For a while, the cartoon is about Piggy escaping from an alligator (to the background song of “Just a Blue-Eyed Blonde” by Gus Kahn and Ted Fiorito). Then it’s about Uncle Tom and skeletons in a cemetery. Finally, almost at the end of the cartoon, the villain shows up and Piggy has to rescue the girl pig.
The skeletons will likely remind cartoon fans of Disney’s The Skeleton Dance, especially in close-up.
There’s a non-Disney gag in here. A skeleton dog jumps out of a grave and barks. It’s kicked back into the grave. The odd thing is there’s a brief puff of dirt, then the scene quickly cuts away. It’s like something was edited out.
Rudy Ising is the director, Friz Freleng and Paul J. Smith are the credited animators. Joe Young and Rube Bloom wrote the title song in 1931 but for which Warners feature, I have no idea.
Yes, so long folks!
The most innocuous (IMO) entry in the Censored Eleven assemblage. Never really understood why this particular short was included, when there are so many mote deserving candidates.
ReplyDeletePlace your bets: Which of the following will be the first to see a Blu-ray release before you become worm food--The C11, the second volume of the Tom & Jerry Golden Collection, or Song of the South?
Second Volume of T&J. I'm selling mine and had bought Spotlight instead.
DeleteLackluster attempt at Skeleton Dance by the Disney-worshipping/hating Harman-Ising. Not really racist, either.
ReplyDeleteNice copy though, Yowp!
I was never aware of this cartoon until I had seen it at an animation festival in the 1980s, and it was of course mentioned in certain books on the Warner Bros. Studios or on animation in general. I never got to see this thing literally, because I lost my site in 1976. my guess, as to the reason why it is censorable today, is that it gives a reference to “uncle Tom’s cabin“; that alone would make it taboo today. my guess and hope as to which taboo project would resume once the WarnerArchive resumes new cartoon projects, well, I would think it’s the Tom and Jerry golden collection, because there’s really no big reason why that shouldn’t resume. I would love to see all the censored 11 and beyond cartoons from Warner Brothers in the Looney Tunes and merry melodies series, And the studio can really do it quietly enough that they wouldn’t be such a big brouhaha over this thing. Somehow, the more we talk about it, the less that any studio whatsoever would want to touch it. it is we animation fans who want it, just to complete our Looney Tunes and merry melodies collections. That should be understood! Here’s hoping, some fine day, will have all the stuff.
ReplyDeleteIf it's such a lackluster, unworthy cartoon (it also echoes Max Fleischer's much better "Swing, You Sinners"), why bother wasting an entire column on it? Unless for the presumed shock value: "Look at this racist cartoon! Isn't it fun being offended by it?" I'm not sure, but I think this one actually is on one of the Looney Tunes DVDs.
ReplyDeleteI'm stunned to learn that it is not permissible to post about problems with something. I shall immediately do a web search to see who invented this rule. Perhaps all critics in newspapers and on places like YouTube should be told to stop making negative observations immediately.
DeleteAt no time in the post is there anything about race. Nor do I say I'm offended by the cartoon. I find the story disjointed.
Perhaps you should ask yourself why you're reading in all kinds of things into this post that simply don't exist.
I wouldn't say the Piggy cartoons were "good," but I think you undersell them, in a way -- they are very effective pastiches of Disney, where the first cartoon seems to recapitulate the Oswald era and the second the post-Oswald era. In the same way, Foxy is a pastiche of the Mickey Mouse cartoons and tropes. Being more Disney than Disney counts for something to me.
ReplyDelete