All This and Rabbit Stew
When people defend racist cartoons, one of the stock arguments is that it’s unreasonable to be offended that black people are portrayed unflatteringly; after all, Elmer Fudd isn’t usually presented as a brilliant or capable man.
It’s a bit ironic, then, that some of the animation and gags in this cartoon featuring the Stepin Fetchit-like Little Sambo were recycled for Elmer Fudd in The Big Snooze five years later. The parallel is convenient because it directly points up the flaw in that stock argument: Elmer Fudd’s flaws are never attributed to his being white. That’s the crucial difference. Sambo’s lackadaisical walk and the cadence of his drawl are both key elements of the “shiftless Negro” stereotype that performer Lincoln Perry hadn’t created, but perfected as Fetchit; and they were recognized as traits that were intrinsic to the black male. The same goes for the gag toward the end where Bugs Bunny presents a pair of dice and Sambo is seized by the uncontrollable urge to play craps—one of the many uncontrollable urges that were supposedly built-in.
- Emru Townsend
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On November 16th, 2006 at 12:00 am
Great post! It’s pretty easy to distance ourselves from early, archaic films that simply plopped down racist cliches in lieu of anything particularly clever or humorous. The stereotype WAS the gag, period. Things get trickier viewing cartoons from the 1940’s — the way directors and writers of the era would riff on all kinds of ‘common knowledge’ (truisms, old wives’ tales, superstitions, colloquialisms, etc.) still seems fairly sophisticated, and it was inevitable that even major talents like Avery and Clampett would latch onto widely held prejudices as grist for their mill. By in large, golden age cartoons don’t date badly — a lot of them play a lot better with an audience than many live action comedies just twenty years old — so it’s doubly jarring to see a vintage Bugs Bunny toon build around ugly ethnic notions. Keep up the good work!