Please contact us
with corrections
or breaking news
Cohen’s Cartoon Corners: July 2020 by Karl F. Cohen
Please support our stories by liking articles—thanks!
Hattie McDaniel (rt) and Vivien Leigh in the antiquated and problematic 'Gone with the Wind' (1939). photo: courtesy David O. Selznik
Finding an Acceptable Way to Deal with Offensive Art
Should we ban offensive images, show them with a detailed introduction or simply put a warning that a film or TV show contains political incorrect content?
Disney banned “Song of the South” years ago and no longer distributes it. Apparently they didn’t bother to renew the copyright, hence, non-authorized copies are available for sale on the internet or downloadable free.
“Song of the South” is truly over-the-top politically incorrect. Indeed, while it was being made, Walt Disney ignored detailed warnings from a staff member, Maurice Rapt, assigned to study exactly that.
Rapt told me all about Walt’s wanton disregard, when I interviewed him for my book “Forbidden Animation”. Many others also warned him as well but he dismissed most of their advice.
Now the Splash Mountain ride at Disney theme parks is being criticized for including characters from “Song of the South” on its fake mountain. Are those sculptures really going to upset anybody because they come from an offensive film?
Should We Ban a Racist Classic?
Another reaction to the current unrest is HBO MAX announcing that they are withdrawing “Gone With the Wind” (1939), due to its South-sympathetic and outright racist content.
When I told my aunt, Joan Cohen, a longtime film researcher and a film curator at the LA County Museum in the 1970s, about HBO’s censorship, she emailed me:
“Somehow, rewriting history lets the US off the hook and gives in to too much political correctness. We always have been a racist nation and, hopefully, that is changing. But censoring ‘GWTW’ and Elmer Fudd is not going to change the past. Where do you stop with works of art? Do you cover up nude paintings in museums for children?”
There was enough criticism of HBO’s decision that, a few day later, Variety reported that “‘Gone with the Wind’ will return to HBO Max after ‘careful’ planning,” and, hopefully, a well-researched and -written introduction.
Elmer Fudd chases Bugs Bunny but not with a gun, in the reboot from Looney Tunes. photo: courtesy Looney Tunes
New Looney Tunes Brings Back Classical Fun
HBO has, however, found a fairly uncontested path to renewing a beloved classic.
From what I’ve seen, their new “Max Looney Tunes” cartoons captures the spirit and fun of the originals, although I’ve yet to see the brilliant writing and artwork of the teams headed by Chuck Jones, Bob Clampett, Frank Tashlin and Tex Avery. Nevertheless, I’ve enjoyed plenty of overly fast-paced chases, explosions and other historic gags.
I wish the series’ executive producer, Peter Browngardt, good luck finding the right mix of contemporary culture with the aesthetics of the past.
Parody, a basic element in many classic cartoons, has to be updated to be funny for younger audiences. Given fewer people today have much knowledge of opera or classical music, perhaps Bugs and friends can delight us with a rock musical or being a punk or hip hop musician.
Although a basic premise of many Bugs Bunny cartoons is Elmer hunting for rabbit, Browngardt said in an interview that, “Guns are out.” Obviously, a lot more people today are turned off by gun culture than in the1940s and ‘50s.
In the first season of “South Park”, the “Coming Right At Us” episode was quite critical of hunting. Meanwhile, many have repudiated the Trump family’s enjoyment of trophy hunting. Is Elmer hunting Bugs still funny? Times have changed, so can Looney Tunes adopt? I hope so.
An article on the new series noted Browngardt held meetings where writers and artists threw out ideas based on the simplest of premises. “We don’t do scripts,” he said. “I hired cartoonists. So we get them together in a room, and we just draw pictures and gags.”
That sounds more like a script session at the Fleischer studio (developers of Betty Boop, Popeye and Superman). Does he understand what made each director’s work unique, or how their best works were from carefully thought out scripts?
HBO Max is a new streaming service and, from what I’ve seen, they have the good sense not to modernize this show. If you subscribe, you can look forward to shorts with Bugs, Daffy, Tweety, Sylvester, Porky and other animated stars.
Is Bob gay or just very happy?. image: courtesy Steve Hillenburg
Submarine Sexuality?
Is SpongeBob Squarepants gay, and is that a gay pride flag behind him? Nickelodeon has depicted the character in LGBTQ+ colors for Pride month, stimulating still more discussions about his sexuality. Although SpongeBob is 21 and lives under the sea in the legendary city of Bikini Bottom, it is hardly a sex club.
Created by the late Steve Hillenburg, a marine biologist turned animator, the lovable and wildly optimistic SpongeBob is a cook in the Krusty Krab restaurant. His close friend is Patrick Star, a pink starfish who wears floral shorts, resulting in people speculating about his sexuality.
Nevertheless, “We never intended them to be gay,” Hillenburg said in 2005. “I consider them to be almost asexual.”
