Showing posts with label censorship. Show all posts
Showing posts with label censorship. Show all posts

Thursday, July 19, 2018

Racism or erase-ism? The dilemma of Sunflower




It's been said about certain particularly pompous types of music (Wagner comes to mind) that "maybe it's better than it sounds." This statement puts me in mind of Disney's Fantasia.

Maybe it's worse than it seems. 




Disney was a farm boy at heart, and Fantasia was a country bumpkin's idea of high culture, a massive and lumbering delivery device for "good" music. Meaning, classical music, which you really should be exposing your children to, for their own good. Disney's choices were conservative:  Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony, Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite, the Sorceror's Apprentice, Dance of the Hours, all things that leant themselves to the typical sentimental, florid Disney animation. And to throw in something really daring, Disney included a bit of Stravinsky to accompany T-rexes and stegosauri duking it out in a steamy primordial jungle.


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But that's not what we're talking about here.

We're talking about someone else.

We're talking about Sunflower.

There was a lot more to Fantasia than Mickey stemming the flood in The Sorcerer's Apprentice (the best-animated piece in the whole thing), dancing mushrooms, and alligators chasing after ostriches. There was this person. This - little horse, rather, and her name was Sunflower, featured briefly in the Pastoral Symphony's slow movement. 




We see a group  of pastel-colored horsettes, or should I say centaurettes, primping to meet their beefy centaur boyfriends. But they're not doing all the primping by themselves. To help them braid their manes and blow-dry their tails, they have. . . Sunflower.
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But, cute as she is, she's now a problem. Sunflower is clearly a servant, a little black girl trotting around obediently after all the glam horsettes. She's much smaller than the others, wears large gold hoop earrings, has stereotypical African features, and has her hair tied up in rags. In short, she's what people thought of in those days when you thought of a servant. Is she smaller because she's younger, a different kind of centaur, or what? It may have been a familiar visual device to convey relative status. This helped the audience orientate themselves, made it easier on them due to recognition of something they knew in the "real world".

She's something of a shock today, like seeing the godawful Steppin' Fetchit characters of the 1930s. By some Disney magic she was cut out of all prints of Fantasia when it was reissued for home video in the 1960s. Just - dropped, without an explanation, without a trace. This took some fancy dancing on the part of the animators, who had to try to keep the animation moving in synch with the music while the shears were applied. They used awkward closeups that left her out of the frame. The epitome of being marginalized! In one case, a red carpet eerily unrolled all by itself, because Sunflower was no longer there to unroll it.




Removing Sunflower was considered to be a "solution". She had been solved -or dissolved - by being erased, un-drawn, un-created. Undone. 

It was as if she had never existed at all. It seems, to me, a curious solution to a racist portrait, but that's what they did. Thus, they never had to take any responsibility for what they had already done. This was Papa Disney, after all, and he was clearly above all that.




If they hadn't erased Sunflower, there would no doubt have been an outcry. I understand the outcry, yes. But it confuses me. The whole thing does. If she had been a real live human being, it would have been more complicated - but maybe not by much. It was as if Sunflower were the shit-disturber, the joker in an otherwise conservative deck. So the trap door had to open. There was no other way.





Or - ?

Max Fleischer found another way, or at least his studio did, when it came time to release a DVD set of the complete Popeye cartoons (which I, of course, have). At the beginning of each DVD is a disclaimer stating that some of the cartoons feature characters and images which might be considered racist and offensive, but that these reflect the attitudes and prejudices of their time. And to censor or remove these images would be to pretend those attitudes never existed at all.

Brilliant.




But soft! What's this? A little later on in the Pastoral Symphony, we have the fat drunk guy on the donkey, Dionysus or whoever-the-hell-he-is. He's a silly character, rolling around, and meant to be. But who's that on either side of him? Look fast, because they are there for exactly ten seconds.

These are black servants, half-zebra instead of half-horse. They are quite glamorous, much taller than Dionysus - in fact, they tower over him - and their job is to fan him and keep his wine glass topped up. No matter how different they look from Sunflower, they are still servants, and they are black.

And they've been allowed to stay.




