saturday_am_80s | 1985 8:00 on ABC: THE BUGS BUNNY LOONEY TUNES COMEDY HOUR

It is generally accepted and agreed upon that THIS SHOW was "The Beginning Of The End" for Saturday Mornings. Up till this point the Parental Watchdog Groups, Marketing Executives and Overzealous Censors had only had an effect on NEW cartoons being produced... but at 8:00 Saturday morning in 1985 on ABC, a precedent was set that changed the entire dynamic of Saturday Morning Cartoons FOREVER.

After numerous years of volleying the Looney Tunes cartoons back and forth between CBS and ABC (resulting in a few seasons where there were Looney Tunes cartoons on both channels under different names), CBS finally backed out of the bidding and let ABC snatch up the exclusive network broadcast rights - but at a cost. Marketing, Censors and Watchdogs had just a few simple requests...

No Speedy Gonzales (because he was racist), and no Tweety Bird (because he was GAY).

Speedy was racist because he spoke with an accent, and Tweety was Gay because he spoke was pretty and spoke in a high voice.

Despite the ludicrous accusations, ABC went ahead and pulled the Speedy and Tweety cartoons that had been running for the past 15 years without question or hesitation. The Censors had their foothold - NOTHING was safe from this point forward. They could now retro-actively censor, edit and otherwise ban whatever they liked for any old reason, knowing that there would be no questioning of The Great And Powerful Standards & Practices Board.

Saturday Morning, was doomed :(

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I know they cut the really obvious Black stereotypes quite some time before that (I bought the DVDs and was rather surprised at how many I missed)--either the entire cartoon or scenes from it. I bet they've cut the Arabian ones too by now... "Hassan chop!"

But when you think of the number of stereotypes in those cartoons--or violence--it's a wonder they get any play at all any more. Oh wait...they really don't, do they?

Never heard that about Tweety, though. Mind you, I had always thought he was a she for those reasons!

EDIT: oh, and this has to be one of the lamest openings EVER!

Edited 2013-09-11 02:44 (UTC)

Yeah, that opening is *terrible*. In '86 (or was it '87?) they re-animated the classic "Overture, cut the lights" opening without the objectionable characters, and then Tweety was brought back in to the mix because somebody at Standards & Practices WASN'T homophobic for once, becoming a title character by the end of the 80's!

Cartoon Network owns the exclusive broadcast rights to all the vintage Looney Tunes stuff, and they're doing their darndest to make sure no one ever sees them for free again :(

*rants for several hours*

-TG

Shhhhh.... it's okay... it's all right... the homophobic Standards and Practices man is alllllll gone now. That was a long time ago... shhhhhhhhh... it's okay...

I never knew that about the Tweety "controversy," but wow, are my eyes rolling over that. You're right, once S&P got their hands on the classic shorts, everything changed. I knew these cartoon shorts forward and backward and even when I was young, when they cut something out, it was glaring. So it was so strange when I bought the Golden Collection DVDs and saw all the stuff put back in--you'd see something you knew they'd cut and you'd just wonder why. I mean yeah, I understand about the racism stuff (which still makes me squirm), but cutting out stuff like Bugs taking sleeping pills so he could go into Elmer's dream? Puh-leeze.

Haha. Funny I thought Porky Pig was always gay but then he did have Petunia. But there was plenty of racist shit in those cartoons. Remember Porky Pig and the Dragon Lady? Or the one where he ends up upside down in China and speaks with a Pidgin accent and has buck teeth? Or the one where these rats come out of the refrigerator doing ongo bongo drums with big pink lips like racist depictions of blacks?

Oh i remember it all - I have bootlegs of most of them :)

Thing is, and this is my own personal opinion that does not reflect the official opinion of the SMHRS in any way, these racist cartoons are *important*... just like the Disney film "Song Of The South". In hindsight, these things are terribly racist... but at the time they were perfectly acceptable and it's important that we be able to see where we came from so we can more clearly see where we still need to be going. The attempt to remove them from history just makes them more desirable to the type of people who will get the wrong message from them.

Once upon a time in this country, Doctors recommended cigarettes and brandy for pregnant women in order to reduce the stress of carrying child, as well as to help reduce the birth weight and ensure a less complicated delivery. We now know that this was STUPID and DANGEROUS, but we didn't ban anything - he just said "Wow that was stupid, we know so much better now" and moved on.

Oh I totally agree with you 100%. I think it's very important to show how things were like back then. In fact I'm one of the few people who ( I am Asian) believes that things SHOULD be left the way they are. For example I don't think that they should leave out the N word when it comes to literature like what has been used in Mark Twain and in other literature that uses racist words. It just takes away from the authenticity of the story in the context of what it was written in.

And the same goes for the cartoons. I say they should leave it the way it is because it's so hilariously outdated, and personally doesn't offend me. In fact that dragon lady thing just makes me laugh. I don't get offended by it because I certainly know that I'm not defined by my race or racial slurs.

One interesting thing too is that in Texas, there was this road called JAP ROAD, and there was a hot dog place called CHINK'S in Philadelphia. People got all up in arms about it and said it should be taken down or changed. I said it shouldn't because it is a reminder of what used to be.

I don't know if you're aware of the Japanese Internment during World War II, after Pearl Harbor was bombed the US then rounded up 120,000 loyal Japanese American citizens including my relatives and ancestors,and placed in concentration camps primarily in the Western US. My dad saved this antique poster that called my relatives ' ENEMY ALIEN JAPS'and other paperwork, and we saved it because it is an important historical reminder of what was said then. We also have an old newspaper that lists jobs according to color. In other words, the shittiest jobs were reserved for 'negroes, spics, and persons of alien oriental descent' and 'white people' got the best jobs.

So, I agree with you completely about that kind of thing and it sort of makes me mad when they actually delete or 'blank out' the racist words.

And they kept the Jap Road sign there. I was probably one of the few Japanese Americans who wrote into the Pacific Citizen, the Japanese American Citizen's League paper, to tell them I felt the sign was a necessary SIGN OF THE TIMES, so to speak.

It WAS a bit weird though LOL to call the hot dog stand in Philadelphia ' Chink's' LOL as there were virtually no Chinese in that neck of the woods and certainly the ones there didn't eat hot dogs. Not to my knowledge anyways. But they changed the damn name!!

I live in Seattle... I'm far too familiar with the Japanese Internment Camps :(

"Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it", after all :)

1985 8:00 on ABC: THE BUGS BUNNY LOONEY TUNES COMEDY HOUR

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