As noted here — and sent to me by many of you, thanks — the British arm of Turner Broadcasting (i.e., Time-Warner) is excising scenes that "glamourize smoking" from vintage shorts. This, they say, is in response to one complaint about scenes in two cartoons.
Let me type that again and boldface two words: This, they say, is in response to one complaint about scenes in two cartoons.
But of course, that can't be true. You don't start chopping up your old cartoons in response to one complaint about two scenes. You do it because someone high in the company says to someone else high in the company, "You know, one of these days, we may have a problem with this." For some reason, when they make these decisions, they like to make it sound like they had no choice in the matter; that they gave in to public pressure, even when that pressure was close to non-existent. It's an excuse to take an action that is probably more economic than idealistic…and to make it sound like an act of social responsibility.
Which brings us to one of the little lies of the animation business. For years, studio heads have wailed about imposed censorship and insisted that their films could be better if only those danged Standards and Practices people would butt out and the pressure groups would back off. In many cases, that's absolutely true.
But it's also true that to protect the future marketability of their wares, some producers are way too willing, even eager to launder their shows and cut out anything that might be controversial. I wish they'd get a little more courageous…or at least consider that it would also be a demonstration of integrity to preserve works of art in their original form. If I were the guy in charge and the issue of cartoon characters smoking came to my attention, I think I'd try to find a more creative solution. And I'd start by waiting until it actually was a problem before I started fixing it at all.
In honor of this silly move, we dedicate today's video link…and probably tomorrow's, as well.