I've always found that weird. Is it the fact they're more adult, more exotic, taller, and less the little plantation girl than Sunflower? Are zebras more acceptable (half-white, after all) than horses or ponies? Is it the fact they're waiting on a man, instead of a bunch of pony-girls? I can't quite understand the thinking here. Or was it just too hard to animate them out or turn them into camels or something?

What's even stranger though is that Sunflower has a sunflower in her hair in some shots, and not in others - and this is in the same scene! It comes and goes, comes and goes at the whim of the animators. Did they know she was going to be cut out? No, she was there when the movie opened to great fanfare in 1940. (It was a flop. The public found such forced musical edification pompous and boring.) Nobody noticed it, I'd imagine, or thought much of the fact that there was a cute little Negro girl waiting on the ladies. It wouldn't have raised an eyebrow. It doesn't now, either, because it can't!  Sunflower has left the building.

Only this time, she's gone for good.


Monday, June 18, 2018

Jane pushes the broom










This post was originally going to be about Tarzan and Jane, and how Jane's costume radically changed between 1934 (Tarzan and his Mate, with the infamous nude swimming scene) and Tarzan Escapes in 1936, in which she wore something like gym bloomers coming all the way up to her neck and all the way down to her knees. But I couldn't find a video clip that illustrated all that, so I couldn't make any gifs.






So I used Betty Boop instead.

Nowhere is the repressive, soul-deadening Hays Code more vividly displayed than in Betty's change from a hot little floozie to a housewife pushing a broom. I mean, LITERALLY pushing a broom! In Tarzan Escapes, Tarzan and Jane had enough physicality and emotional chemistry to somehow imply a sexual relationship - still pretty taboo, given the fact that they weren't married.

There is one gorgeous scene, which I can't find, in which Jane lies back langorously by the river, managing to look sexy in the unsexiest clothing imagineable. Tarzan gives her a tropical flower, towering over her as she looks up in a kind of half-frightened awe (and in case you haven't seen one of these for a while, Tarzan is quite rough on Jane and even overwhelms her). The way he silently falls to his knees says it all, as does her hand as it slowly and langorously lets go of the flower so that it slides into the current.



So they got around it, with the finest acting and directing, and the best body in Hollywood.

But poor Betty Boop. Just look at her! Navy blue dress, looking like some military surplus, skirt even below the knees and shoulders decently covered. She would never be the same. For she belonged to the boop-a-doop '20s and early '30s, before the forces of suffocating decency descended like a toxic cloud.

And yet, what she's wearing in the other three is - even by today's standards - kind of scanty. Hell, in that hula scene she's hardly wearing anything at all! She even breaks the sacred Disney blurred-nipple rule for a split-second. Would that be acceptable for family viewing today?






P., S. I found it! I found it! This is the most erotic scene in the whole erotic Tarzan series.  And yet, they get around the Hays code very nicely, flouting those repressive rules. Maureen O'Sullivan does it with her face, and Weismuller with that incredible body.


Tuesday, June 12, 2018

What is wrong with this picture?




Nothing! Not as far as I am concerned.

This animation I made wasn't an animation at all, until I converted it from a series of still pictures from the motion studies of Eadweard Muybridge.

THAT Eadweard Muybridge, the man who predated the motion picture by formulating the idea that a lot of still pictures shown in rapid succession would help us see exactly how people and animals moved.

Muybridge only toyed with the idea of looping all these pictures together to attain the illusion of motion. That came later, with the Lumiere Brothers, a few dozen others, and anyone but Edison.

Who ripped off ideas right, left and centre, but was quick on a patent like Billy the Kid was quick on the draw.

SO. I decided to try an experiment and just take a few seconds of video of my little animation. Which I did, and posted it on YouTube. Or at least I thought I did.




Next time I tried to get on YouTube, a stern full-page warning flashed on the screen telling me I had violated their Code of Decency and that my video had been censored/deleted. Forever. Well, maybe that was OK or maybe not - it seemed stupid to make such a fuss over a few seconds of educational material. But then they started talking about "strikes against your account". I already had one strike against my account by posting an obscene pornographic video of two women frollicking with a bucket of water (though obviously they saw it as the sort of explicitly sleazy garbage I see on YouTube every single day).

If I got to three strikes against my account, my days with YouTube would be over. Forever. All my videos would be gone.




