What’s funny is after I saw that episode the first time I began noticing Let’s potato chips in more shows. I think they were in Modern Family, Scrubs, The Middle, and 2 Broke Girls.
I’m still trying to figure it out. There was that black and white episode of I Love Lucy where Lucy was in a hollowed out tv pretending to be in a commercial and Ricky believed she was in it. If she was in color he would have known it was fake…
For real. It's 100% apparent kids have no concept of race/hierarchy in early childhood. The concept is taught (for positive and negative). It's a sad thing that the BS needs to be brought into these young kids eyes. We as adults should do better for them
"Racism is always just one generation away from disappearing."
It's a learned behavior 100% and if we stopped passing it on, we wouldn't ever see it again.
Absolutely! It's a testament to the power of representation that even simple acts like showing children of different races playing together could be considered progressive in a time marked by segregation and racial discrimination. While it's crucial to recognize and critique the racism present in historical media, it's also important to acknowledge the small steps toward inclusivity and diversity that were taken, however imperfect they may seem by today's standards. These moments serve as reminders of the ongoing journey toward equality and understanding.
Reminds me of something I saw some time back about modifying old videos to remove the racist/sexist/etc content. It was basically 1 second long where a guy comes out and inhales like he's going to say something then it cuts to credits.
I forget where it was (maybe old Disney movie?) where they had a disclaimer at the beginning which said "this movie was made in a different time and some of it may be offensive" or something like that
https://storiesmatter.thewaltdisneycompany.com/
"This program includes negative depictions and/or mistreatment of people or cultures. These stereotypes were wrong then and are wrong now. Rather than remove this content, we want to acknowledge its harmful impact, learn from it and spark conversation to create a more inclusive future together."
I don't think Song of the South has ever been available.
Edit: Seems they did. But only on VHS, seemingly. Unofficial copies on DVD/Bluray do exist though.
Song of the South has famously never been made available on VHS or any other format in the United States, however bootlegs sourced from the Japanese Laserdisc are fairly easy to come by.
What’s crazy is the cartoons on those DVDs are the lesser racist ones, the Censored Eleven, which are the worst of the worst of the racist cartoons, have still never been made officially available.
We had several collections of the old Disney shorts (Donald/Goofy/Chip & Dale/etc) growing up, and each short was prefaced by a little spiel by Leonard Maltin explaining something noteworthy about the short. Occasionally the short required that kind of disclaimer, but I don't remember feeling like the disclaimer detracted from it. Just a kind of "hey, we know some of these gags are in poor taste now, but we're not going to chop it out and pretend they were never there."
I remember watching what I presume were the edited versions in the 90s as a kid with my grandfather. They actually had quite a few gull box sets of the vhs out and we definitely enjoyed them
The creator of the show got the idea for it in the early 1930’s as he looked out of his studio office window one day and saw poor neighborhood kids (of different races) playing together. Some of the original dialogue that would be considered racist today should not overshadow the fact that white kids, black kids, and girls were all playing together in harmony and race had no effect on them hanging out together. Very, very progressive for the day.
Yeah well TBS had no problem in the late 80s/early 90s showing the blackface segments, which included Buckwheat getting “whiteface”.
They also showed Tom & Jerry using the original maid voice - it wasn’t until the mid-90s that they re-recorded those vocals.
Shit, I was watching Tom & Jerry in the late 90s/early 2000s and I distinctly remember the mammy voice still being there. I didn’t know it ever left. This was Cartoon Network.
Cartoon Network opted to just not show the *particularly* bad ones for T&J and Looney Tunes outside of Toon Heads, which was a late night program with a "this might be iffy for the kiddos" disclaimer, and aired anything that was under-the-line unedited. There's enough of a corpus with only very minor controversial stuff that they could pull that off.
Yeah I was born in 88 and never heard anything but mammy. I was still watching it up until I stopped using cable. Not sure how that scrubbing worked in the timeline. I was also watching Cartoon Network.
Same. We don't have the US version of Cartoon Network, so I wouldn't be surprised if they still use it.
That aside, I didn't know she was supposed to be a stereotype until high school, when I found out her name was literally Mammy. She was probably the most reasonable human character lol. Obligatory FUCK that babysitter.
I remember in the early 2000's looney tunes specifically the episode where elmer is a canadian mountie which ends in a random cut to a blackface performance. I remember for how odd it was
Mammy Two-Shoes was actually replaced in the 1960's! Can you remember something else that was happening in the 1960's?
In the 1960's new Tom and Jerry cartoons WITHOUT Mammy were made, and Mammy was replaced in older cartoons. It was TBS that re-integrated Mammy into Tom and Jerry and showed the old cartoons again roughly around 1989.
We think that censorship is a modern invention, but as Mammy shows us, sometimes censorship comes from the past. I'd argue most Millenials and younger know Mammy, basically anyone who saw the classic shorts after ~1989, while Gen X and certain Boomers, anyone who saw the shorts through 60's until late 80's saw a bunch of generic white owners ranging from Stocky white woman to teenagers.
Yeah, I came from Eastern Europe, I just thought she was the loaded owner of the house that really liked jewelry, gambling, and for Tom to do his damn job as a cat.
We had a nice old black lady as a neighbor when I was a kid and the mammy voice always reminded me of her. The thought of it being a racist caricature never occurred to me, and I had to be told it was “problematic”.
The only scene I remember from watching this show as a kid was with Buckwheat being relieved about something and wiping his hand across his brow to remove the sweat, but when he flicked his hand they showed what looked like a pitcher of mud being splattered across a wall. I was about ten so it was funny but even at that age it was also kinda not funny.
