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Author
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Topic: Tom & Jerry censored by British cable channel
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 08-22-2006 07:02 AM
quote: The Daily Telegraph, 22 August 2006
Tom and Jerry can chase each other as much as they like, wielding hammers and axes, but what they must not do, in the eyes of the media watchdog Ofcom, is light up a cigarette. Some 65 years after the quick-tempered cat and opportunistic mouse made their debut in The Midnight Snack, smoking scenes from the series have been cut.
A viewer complained this year that scenes of characters smoking were inappropriate for the young, despite the fact that Hollywood's animation team William Hanna and Joseph Barbera stopped making the series in 1957 when smoking was common. Upset was caused by Texas Tom, made in 1950, and Tennis Chumps, from 1949.
Both were transmitted by Turner Broadcasting's Boomerang cable channel. More than half the audience is aged from four to 14.
In Texas Tom, Tom tries to impress a female cat by rolling a cigarette, lighting it and smoking it with one hand. In Tennis Chumps, Tom's opponent on the court is seen smoking a large cigar. Turner itself proposed to Ofcom that it should edit out scenes whenever smoking appeared to be condoned.
Ofcom adheres to a broadcast code that smoking must be omitted from programmes made primarily for children, unless there is a strong editorial justification.
The regulator said that, "while we appreciate the historic integrity of the animation, the level of editorial justification required for the inclusion of smoking in such cartoons is necessarily high". Turner said last night that, in working through all 162 episodes of Tom and Jerry, it had so far removed three smoking scenes.
Its editors are to paint out the images frame by frame, which are shown at the rate of 25 per second. The process is to be extended to about 1,700 episodes of other shows, among them Scooby Doo and The Flintstones.
Sigh. ![[Mad]](mad.gif)
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Charles Greenlee
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 801
From: Savannah, Ga, U.S.
Registered: Jun 2006
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posted 08-23-2006 12:19 AM
Ahahaha, E.T., guns to walkies, that's great. It's so much PC BS. Barring anvils? Great, now how are our kids suppsoed to learn how much fun it is to drop an anvil on someone's head? It's hard enough to even find an anvil, much less let a kid move one by himself, and we're not talking the little tinkerer's ones either, but the big forge anvils. And what'll put the tune "Anvil Chorus" into perspetice if they can't see bugs bunny directing them to fall on someone? Good greif. Nex thing you know, they'll ban snoopy flying his dog hous because some kids tried it and fell of the dog house and broke their necks.
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Michael Schaffer
"Where is the
Boardwalk Hotel?"
Posts: 4143
From: Boston, MA
Registered: Apr 2002
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posted 08-24-2006 10:22 PM
quote: Pravin Ratnam
Didn't know you were from the East German side, Michael. You had cartoons on TV?
I am actually from West Berlin. But it was an island in the middle of East Germany - many people don't realize that and think that Berlin was divided because the East-West border ran through it. In fact, Berlin is right in the middle of what was the "Soviet sector" aka the "GDR". The Soviets conceded the other allies sectors of Berlin because of its significance as the former capital.
Anyway, because of the geographical situation, we could watch East German TV. They had two channels - in color! East German TV was a lot of fun because they had a lot of really nonsensical propaganda which if you saw it today would make you think was a parody but they were dead serious. There was one program in which they took material from West TV and reedited it to prove that, for instance, in the West 80% of the people were unemployed and starving. They also said that the images of fully stocked supermarkets on West TV were all fake and only broadcast to make the Easterners - who could get West TV, too, but were officially not allowed to watch it, but most did anyway - try to defect to the West where they would be enslaved in the capitalist system!
But what was really great on East TV were the children's programs. They had indeed a lot of animation and puppet shows and the most wonderful movies and TV series for kids, mostly free of propanda, too. Especially the Russian and Czech fairy tale movies were absolutely awesome, nothing made in the West can really quite compare to that stylistically. They actually also made some very good movies in the Eastern Block, some of the Soviet productions made in the 60s and 70s were large scale epic adventure movies with great costumes and thousands of extras and all that sometimes even in 70mm because if they decided to make such a movie, they didn't really have to deal with budget considerations. One fairly well known example is the Italian/Soviet co-production Waterloo, but there were many more, often more specifically Russian themed movies.
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