Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Tom & Jerry censored by British cable channel

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Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 08-22-2006, 07:02 AM:

quote: The Daily Telegraph, 22 August 2006

Tom and Jerry can chase each other as much as they like, wielding hammers and axes, but what they must not do, in the eyes of the media watchdog Ofcom, is light up a cigarette. Some 65 years after the quick-tempered cat and opportunistic mouse made their debut in The Midnight Snack, smoking scenes from the series have been cut.

A viewer complained this year that scenes of characters smoking were inappropriate for the young, despite the fact that Hollywood's animation team William Hanna and Joseph Barbera stopped making the series in 1957 when smoking was common. Upset was caused by Texas Tom, made in 1950, and Tennis Chumps, from 1949.

Both were transmitted by Turner Broadcasting's Boomerang cable channel. More than half the audience is aged from four to 14.

In Texas Tom, Tom tries to impress a female cat by rolling a cigarette, lighting it and smoking it with one hand. In Tennis Chumps, Tom's opponent on the court is seen smoking a large cigar. Turner itself proposed to Ofcom that it should edit out scenes whenever smoking appeared to be condoned.

Ofcom adheres to a broadcast code that smoking must be omitted from programmes made primarily for children, unless there is a strong editorial justification.

The regulator said that, "while we appreciate the historic integrity of the animation, the level of editorial justification required for the inclusion of smoking in such cartoons is necessarily high". Turner said last night that, in working through all 162 episodes of Tom and Jerry, it had so far removed three smoking scenes.

Its editors are to paint out the images frame by frame, which are shown at the rate of 25 per second. The process is to be extended to about 1,700 episodes of other shows, among them Scooby Doo and The Flintstones.

Sigh.

Posted by Bruce McGee (Member # 131) on 08-22-2006, 10:14 AM:

Im so tired of this shit. THEY ARE CARTOONS!!!

I love the theatrical cartoons. I dont smoke. I've watched all of the T&J cartoons too! I dont beat people with bats either.

There are many cartoons that are no longer even seen on TV due to this moral crap. Get a life and tell your own kids not to do what they see on an animated cartoon.

"I Love Lucy" will get it one day, too. So much smoking! Phillip Morris Company sponsored it originally.

[Mad]

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 08-22-2006, 02:11 PM:

quote:
Im so tired of this shit. THEY ARE CARTOONS!!!

I know. We can no longer see Tom as a negro with huge lips and little ribbons in his hair (basically blackface) after he is involved in an explosion. They showed all of this uncensored on TV when I was a kid and I have only murdered 3 people and I am only partially intolerant towards other races!

Posted by Pravin Ratnam (Member # 1417) on 08-22-2006, 02:19 PM:

People still watch Tom and Jerry? I got bored of them when I turned 3.

Posted by Dieter Depypere (Member # 3184) on 08-22-2006, 04:00 PM:

If they are about to censor all "not-for-children-scenes" (cigarets, axes, explosions, anvils, ...), the runtime of a cartoon would be one minute or less.

C'mon who are they kidding? [fu]

Posted by Michael Schaffer (Member # 1204) on 08-22-2006, 08:00 PM:

The Russians produced a similar cartoon series with a wolf perpetually chasing a rabbit which I used to watch on East German TV as a kid - and the wolf *always* smoked. I guess that can't be shown at all anymore now.

Posted by Adam Martin (Member # 641) on 08-22-2006, 11:32 PM:

Are they gonna change all of the cigarettes to walkie-talkies? [Devil]

Posted by Charles Greenlee (Member # 3856) on 08-23-2006, 12:19 AM:

Ahahaha, E.T., guns to walkies, that's great. It's so much PC BS. Barring anvils? Great, now how are our kids suppsoed to learn how much fun it is to drop an anvil on someone's head? It's hard enough to even find an anvil, much less let a kid move one by himself, and we're not talking the little tinkerer's ones either, but the big forge anvils. And what'll put the tune "Anvil Chorus" into perspetice if they can't see bugs bunny directing them to fall on someone? Good greif. Nex thing you know, they'll ban snoopy flying his dog hous because some kids tried it and fell of the dog house and broke their necks.