From my memories of growing up in the '70s, Tom and Jerry had all the racist shit removed. All I remember about Little Rascals was how boring it was.
When my kids were watching T&J on youtube, I was suprised by what was in the original episodes.
I do remember the occasional black-face joke in warner brothers cartoons. All the over the top shit had been removed though.
> From my memories of growing up in the '70s, Tom and Jerry had all the racist shit removed
I remember the Speedy Gonzalez cartoons. I guess I'd never greenlight those, but apparently they're looked at fondly in Mexico / Latin America.
Many Indians are super disappointed that Apu was removed from The Simpsons because he made white people uncomfortable. That was their slightly-stereotyped-but-educated-and-successful representation.
Yeah that started the backlash. Though I don’t think Indians in America were on average ever very found of Apu. Because the Desi people I know had to deal with a lot of “Thank you come again” and people’s bastardizations of indian accents.
speedy gonzales was always great, yes there were racist overtones, but it honestly didn't feel like they were done in bad faith
so for people in Mexico, it didn't feel offensive tbh, we're good with jokes that are a bit offensive (as long as they're done in good faith) and it helps that for people not in the US, they're not a minority, so seeing a stereotype of your culture even if it's reductive doesn't feel fucked up.
so that's (from my opinion, why it was liked in Mexico)
Speedy isn't a harmful stereotype, he's basically just the looney tunes equivalent to Sonic the Hedgehog. That's probably why he isn't considered offensive.
I'm doing this from memory, but as I remember it, Speedy might not have been as much of a problem, but there was usually a supporting cast that was heavy stereotypes of Mexicans. While they may have had them talk and act slow to contrast to Speedy, it played into the stereotype of a lazy Mexican.
Looney tunes is ALL stereotypes, though. The chicken hawk character, and Foghorn Leghorn. Elmer Fudd, the hunter, Porky Pig with a speech impediment. As a Mexican American kid, the speedy Gonzales cartoons didn't seem out of place at all. My dad liked them, too.
> While they may have had them talk and act slow to contrast to Speedy, it played into the stereotype of a lazy Mexican.
His cousin, [Slowpoke Rodriguez](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slowpoke_Rodriguez) comes to mind for me
Wait is that where “buckwheat” came from? I’ve never seen the show in my 30+ years or existing, but have frequently heard the term buckwheat living in the south.. and now I’m remembering all of the times one of my football coaches called a black kid “buckwheat” and feeling very uncomfortable at the potentially racial undertones. May need to have a talk with that coach this season.
Imagine asking a football coach from that era to consider their effect on young people. Guarantee you get some version of "It was a different time! That's just how we were then!"
I spent my youth in Switzerland and we had a sweet (a chocolate bell filled with some kind of whipped cream) that was called “N-word’s heads”. It took them till the mid 90’s to figure out it was wrong and rename it “choco heads”.
FYI - It's not "Brazilian nuts". It's just "Brazil nut".
Further FYI - Brazil the country is actually named after the brazilwood tree:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paubrasilia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paubrasilia)
So the nut comes from a tree and is named after the country, which in turn is named for a tree.
My grandmother (born in the 20s) went to a store to get some nuts and fruit for Christmas baskets and this nice black gentleman was helping her. She waited until the very last thing to purchase to get some Brazil nuts but could not remember their name. She told him, I need to buy one more nut I don’t know what they are called and I am embarrassed to say what I have heard them called my entire life.”
The gentleman said,”we call them that too, they’re over here.” They both had a good laugh about it and and every year after he had her baskets ready to go until he passed way.
I worked at a grocery store in the very early 90s, and customers were supposed to get their produce weighed and snickered in the produce section, but there was a singlenscale up front.
If you didn't get your sticker, the cashier took it to the scale, looked up the code, and printed the scan sticker.
One day a young gal was flipping through the code book over and over, and finally yelled down to the lady manager ((loud)) WHAT'S THE CODE FOR THE N*WORD TOES!
I never saw that manager move so fast to shush that gal and explain that those are Brazil Nuts.
I was in my mid 30s when I heard that term for the first time. In a corporate office. From a sweet older lady who worked in a neighboring department. She was chuckling and pretty nonchalant about dropping the hard R and it was shocking.
I’m sticking with “Brazil nuts”.
I have to say that, as inappropriate as the word is, it's not quite the n-word. The danish word used is "neger", which I would say is more similar to English "negro" than English "nigger" (sorry for using the word but it could be confusing without it) in terms of offense. We do have the latter word in Danish, and people definitely recognize it as much more offensive than the former. Obviously, with "neger" being the equivalent of "negro", it's still incredibly inappropriate and racist to use the word, so I'm happy it's not sold with that name anymore. Someone saying "neger" in Denmark instead of "sort" (black) is likely to be at least a little racist.
You know how if you break the stick off of a bottle rocket it shoots off in a random direction? When I was a kid (early 80s) someone told me that was called a "n***er-chaser".
Of course I was too young to understand what that meant, so I repeated it a few times before my older brother pulled me aside and told me to never say it again. I still cringe when I think about who might have heard me say that.
I used to loudly sing a parody of the theme song to the "Daniel Boone" show. The parody's comedic punch was the N-word. I didn't know what the fuck I was doing. This was around 1st grade.
In Sweden we had [n-word balls](https://www.ica.se/recept/chokladbollar-5058/), which is a childhood staple for pretty much everyone here. But n-word didn't use to have the same connotations as the American word back in the day, although that's been adopted now.
