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"Tom and Jerry" deemed "racist" will carry warning messages
http://m.smh.com.au/entertainment/tv...03-10pm0f.html'"These animated shorts are products of their time": Tom and Jerry will carry warnings on iTunes and Amazon.
Tom and Jerry, racist?
That appears to be the consensus, as news has surfaced that early episodes of the iconic cartoon series now carry warnings about the program's racially sensitive content.
"These animated shorts are products of their time," the warning says.
Warning: Tom and Jerry may be racially sensitive.
"Some of them may depict some of the ethnic and racial prejudices that were commonplace in American society. These depictions were wrong and are wrong today."
The warnings are carried on at least two platforms, the Apple-owned iTunes store and the Amazon Prime Instant Video streaming service.
The Tom and Jerry cartoons, about a cat and mouse who are constantly at odds, were first produced in 1940 by the legendary animators William Hanna and Joseph Barbera.
The original series of 114 animated short films were made between 1940 and 1957. Since then there have been a handful of revivals, either as short cartoons, television series or animated feature films.
The question of racism in Tom and Jerry has been the subject of long debate, most of it focused on the character of Mammy Two Shoes, a middle-aged African-American housemaid who is, in some episodes, caught between the feuding cat and the mouse.
Over the years Warner Bros has altered some of the original cartoons, either re-dubbing the voice of Mammy Two Shows or replacing her with a middle-aged white housemaid.
The original voice of Mammy Two Shoes was that of actress Lillian Randolph.
The racism "warning" is carried on episodes of the Tom and Jerry series which have not been altered.
In one DVD release of the Tom and Jerry cartoons in 2005, the US comedian Whoopi Goldberg recorded an introduction to give the seemingly racism images contained in the programs some context.
The programs, she said, "come to us from a time when racial and ethnic differences were caricatured in the name of entertainment."
"While humour may have been the intent of such caricatures, they also had the effect of revealing society's unfair and hurtful representations of people of colour, women and ethnic groups.
"Removing Mammy Two Shoes would be the same as pretending she never existed.
"The same is true for the other images and jokes that we wouldn't normally include in a mainstream cartoon today," Goldberg said.
Goldberg added that retaining the racial and ethnic stereotypes was important because they "accurately reflect a part of our history that can not and should not be ignored."
In the taped introduction, Goldberg noted that she had been a Tom and Jerry fan since she was a child.
I persoally think Sesame Street is anti-white:
http://www.theapricity.com/forum/sho...teet-Is-Racist
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Originally Posted by dude
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