“Banned! Censored! Cartoons!” at Oddball Films March 18, 2011

Event: “Banned! Censored! Cartoons!”. Guest curator Pete Gowdy and Oddball Films present an evening of banned or censored cartoons. Racism, sexism, drug references and more were routinely featured in American animation- many of these cartoons were shown on TV through the late 1960’s until they were pulled from distribution. Swept from the public eye as an embarrassment and considered dangers to the public, these cartoons are nonetheless a part of American cultural and artistic history, should be available, and perhaps need to be seen.
Titles include: “Coal Black and The Sebben Dwarfs” (1943), “Tokio Jokio” (1943), “Little Black Sambo” (1935), “All This and Rabbit Stew” (1941), “Scrub Me Mama With a Boogie Beat” (1941), “Minnie the Moocher” (1932), “Bacall To Arms” (1946), “Lumber Jerks” (1955), “Buried Treasure” (1928), "Caveman Inki" (1950) and more.
Date: Friday, March 18, 2011 at 8:30PM
Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street, San Francisco
Admission: $10.00 RSVP Only to: 415-558-8117 or [email protected]
Web: http://www.oddballfilm.com/oddballftp/Banned_PR.pdf

On Friday, March 18 Curator Pete Gowdy and Oddball Films present an evening of banned or censored cartoons from the “golden age” of animation. Racist, sexist, “immoral”, illegal drug references and certainly controversial- sweeping them under the rug was the response, but confronting them is better.
Showtime is 8:30PM and admission is $10.00. Seating is limited so RSVP is preferred to: [email protected] or 415-558-8117.

Highlights Include:

Coal Black and The Sebben Dwarfs (Color, 1943)
Considered by many one of the greatest animated films of all time, Coal Black has been officially banned from circulation since 1968 and is one of the so called “Censored 11”, the group of cartoons pulled by United Artists due to racist content. A parody of Snow White, (called “So White” in the film), the blackface imagery and stereotypes are shocking to witness today (including a nasty dig at the Japanese). Nonetheless, Coal Black is a cultural tour de force snapshot of 1940’s America, ugly stereotypes and all.

Tokio Jokio (B+W, 1943)
Venomous anti-Japan propaganda short produced at the height of WWII portrays the Japanese as incompetent, weak, cowardly and primitive utilizing patently offensive portrayals, along with a raspberry or two for Hitler, Mussolini, Hess and others.

Little Black Sambo (Color, 1935)
Pre-war cartoon from two-time Academy Award winner Ub Iwerks and adapted from the controversial children’s book (and “inspiration” for the 1960’s-70’s restaurant chain Sambo’s). Despite the innocent theme, blackface representation and stereotypes prevail. Portions of the audio from this short were sampled by Public Enemy on their Fear of a Black Planet album.

All This and Rabbit Stew (Color, 1941)
You didn’t think the rabbit would escape unscathed, did you? Bugs Bunny at his worst tormenting a Stepin Fetchit –esque hunter. Another of the “Censored 11” pulled from distribution in 1968.

Minnie The Moocher (B+W, 1932)
All time classic featuring Cab Calloway and his Orchestra (seen live briefly at the beginning), Betty Boop and Bimbo. The main controversy here is the veiled drug and sex references: Minnie gets caught up with a pot headed coke-sniffing junkie who teaches her how to "kick the gong" (mainline heroin). Later she meets up with a pimp, the king of Sweden, who gives her “somethin she was needin'”…

Bacall To Arms (Color, 1946)
Directed by an un-credited Bob Clampett, this Merrie Melodies release features some great Hollywood star caricature- and a nasty final blackface gag (which hit the cutting room floor in modern times).

Scrub Me Mama With A Boogie Beat (B+W, 1941)
Despite the jitterbugging jive of the main musical number, this Mel Blanc voiced, Walter Lantz production may be the least defensibly racist cartoon of the lot, as we take a tour and meet the residents of Lazy Town, “the laziest place on earth”.

Buried Treasure (B+W, 1928)
The Granddaddy of pornographic cartoons, persistent rumors suggest that Max Fleischer (Betty Boop and others), Paul Terry (of TerryToons) and Budd Fisher (Mutt & Jeff) were responsible for this bawdy masterpiece.

Caveman Inki (Color, 1950)
The fifth and final cartoon featuring Inki, a little jungle boy who usually dresses in a simple loincloth, armband, legband, earrings, and a bone through his hair. He never speaks, and his usual pastime seems to be hunting jungle creatures. Here Inki is set in pre-historic times and features the usual non sequitur Minah Bird hop hop hopping along.

PLUS- Private Snafu, WWII training/propaganda cartoons meant for soldiers only and the first out-of-the-closet rodents- the Goofy Gophers!

For further reading on Coal Black and The Sebben Dwarfs and the debate over these censored cartoons, read Martin Goodman’s essay here: http://www.toontracker.com/coalblack/coalblack.htm
Curator Biography
Pete Gowdy (aka DJ Chas Gaudi) is host of San Francisco’s Shellac Shack, a weekly 78 rpm listening party and a DJ specializing in vintage sounds: soul, jazz, country, punk and new wave. A graduate of the Vassar College Film Program, he is an associate producer of Marc Huestis Presents, the long-running movie legend tributes at the Castro Theatre.

About Oddball Films
Oddball films is the film component of Oddball Film+Video, a stock footage company providing offbeat and unusual film footage for feature films like Milk, documentaries like The Summer of Love, television programs like Mythbusters, clips for Boing Boing and web projects around the world.  
Our films are almost exclusively drawn from our collection of over 50,000 16mm prints of animation, commercials, educationals, feature films, movie trailers, medical, industrial military, news out-takes and every genre in between. We’re actively working to present rarely screened genres of cinema as well as avant-garde and ethno-cultural documentaries, which expand the boundaries of cinema. Oddball Films is the largest film archive in Northern California and one of the most unusual private collections in the US. We invite you to join us in our weekly offerings of offbeat cinema.

Official Website: http://mim.io/09bfe