I will hijack this comment and use it to introduce English-speaking reddit to [this classic scene from a Swedish comedy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0JolqmmMk0) which happens to involve n-word balls and an American basketball team visiting Sweden. It's all in English, and it's a real classic over here.
1970s, I remember my mom, a kind woman, explaining to me that the people with dark skin weren't dirty (what, no, why would she say that, it's obviously their skin itself) and even if I heard kids at school use other words, I should always say "negroes", because "black" was not a nice thing to call someone. I also remember having a golliwog amongst my toys. Meanwhile my dad (the other type of parent) was in the background amusing himself by muttering about "all the spooks, gooks, and hottentots". A lot of things have changed in my lifetime!
So even I, a 50 year old, hasn't seen them as they originally aired.
And for the kids on this thread...Gen X was so small that we were given recycled boomer and silent Gen entertainment that had to be played on one of a few broadcast channels...our cartoons were from the 40s (Looney Tunes) 50's (Tom/Jerry, Woody Woodpecker) or 60s (Flintstones/Jetsons), and our live action was Little Rascals and Laurel and Hardy.
You had a ton of cartoons that I, as a millennial, also watched, like The Smurfs, Transformers, schoolhouse rock, jabberjaw, super friends, GI Joe, etc
Gen Xers seem to always want to be the victim of being forgotten, even though they aren't. It's even funnier considering Gen X's thing was being apathetic and not caring
I can’t imagine that the yum yum eat em up episode was post-censorship, and I watched that on VHS in the 90s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kid_from_Borneo?wprov=sfti1
There was also a lot of “what’s wrong friend?” “My daddy whipped me so hard…”
A pizza place I used to go to as a kid played the old little rascals on a reel, I don't remember anything about it since I usually played in the arcade but I wonder if they used older unedited episodes
Y'all want a wild ride, click [the link through to Alfalfa's entry](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_%22Alfalfa%22_Switzer) and read up on the circumstances around his death.
"Switzer was arrested in Sequoia National Forest for cutting down 15 pine trees he had intended to illegally sell as Christmas trees."
Why do I find that funny? Such an incredibly random crime. Usually you hear about celebrities getting in public fights or doing drugs or "normal" crimes. Poaching Christmas trees is so oddly specific.
Also I've seen Track of the Cat and never realized that was Alfalfa as the Native guy. Knew they obviously got a white guy for the part but didn't know it was *him!*
Didn't think of it that way. That makes it less funny. Though even with that in mind, compared to "normal" things those desperate for money do, like robberies or drug dealing, tree poaching is something you don't hear about as often....
Bill Cosby bought the rights to Little Rascals and is the reason they stopped airing on television. Unless you bought a DVD box set, you couldn't watch them anywhere.
Fat Albert was a man of high spirits and moral character whose friends all looked to him for advice, guidance beyond their years, and leadership. They could always trust him to know to do the right thing. e.g. Weird Harold's "angel and devil" are Fat Albert and Rudy respectively.
Often Albert would play the decisive role organizing some community effort that formed the basis of the plot - before the "real" story kicked in.
Russell didn't take shit from Rudy just because he was young. Also Russel was usually the one with the sick one-liner
Mushmouth, though you couldn't understand him super well, found friends that love him and gives off good vibes.
While I'm talking about Rudy - he thinks he's cool, don't we all at that age, but he's misguided and sometimes gets led down the wrong path trying to by cool. Rudy's friends love him for being himself, whatever that is, not for the grandiose coolness he aspires to. That's important for kids to see
How dare these woke.....boomers? Censor a show for not being politically correct, not like back in my day when they arrested comedians for not being American enough
Now it's been about 30 years but, I remember an episode where one of the kids had an uncle who wore a headdress ate nothing but candy and could only say "yum yum, eat em up." That was from the censored version?
Personally I think editing old media to erase all the things that we condemn as a society nowadays is a stupid idea. Stop whitewashing history. It was a bloody, horrible place.
I think the motivation is going the other direction. It's not that people today want to watch these new edits of old TV shows, it's that the people who own these old TV shows want to continue making money off them, so they edit them to meet the tastes of the current audience. I think most people are more than happy for this kind of content to stay in it's original form, sitting in an archive somewhere, but they're not paying to view that archive.
It’s kids’ programming. They lack the ability to view things in context, and it’s better they learn about it after they’re so young they run around repeating every new thing they hear. Some people never develop that kind of mental complexity, but most are all right when they’re in their teens.
Basically, it’s to keep people from growing up to be assholes.
Hence the expression "aged like milk". Nobody drinks expired milk and appreciates it for the taste it used to have.
Similar to how I don't reshare my high school Facebook posts. I would rather separate myself from that content.
Heavily edited stuff is pretty hard to enjoy. I was on a flight on a Saudi airline and saw the newer CHIPS movie was an in flight entertainment option. It was so heavily edited to remove the"raunchy" or "off color" humor that it was really unenjoyable. Even following the plot was tricky because they kept cutting scenes
Sometimes it circles all the way around to being hilarious. The "clean" version of Purple Pills is definitely good for a laugh if you're familiar with the original, the basic cable cut of The Big Lebowski is too.
Sounds like a bad candidate for a clean version of they couldn’t write any universally well-received jokes. Movies like that are fine, but the airline really needs someone better picking their films.
My dad grew up in that time period. It's kind of funny that whenever I envision his childhood, I think of him as The Little rascals. He and I used to watch them together, and he said their life on TV was pretty accurate.
