Sep

18

Why No Apologies for the Asians?

Category: Disney, Entertainment, Movies, tv | 5 Comments

I am against censorship. The recent news that Tom and Jerry will be edited in Europe to remove smoking scenes is absurd! So it’s not ok for Tom to smoke, but it’s ok for Jerry to electrocute him, chop him up, and all the other behaviours kids may imitate from watching cartoons. Even racist stuff has a place in our culture so that we can see what was acceptable back then, why it was acceptable and why it’s not acceptable today. I think it can be educational and also show how every immigrant group has gone through racist depictions in our multi-media. However, what I don’t like is unequal treatment people seem to give the different races and ethnic groups when it comes to apologizing. Here are two screenshots from the original Three Little Pigs.


This footage come from Leonard Maltin’s introduction about how the original TLP had depicted the big bad wolf as a Jewish salesman, complete with beard and large nose. The footage was later removed to placate sensitivities amongst the Jewish community. So there was a whole spiel about how it was wrong, but W. Disney wasn’t a racist and all that.

Now here are two screenshots from Disney Rarities where they sing a song about a fortune cookie man.


Having the Rickshaw was a bit racist, but tolerable. However, having an “honorable trash box” is just plain wrong! It’s like asians call everything honorable, even their trash cans. WTF is that? Now, to me, this wouldn’t have been any more racist or wrong than the TLP except that there was absolutely no apology from Leonard on behalf of Disney with respect to this cartoon. So what I get from this is that it’s ok to make fun of asians, but not Jews? is there a reason why they seem to have a need to apologize to one group and not the other?

And Disney isn’t the only one guilty of this - the Tom and Jerry cartoons had a whole explanation from Whoopi Goldberg about how the black maid in T&J was a little racist, but it was left in to preserve the integrity of the cartoon. However, when Tom or Jerry get hit on the head with a cymbal and suddenly get all slanty-eyed and buck-toothed, there’s no apology to asians.

Again, I think that these scenes SHOULD be left IN so that we and our children can look back on what was acceptable and how things have changed. But there seems to be some kind of conspiracy or, more appropriatly, some consensus that it’s ok not to say anything to the asians. They’re good sports about it, right? They won’t make as big a fuss as the african americans and the jews. I just think it’s so wrong!

  

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