Censorship in Animation

Censorship in animation is a tricky and elusive topic to talk about. Sometimes it involves lots of contradictions and hypocrisy.  And it seems like has different standards case to case. For example, Tom and Jerry from 1940s could be called out for cartoon violence. Some more contemporary cartoons like Sam and Max are allowed greater latitude of violence.The guidelines are different depends on what platform you decide to put your show on. For example, cable channels have the strictest censorship guidelines while online-only mediums have less strict guidelines.  Even there is a general guideline for people to look at when decided what is appropriate to be on-air,  the final decision often falls to individual censors.  In this article, I will mostly focus on censorship of racism, sexism and violence in American cartoons.

The Image of Racism

This scene from Scrub Me Mama With a Boogie Beat, featuring a town called The Lazy Town. This woman on the left of the image singing around the town, while the rest of the town is far darker, with exaggerated thick lips.  This was a common use of stereotype in animation back days. At that time, these are considered as “did not offended or degraded the colored race”. As quoted from Walter Lantz who was the founder of Walter Lantz  Production and created Woody Woodpecker, “the first thing that happened was the elimination of all my films that contained Negro characters; there were eight such pictures. But we never offened or degraded the colored race and they were all top musical cartoons too. ”  So if at that time, some creators still believe that using stereotypes in animation to represent minorities should be forgivable.  Then when and why did animators stop making these film?

The simple answer to this question is that there are mainly two reasons; the actions of African-American publications and organizations such as the NAACP (the national association for the advancement of colored people) in making their displeasure with stereotypes in American animation public and known.

Sex/sexism

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These two image shows different cases of censorship in animation. For example, in 1930, Flossie Cow was presented completely nude with no cloth or hair to cover any parts of its body. Censors obviously had no problem with Flossie Cow just wearing a cowbell. In 1932 , they have to make Flossie Cow to wear a skirt before the movie go public. In 1939, Flossie started to wear a actual dress and walk upright more human-like.  Similar to this, the Mermaid had to use hair to cover her chest.

We all know that sex sells in any industries. Is this the reason why we have all these sexy bunnies, sexy lady cats and sexy ducks in our children’s cartoon? who will be calling the shots for “if the girl should wear more”? It seems like the censors for sex and sexism has become stricter. However, we can say that today’s popular animation has the most violence than ever in animation history.

Some popular shows has successfully developed violence into humor. For example, in classic cartoon Tom and Jerry, we have all seen Tom tried to kill Jerry with a shotgun, knife or hammer. These acts might not be consider appropriate for children. More realistic violence involving acts which children could imitate are not allowed.  So what is the limit for how much violence that a show could have just to make it funny before you call it “too far”?  Why is a live action movie for children have different censorship guidelines than cartoons? It is indeed ironic that cartoon shorts are censored while mainstream prime-time entertainment is bawdier than ever in entertainment history.

 

 

10 Replies to “Censorship in Animation”

  1. You definitely bring up and interesting point with just the *where do you draw the line* thing. Its always kinda amusing to me that animation is able to get away with more things like violence then live action is. I can understand it in the way of, kinda can tell the difference between real life and cartoons, but its always kinda amusing.

  2. I think that it is a slippery slope as to what is acceptable and what is not, especially with violence. Some violence is obviously just for laughs, but kids do emulate what they see so at what point is it the job of the animation to make sure that kids behave?
    With racism in animation, I think that the real changes came when people of color began to have a voice. Before, there was no respect for them so no one cared if they did not like their depiction. It was all in fun. This is harmful when you realize that only those in the dominant group are laughing at the jokes.

  3. The censorship within animation is a very interesting topic. I feel like that’s why animation is so attractive to people because of the fact that it is “limitless”. People want to be able to control someone that cannot be tamed, even if the control is vague or isn’t fair for certain parts. Live action gets away with a lot because it is “grounded” and it makes things feel more “real” while animation isn’t taken into that account.

  4. You know what I find hilarious is that the cow appears more sexually explicit now that it has a dress on and stands up. It’s like by calling attention to it they have made it more of what they are trying to avoid.

  5. Interesting that just last year we had Walter Lantz come to campus and an entire exhibit dedicated to him. Perhaps it would have been nice to have mentioned this part of his story, but then again he was about to donate a ton of money so I’m not really surprised. Good article!

  6. I think it’s pretty funny how the cow had to be censored. If the cartoon cows had to be censored, then does that mean real cow udders are scandalous? Goes to show you that censorship was way too strict. I’m glad that there’s more freedom to explore the medium now.

  7. Ho man, the censorship on that cow. I had no idea, that is ridiculous. Very interesting conversation to have, I believe there are both good and bad sides to censorship, but it all depends on the age-range of the audience viewing it (when dealing with violence censorship).

  8. I think what we can gleam from what we choose to censor (sexy stuff) and not (violence) speaks especially to our culture. This exists also outside of animation, but other realms of entertainment as well. It gives the message that especially Western (and maybe viewers in general) rather accept violence, acts of power, and power fantasies.

  9. This is an interesting topic, and a bit funny when you think about it. You’re right, censorship is one of those things that’s constantly in flux with cartoons. We definitely have this issue when it comes to cartoons from other countries being released here. For instance: 6Teen, Stoked, and the Total Drama series all came out of Canada, and were edited quite a bit before being okay’d for American TV (removal of dialogue, scene cuts, and other things that you’d never know unless you watched the unedited version on Netflix). This also happens with anime, but in reverse. Violence is downplayed (blood edited out, fight scenes shortened or framed differently, weapons removes or edited to look less intimidating), while sexual imagery remains right where it is.

  10. This is certainly an interesting discussion. I personally tend to like tamer, less sexual media, but it is difficult to discern how much of that should be in the hands of the creators and how much of that should be censored.

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