[Calavera]

As we all know, children can be rather impressionable. We see it when a teenager succumbs to peer pressure and experiments with drugs. We see it when your little toddler who is just learning to talk tells Grandma to "*censored* of."

Where do children pick up bad behavior? Could it be from the parents and other close relatives? Less than child friendly movies? Or, could cartoons possibly be the culprit?

While I am very torn when it comes to the subject of censoring art and history, some censorship in cartoons may be for the better.
An example of what may be very inappropriate for a child to see in this day and age include a Looney Tunes segment where Bugs Bunny appears in black-face and hysterically exclaims "Don't beat me Massa! Don't beat this tired, ol' body!"

Disney is also the culprit for racism in animation, giving us such examples as the shorts "Little Black Sambo" and the parody "Coal Black and the Sebben Dwarfs."

In "Fantasia" there was originally a short segment which has been edited out. It involved a lovely, Aryan female centaur. Grooming her (sticking flowers in her hair, polishing her hooves,) is a rather unflattering caricature of a young, black centaur. Really, it screams "slave."

The little slave girl briefly appears later on in the "Fantasia" sequence, helping a drunken Bacchus climb a flight of stairs She is aided by other young centaurs, both black and white. All centaurs have been edited out of that scene, leaving us to see only a drunken Bacchus staggering rather unnaturally up the stairs.

Another lost piece of cartoon history is a Betty Boop short called "Stars of the Future." In this short, Betty introduces the celebrities of tomorrow, little babies with remarkable talent.
As the short progresses, she introduces the "Colorful Three".

The Colorful Three are, as the name suggests, hideous and mocking portrayals of three black infants. The perform a little dance and soon bump into each other. After their little injury, they begin to cry and can only be consoled with a watermelon.

Cut to the audience, and a black mother in trying to hush her crying baby who has grown jealous of the fact that the Colorful Three have gotten watermelons, and he/she has not.
The mother immediately pulls a watermelon out of her bag next to her and the child is content.

I believe that refusing to show our children horrid racism is the right thing to do. Yes, it was part of our past, but there's no need to start the past all over again.

Breaking away from racism in cartoons, let's move on to vices of the flesh.

Disney produced a film in 1942 called "Saludos Amigos." The film involves a handful of animated shorts that educate us about Hispanic culture. In one segment, called "El Gaucho Goofy," Goofy goes on to Argentina to learn about the famous gauchos. This segment was later edited to remove a shot of Goofy smoking a cigarette...or rather, attempting to smoke. In classic Goofy fashion, he chokes on the offending smoke.

I am against this kind of censorship. It is rather trivial and sets a double standard for other animations. Now, let's talk about another classic Disney film...."Dumbo."

From memory, I can recall a small handful of things that should be censored if you want to remove all offending parts of the film.

1. After Dumbo's performance with the clowns, he is seen sobbing quietly in his humiliation and his loneliness without his mother (who is still locked up after "attacking" a child.) So much does Dumbo cry, that he begins to hiccup, prompting his friend Timothy the mouse to offer him a drink from a nearby bucket of water.
What they don't know (but is clear to us) is that the celebrating clowns have accidentally knocked a bottle of beer into the water. Dumbo drinks, gets hammered and sees the fable pink elephants.

2. Upon waking up the next day, they find themselves high up in a tree and meet a gang of jive-talking crows, obviously meant to portray the black community.

3. One of these crows smokes a fat cigar.

4. Harsh unfairness to clowns. Come on, it's there and you know it. One of the gossiping lady elephants proclaims in horror that Dumbo has been forced to become a clown and announces that they must disown Dumbo.
Okay, so it's not a real example, but it's bound to offend some!

See, now everybody's offended...but it still goes uncensored and shown to the public.

In the Disney classic "Pinocchio," cigar smoking and beer drinking ran amok, especially in the "Pleasure Island" scene. These scenes are also left intact and public.

Clearly, we have a double standard on our hands.

So, now I turn to you.
When is censoring cartoons acceptable and when is it silly and trivial?
Just how impressionable are our children?
When does the responsibility of animation company stop and the responsibility of the parents begin?

Read, discuss, and think about it.