“These cartoons are products
of their time and may depict ethnic and racial prejudices that were
commonplace. These depictions were wrong then and are wrong today; the cartoons
are presented as originally created to avoid claiming these prejudices never
existed.”
So yesterday I was looking
at my YouTube shuffle and saw that this came up, Top 10 Darkest and Adult
Popeye Episodes That Aren’t Just For Kids:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQCpcYQ7qcY
I don’t know that they were
particularly ‘adult’; they seemed more in poor taste, and certainly racially
offensive, full of once-popular stereotypes and World War II propaganda. Perhaps they meant only adult minds could
deal with them without being tainted, and that impressionable children should
not be exposed to them without someone to put them in context.
It certainly reminded me of
two Popeye cartoons I hadn’t seen for at least 50 years. They were Pop-Pie a la Mode and Popeye’s
Pappy. I don’t remember them as awakening or feeding any prejudices.
What I remembered mostly
from Pop-Pie a la Mode (1945) was food being poured down Popeye’s
throat (I've always been a sucker for animated food), a bathtub being pulled apart to reveal a huge stewpot, and being
somewhat tempted by the enormous floppy steak Popeye was flattened into. It
didn’t move me to prejudice, just mild cannibalism.
What I remembered from the
1958 Popeye’s Pappy (a remake of the 1938 Goonland) was stuff
about Popeye’s family: his mother, his Pappy with a black beard, and Popeye as
a baby. The makers of this cartoon, set on a tropical island, seemed to assume
all ‘natives’ were cannibals, and vaguely black. They were a menace, but not
evil, even attractive. The real ‘villain’ was ‘King’ Pappy, who was hedonistic
and unfeeling at first, and something of a tyrant before his family affection reawakens.
The only place I could find
these cartoons in full form were as reviews on Brandon Reacts TV on
YouTube. I can’t say he is the most informative commentator, but he did allow
me to satisfy my curiosity about these elderly memories.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsEqvjrtObA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABlAFguPIl8
I can see why they are not rerun broadcast for general consumption.
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