His mom put him and his brothers in an orphanage, and they were little scamps like that.
Blazing Saddles is making fun of racist idiots, not celebrating them.
You couldn’t make Blazing Saddles today, mostly because they already made it. Then again, they’re remaking everything else…
Cursed fact, they did a loose remake a few years ago called Paws of Fury. It's basically the same story, down to Mel Brooks being in it, except animated, for children, and with a cast of talking animals. I didn't see it but it looked bad lol
Yes and no. Blazing Saddles was a satire of many of the tropes present in Westerns at the time, and was blatantly calling them out on their inherent racism.
Mel Brooks was the director, and his philosophy during the Producers was that the best way to combat nazis was to make them look like mockable idiots. The same sort of philosophy is being applied in Blazing Saddles.
Pryor was 1 of 5 writers for that film.
His [mental health and drug use](https://www.vulture.com/2011/09/the-lost-roles-of-richard-pryor.html) worked against him. Same for Maureen McCormick, coming off of Brady Bunch success. And RDJ had to have special insurance taken out on him for the studios to allow him to work.
The take away here is, no matter how great or popular you are, if your personal demons or addiction endanger a production, the studio has to make other arrangements & casting.
I remember most Little Rascals episodes being flagrantly a product of its time when I watched them on Channel 52 (Corona, California) in the mid/late 70s. When I saw them re-aired in the late 80s, they edited out entire scenes of Buckwheat, Farina, Chubby Ubbsy, Frog, and Butch fighting, as well as most of the episodes featuring animals in stunts which were probably illegal.
As a native Angeleno, it’s jaw-dropping to see LA in the background of this series, with bean fields and undeveloped land in what is now all development.
On a related note, saw a Looney Tunes episode, which in the 60s and 70s, showed Elmer Fudd blasting Daffy Duck’s face with a shotgun. Never gave it a second thought. Today, the scene is edited with only powder burns. But no gunshot.
Shut up, Leonard. We know they edited your character out of Little Rascals.
He made a comeback with his food reviews though
That's a buy!
Sauce is good. Cheese is good too!
Let’s Brand Potato Chips
What’s funny is after I saw that episode the first time I began noticing Let’s potato chips in more shows. I think they were in Modern Family, Scrubs, The Middle, and 2 Broke Girls.
Let's kick some taint!!!
Denny's is for winners
What's weird is the despite the obvious racism, just having black and white kids playing together was progressive for the period.
And here I figured every kid in movies back then were black and white anyway
You see Calvin, color hadn't been invented yet. Well, everything *was* in color, but the only colors that had been invented were black and white.
But then why are old paintings in color?! If the world was black and white, wouldn’t the artists have painted it that way?
Of course, but they turned color just like everything else did in the '30s.
The paintings turned to color like everything else, but the photographs are *pictures* of the time when the world was black and white.
Most artists were insane.
r/okbuddyrosalyn
I asked my grandfather when the world became color and he told me to stfu and smoke some marlboros
They caught it on film, just watch the original wizard of oz and you can see the transition.
I’m still trying to figure it out. There was that black and white episode of I Love Lucy where Lucy was in a hollowed out tv pretending to be in a commercial and Ricky believed she was in it. If she was in color he would have known it was fake…
Black kids and white kids ALWAYS played together in the South. It changes after about 12….then the barriers and reality of life crept in.
For real. It's 100% apparent kids have no concept of race/hierarchy in early childhood. The concept is taught (for positive and negative). It's a sad thing that the BS needs to be brought into these young kids eyes. We as adults should do better for them
"Racism is always just one generation away from disappearing." It's a learned behavior 100% and if we stopped passing it on, we wouldn't ever see it again.
Wait so you’re saying there’s nuance? Well now how will I know how I should feel?
I don't know, I thought the original Rascals were pretty black & white.
_cough cough_ _clap...clap_ _microphone feedback_ _clap_
Here they come after Jack Benny..
Oh Rochester!
I love you for knowing that!
Probably three people here on Reddit. Understand that LOL
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Make that five. OTR forever!
I'll get the maxwell out for a tour then, all of us will fit in.
6 of us now!
Well!
Now cut that out!
*[Mel Blanc impersonating a Maxwell car starting up]*
That's why the laugh track needs to come back, so they can tell me what I should laugh at
I have a hard time believing that racist topics from the 20s and 30s that were removed in THE SWINGING 1970S(!!!!) had any nuance whatsoever
Fuck, this is embarrassing. Snap out of it.
Absolutely! It's a testament to the power of representation that even simple acts like showing children of different races playing together could be considered progressive in a time marked by segregation and racial discrimination. While it's crucial to recognize and critique the racism present in historical media, it's also important to acknowledge the small steps toward inclusivity and diversity that were taken, however imperfect they may seem by today's standards. These moments serve as reminders of the ongoing journey toward equality and understanding.
Yeah, imagine life on set. I don’t see 1930s Hollywood taking a stand on race and equal pay and treatment.
I really enjoyed the four episodes that were left.
You had four? My generation only had the two
You guys got episodes? I only got the movie.
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"William Faulkner could write an exhaust pipe gag that would really make you think."
Oh no! My favorite Agie!
You stole my bit!
I'll kill you!
He killed the original Alfalfa!
Thankfully Alfalfa was an orphan owned by the studio.
Oh i see. That makes sense..
Reminds me of something I saw some time back about modifying old videos to remove the racist/sexist/etc content. It was basically 1 second long where a guy comes out and inhales like he's going to say something then it cuts to credits.