I have something like 800 videos on YouTube, most of it personal stuff only meaningful to me, but I didn't keep 800 originals, I just couldn't. And over the years, I had no idea how much these videos came to mean, a record of my life, my pain and joy and discovery.

So to lose it forever. . . 

But then I thought of something: hadn't I SEEN a Muybridge video not long ago, one which showed very similar scenes (motion studies!) which lasted four minutes and went into a lot more detail?

Of course! And it looks like this.




Not only that, but you can see MY animation at 2:23. Exactly the same thing, all two seconds of it.

I don't know what is going on. I don't understand the double standard, or why Muybridge is suddenly such a threat to common decency. I find it hard to see these pictures of women as "dirty" or titillating - they weren't meant to be, though some say Eadweard favored comely young women over men for a reason. Be that as it may, THIS ISN'T PORN, it's nothing to do with it or even with sexuality or eroticism. If it's censored, what we are censoring are women's bodies. What we are saying is that the female body is inherently sexual, and sexuality is (of course!) dirty, bad, and wrong.

We need to do this, to make sure our children get the message. Particularly our female children. The sooner they learn that their bodies are filthy, depraved, and slimily disgusting, the better.





These photos were taken in the Victorian era, but not much was said about their erotic content. As far as I know, NOTHING was said. The Victorians were quite OK with Muybridge because he was he was a scientist and educating the public in a fascinating way. He also provided work for young women who might otherwise have been shop clerks or chambermaids.

When you look at how sick this all is, when you look at how contradictory - . The slobbering idiots at YouTube are the ones with  the dirty minds, sexualizing something that's meant to be innocent and even has an important historic and scientific origin. But what's worse is that a much longer and more explicit version of MY VIDEO is still up, under someone else's account, someone who has no "strikes" against him and probably never will. 





(Please note. Several paragraphs just dropped into oblivion, and I have no way of reconstituting them. Sorry about that - something to do with the photos).

Post-blog thoughts. I did contest the "strike", which you are allowed to do, by pointing out to YouTube that I had only used material already in a published video. I doubt if I will win this, however. Something about the way I presented the material, perhaps? I don't know. I hope contesting it doesn't count as another "strike". Sounds almost as bad as a stroke.

On top of that, after perusing what passes for "commentary" on thousands or perhaps millions of existing videos, I see hatred, racism, white supremacy, the n-word, the J-word (Jews, universally evil and hated), and all manner of other vile ideologies, if you can call them that. Those people are allowed to say anything they want under "freedom of speech". Now I worry about my two bucket ladies (which, by the way, I had already posted on an earlier video) being censored by Blogspot, my reputation besmirched by posting utterly disgusting pornography. A bucket of water! Imagine.

Maybe I should just join a white supremacy group. It would go down a lot better, and I'd have a lot less worry of being shut down.

Post-post. The offending nine frames. Cover your eyes if you're easily frightened, have a weak stomach, or have never seen a naked woman before. 












Depressed post-script. Today I had one of those fantastic ideas, encouraged by someone who actually made a comment on one of my YouTube videos (something which is, to my astonishment, happening more and more these days). I kept wondering aloud "why isn't there a troll channel on YouTube, like all those reborn doll channels?", and this person said, "What a brilliant idea! You should do it."

I had almost 50 videos already in my troll playlist. My idea wasn't to run a serious collector's channel, which interests me about as much as worms. I don't care if the troll has a 456 stamped in its foot, or if it was made in 1959 in Oslo or wherever they were made. I care about whether it's "trollie" and FUN.

So I eagerly began to title the videos in my troll playlist as The Troll Channel. And I was all the way through adding this title (laboriously, one at a time) to all of them, until I realized - 

There was a good chance YouTube would shut me down for it.

Why? Do I need to tell you why? Even though there are hundreds, perhaps thousands of videos labelled The Troll Channel, MINE would be seen as "violating community standards" and outside the realm of common decency. They had already hit me in the face with that one. That one strike had made me vulnerable, bleeding on the jungle floor, a thing carnivores love.






So, very reluctantly, I changed the title to The Troll Doll Channel. I like the double-oll, the way it looks at least, but it lacks punch. And yet. When I finally looked up The Troll Channel on YouTube, I was horrified at how obscene, violent, and thoroughly awful these videos all were. 

