Coonie Tunes

This is another of the infamous Censored Eleven cartoons. 1936's "Sunday Go to Meetin' Time" and from the wikipedia description you can learn that

The plot follows the misadventures of a black man in the stereotypical minstrel show and coon song mold...Sunday Go to Meetin' Time has a religious and racist theme. This is because "churches were more easily portrayed in predominantly black settings due to the vivacity of their worship rituals." Instead of celebrating these customs, however, the film ridicules them. Ringing bells in a lazy town announce that it is time to go to church. A black preacher with caricatured enormous lips greets his parisioners as he sings the song for which the short is named. A minstrel show dandy and his gal jazz up the song as they dance their way to church. A succession of gags featuring stereotyped black characters follows: A mammy and old uncle shine the heads of pickanniny children; a woman steals a bra off a clothesline to use as a bonnet for her twin children. Lindvall notes that mammies were "ubiquitous in films dealing with black culture"

Yeah it is pretty offensive but, saldy over the course of this "series" I think I'm getting a little immune to the racism of back then. I mean all the stereotypes that are seen are the same- dice playing, southern dialect, black skin, big white lips, dumb and lazy. But of course I have a higher threshold. See if this gets your goat

From 1936, "Sunday Go To Meetin' Time"



ah I do love fear based theology

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Coonie Tunes

I'm a little tired and sore and so I don't want to expound too much but I hope you'll be able to see the many ways that this cartoon, Clean Pastures, is racist. (i must say though that it first offended me when the showgirls were wearing Carolina blue outfits-made me a little queasy.) But since I don't want to think yet I turn to my handy surrogate brain, wikipedia for more information about it:

Schlesinger and Warner Bros. had problems with Clean Pastures from the start. Hollywood censors alleged that the film ran afoul of the Hays Production Code because it burlesqued religion. Later commentators surmise that the censors also objected to the portrayal of a Heaven run by African Americans. In 1968, the short's stereotypical portrayal of black characters prompted United Artists to withhold it from distribution as one of the infamous Censored Eleven.
[snip]
Daniel Goldmark alleges that the film is a burlesque of black religion and culture in its portrayal of Pair-O-Dice as "heavenly Harlem shops and singing choirs". In his interpretation, the film's use of rhythm is a metaphor for faith. This demonstrates white Americans' placement of jazz alongside religion and "the unfettered expressions of emotion associated with it" as aspects of African American culture. The cartoon implies that jazz cannot be replaced in the black psyche, as the musicians in the film must appropriate jazz, not compete with it, to draw Harlemites to Pair-O-Dice. The mortal characters are given no information about why Pair-O-Dice is better than Harlem, but the upbeat music is enough to lure them there. Even the Devil himself takes the bait. In the end, the film reaffirms the vision of Paradise from The Green Pastures, with its "perpetual Negro holiday [and] everlasting weekend fish fry.
[snip]
Contemporary black commentators argued that to white audiences, Connelly's The Green Pastures simply reinforced the notion that black people presented a danger that needed to be contained. Weinsenfeld argues that this is also the case with Freleng's parody. To white viewers in the 1930s, the film's implication that blacks care for nothing but gambling, drinking, and dancing only reinforces notions of the dangers posed by urban blacks. According to Goldmark, the choice of performers caricatured is telling; that Armstrong and Calloway are depicted as angels indicates that their crossover appeal was strong enough among whites that white audiences would not have felt threatened by the notion that they were angels in Heaven. Weisenfeld notes that by focusing the narrative on Saint Peter and his Stepin Fetchit underling, the animators ducked the potential offense white audiences might have felt upon seeing a black God.

from 1937 "Clean Pastures"

CLEAN PASTURES (1937)

well, at least there are black people in heaven, which is more progressive than the Mormon church of Mitt Romney's adolescence. and it does include one of my favorite, overusable quotes ever "there's always room for one more."
i give it 2 and a half nooses.

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Coonie Tunes

This morning's cartoon is Uncle Tom's Bungalow loosely loosely inspired by Uncle Tom's Cabin (is a bungalow a step down from a cabin or a step up? I just want to see if we're making progress) and if you can't tell why this one is racist, well then you haven't been paying attention; just thinking of scrubbing washboards, mammies and horrible dialects. I mean when the dogs enunciate better than the black characters you know there's a problem. It does have a great line though when Uncle Tom says "You my own my body but Warner Brothers owns my soul" it sounded like a Bugs Bunny quip. and there are so many anachronistic moments, like you can buy slaves but you have electricity in your house and then at the end Uncle Tom has somehow become rich due to social security. Oh wait no; he mad it playing craps. Of course. He must have been Tron Carter's great grand dad. Well, at least the main villain is French and the little girls are cute.
Anyway from 1937 it's Uncle Tom's Bungalow

(and I didn't sleep well at all last night so if today is not amazingly awesome, I'm sorry for that)

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Coonie Tunes

Sorry today is starting so incredibly late but this was one of those days where I had to do things, far away from my laptop. But since it is still Friday and this is my first post of the day, we all know what this means- racist cartoons! (woo; get excited.) I kind of feel dirty about posting this in the full and bright glare of the day, but I'm sure there's one or two of you out there who enjoy this.
This short is called Scrub me Mama with a Boogie Beat from 1941 a short in which, according to the youtube page description "Lazy black folks are napping and attracting flies they are so leathargic (sp.) they even fight in slow motion then a river boat arrives with a red hot mama on board faster then you can say ''jim crow'' she has everyone moving to a harlem boogie beat."