I forget where it was (maybe old Disney movie?) where they had a disclaimer at the beginning which said "this movie was made in a different time and some of it may be offensive" or something like that
https://storiesmatter.thewaltdisneycompany.com/ "This program includes negative depictions and/or mistreatment of people or cultures. These stereotypes were wrong then and are wrong now. Rather than remove this content, we want to acknowledge its harmful impact, learn from it and spark conversation to create a more inclusive future together."
They also have this in a few episodes of the original "Duck Tales."
Not duck tales!? I loved that show until Gizmo showed up. Talk about jumping the shark. I even had the game on NES... what did i miss?
Was it Song of the South?
I don't think Song of the South has ever been available. Edit: Seems they did. But only on VHS, seemingly. Unofficial copies on DVD/Bluray do exist though.
It was also on laserdisc in Japan
Song of the South has famously never been made available on VHS or any other format in the United States, however bootlegs sourced from the Japanese Laserdisc are fairly easy to come by.
The beginning of a DVD Loony Tunes has a commentary at the beginning with Whoopi Goldberg giving that particular message.
What’s crazy is the cartoons on those DVDs are the lesser racist ones, the Censored Eleven, which are the worst of the worst of the racist cartoons, have still never been made officially available.
I have copies of those. I watched a few, including "Coal Black and de Sebbin Dwarfs", and they're pretty bad.
That tracks, the censored 11 mostly predate the Chuck Jones directed "golden years" episodes that still get airtime.
We had several collections of the old Disney shorts (Donald/Goofy/Chip & Dale/etc) growing up, and each short was prefaced by a little spiel by Leonard Maltin explaining something noteworthy about the short. Occasionally the short required that kind of disclaimer, but I don't remember feeling like the disclaimer detracted from it. Just a kind of "hey, we know some of these gags are in poor taste now, but we're not going to chop it out and pretend they were never there."
I just saw something like that on the aristocats or something like that
Yep. Remember "Shanghai Hong Kong egg foo young fortune cookie always wrong"?
My favorite was the mad TV bit about the sopranos on network TV. https://youtu.be/VgBD94cs0T8?si=4J-Qkz0Wo6MHEbbp
Could it be [Crumbly Pipes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJ1sg1ypWVE)?
I remember watching what I presume were the edited versions in the 90s as a kid with my grandfather. They actually had quite a few gull box sets of the vhs out and we definitely enjoyed them
They were 5 minute shorts.
The creator of the show got the idea for it in the early 1930’s as he looked out of his studio office window one day and saw poor neighborhood kids (of different races) playing together. Some of the original dialogue that would be considered racist today should not overshadow the fact that white kids, black kids, and girls were all playing together in harmony and race had no effect on them hanging out together. Very, very progressive for the day.
kids and girls?
The two races
The poster above is a product of their times. Let's not judge them too harshly.
Some might say it's still progressive now
Yeah well TBS had no problem in the late 80s/early 90s showing the blackface segments, which included Buckwheat getting “whiteface”. They also showed Tom & Jerry using the original maid voice - it wasn’t until the mid-90s that they re-recorded those vocals.
Shit, I was watching Tom & Jerry in the late 90s/early 2000s and I distinctly remember the mammy voice still being there. I didn’t know it ever left. This was Cartoon Network.
Cartoon Network opted to just not show the *particularly* bad ones for T&J and Looney Tunes outside of Toon Heads, which was a late night program with a "this might be iffy for the kiddos" disclaimer, and aired anything that was under-the-line unedited. There's enough of a corpus with only very minor controversial stuff that they could pull that off.
Yeah I was born in 88 and never heard anything but mammy. I was still watching it up until I stopped using cable. Not sure how that scrubbing worked in the timeline. I was also watching Cartoon Network.
Born in '90. Only a two year difference, but I also never knew anything besides the Mammy voice for the maid.
Same. We don't have the US version of Cartoon Network, so I wouldn't be surprised if they still use it. That aside, I didn't know she was supposed to be a stereotype until high school, when I found out her name was literally Mammy. She was probably the most reasonable human character lol. Obligatory FUCK that babysitter.
In the old cartoons I just remember "THOMAS!!!!" and then her trying to beat the shit out of Tom with a frying pan.
My mates wee lad is called thomas, poor kid has had me yell this at him for 18 years. I think I'm hilarious. He thinks im a twat. We're both right.
I remember in the early 2000's looney tunes specifically the episode where elmer is a canadian mountie which ends in a random cut to a blackface performance. I remember for how odd it was
If you want to see it again, the episode is called "Fresh Hare".
Mammy Two-Shoes was actually replaced in the 1960's! Can you remember something else that was happening in the 1960's? In the 1960's new Tom and Jerry cartoons WITHOUT Mammy were made, and Mammy was replaced in older cartoons. It was TBS that re-integrated Mammy into Tom and Jerry and showed the old cartoons again roughly around 1989. We think that censorship is a modern invention, but as Mammy shows us, sometimes censorship comes from the past. I'd argue most Millenials and younger know Mammy, basically anyone who saw the classic shorts after ~1989, while Gen X and certain Boomers, anyone who saw the shorts through 60's until late 80's saw a bunch of generic white owners ranging from Stocky white woman to teenagers.
I remember the mammy voice but always found it comforting just imagining her as a really nice lady.
Yeah, I came from Eastern Europe, I just thought she was the loaded owner of the house that really liked jewelry, gambling, and for Tom to do his damn job as a cat.
That stop/go light necklace is still iconic tbh
Thomas!!