Posted by Thomas King (Member # 2745) on 08-24-2006, 09:57 AM:

That's the stupidest thing I've seen since Greedo shooting first.

Posted by Pravin Ratnam (Member # 1417) on 08-24-2006, 10:34 AM:

Didn't know you were from the East German side, Michael. You had cartoons on TV? [evil]

In all seriousness, I doubt such cartoons would be affected since the bad guy is a smoker.

Posted by Jim Bedford (Member # 4) on 08-24-2006, 06:53 PM:

Here's a site that catalogues many censored WB, MGM, Paramount and other cartoons when they are shown on TV. I found it doing a search for "Plane Daffy," a 1944 cartoon where Goebbels and Göring blow themselves away but this short scene is cut from many broadcasts. Censored Cartoon Page

Posted by Michael Schaffer (Member # 1204) on 08-24-2006, 10:22 PM:

quote: Pravin Ratnam
Didn't know you were from the East German side, Michael. You had cartoons on TV?

I am actually from West Berlin. But it was an island in the middle of East Germany - many people don't realize that and think that Berlin was divided because the East-West border ran through it. In fact, Berlin is right in the middle of what was the "Soviet sector" aka the "GDR". The Soviets conceded the other allies sectors of Berlin because of its significance as the former capital.
Anyway, because of the geographical situation, we could watch East German TV. They had two channels - in color! East German TV was a lot of fun because they had a lot of really nonsensical propaganda which if you saw it today would make you think was a parody but they were dead serious. There was one program in which they took material from West TV and reedited it to prove that, for instance, in the West 80% of the people were unemployed and starving. They also said that the images of fully stocked supermarkets on West TV were all fake and only broadcast to make the Easterners - who could get West TV, too, but were officially not allowed to watch it, but most did anyway - try to defect to the West where they would be enslaved in the capitalist system!
But what was really great on East TV were the children's programs. They had indeed a lot of animation and puppet shows and the most wonderful movies and TV series for kids, mostly free of propanda, too. Especially the Russian and Czech fairy tale movies were absolutely awesome, nothing made in the West can really quite compare to that stylistically. They actually also made some very good movies in the Eastern Block, some of the Soviet productions made in the 60s and 70s were large scale epic adventure movies with great costumes and thousands of extras and all that sometimes even in 70mm because if they decided to make such a movie, they didn't really have to deal with budget considerations. One fairly well known example is the Italian/Soviet co-production Waterloo, but there were many more, often more specifically Russian themed movies.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 08-25-2006, 05:23 AM:

East Side Story is a must-see for anyone interested in East German popular culture. It's a documentary which charts the history of screen musicals behind the iron curtain, from the Stalin-inspired Tractor Drivers (1941) to some astonishing ripoffs of the teen culture movies of the '60s, starting East Germany's answer to Cliff Richard and Buddy Holly rolled into one, Chris Doerk. The film argues that the Communist authorities didn't really like musicals, but put up with them through gritted teeth because they were very popular with audiences, while at the same time trying to slip the appropriate ideological messages into the script. In terms of the way it presents and contextualises archive footage, it's one of the cleverest and most entertaining documentaries made in the last 20 years, IMHO.

Posted by Bruce McGee (Member # 131) on 08-25-2006, 10:12 AM:

Not to interrupt the flow here, but "Puss Gets The Boot" (1940) is the First T&J cartoon. Tom is called "Jasper," and Jerry is unnamed. And now, back to our story.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 08-25-2006, 01:03 PM:

I guess all the great "Rocky and Mugsy" Looney Tunes aren't long for this world either.

"Turn-it off the light, Mugsy" [CRASH!!] "Turn-it on the light"

"OK, cat... get cher package and scram"

"OK, duck....make wit da golden eggs."