6.10.20 Bee-otch of the Day: Warner Bros.

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Name: Warner Bros.
Age: 97
Occupation: entertainment giant
Last Seen: Burbank, CA
Bee-otched For: gone with the recycle button                                                              

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Throughout the golden age of cinema from the silent era until the late 60s/early 70s, short subject cartoons kept audiences entertained. 

These roughly seven-minute masterpieces showcased Popeye punching Bluto into the sky after he ate a can of spinach. They introduced us to the whimsical world of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck and the ever-lasting battle between a cat named Tom and his arch nemesis, a mouse named Jerry. And yes, Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig and the rest of the Looney Tunes gang. Many of their creators would be known by a last name basis: Disney, Hanna and Barbera, Fleischer and Lantz. 

Obviously, the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series from Warner Bros. are probably the best-known short subject bunch. Usually when the WB shield zooms towards us in a tunnel of red circles, we're in for seven minutes of fun and cleverness. 

True, the original theatricals - produced between 1930 and 1969 - have had their issues with censorship and political correctness. Warner's first cartoon star was a stereotypical black boy named Bosko. Amazingly enough, his cartoons were still shown on TV as recently as the early 90s on Nickelodeon. Some had issues with Porky Pig's stutter and wanted him eliminated from the LT roster. Cartoon Network even pulled old Speedy Gonzales cartoons from their channel 20 years ago because they thought he offended Hispanics. However, a push from the Latino community reestablished his shorts to the network a few years later.

Today, legally, you're most-likely able to see the old LT/MM shorts on Boomerang, Cartoon Network's retro-friendly sister, along with co-owned Tom and Jerry shorts as well. On the internet, Warner has forced YouTube to remove many of their shorts from their site, but other sites like Vimeo are loaded with prints of Warner shorts of varying conditions. You can even find some shorts that haven't been on TV in decades, like those in Warner's famous "Censored 11", which were eleven shorts yanked from television over 50 years ago because of their stereotypical depictions of black people.

But now, Warner is at it again.

Earlier this week, the company announced that their new Looney Tunes Cartoons series on HBO Max will still be loaded with the typical cartoon violence: TNT (as in dynamite and not their sister cable network), anvils and Acme-brand badness. But, both Yosemite Sam and Elmer Fudd will be without the things that they've long-treated like security blankets: their guns. 

In one of the shorts called "Dynamite Dance", Fudd is chasing Bugs around with a scythe. Yes, that nasty, sharpy, pointy thing that the Grim Reaper walks around with. 

The reason for the lack of guns is totally unclear. Some think that it's to honor those who have been victims of gun violence. But then again, Warner-owned TBS did show "A Christmas Story" just weeks after Sandy Hook.

But, it's not the only cutting Warner's been doing. HBO Max also temporarily removed the 1939 classic "Gone With the Wind" from their roster in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. For years, some claimed that the movie glorified slavery, though Hattie McDaniel was the first black actress to win an Oscar for her work in the film. 

Yes, gun violence and treating blacks like shit is simply not cool. But, neither is censoring history. I know, Warner Bros. owns both Bugs Bunny and "Gone With the Wind". They also own Bosko, Speedy Gonzalez, "The Jazz Singer" with Al Jolson in blackface and Mammy Two-Shoes, Tom and Jerry's owner. They have every God-given right to do whatever they want to their movies since they still own them. If they want to treat "Gone With the Wind" the same way Disney treats "Song of the South", that's all up to them. They know that even if they take Bugs Bunny's carrot away from him, people will still watch his movies. However, I - like many old school cartoon fans - am a purist. I don't like watching anything that's been overly censored because some view it as kid's crap. There's millions of people older than I am who all love Looney Tunes and don't like to be treated like kids. We all know. What was accepted in 1940 isn't accepted today. If Disney made a movie with blackface characters voiced by white people, the NAACP and others would be pissed.

With all the censorship at HBO Max, I wonder if people are saying, "That's All, Folks!"

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