Readers Against Prejudice and Racism discussion

I was watching a DVD that contained the old Tom and Jerry cartoons made during the 1940s, and I keep on seeing this message at the beginning of the DVD:

"The cartoons you are about to see are products of their time. They may depict some of the ethnic and racial prejudice in American society. These depictions were wrong then and are wrong today. While the following does not represent Warner Bros. view of today's society, these cartoons are being presented as they were originally created, because to do otherwise would be the same as claiming these prejudices never existed."

Alright, even though I totally agree with this message and I think that it does a good job at explaining the opinions of society during the times that those cartoons were created, I think that they should have shown this message when the older cartoons aired on live TV. I think this message would have helped many people understand about the prejudice and racism that was going on during the 20s through the 60s and the 70s, unfortunately, when these older cartoons aired on live TV, they were heavily edited. Now I'm always paying attention to the last part of the message that states "these cartoons are being presented as they were originally created, because to do otherwise would be the same as claiming these prejudices never existed." Well, they are pretty much doing the same thing that they claim they were not going to do when it aired on TV because they edited the scenes that contained racial stereotypes and therefore, they are still suggesting that such prejudices never happened during the times that cartoons like "Looney Tunes" and "Tom and Jerry" came out.

I think part of the reason why they edited so much from the older cartoons when they first aired it on live TV is because they aired on kids' networks like Cartoon Network and I'm assuming that many people would have complained that such scenes should not be shown to children. I believe that instead of editing these scenes out, parents should explain to their children about why these scenes were offensive and what society was like during those times. Also, I think that money has a role in the cause of editing these scenes because I'm guessing that the TV producers were thinking that if these scenes were still in these old cartoons, then they would not make money off of them because people would not watch the shows. But in a way, I think that promotes ignorance to what was going on in society back in the 20s and onwards because many people would not know about these stereotypes because they were edited when they aired on TV. I'm not saying that these stereotypes were good, because they were offensive, but I think that it limits many people's knowledge about how prejudice and racism usually consumes the culture of any country and whenever people try to change the structure of a culture, everyone gets upset, no matter how offensive the culture is when dealing with prejudice and racism. All in all, I think that this was a good message to send to the people whenever they are watching the older cartoons, but it should have been presented with the older cartoons when they first aired on live TV to create a better understanding of how racism and prejudice can corrupt a culture.

I agree with you, but I also think that if the cartoons had not been edited, they would not have been able to be shown on live TV, there would have been too many legitimate complaints and much controversy. Maybe these cartoons should have only been rereleased on video and DVD in the first place, because racially problematic cartoons on live TV are always problematic. I do agree though that this message should have been included when these older cartoons were aired on live TV, because even with heavy editing, many of them were still quite racially and culturally stereotypical and prejudiced.

I agree Gundula, that there would have been too much controversy if these cartoons did aired in their original format on live TV and having controversy is definitely something that you don't want to happen because it might have caused a huge rift between the people if there was no kind of warning to the people about why these cartoons are racially insensitive.