Amazon has put a racism disclaimer
on its series of “Tom and Jerry” cartoons. Critics say this is
“empty-headed” and “PC madness.”
The
premise of “Tom and Jerry,” the 75-year-old madcap slapstick cartoon
about a feuding cat and mouse, is as innocuous as it is endlessly
entertaining. But as with any show that was created in the 1940s, some
of its tropes could be deemed politically incorrect or offensive today.
You’d be hard-pressed to find a character like Mammy Two Shoes, a
heavyset black maid whose face is obscured in all but one “Tom and
Jerry” episode, on the Disney Channel today.
So while Amazon has
recently added “Tom and Jerry” to its video streaming service, they made
sure to include a racism disclaimer: a warning that “Tom and Jerry”
contains “some ethnic and racial prejudices that were once commonplace
in American society.”
Characters like Mammy Two Shoes “were wrong
then and are wrong today,” the warning reads, incensing some fans of the
seven-time Academy-Award winning show. “I loved Tom and Jerry as a kid
and it never made me think poorly of ethnic minorities or want to smoke
cigars,” one tweeted. Another “watched Tom and Jerry since the 60s this
is the 1st time I’ve ever heard the R word in relation to it. PC
madness!”
Meanwhile, British cultural commentator and sociology professor Frank Furedi declared Amazon’s warning “empty-headed” and excoriated a kind of “false piousness” and culture of censorship that “seems to be sweeping cultural life.”
Cartoon historian Jerry Beck
agrees. “Amazon seems to have forgotten that ‘Tom and Jerry’ was made
for adults as much as it was for children,” Beck told The Daily Beast.
“[Amazon] should be showcasing ‘Tom and Jerry’ among classic movies in a
way that gives them cultural context,” he said. “The advisory is really
meant to warn parents that the cartoon may include things like smoking
or the black housekeeper that they might have to explain to their
children.”
It’s hardly the first time the beloved cat and mouse
frenemies have run into controversy. In 2013, two episodes were pulled
from the second installment of Warner Brothers’ Golden Collection
because they featured Tom and Jerry “blacked up.”
Fans
thought the collection would feature every episode of the comedy since
its creation, but “Casanova Cat” and “Mouse Cleaning,” two episodes from
1951 and 1948 with obvious race references that had previously been
censored on broadcast television, were cut from the collection.
“Casanova Cat” features Tom wooing a glamorous female feline by
darkening Jerry’s face with cigar smoke and making him do a minstrel
dance. And in “Mouse Cleaning,” Tom uses his “blackface” to trick Mammy
Two Shoes.
The cartoon’s creators, William Hanna and Joseph
Barbera, had trouble pitching it to broadcast networks in 1975, after
they retrieved rights from MGM. “We showed them (the network folks) five
of the old ‘Tom and Jerrys’ and they laughed so hard they had tears in
their eyes,” Barbera told the Associated Press at the time. “Then they said, ‘We can’t use them. If we put those on we’ll get killed,’” he said, referring to
standards instituted
several
years earlier by parents’ activist groups pushing for less violence on
TV. The criticism prompted Hanna and Barbera to create more “socially
acceptable” episodes (in 1975, they hadn’t sketched any new “Tom and
Jerry” shorts in 18 years).
There are plenty of other outdated stereotypes in “Tom and
Jerry”—sexist attitudes, for example—but Amazon chose to focus on race.
(Amazon could not be reached for comment.) Indeed, race has become an
increasingly hot-button issue in the last 10 years, so much so that we
are either censoring references to racial stereotypes or issuing trigger
warnings about them—sometimes at the expense of cultural and historical
literacy.
When Whoopi Goldberg introduces a 2005
Looney Tunes Golden Collection,
she addresses its politically incorrect themes, stressing that “they
are presented here to accurately reflect a part of our history that
cannot and should not be ignored” and that “removing these inexcusable
images and jokes from this collection would be the same as saying [these
prejudices] never existed.”
It’s understandable that big
companies are pointing out that the outdated ethnic stereotypes in these
old cartoons could cause offense. But as Goldberg noted, it’s important
to understand their historical context. There were few countries that
were built on such a multiethnic foundation, where differences were so
profound—where language, cultural mores, and ritual changed from block
to block—that racial and national stereotypes were an obvious outlet for
humor in cartoons.
And in the age of
South Park and
Family Guy, not much is going to shock us in a “Tom and Jerry” cartoon.
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