Wednesday, May 20, 2009

The Wonders of Watch it Now: Racist Cartoons

If you have Netflix Instant watch, check out the Ub Iwerks collection Vol.2 and skip to roughly 91 minutes in. Or just check it out here.

I have seen some racist cartoons in my day, but that one was.... sort of awesome. Just when you think it couldn't possibly be a worse influence on the minds of children, the frog gets really high on opium. It looks like a lot of fun, too.

It was a different time, so perhaps the use of opium was so taken for granted that the message was merely: "Friends don't let friends perform police actions on drugs." Probably not, but the cartoon before it had the moral: "Don't forget to prepare for winter." There has to be some wholesome message beyond "watch out for Chinamen," right?

Oh god, there's one called Little Black Sambo. This is heavy stuff for cartoons. Here's something more lighthearted:
It's about Hell. How come Dora the Explorer never explores Hell?

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