Here's an excellently offensive essay on cartoon racism that came to me by way of the Cartoonist. It got me thinking about how much cartoons have changed since I was a kid. For example, I saw most, if not all of these censored Loony Tunes while growing up in Los Angeles, only to watch them get hacked to bits and sanitized for modern-day sensibilities by jerks like Ted Turner.
The height of this insanity was reached when they started editing out everything that even remotely smacked of violence. For example, you'd see Wile E. Coyote run off of a cliff, but they'd edit out his fall and subsequent impact, but then you'd still see him walk away compressed into an accordion shape. Elmer Fudd would be shown with his wabbit-huntin' gun, but the shots were edited out, then you'd see him a frame or two later with his face blackened by gunpowder. Ludicrous! Even my children thought this was ridiculous, and when shown the original versions, they were quickly able to spot, identify, and decry the obvious racism and stereotypes. In addition, I've never met a single child who wasn't able to distinguish between cartoon violence and the real thing, nor have I met one who was tempted to emulate what they saw.
Happily, these sorts of things are cyclical, and the pendulum appears to be swinging back towards allowing cartoons to retain their original form albeit with a caveat inserted beforehand that they are being shown for their "historical value". Whatever, as long as they stopped the idiotic censorship.
Finally, you may be shocked and dismayed to discover that some of our favorite cartoons and children's shows have featured graphically explicit sex scenes involving doll fornication and sodomy between fuzzy puppets, that were cut by the censors, and rightly so, in my opinion. Definitely not safe for work and I present it here purely for its "historical value", doncha know.