But it is also the fact I would have two strikes against me, you see. I am teetering on the brink. But now that I think of it - and I have been on a total rollercoaster about it all evening - I don't want a channel, or even a playlist, called The Troll Channel, not even with a museum called The Troll Hole somewhere in the States. (Now, just think if I started a channel called The Troll Hole. Probably there already is one, if not 4 or 500, considered perfectly acceptable. Who's doing favors for whom here?)

The word has been poisoned, and not by me. I don't want any idiot looking up obscene violent crap and finding MY little innocent playlist with its 47 videos, me playing Mama to a bunch of trolls.

It's really too bad that word got so  poisoned, and I don't know where it came from - Lord of the Rings, perhaps? But keep my trolls out of it! 

A lot of this was a desire to get out of those snotty Facebook  groups that DO go into troll foot size, number of fingers, etc. Who gives a  royal rip! Dates, times, and price tags mean nothing to me. And I found myself trying to get into their good graces, trying to get "likes", and hating myself for it.

So it's now The Troll Doll Channel, much as that takes something away from it. But I cannot afford to have YouTube squeeze me any further by using a title 5000 other people are already using withoiut penalty. I've learned a lesson or two about that.

(Wouldn't it be funny if I lost my account because my troll account was about TROLLS and not. . . trolls? We can't let the public down, can we?)


Sunday, April 3, 2016

Disney's zebra centaurs: the lost tapes




Here, after much searching, is a very brief but significant clip from the Pastoral Symphony segment of Disney's Fantasia. I wanted to see this because it features, if ever-so-briefly, two glorious zebra centaurettes who weren't erased from the final cut.





This voyage into cinematic racism in human/equine hybrids started with Sunflower, the little black girl who acted as a handmaiden/possible slave to the pastel-coloured centaurettes. Sunflower, who was half-donkey rather than half-horse, was edited out so thoroughly that she no longer appears in the DVD version of the movie at all, and even looks to have been photoshopped out of one scene.




That turned out to be wrong. The little black centaurette/donkey/possible slave who unrolled the red carpet for Bacchus/Dionysis and the gang was a character called Otika. It was nice of the animators to name her, but not so great when she almost instantly vanished from view.  Once she was photoshopped out, we were left with the bizarre phenomenon of the red carpet unrolling all by itself.




Better black magic than an admission of racist stereotyping. The solution seemed to be getting rid of the character altogether. But what of the zebra-ettes, who aren't even given names? They too act as servants: one of them fans the fat,drunken Bacchus, and the other keeps his wine glass sloshing over the top. Within ten seconds or so, both of them have quickly moved out of the frame.





 


I don't know what the rationale is here. These are grown women, obviously; but it is equally obvious they are black, perhaps even African, since their lower halves are not horse but zebra.

Were these exotic creatures serving Bacchus out of love, or because they were earning a salary? Disney was a known cheapskate who might just have kept his zebra hybrids on slave wages.

It's impossible to untangle this one because it's such a bizarre example of erasing something that is just too embarrassing to leave in. Having a sort of little black Sambo-ette/servant figure in the movie is inappropriate, but why is it OK to get rid of her completely? The magnificent Deviantart depictions of Sunflower are reclaiming her from obscurity, giving her her power back. And I'm all for that.








But Otika, her two-second film appearance now more rarefied than the unicorn or even the centaur, can take comfort in the fact that she is not the only actress whose performance has ended up on the cutting room floor.




Sunday, September 21, 2014

Big chill around the campfire: how writers are being silenced


A Writerly Chill at Jeff Bezos’ Fire

By DAVID STREITFELD  SEPT. 20, 2014

(Blogger's note: this is a New York Times article which I have illustrated in my usual non-literal/linear way. I have added italics for emphasis. A lot of italics. A lot of shit going on here.)




Jeff Bezos of Amazon has rented Bishop’s Lodge Ranch Resort and Spa in Santa Fe for Campfire, a literary gathering, this year. CreditRick Scibelli Jr. for The New York Times

When Jeff Bezos tells writers to keep quiet, they obey.

Every fall, Mr. Bezos, the founder of Amazon, hosts Campfire, a literary weekend in Santa Fe, N.M. Dozens of well-known novelists have attended, but they do not talk about the abundance of high-end clothing and other gifts, the lavish meals, the discussion under the desert stars by Neil Armstrong or the private planes that ferried some home.

