the main characters on Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs. I have the "That's All Folks!" 2-CD set of LT/MM music and there's some selections from Clean Pastures, Tin Pan Alley Cats, and The Isle of Pingo-Pongo (all banned). "Swing for Sale" from Clean Pastures and the performance of "Sweet Georgia Brown" from The Isle of Pingo-Pongo are fantastic!

A lot of the "stereotypes" were formed by films such as Green Pastures and other films of the era, anyways. Now, without that context, they look awful.

That retort in "Uncle Tom's Bungalow" is a reference to the Marx Bros. film, Animal Crackers, by Mrs. Rittenhouse to Jeffrey Spaulding.

Now, some of the racial cartoons are tasteless...but as a result of the tastelessness, they're not very good. Angel Puss, one of the Censored 11, is an awful cartoon. All This and Rabbit Stew is borderline with the hunter... but he's essentially a black Elmer Fudd. Just as stupid, too. Jungle Jitters and The Isle of Pingo-Pongo aren't even "racist" since they basically poke fun at the jungle tribes in Africa. The Inki cartoons (none of which were banned, by the way) are actually quite cute.

The truth is, these sort of gags are no worse than showing an Irish cop with a Paddy O'Brien accent or an Italian chef with a Stromboli accent. After all, shows like Saturday Night Live make fun of people's accents and behaviors all the time.

Perhaps looks are exaggerated, but a lot of the time, the people parodied actually sounded like their charactures. Eddie Anderson's Rochester character really did sound like the "My, oh, my, tattletale grey!" charactures. Fats Waller's voice was well parodied in several cartoons. Is it any different than making fun of Bill Clinton or John Edwards by using that exaggerated southern accent?

ddschneider1972

Ones that want to remeber the accuracy of history. Not appreciate them for being derogtory but a remeberance of how people were treated. That's the way life was then, if it is ignored doesn't mean it didn't happen. The same reason Cincinnati opened up the Freedom Center & Underground Railroad Museum, to show what happened, the way things were...people learn from their mistakes and history repeats itself so if you sweep history under the rug can future generations learn from it?
I think these and the Brer Rabbit Disney toons should be available, not for kids but for those who want to see them. Disney could do a Disney Treasure Disk, and have features and commentary about the times the toons were made. WB could do that very same thing with the Bugs bunny and Warner Brothers toons.

PatrickMcCart

Adults who are mature and are not offended by a piece of artwork. I think Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs is one of the funniest and best of the Warner Bros. cartoons. Why should I present false feelings on it because of the racial issue? It's like the jerks who tear down Birth of a Nation because of its racism (and it IS blatant), but at the cost of being untruthful about its other merits. Racism in a motion picture doesn't erase some of the best cinematic advances in history. If this logic was in place, the works of Wagner would be said to be the worst only because of the man's anti-semitism.

Chooch

The number one reason people want to see these images -

because they are funny.

Let's not forget that comedy is poking fun of things and people. Everything is made fun of in the WB cartoons. White, black, overweight, skinny, smart & stupid. You could be part of any group and be offended watching these cartoons.

Race is the only one focused on. I'm not sure if any of the gags were done to hurt people, personally I just think they wanted to make people laugh.

I respect people's feelings, and I know I can never feel the way they feel, but I have no problem being poked fun at, as long as the people doing in aren't doing it to be malicious.

roger_d

I heard sometime back that they made a cartoon where the coyote caught the roadrunner, cooked him and ate him. If this is true is it available anywhere?