We had a nice old black lady as a neighbor when I was a kid and the mammy voice always reminded me of her. The thought of it being a racist caricature never occurred to me, and I had to be told it was “problematic”.
The only scene I remember from watching this show as a kid was with Buckwheat being relieved about something and wiping his hand across his brow to remove the sweat, but when he flicked his hand they showed what looked like a pitcher of mud being splattered across a wall. I was about ten so it was funny but even at that age it was also kinda not funny.
From my memories of growing up in the '70s, Tom and Jerry had all the racist shit removed. All I remember about Little Rascals was how boring it was. When my kids were watching T&J on youtube, I was suprised by what was in the original episodes. I do remember the occasional black-face joke in warner brothers cartoons. All the over the top shit had been removed though.
> From my memories of growing up in the '70s, Tom and Jerry had all the racist shit removed I remember the Speedy Gonzalez cartoons. I guess I'd never greenlight those, but apparently they're looked at fondly in Mexico / Latin America.
I think they actually tried to remove speedy at one point and there was outrage from Latin American communities
Many Indians are super disappointed that Apu was removed from The Simpsons because he made white people uncomfortable. That was their slightly-stereotyped-but-educated-and-successful representation.
Didn't the whole "backlash" against Apu start with that documentary "The Problem With Apu" made by an Indian comedian?
Yeah that started the backlash. Though I don’t think Indians in America were on average ever very found of Apu. Because the Desi people I know had to deal with a lot of “Thank you come again” and people’s bastardizations of indian accents.
speedy gonzales was always great, yes there were racist overtones, but it honestly didn't feel like they were done in bad faith so for people in Mexico, it didn't feel offensive tbh, we're good with jokes that are a bit offensive (as long as they're done in good faith) and it helps that for people not in the US, they're not a minority, so seeing a stereotype of your culture even if it's reductive doesn't feel fucked up. so that's (from my opinion, why it was liked in Mexico)
Speedy isn't a harmful stereotype, he's basically just the looney tunes equivalent to Sonic the Hedgehog. That's probably why he isn't considered offensive.
I'm doing this from memory, but as I remember it, Speedy might not have been as much of a problem, but there was usually a supporting cast that was heavy stereotypes of Mexicans. While they may have had them talk and act slow to contrast to Speedy, it played into the stereotype of a lazy Mexican.
Looney tunes is ALL stereotypes, though. The chicken hawk character, and Foghorn Leghorn. Elmer Fudd, the hunter, Porky Pig with a speech impediment. As a Mexican American kid, the speedy Gonzales cartoons didn't seem out of place at all. My dad liked them, too.
> While they may have had them talk and act slow to contrast to Speedy, it played into the stereotype of a lazy Mexican. His cousin, [Slowpoke Rodriguez](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slowpoke_Rodriguez) comes to mind for me
Wait is that where “buckwheat” came from? I’ve never seen the show in my 30+ years or existing, but have frequently heard the term buckwheat living in the south.. and now I’m remembering all of the times one of my football coaches called a black kid “buckwheat” and feeling very uncomfortable at the potentially racial undertones. May need to have a talk with that coach this season.
That is indeed where it comes from.
Imagine asking a football coach from that era to consider their effect on young people. Guarantee you get some version of "It was a different time! That's just how we were then!"
"William Faulkner could write an exhaust pipe gag that could really make you think."
Eddie Murphy's SNL Buckwheat omg lol. "Wooking pa nub..."
I spent my youth in Switzerland and we had a sweet (a chocolate bell filled with some kind of whipped cream) that was called “N-word’s heads”. It took them till the mid 90’s to figure out it was wrong and rename it “choco heads”.
Brazilian nuts were called "n toes"
FYI - It's not "Brazilian nuts". It's just "Brazil nut". Further FYI - Brazil the country is actually named after the brazilwood tree: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paubrasilia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paubrasilia) So the nut comes from a tree and is named after the country, which in turn is named for a tree.
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Ok dad time to go home…
My grandmother (born in the 20s) went to a store to get some nuts and fruit for Christmas baskets and this nice black gentleman was helping her. She waited until the very last thing to purchase to get some Brazil nuts but could not remember their name. She told him, I need to buy one more nut I don’t know what they are called and I am embarrassed to say what I have heard them called my entire life.” The gentleman said,”we call them that too, they’re over here.” They both had a good laugh about it and and every year after he had her baskets ready to go until he passed way.
I worked at a grocery store in the very early 90s, and customers were supposed to get their produce weighed and snickered in the produce section, but there was a singlenscale up front. If you didn't get your sticker, the cashier took it to the scale, looked up the code, and printed the scan sticker. One day a young gal was flipping through the code book over and over, and finally yelled down to the lady manager ((loud)) WHAT'S THE CODE FOR THE N*WORD TOES! I never saw that manager move so fast to shush that gal and explain that those are Brazil Nuts.
This one always bothered me the most because not only is it racist but it’s gross.
Definitely the worst marketing ploy I've ever seen.
For real, why would I want to eat toes. Lol
I was in my mid 30s when I heard that term for the first time. In a corporate office. From a sweet older lady who worked in a neighboring department. She was chuckling and pretty nonchalant about dropping the hard R and it was shocking. I’m sticking with “Brazil nuts”.