Writers loved it. There was no hard sell of Amazon, or soft sell, either. The man who sells half the books in America seemed to want nothing more each year than for everyone to have a good time. All he asked in return was silence.





For four years, the bargain held. But the fifth Campfire, which writers say is taking place this weekend, is a little different. Amazon’s acrimonious battle with Hachette, the fourth-largest publisher, is fracturing the secrecy and sapping some of the good will. (Amazon will not confirm that the event is even happening.)

The struggle between the retailer and the publisher is ostensibly over the price of e-books but really over profit margins and, ultimately, the future of publishing. The conflict, which is unlike any in recent publishing history, has inflamed tensions across the literary spectrum. It began six months ago and appears unlikely to end any time soon.



Jeff Bezos Credit Win Mcnamee/Getty Images

Some repeat Campfire attendees who have supported Hachette in the dispute say they were not invited this year. Others say they are having second thoughts about going. The event has become as divisive as the fight.

“My guess is a lot of writers turned it down this year,” said James Patterson, who attended last year’s festivities. Mr. Patterson, whose novels are published by Hachette, gave a speech in May, when he warned that Amazon needed to be stopped “by law if necessary, immediately.”

“I wasn’t invited again, and I wouldn’t have gone if I had been,” he said. “I would feel very odd being there.” He noted, however, that the event had been “terrific.”





Hugh Howey, a self-published science fiction novelist who is one of Amazon’s most dedicated defenders, is in Santa Fe but said he had not wanted to go.

“I asked not to be invited back this year, as I want to be able to speak my mind and not have any hint of a quid pro quo,” he wrote in an email.

But this kind of openness is not for everyone. Some writers, when contacted about their past attendance and asked whether they were going this year, reacted with something akin to terror. One writer begged not to be mentioned in any way, insisting that it was a private, off-the-record event and should remain so, lest Mr. Bezos be offended.





The Amazon mogul does not make attendees sign nondisclosure forms. His team just cautions them that the weekend is off the record. Even those who like to share their every thought on Twitter and Facebook have kept it that way.

Ayelet Waldman has attended Campfire with her husband, Michael Chabon. Both novelists signed an open letter this summer in support of Hachette authors, whose books Amazon is making it harder to buy as a way to achieve leverage in the dispute. Ms. Waldman, who gained fame by publicly chronicling some of her most intimate feelings, including loving her husband more than her children, did not respond to emails about Campfire.

An Amazon spokesman declined to discuss Campfire. A spokesman for Mr. Bezos did not respond to a message seeking comment.






Traces of Campfire on the Internet are decidedly rare. A publishing newsletter mentioned the 2011 event, saying it included Jeff Tweedy of Wilco and the directors Jason Reitman and Werner Herzog. Diversified Production Services, which helped stage the 2011 event, describes it on its website as a “private gathering and conference of influential artists, writers, activists and scientists for a sharing of inspiration and stories.”

The company listed the “featured talent” that year as Mr. Armstrong as well as Margaret Atwood, the musicians T Bone Burnett and Moby, and George Martin — presumably the “Game of Thrones” novelist George R. R. Martin and not the Beatles producer.

A spokeswoman for Ms. Atwood declined to comment except to point out that the writer was in Europe this weekend. Mr. Martin could not be reached. Mr. Armstrong died in 2012.

Whether or not fear of Amazon is legitimate, it exists.




When Authors United, a group of writers, reprinted the open letter denouncing Amazon’s tactics in the Hachette dispute as an advertisement in The New York Times, 17 writers and a trust split the bill. Douglas Preston, the founder of the group, said the writers willing to be identified were Mr. Patterson, David Baldacci, Lee Child, Nelson DeMille, Amanda Foreman, Stephen King, Nora Roberts, Stacy Schiff and Scott Turow. Mr. Preston also paid a share, as did the Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust.

Seven other contributors asked to remain anonymous. “They were quite specifically worried about the possibility that Amazon would single them out for punishment,” Mr. Preston said.

An Amazon spokesman did not respond to questions on the subject of fear.






