Tom & Jerry Airbrushed…

And while I’m in full rant mode, this pissed me off no end. Ranting

Children’s TV channel Boomerang is to edit scenes from Tom and Jerry cartoons where characters are shown smoking.

The move follows an investigation by media watchdog Ofcom into a viewer’s complaint that the vintage animations were not appropriate for young viewers.

The watchdog recognised the “historic” cartoons were made at a time “when smoking was more generally accepted”.

However, Boomerang will only edit those cartoons where smoking appears to be “condoned, acceptable or glamorised”.

So, it’s started; rewriting history…  That is, instead of responding to the complaining viewer with a sharply worded retort to the effect that they should grow up and take some personal responsibility and stop wasting everyone’s time. Oh, no, far better to pander to such abject inanity and rewrite history rather than be sensible about it and give the viewer a well deserved verbal kicking. Make everyone else suffer the consequences of this viewer’s over sensitive constitution, why not? Doesn’t this fuckwit have an “off” switch on the television?

Already the Scottish executive stopped a play’s producers showing Winston Churchill smoking a cigar during a production about his life. Now this. Slowly, but surely, smoking will be airbrushed from history.

You might think this no bad thing, but it is exactly what the Soviet Union did to history that it found inconvenient. Smoking today, what will it be tomorrow?

The other thing that bothers me is the dumbing down aspect – the assumption that children are just soooo stupid that they must be protected from knowledge for their own good. They can be told by parents and guardians that this “glamorising” is just that and that in future they will need to be discerning about messages that they come across in the media. It’s how my parents taught me and, despite “glamorising” of smoking I never felt inclined to try it.

It looks as if that egregious busybody Mary Whitehouse scored a posthumous victory (although she was obsessed by the cartoon violence rather than smoking) over Tom and Jerry. The narrow minded, petty, mean spirited (in Whitehouse’s case, self-appointed) censors of our entertainment will decide for us, and our children, what is good for us and what we may be allowed to see. They assume that we are all too stupid to manage to educate the next generation or cope with the “wrong” knowledge. Unfortunately, many of those interviewed yesterday by the BBC were only too willing to think that this is a good idea. The censors may be right, some people are too brainless to recognise that it’s just a cartoon and that cats don’t really smoke and that it doesn’t mean that we should all rush out and buy cigars. Some people like the idea of legislation and regulation of every aspect of their lives because they are too lazy and half-witted to take some personal responsibility and do it for themselves

Frighteningly, in the minds of these bureaucrats who are the guardians of the future generation’s wellbeing, and education this, it seems, means not educating. I recall watching cartoon cats in Tom and Jerry smoking huge cigars. At no time did I feel tempted to try one for myself. There must be something wrong with me… :dry:

2 Comments

  1. This is very much in the same spirit as Christian Voice who objected to Jerry Springer – The Opera and demanded it be withdrawn from the shelves of Sainsbury’s because it was offensive to Christians yet most Christians saw it as what it was, a load of old shit. It’s strange that it was withdrawn because of a handful of complaints when the vast majority of people didn’t care one way or the other and the same is happening here, this is ONE viewer. One. Not a couple of hundred or tens, not even an irate handful but one. I find the idea of censoring cartoons for smoking offensive so what would happen if I, as one person, complained about their decision to airbrush out the ciggies? Not a lot I should imagine 😡

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