Yup that's a pretty nice synopsis but for something more indepth (because i'm too lazy and tired to think for myself right now) this is the description from the wikipedia page:
The depiction of the jazz singer from Harlem represents the "exotic sex symbol" stereotype foisted upon young Black women in cinema at the time and which dated back to the mulatto wench characters of blackface minstrel shows a century earlier. The short, like the infamous Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs, does indeed derive almost all of its humor from minstrel show stereotypes of African Americans. Characters who appear in Lazytown include mammies, an old pappy, pickaninnies, dandies, and slave-like Jim Crows.
Yeah it really is pretty offensive. see for yourself Scrub Me Mama with a Boogie Beat


speaking of kind of racist, last night while watching the Cleveland-Yankees game they showed a few times two middle aged white guys with pretty crude face paint and headdresses to support the team, no doubt, but it still struck me as rather insensitive. Then there was a sign shown for a second, referring to Yankees' Pitcher Chien-Ming Wang, "Hey Wang, Wong Number" and I really cringed. I'm sure the guy didn't mean anything racially and just thought he was being clever but still....

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Coonie Tunes

This one kind of amused me, especially the Scare crow even though that accent was so a 19th century stereotypical one and of course the boy has that slow drawn out and kind of dimwitted way of speaking with that strange white lined mouth (which I still don't understand what that is supposed to represent) Oh and the Spooks billboard at the end was a very nice touch Anyway here's Jasper and the Haunted House from 1942

It's not the most racist thing I've shown but I don't want to think too hard right now.
(Though I guess it can be argued that unlike other cartoons where the stereotypes of blacks are so exaggerated and lampoonish, the fact this cartoon, in a plot independent of pointing out racial differences- a boy going to a haunted house- still uses and relies on many of those same stereotypes is perhaps even more insidiously racist because it can be seen as harmless and acceptable and the stereotypes normalized by removing them from such an obvious stereotypical situation- if that made any sense at all.)

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The World is Full of Morons

And we thought L.C. Upton was "dumb."
TMZ conducted an interview at San Diego State to see how many of the respondents knew what year 9/11 occurred. C'mon San Diego I used to respect y'all. And I know its a very small sample but still. This is not good, people.
(But I think my favorite part of the article is TMZ' commentary at the end):

It is understandable though, that collegians would be more likely to remember the last time Britney had a hit rather than the day that changed America forever. Oh Brit Brit! Ding Dang!

Over 2,700 people lost their lives on September 11, 2001.

I mean could you go from anything more frivolous to anything more sombre? I'm sure you
could have put some sort of intermediate sentence or two. It's just a really abrupt transition.

Speaking of shaming the American Higher Educational system just watch this clip of a college kid (a junior at presumably Vanderbilt! wow) who flew out to be on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? and more importantly watch his face.


But we are not the only country of fools. Oh no. The whole world is filled with dolts. Here is a clip from the French Who Wants to be A Millionaire and it is shocking. Not only did this guy not know that the moon revolves around the Earth, but neither did half the audience. At least the college kid was probably hung over. Poor Sophie; your daddy is a moron. From Best Week Ever:

I mean even us U.S. Americans know that (hopefully.) Copernicus must be spinning in, err...Copernicus' grave must be spinning around him.

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Coonie Tunes

Such a terrible name I know, but it amused me. The L.A. Times, in response to a controversy over a BET commercial, I think, or a PSA, had a slide-show chronicling the history of racist banned or otherwise controversial cartoons. The BET cartoon that started the discussion and led to the subsequent article, and it all is called Read A Book, a "crunk" style rap song with exhortations, it seems, to the black community to escape the trappings of subjugation, to stop glorifying ignorance and material possesions and break the self imposed chains that keep them locked down. At least that's what I got from it.(here's what the creator has to say.) But apparently some people think that it is reinstituting or reinforcing certain stereotypes about black people, even though all of these same critiques and instructions mentioned in the song I'm sure have been around in one way or another since W.E.B. Du bois and The Talented Tenth or Booker T. Sometimes only through the eyes of offense, or through a mirror being held up can one see one's own faults. In about a month it's been viewed over 650000 times, so it has sparked some debate and interest, though I would think some of that interest is prurient. But watch it here for yourself. I really like the music.

I personally don't find it racist at all because I agree with everything that is being preached.
This however is racist. At first when I sa this and the first image was of a dumb picaninny type guy with blackface skin I was shocked. But then I thought maybe Bugs was just being an equal opportunist; Elmer Fudd isn't the smartest one either. But then near the end when Bugs broke out the dice...straight up racist. Though I did like the log and cliff bit.

I think I may make this a weekly feature; I need something on Fridays and everyone loves racism!

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