stereotypes – Animation, Race and Progress

1970s-1980s

Racial Commentary in Adult Animated Films: Coonskin

Posted on 4th Nov 2019 by Nadia Crawford

Ralph Bakshi’s films were very different from most other animated cartoons of this era and set off a trend that is still prominent today in adult animation: blatant and often offensive depictions of racism, sex, drugs and alcoholism and, most importantly, irony and satire. Bakshi plays upon ethnic visual and behavioural stereotypes well-established in America, using them to subvert expectations and highlight the rampant racism in the 1970s and 80s. Bakshi offers a real commentary on what was happening at the time through this intensely racist imagery. While many people were and still are offended by Bakshi’s stereotypes, the type of satire and social commentary he establishes is largely created by just how different and stereotyped all the characters look.

*Coonskin*‘s Miss America – A metaphorical character reflecting the attitudes of America

Coonskin (1975) was Bakshi’s most controversial film. The story is a modern re-telling of the Brer Rabbit tales of Joel Chandler Harris, satirically exploring the black flight to the Harlem. Its characters, Bear, Fox and Rabbit ultimately take over Harlem by destroying the figures oppressing black power in the city: a duplicitous black preacher who fails to deliver his promise of revolution, a white supremacist policeman and an Italian mafioso. At its core, Coonskin is about oppression and revolution in the ghetto and is, once one looks past its grotesque imagery, a film about black power, hope and resilience, with its characters reflecting the way America sees its Harlemites. By portraying his characters like he did, Bakshi exposes the racist tendencies of animation itself, which had been using these same stereotypes unironically and uncritically for decades. As Bakshi explains himself:

I do take all the stereotyped black images…but I try to show why blacks have taken these roles. The reason is that they can’t get decent jobs…Coonskin is a tough, angry film, but it’s not racist.
Ralph Bakshi, 1975

Coonskin aroused so much protest from CORE, NAACP and prominent individuals that Paramount Pictures withdrew it from circulation. Many of its major critics, however, had not even seen the film and were basing their analyses purely on the visual stereotypes. However, not every reviewer was so critical of the film’s racial premise. As one noted:

This film is not against groups – it’s against snarling, short-sighted, scrabbling, egocentric, murderous American city life, particularly as it beats up on blacks .

Several prominent black figures have also praised the film, such as Eddie Smith, a member the NAACP, who thought:

…the movie was very good. It is not a putdown of blacks. It is very positive.

In addition, the voice actor for Rabbit in the film said:

…the film is totally honest, and it is definitely pro-black. Yes, the film shows black pimps and whores. But we’ve got to accept reality and stop living with fairy tales.

My personal closing thoughts on the matter is that Coonskin is a brilliant piece of grotesque satire about race relations in the 70s and should always be viewed in that context. While it is valid to view the film as racist, it is worthwhile trying to see the film through a different lens.

1970s-1980s

The Last Days of the Dark Ages: The Rebirth of Representation

Posted on 4th Nov 2019 by Nadia Crawford

As the 60s ended and the 70s began, representation began to shift. Animation was reintroduced to adult audiences through the works of people like Ralph Bakshi, and cartoons steadily began to address race again, this time in more sensitive and positive ways, for the first time marking a serious reconsideration of racial and ethnic stereotypes and a provision of positive alternatives.

However, conservatism was the environment of the time, and racism thus continued in animation. There was a resurgence of racism in the 1980s as conservative sentiment increased under the Reagan government, putting rights minorities had previously fought for under threat as structural inequality worsened. As once again white people increasingly gained more social and economic prosperity than racial minorities, the ethnic underclass increased, widening the divide between them and intensifying racism on both sides. Ethnic minorities thenceforth lost their will to continue the protests and activism of the 1960s as both white and minority groups began to forget that the civil rights movement had even happened. People focused on the progression of individual members of ethnic minorities, the reduced use of slurs in media and public discourse, and the reduction in systematic segregation and took it to mean that racial equality had already been met and thus no more needed to be done.

These trends played into depictions of race in cartoons throughout the 1970s and 1980s. By this point, animation was firmly ingrained on television and had a set audience of predominantly children. Reports from this time indicate that black and low-income children spend more time watching television than other groups of children since it filled the vacuum created by weaker family ties. However, it was found that black characters only consisted of 7% of characters on screen, and 2% for other minorities, with neither groups ever portrayed in white-collar jobs. While black characters were portrayed with largely positive attributes, other ethnic minorities were almost always portrayed negatively. While there were more shows featuring predominantly black casts, typically inspired by real life famous African-American groups, such as the Harlem Globetrotters, Fat Albert, and the Jackson 5ive, this still was a very small number of total cartoons.

