Media Bitchfest

Kids To Suck That Much More

August 22nd, 2006 by Justin

When I was 13 my mother rented Pulp Fiction for me, I loved it. I watched explicit drug use and violent, cold blooded murder with wide eyes and an open pliable mind. It instantly became my favorite movie and created an undeniable definition in my taste for cinema and television. I was a very impressionable young boy and I still drink my coffee with lots of cream and lots of sugar because that’s what The Wolf did.

However, I have never tried heroin and I have never thought of killing as a way to solve problems. Yet both are important keystones in the plot and are never morally called on the carpet for being wrong. But in the context of the film, you see its effects. For as stylized as Tarantino writes and directs, you see the panic caused by an accidental overdose. You watch a repentant Sam Jackson scare the living shit out of Tim Roth during his first steps toward a life on the straight and narrow. You know it’s justified when the likable John Travolta is gunned down is a Southern California bathroom, but you still wish it didn’t happen.

The point is, context is what matters, not the acts. There’s a reason there are Goofus and Gallant, because if it was just Gallant running around not sticking his hand on the stove we wouldn’t know what not to do.

Which brings me (after the longest intro in Media Bitchfest history) to today’s annoying story of the day, British fucktard parents are making the Cartoon Network remove every instance to smoking from 1,500 of their cartoons. Now granted, that is an overstatement since they just bitched and Turner decided to proactively make the cuts, but that only shifts the blame for this gutless malarkey.

This, of course, is not a new thing, companies have cut violent and racist acts from cartoons for over a decade. Thankfully, our generation was raised in the very last, dying days of a laizzes faire cartoon market. I clearly remember instances of minstrel characters, comic interpretations of Hitler, depictions of womanizing, shameless sloven drunks and yes, even smokers. I would venture to say that the controlled exposure to these uncomfortable elements (via the humor of animation) allowed me to form more educated opinions on them later in life.

In the four years I was at Syracuse University, there was an annual problem with at least one dumb white kid getting busted in public for running around in black face. You know what their number one defense was? I didn’t know it was wrong, black people could wear white face and I wouldn’t care. They had no clue what the social implications of their actions were, they didn’t know the history. This to me demonstrates a benign ignorance perpetuated, at least in part, by our need to bury historic faults and wrongdoings.

I am not saying that if black face characters were on TV that Tom Q. Duckfuck from Syosset wouldn’t still be dumb enough to think putting shoe polish on his face isn’t insensitive. I am saying, that it’s harder to blame him for not knowing something if we seek to proactively cut the message out of our international discourse.

So now it’s smoking, and one of these original British complaints is about a cartoon cat (Tom of Tom and Jerry) who in a bout of insecurity tries to impress a female by smoking a cigarette. You know, in context that seems an awful lot like the government sponsored messages warning against peer pressure, specifically considering Tom never wins in the end.

Oh well.

Did you see a sign, outside our culture that said “Dead Lesson Storage”?

• Please, think of Tom Q. Duckfuck [AOL Entertainment]

Posted in Racism!, Cartoons

8 Responses to “Kids To Suck That Much More”

1. Graf wrote on 08/22/06 at 12:08 pm :

   Justin Young, I think I love you.

2. Justin wrote on 08/22/06 at 12:15 pm :

   Oh shucks Graf. I don’t know if you should be flattering internet personalities with a rock on your finger.

   But seriously, fuck Brit parents.

3. Graf wrote on 08/22/06 at 12:35 pm :

   Internet personality, eh? Interesting …

4. Noralil Ryan Fores wrote on 08/22/06 at 7:16 pm :

   Along the same line, however, and actually more alarming than any cartoon is the report in amNew York- don’t make fun of me, I’m poor, it’s free so I read it- cites a national survey released yesterday that indicates that parents in the States have become “laizze faire” to their own children’s drug use- even in the case that said parents are farting around watching “Wife Swap” in the next room. We want to prosecute drug use, England? Let’s start pinpointing it in the home first. Inked cigarettes are the least of our problems.

   And, on another note, I loved “Thank You For Smoking.” Brillant moviemaking.

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