For many blog posts, I have been looking at Merrie Melodies. I know it is a little repetitive, but I find these cartoons hilarious. Also, I remember watching them when I was a kid. This is why the Merrie Melodies cartoon, Bugs Bunny Rides Again caught my eye. I used to watch this episode a lot. The part that gave it away was the scene when Bugs Bunny is dancing to the music and then makes Yosemite Sam dance into an open mine shaft. I knew I could never forget about that part. This cartoon brings back many memories for me. In this Blog Post, I will give a brief summary of the cartoon, as well as, talk about some of the censorship issues.
The cartoons starts out with bullets being fired. There is a gag where the bullets stop at a red light and once the crossing of the other bullets are done, they resume. It then cuts to a saloon where a couple of men are drinking and one of the men shoots the other one. When Yosemite Sam enters, everyone is scared of him. This is where he makes a Gandhi joke, which will be discussed later. Then all the “skunks” leave the bar, the last one being an actual skunk. Yosemite Sam sees someone trying to escape and starts firing at him, which turns into a shooting dummy. After, Bugs challenges Yosemite and he says the town isn’t big enough for the two of them. So Bugs runs out and builds a city (another gag). Yosemite Sam still says it isn’t big enough and starts to make Bugs “dance.” This is where Bugs turns it around and makes Yosemite dance in an open mine shaft. Bugs then dares Yosemite to cross a line. This is repeated until Yosemite Sam crosses a line, falling off a cliff. Bugs puts a mattress down, saying he has a guilty conscious, however he said he didn’t that day and took it away. Then they chase each other on horse in with a western tune. This is where Bugs builds a brick wall, making Yosemite Sam and his horse crash into a wall. Seeing that this wasn’t going anywhere, the two of them decide to play cards to see who stays. However, Bugs tells Yosemite Sam which card to put down and Bugs wins. When they go to the train station (where Yosemite Sam is supposed to get on), they both notice a numerous amount of beautiful women going to Miami. Bugs pulls Yosemite’s hat over him and gets on the train, allowing Bugs to be with all the women alone.
As seen above, this cartoon has several gags. However, there are many different censorship issues that were corrected in order to show a viewing audience. The Gandhi gag was taken out for an important reason. Gandhi was assassinated earlier that year in January, which is the reason why that part of the cartoon is censored out to say “mamby-pamby” instead. However, on this one above, the original version is shown so you can see that part at the beginning. Another interesting censorship issue with this cartoon is when it aired on the WB. When it aired on this station, there were three parts that were cut: the part with the bullets stopping at traffic lights, the part where the man killed the other man and took his whiskey, and the part where Yosemite Sam is using a person as a target for practice. I’m assuming these parts were edited out due to the violence. However, I feel it was unnecessary to take those out. It is cartoon violence and not real violence. Ultimately, I don’t see the problem, however, the network apparently did. It’s interesting what is actually censored in cartoons and why.
ETA: I commented on the Blogs of Jessica Martin and Samantha Francis.
Til Next Time…
These make me laugh too so I wouldt say its repetitive and I never thought about the censorship issues the ghandi thing was new to me. Ive only ever seen the censored version and its weird to think that even back than they wanted to be PC. Atleast with ghandi it is out of respect, the others are just like todays concepts where smoking could get a movie a higher maturity ranking. The reason why things are censored either make sense or they dont but there will always be people who feel the need to censor things