Nevertheless, this is a very important era for animation since this was a real turning point for representation, as some minorities began to be portrayed in a much more positive and sympathetic light. By focusing on younger audiences, cartoons with a more diverse or all-black cast allowed black children, for the first time, to see themselves in positive cartoon characters of their ethnicity.

1930s-1940s

War-torn America and Visions of Blacks and Native Americans ‘In Their Place’

Posted on 4th Nov 2019 by Nadia Crawford

Black and Native American representation in cartoons during war time played into a nostalgic desire for a time of peace and simplicity, making them incredibly popular with audiences and taken for the most part without criticism. Since these cartoons were a nostalgic view of history, not a realistic one, they reflected little to no historical accuracy even when they addressed historical settings and stories like Uncle Tom’s Cabin or Pocahontas. By glorifying American history, cartoons could instil a sense of national pride in its viewers and inspire them to take greater action in the war effort.

Black representation, at least for African Americans, grew more sophisticated throughout this era, since sound now gave black characters a (stereotypical) voice, and they began to appear in new locations such as rural towns or ghettos. Native Americans, however, were still portrayed as existing solely on the reservation or in tribes. Black and Native characters had to be portrayed as happy in these ‘natural’ settings since whites had to compete with them for jobs in the Depression. Black and native characters were thus portrayed with intensely racist visual stereotyping, and always were servile to whites or existed on the perimeters as savages. The white ‘heroic’ characters in these cartoons were always represented as forces of law and order by maintaining the status quo by suppressing these forces of ‘evil and chaos’.

There is a great wealth of examples of this type of racialized content, so here I can only mention a few prominent examples. In both Pop-pie a la Mode (1945), and Johnny Smith and Poker-Huntas (1938), the natives of the country the white protagonists find themselves in are depicted as primitive savages. In the former, black natives try to cook and eat a shipwrecked Popeye and in the latter Native Americans attack the colonialists coming from the Mayflower. While both differ slightly, such as the latter jokingly portraying the Native tribe like a city, they are all ultimately defeated by the white protagonists. These narratives are the same for all depictions of Africans and Native Americans – they are nothing but savages to be put down in the quest for white civilisation.

Black cannibal stereotype in *Pop-pie a la Mode*

Ultimately, these depictions remained a mainstay throughout the war as a source of comfort for white America, reinforcing racial trends that began in the 1900s and modifying them into a form that would continue to permeate representations in later eras of animation.

1900s-1920s

Pat Sullivan, Otto Messmer and Felix the Cat

Posted on 3rd Nov 20194th Nov 2019 by Nadia Crawford

Felix the Cat is one of the most recognised cartoon characters of all time. Felix has often been referred to as the ‘Charley Chaplin’ of cartoon characters: a figure alone in a hostile world, who relies on his own cunning to survive. Unlike most other characters of his time, Felix had a real personality which was expressed predominantly through his actions and movements. Felix was a blackface minstrel both in his design and behaviour: he was a mischievous trickster and his blackness of fur, association with Jazz, and his status as an outsider tied him to black culture. Felix was therefore shaped by, embodied, and perpetuated racial anxieties of the time. Of course, like other blackface minstrels, Felix was still tasked with ‘outwitting the other’ which involved turning against other black-coded characters and creating a hierarchy of blackness based upon how ‘civilised’ a given character was.

There are a couple of Felix the Cat cartoons that depict Felix treating a black character more like an equal: Saves the Day (1922) and Tries for Treasure (1923). These shorts contain the same caricature of a young black boy who stars alongside Felix and becomes his side kick in the latter short. In Felix Saves the Day, the boy is portrayed as a member of the ‘Tar Heels’ – a baseball team. While heavily stereotyped, the Tar Heels are still described quite positively, as “a tough team to be reckoned with”. However, the boy is developed in Tries for Treasure into a Sambo character, embodying subservience through his adherence to Felix’s wishes.

Having a cat portrayed as racially superior to a black boy really demonstrates how black people were considered in greater society at the time: as something inferior to be kept at the margins of white culture. This is a trend that would continue for decades since racist ideologies had been intertwined into the very fabric of animation itself.