🚀 go-pugleaf

Uncle Remus be saying, "dat old dice be nuffin, too many lotteries, casinos.
But you gits a box of fried chicken or makes de sound of a basketball, den
dat coon drop everyting and come a running".

Joel Chandler Harris


"Sir Frederick" <mmcneill@ix.netcom.com> wrote in message
news:3AF5E3DC.EDF06F60@ix.netcom.com...
> Bugs Bunny in Blackface
>
>  - Most fans of wacky cartoon rabbit Bugs Bunny remember him posing as the
> Barber of Seville or escaping
>  Yosemite Sam's stew pot.
>
>
>  But some less familiar Bugs skits are so controversial they are being
> banned from a cartoon retrospective in the
>  works for next month on the Cartoon Network.
>
>  Executives had planned a complete run of the Bugs Bunny cartoons, but
> decided to omit 12 of the animated
>  shorts because they were considered too racially charged, the Wall Street
> Journal reported today.
>
>  In an episode called "All This and Rabbit Stew," Bugs distracts a black
> rabbit hunter by rattling a pair of dice.
>  In another episode, Bugs imitates a blackfaced Al Jolson. In another, he
> calls an oafish, bucktoothed Eskimo a
>  "big baboon."
>
>  The controversial episodes, dating back to the 1930s and '40s, are
> representative of the racial stereotypes
>  common in early cartoons. Unflattering depictions of blacks, American
> Indians, Japanese and Germans are
>  quite common in cartoons of that era.
>
>  The retrospective was being billed as a historic television event, but
> executives eventually realized how
>  offensive some cartoons would be to some viewers.
>
>  Thinking Twice About Historic Episodes
>
>  At first, Cartoon Network executives had planned on running the
> controversial episodes late at night along with
>  prominently displayed disclaimers. But the network changed course and
> decided to eliminate the dozen
>  cartoons from the lineup.
>
>  Warner Bros., the company that owns Bugs Bunny, had protested the
inclusion
> of the 12 episodes in the annual
>  Cartoon Network event, entitled "June Bugs," but didn't go so far as to
> veto them, the Journal reported.
>  Warner Bros. reportedly expressed its worry that the episodes might
affect
> the company's extensive
>  merchandising ventures.
>
>  The Cartoon Network, owned by AOL Time Warner, Inc., holds a licensing
> agreement with Warner Bros. for
>  the entire library of Bugs Bunny cartoons.
>
>  This isn't the first time Warner Bros. cartoons were pulled for their
> racially charged content. Others
>  lampooning blacks were taken out of circulation in the late 1960s,
> animation expert Jerry Beck told the
>  Journal. Cartoons featuring stereotyped American Indians were taken out
of
> circulation about five years ago.
>
>
>
>   Copyright � 2001 ABC News Internet Ventures.
> --
> f. m. mcneill : http://www.fuzzysys.com
> "On the empty table sat an empty glass of milk." -- BBC