Thursday, September 4, 2008

Racist Cartoons and the Great Garloo

I was watching a collection of old Porky Pig cartoons with my son today. I love old cartoons from the 30's - 60's because animation back then was actually quite fun to look at. The storylines/plots were basically irrelevant (in my opinion), because the visual gags and the way the characters move and act is just as funny and fun to watch (if not more so) than the so-called "entertainment" of the 80's and 90's (TMNT, Thundercats, X-Men, and The Tick notwithstanding.... Those cartoons are AWESOME). But as cool as the X-Men are, I often find more enjoyment watching the complete absurdity that was the hallmark of the "Golden Age of Animation". Betty Boop, Popeye, Casper and of course Bugs Bunny and the Looney Tunes Gang are among my favorites.

After growing up with the heavily-edited versions of these cartoon shorts (as shown on Saturday Mornings throughout the 80's), I eventually discovered the original, unedited, sometimes insanely violent (by today's standards) and sometimes blatantly racist and sexist cartoons of yesteryear.

So... back to the Porky pig collection....

Knowing what I know about the racist past of the old cartoons, I was (slightly) shocked while watching the 1940 Porky Pig cartoon called "Ali Baba Bound" (which can be seen here in it's entirety ). There is one scene in particular in which an Arab with a bullet strapped to his head is identified as a member of the "Suicide Squad". He watches the warfare from afar and gets visibly excited at the thought of getting shot at. Eventually he just decides to head right into battle, thus concluding the episode.



Presumably, at the time of its' release, "Ali Baba Bound" didn't cause quite the uproar of the Muhammad caricatures of 2006, but one could only wonder at the amount of hullaballoo this cartoon would have stirred had it been released in recent times.

Now, I'm not racist, but let's all watch these racist cartoons together and remember the good old days:
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=racist+cartoons&search_type=&aq=f

For no reason in particular, I'm closing this entry with the completely unrelated, non-racist, fantastically-named "Great Garloo".

Enjoy:


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