Jingle Jangle Jungle
Perhaps the most surprising thing about this cartoon is that the marketplace scene, with its variety of depicted ethnicities and clothing styles, is probably the closest to the real thing I’ve ever seen in a golden-age cartoon. Other than that, though, it’s a fairly typical cartoon pseudo-documentary, with lots of groaners that wouldn’t be out of place in a middling Tex Avery cartoon—it just so happens that most of the jokes centre around Africa, or its inhabitants, being uncivilized and savage. In fact, the follow-the-bouncing-ball song at the end is entirely about Africa’s lack of civilization.
Like most of the cartoons here, I first saw Jingle Jangle Jungle on televison. Until the mid-1980s or so, WPTZ (our NBC affiliate) showed classic cartoons every weekday afternoon. We got it all: shorts from UPA, MGM, the Fleischers, Warner Bros., DePatie-Freleng, you name it—and all of it was uncut. It was a great time and place to be an animation fan, but the single thing that marred it was cartoons like these. Living in predominantly white suburbs at the time, unconscious and overt racism wasn’t an everyday thing, but it was still regular enough to be wearying. Every time I had to explain that on our trips to Africa we visited actual cities, or that there was more to pre-colonial Africa than “spearchucking savages” (actual quote), or that it wasn’t all that remarkable that I spoke English well, I’d wonder where people got these idiot ideas. Then, in the afternoon, I’d see these cartoons and think, “Oh. Right.”
- Emru Townsend
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On November 14th, 2006 at 12:00 am
This cartoon aired in New York in the early 1960s, before being yanked by WNEW (now WNYW), which also edited out stereotypical images from other Paramount and WB cartoons, along with banning any WWII-themed shorts.
As far as the cartoon itself, it’s interesting to note that “Civilization (Bongo Bongo Bongo)” was one of the only contemporary songs ever used by Famous Studios in its revival of the Fleischer bouncing ball (they even got to animate an atomic bomb blast in the second chorus). The Fleisher series always used songs of recent vintage; out of of this number, popularized by Danny Kaye, Famous stuck with either dated songs from the studio’s music library or songs already in public domain.
I doubt the crews there could have been all that thrilled to have to write and animate gags based on music from 1900-1920, so I would guess they jumped at the chance to work on this cartoon, which is a little more energetic than your average Screen Song. That doesn’t excuse the sterotypical racial gags — Famous could do boring Screen Songs with sterotypical characters just as easily — but if Paramount or the folks at Famous had at least tried to use more songs from the 1940s, the series might have turned out better than it did.
On November 15th, 2006 at 12:00 am
I used to love this cartoon as a child. It never occured to me that it was racist and it never gave me the idea that blacks really acted this way. Still, it’s offensive (and not very good either).
On November 22nd, 2006 at 12:00 am
WPTZ’s grab bag of animation was something my brother and I woke up early (as in, before the station even signed on for the day) on the weekends, and while I don’t remeber this particular short (in part because I found most of the Famous material to be extremely bland even then), it doesn’t shock me in the least. WPTZ commonly showed the Mammy Tom & Jerry shorts uncut, and that’s just for starters. (It should be noted that there were no WB shorts on the weekends, probably so as to avoid offending the Burlington, VT CBS affiliate, which was by far the biggest and best-run station in the area at the time.) As a white kid whose only exposure to minorities was on television (and after Benson and the cast of Star Trek, most of the minorities were cartoon characters or sports stars), I’m certain that cartoons like this skewed my perceptions. The sad thing is, “Jingle Jangle Jungle” is not very good, and was a fossil even upon its original theatrical release.