The assumption that SpongeBob is sexually active off-screen is absurd. He is simply a fictional character with no off-camera life, although there is a lot of merchandise available. Admittedly, SpongeBob does have an onscreen friend who is bisexual, and one of the voice actors is transgender.
The homophobia lobby also created a rumor that Tinky Winky, a star of Teletubbies, was gay because he dressed in purple and carried a red bag that looked like a woman’s purse.
When the tele-evangelist Jerry Falwell alleged that the character was a gay role model in 1999, the BBC replied, "He's not gay. He's not straight. He's just a character in a children's series.” They also noted that his so called purse was a “magic bag.”
Other cartoon characters once rumored to be gay include Bugs Bunny and Tom and Jerry.
Mark Fiore's recent Trump caricature. image: courtesy M. Fiore
Fiore’s Operation Photo Op
Mark Fiore has been creating his often outrageous political cartoons since the turn of the century. He writes about this one, “I sure hope President Trump’s Lafayette Park escapade is a footnote in his horrible presidency and not the first major salvo in his coming autocracy.”
After it was announced that Muni will no longer take cops to anti-police brutality protests, SFPD said, "We've adjusted our transportation and operations accordingly." Here's Mark's reaction (by the way, it is from KQED's newsletter, which you don’t have to be a member to receive.)
Mark is a real San Francisco treasure. He was awarded a Pulitzer Prize a few years ago for what the Pulitzer committee called his "biting wit, extensive research and ability to distill complex issues."
Mark’s work also appears locally in the SF Chronicle’s online edition SF Gate.
Paley Honored at Spanish Festival
Cartoon queen supreme Nina Paley is being honored by Animakon, the major animation festival in Bilbao, Spain. Although Europe will open its boarders to other Europeans on July 1st, there will still be a ban on non-Europeans, so she can’t be there. She will probably accept her lifetime achievement award using Skype.
Paley is best known for her film “Sita Sings the Blues” (2001) and she worked in the Bay Area for many years as a cartoonist.
Who would dare tell a pirate story with armless peg-people—Stoopid Buddy Stoodios, of course. image: courtesy John Harvatine & Tom Root
The Robot Chicken People’s New Show
Stoopid Buddy Stoodios' John Harvatine IV and Tom Root, the team behind “Robot Chickens”, created the concept of “Crossing Swords” about a decade ago. Finally somebody at Hulu was silly enough to bring this stop-motion show to a small screen. Most of it was animated last summer and fall before the virus so a full season awaits their fans.
The shows concept was to use “peg people,” which are cute toys designed for preschoolers, and put them into a wacky and wild world where their dialog was written for adults. The episodes are sword and sorcery fantasies and each episode is set in a different environment. Peg people don’t have traditional arms and legs and they move about in unique ways. Hopefully what John and Tom have done with them is engaging to watch.
When they made “Robot Chicken” they learned to make their characters emote and do and say things that you can believe in. They had to use a lot of expressions in the faces and the eyes including blinks and lots of mouth movements since their puppets don’t have any arms to gesture with.
To gesture without arms the puppets somehow gesture with props that they move around. They can point to things if they need to. Wires were used to create movement and wire removal software hid the mechanism. Hopefully you will connect with them.
In one episode the action is a medieval version of Coachella so they created a rock and roll extravaganza. People speak English, but there is no specific location. In an interview the creators said they ignored the rules that creators of TV are required to establish in what is called the show’s “Bible.”
Apparently, in this sword and sorcery world anything can and will happen. Apparently. they got away doing whatever felt right to do to them.
Virtually Tour the Disney Museum
Enjoy taking a virtual tour of a new exhibit at the Walt Disney Family Museum. When the virus closed down almost everything, the museum decided to go ahead and hang their new show and let us see it in a new way.
You can walk around the complete exhibit using your mouse. Click on each work in the exhibit to get a closer look. You can independently navigate around each gallery space with 360° views.
When you click on a work you get closer and can also read information about the work and the artist. Visit the museum’s website to find the World of Tomorrow exhibit.
The exhibit includes conceptual images from around the world by artists creating paintings, drawings, photographs, and 3D objects. It opened June 10 in the actual museum and online.
“Our vision was to create a unique opportunity for a new kind of exhibition,” according to Executive Director Kirsten Komoroske.
It began as a juried exhibit on the theme of the show. They received hundreds of entries from adult and teen artists from around the world, including India, the UK, Spain, Finland, Romania, Nicaragua, and Australia. The jury selected over 175 works.
Karl F. Cohen—who decided to add his middle initial to distinguish himself from the Russian Karl Cohen, who tried to assassinate the Czar in the mid-19th century—is an animator, educator and director of the local chapter of the International Animation Society and can be reached .Posted on Jun 23, 2020 - 02:33 AM