Campfire this year is being held under the conditions of utmost secrecy, as usual. Mr. Bezos has rented the entire Bishop’s Lodge Ranch Resort and Spa, which is set on 450 acres a little north of Santa Fe. If you call the front desk seeking a particular guest, the operator will not ring the room or even take a message. There are guards at the front gate to prevent the curious from getting too far.

Mr. Bezos, who built Amazon from its dot-com roots as a bookseller into one of the country’s biggest retailers, knows the psychology of writers, several past attendees said in interviews. “You come to this exclusive event, you are treated fabulously and you get access to the next Steve Jobs, who happens to control how many books you sell,” one said.







Employees at Amazon’s headquarters in Seattle have to pay for their perks, down to the treats from vending machines. And the company is famously tough on its suppliers; the Hachette conflict is just one example. At Campfire, however, there is no stinting.

There are impressive dinners, accompanied by live music. There is horseback riding, skeet shooting and lazing by the pool. In the mornings, there are formal talks on highbrow topics. One guest fondly recalled that the swag included down vests, fleeces, shoulder bags and small suitcases to carry all the loot home. Getting back to mundane reality was postponed for the attendees who took one of the private jets. (Others say they took scheduled flights.)

Mr. Howey said Campfire was nonpartisan. “They invite all kinds of people with all kinds of stances,” he wrote in his email. “You’re the first person I’ve heard suggest that people turned this down, so I’m inferring from you that the Hachette standoff has created tension?”





The literary world overflows with tension and invective these days. People are choosing sides.

Maxine Hong Kingston, who was awarded a National Medal of Arts by President Obama in July, was a Campfire attendee but is not coming back. She signed the open letter.

“It seems that I’m not invited,” she wrote in an email. She declined to say anything else.




Like I said, a lot of italics. 
It is hard to know where to start here. I feel like I'm reading about William Randolph Hearst, so powerful that no one dared to stand up to him - so, no matter how corrupt his actions, everyone had to be his "friend". They were too frightened to be anything else.  I am disgusted at all the elitist fat cat writers who gleefully took the bait while pretending not to know they were being seduced: hey, aren't writers supposed to be more aware, more conscious, more sensitive, even more conscientious than the rest of us? Surely they would KNOW if they were being bribed into silence. But could it be they KNEW they were being seduced, and didn't care because it's nice to be dipped in melted butter once in a while? 

What bothers me most of all is the emphasis on secrecy, on keeping it quiet. This means that people in the writing community are being effectively silenced, and putting up with it because they are afraid that speaking out will cost them too much. Sacrificing your integrity is a mighty high cost for a deluxe weenie roast, I'd say. Don't go on the record saying anything against Amazon, or - . Oh! God! There goes my career, Henry! The fact I don't have one, and Amazon is partly to blame for charging junk-sale prices for my novel, means I can say whatever the hell I want.




The irony is that for years I thought Amazon was the best online company to deal with: I never once had a problem with cancelling an order, or returns, or getting things late, or ANYTHING. I have dealt with them for years, because - why? Because, like Kleenex Brand, they were "there", and slowly but surely getting bigger and better at their particular brand of con. With all the lying, deception, intrigue, secrecy, bullying and fear, there's a trace of McCarthyism here, of witch hunt, of who's-side-are-you-on, and it stinks to high heaven, while everyone is looking around sheepishly and saying, "What?" Don't you want your books to sell? What's wrong with discounting them, anyway? Isn't it an advantage to be able to buy six or seven copies for the list price? What are you complaining about?

. . . But that's just me.



It wasn't so long ago we were hearing a version of this in Canada, only it was about Chapters-Indigo. Now that particular brew-haugh-haugh has died down, mainly because now we know that it's no use, we're not going to change anything or get any of our real book stores back by snarling about a high-end gift shop with a few books in the back. Since there are no book stores in my community, none, I (an author, yet) don't go to bookstores any more - I can't get to one. I have to order them online. But where can I go for the best prices, best service, etc.? I think the only answer is to stop buying books altogether.

I don't like hearing about campaigns of silence because they reek of the dynamics of abuse. It means there is something SO special going on that if you tell anybody else, something very bad will happen. So hey, just keep it to yourself, don't say anything. It's our little secret, remember?  That's how it is with special things, and special people. And that is how it is going to stay.