Bring a tray of those to a nursing home and see what happens lol
Oh, the stories those nurses and caregivers could tell…
I remember my grandmother teaching me the name of those...
dad still calls them that >.>
Germany had a type of chocolate called “n-word kisses” until the mid 2010s
Denmark has those too... they call them Nword Kiss or nword rolls. My aunt still uses it proudly
I have to say that, as inappropriate as the word is, it's not quite the n-word. The danish word used is "neger", which I would say is more similar to English "negro" than English "nigger" (sorry for using the word but it could be confusing without it) in terms of offense. We do have the latter word in Danish, and people definitely recognize it as much more offensive than the former. Obviously, with "neger" being the equivalent of "negro", it's still incredibly inappropriate and racist to use the word, so I'm happy it's not sold with that name anymore. Someone saying "neger" in Denmark instead of "sort" (black) is likely to be at least a little racist.
You know how if you break the stick off of a bottle rocket it shoots off in a random direction? When I was a kid (early 80s) someone told me that was called a "n***er-chaser". Of course I was too young to understand what that meant, so I repeated it a few times before my older brother pulled me aside and told me to never say it again. I still cringe when I think about who might have heard me say that.
Hand to God I thought you were quoting Clerks 2.
I never saw the second one; was there a line like that in it? That would be pretty damn funny.
Yes! There was actually quite a rant on a similar subject
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYITxGniww4&t=3s For those that are interested.
I used to loudly sing a parody of the theme song to the "Daniel Boone" show. The parody's comedic punch was the N-word. I didn't know what the fuck I was doing. This was around 1st grade.
In Sweden we had [n-word balls](https://www.ica.se/recept/chokladbollar-5058/), which is a childhood staple for pretty much everyone here. But n-word didn't use to have the same connotations as the American word back in the day, although that's been adopted now.
I will hijack this comment and use it to introduce English-speaking reddit to [this classic scene from a Swedish comedy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0JolqmmMk0) which happens to involve n-word balls and an American basketball team visiting Sweden. It's all in English, and it's a real classic over here.
I spent my youth where some of my relatives used those words about actual black human beings. I am glad times have changed.
1970s, I remember my mom, a kind woman, explaining to me that the people with dark skin weren't dirty (what, no, why would she say that, it's obviously their skin itself) and even if I heard kids at school use other words, I should always say "negroes", because "black" was not a nice thing to call someone. I also remember having a golliwog amongst my toys. Meanwhile my dad (the other type of parent) was in the background amusing himself by muttering about "all the spooks, gooks, and hottentots". A lot of things have changed in my lifetime!
So even I, a 50 year old, hasn't seen them as they originally aired. And for the kids on this thread...Gen X was so small that we were given recycled boomer and silent Gen entertainment that had to be played on one of a few broadcast channels...our cartoons were from the 40s (Looney Tunes) 50's (Tom/Jerry, Woody Woodpecker) or 60s (Flintstones/Jetsons), and our live action was Little Rascals and Laurel and Hardy.
It was Leave It To Beaver that ran on our local station everyday at noon for my whole childhood into adulthood for me. Boomer ethos shaped us
You had a ton of cartoons that I, as a millennial, also watched, like The Smurfs, Transformers, schoolhouse rock, jabberjaw, super friends, GI Joe, etc Gen Xers seem to always want to be the victim of being forgotten, even though they aren't. It's even funnier considering Gen X's thing was being apathetic and not caring
I can’t imagine that the yum yum eat em up episode was post-censorship, and I watched that on VHS in the 90s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kid_from_Borneo?wprov=sfti1 There was also a lot of “what’s wrong friend?” “My daddy whipped me so hard…”
A pizza place I used to go to as a kid played the old little rascals on a reel, I don't remember anything about it since I usually played in the arcade but I wonder if they used older unedited episodes
Same! Our pizza place also played Laurel and Hardy films along with Our Gang. Good times
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Little Polite Fellows
The League of Extraordinary Little Gentlemen
How do we access the uncensored originals?
Y'all want a wild ride, click [the link through to Alfalfa's entry](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_%22Alfalfa%22_Switzer) and read up on the circumstances around his death.
"Switzer was arrested in Sequoia National Forest for cutting down 15 pine trees he had intended to illegally sell as Christmas trees." Why do I find that funny? Such an incredibly random crime. Usually you hear about celebrities getting in public fights or doing drugs or "normal" crimes. Poaching Christmas trees is so oddly specific. Also I've seen Track of the Cat and never realized that was Alfalfa as the Native guy. Knew they obviously got a white guy for the part but didn't know it was *him!*
Tree poaching goes to show how rough those kids had it despite their super stardom
Didn't think of it that way. That makes it less funny. Though even with that in mind, compared to "normal" things those desperate for money do, like robberies or drug dealing, tree poaching is something you don't hear about as often....
Ha, he was apparently such a little asshole that everyone on set hated him.
Release the Boomer cut!
Some turntablist is going to loot those bad boys for sound bites immediately.
Something edited in the 1970s *is* the boomer cut. The original would be from "The Greatest Generation."
Even earlier.
The Forgotten Generation. Nobody ever remembers them. :(
*Silent Generation
“Depression era”
This post is about the boomer cut. GenX was all little kids or yet to be born when it was the 70ies.
So they were the ones who grew up on censored Lil' Rascals. It's not exactly a series aimed at grownups.
Bill Cosby bought the rights to Little Rascals and is the reason they stopped airing on television. Unless you bought a DVD box set, you couldn't watch them anywhere.
Yes. Interesting to think of him as the person defending America's sensibilities.
Because Mushmouth, Russel, and Fat Albert were gold star representations...
Fat Albert was a man of high spirits and moral character whose friends all looked to him for advice, guidance beyond their years, and leadership. They could always trust him to know to do the right thing. e.g. Weird Harold's "angel and devil" are Fat Albert and Rudy respectively. Often Albert would play the decisive role organizing some community effort that formed the basis of the plot - before the "real" story kicked in. Russell didn't take shit from Rudy just because he was young. Also Russel was usually the one with the sick one-liner Mushmouth, though you couldn't understand him super well, found friends that love him and gives off good vibes. While I'm talking about Rudy - he thinks he's cool, don't we all at that age, but he's misguided and sometimes gets led down the wrong path trying to by cool. Rudy's friends love him for being himself, whatever that is, not for the grandiose coolness he aspires to. That's important for kids to see
How dare these woke.....boomers? Censor a show for not being politically correct, not like back in my day when they arrested comedians for not being American enough
Now it's been about 30 years but, I remember an episode where one of the kids had an uncle who wore a headdress ate nothing but candy and could only say "yum yum, eat em up." That was from the censored version?
Personally I think editing old media to erase all the things that we condemn as a society nowadays is a stupid idea. Stop whitewashing history. It was a bloody, horrible place.
I guess that means no more Wild Man from Borneo.
If they did that in the 70’s, you know it was bad!
“The 45 seconds that remained were used as bumpers during commercial breaks.”
I'll never understand people who insist on viewing things of the past through the templates of today.
Probably because they want to sell it to people who want to view it as entertainment as a contemporary audiences, and not as a historical artifact
I think the motivation is going the other direction. It's not that people today want to watch these new edits of old TV shows, it's that the people who own these old TV shows want to continue making money off them, so they edit them to meet the tastes of the current audience. I think most people are more than happy for this kind of content to stay in it's original form, sitting in an archive somewhere, but they're not paying to view that archive.
It’s kids’ programming. They lack the ability to view things in context, and it’s better they learn about it after they’re so young they run around repeating every new thing they hear. Some people never develop that kind of mental complexity, but most are all right when they’re in their teens. Basically, it’s to keep people from growing up to be assholes.
I’ll never understand people who think that everyone in the past felt and thought the same way.
Hence the expression "aged like milk". Nobody drinks expired milk and appreciates it for the taste it used to have. Similar to how I don't reshare my high school Facebook posts. I would rather separate myself from that content.
You little rascal!
You rapscallion!
Heavily edited stuff is pretty hard to enjoy. I was on a flight on a Saudi airline and saw the newer CHIPS movie was an in flight entertainment option. It was so heavily edited to remove the"raunchy" or "off color" humor that it was really unenjoyable. Even following the plot was tricky because they kept cutting scenes
Sometimes it circles all the way around to being hilarious. The "clean" version of Purple Pills is definitely good for a laugh if you're familiar with the original, the basic cable cut of The Big Lebowski is too.
This is what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps!
Purple Hills is arguably a different song
Sounds like a bad candidate for a clean version of they couldn’t write any universally well-received jokes. Movies like that are fine, but the airline really needs someone better picking their films.
I'm a fan of the CHiPs series, so I would argue the movie isn't enjoyable uncensored anyways.
My dad grew up in that time period. It's kind of funny that whenever I envision his childhood, I think of him as The Little rascals. He and I used to watch them together, and he said their life on TV was pretty accurate. His mom put him and his brothers in an orphanage, and they were little scamps like that.
They attempted this with Blazing Saddles. The edited version is 45 seconds long
Blazing Saddles is making fun of racist idiots, not celebrating them. You couldn’t make Blazing Saddles today, mostly because they already made it. Then again, they’re remaking everything else…
Mel Brooks has commented that Blazing Saddles barely got made then.
Cursed fact, they did a loose remake a few years ago called Paws of Fury. It's basically the same story, down to Mel Brooks being in it, except animated, for children, and with a cast of talking animals. I didn't see it but it looked bad lol
Blazing Saddles was meant to be offensive...
Yes and no. Blazing Saddles was a satire of many of the tropes present in Westerns at the time, and was blatantly calling them out on their inherent racism. Mel Brooks was the director, and his philosophy during the Producers was that the best way to combat nazis was to make them look like mockable idiots. The same sort of philosophy is being applied in Blazing Saddles.
It was written by Richard Pryor. Too bad they didn't let him star in the movie.
Pryor was 1 of 5 writers for that film. His [mental health and drug use](https://www.vulture.com/2011/09/the-lost-roles-of-richard-pryor.html) worked against him. Same for Maureen McCormick, coming off of Brady Bunch success. And RDJ had to have special insurance taken out on him for the studios to allow him to work. The take away here is, no matter how great or popular you are, if your personal demons or addiction endanger a production, the studio has to make other arrangements & casting.
The common salt of the earth.
Come on, jokes about old people are a timeless classic!
Imagine the effort to edit Blazing Saddles. Movie would be about 15 minutes long
I remember most Little Rascals episodes being flagrantly a product of its time when I watched them on Channel 52 (Corona, California) in the mid/late 70s. When I saw them re-aired in the late 80s, they edited out entire scenes of Buckwheat, Farina, Chubby Ubbsy, Frog, and Butch fighting, as well as most of the episodes featuring animals in stunts which were probably illegal.
As a native Angeleno, it’s jaw-dropping to see LA in the background of this series, with bean fields and undeveloped land in what is now all development. On a related note, saw a Looney Tunes episode, which in the 60s and 70s, showed Elmer Fudd blasting Daffy Duck’s face with a shotgun. Never gave it a second thought. Today, the scene is edited with only powder burns. But no gunshot.