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  • the cartoon is anti jazz

  • good news since warner brothers has not renewed the forbidden racist 11. Legally riechs kino dot com has bought the rights, Since it's public domain. Will be ready on d.v.d next week for sales

  • Those commies are good at drawing

  • I FUCKING HATE COMMUNISM! GREETINGS FRoM BRAZIL

  • Just gotta LOVE that Soviet tolerance. One wonders what they'd have made of P Diddy!

    Norm

  • @theshadow1932

    By the way, when I saw some old soviet programs where people of various African descent would be shown, they would be always the perfect soviet westerners. They would never really show or talk about their native cultures in depths. Also there were some popular Jazz musicians before ww2, mostly were from Jewish cities like Odessa, and it contributed to some antisemitism.

  • Whoa...the production values are impressive! Looks as good as any US cartoon from the same period, except for minor technical issues like the flicker.

  • @ThrilloVanHouten

    Yes, there is a lot of animation from soviet union in 50s and 60s where its seems they used the same technique as was done in American cartoons. This is actually one of less well made ones in my opinion. There some less political one which are better.

  • if your that way inclined i guess you could interpret anything you like into an 'african american steriotype' such as black coffee,black ink,blackboards or even my hair is racist for that matter as it is also black. anyhow how come if you made a caracature of a white man with pale skin and freckles its a funny cartoon but if you draw a black man its racist. just stop being so politicaly correct and have fun whatever colour you are!

  • Magpies are a curse anyway!! They have no musical qualities at all but that awful cackling racket they come out with.

  • I like magpies...only an ass would be against a beautiful bird...

  • This video affects me deeply...

    It reminds me of the tranquility that was seen prior to the invasion of Hitler in 1940...

    I sense that there is a lot of pain in this film/cartoon...

    Hitler didn't like jazz, either...but he didn't like a lot of other things as well...

  • I always have enjoyed seeing magpies...they are pretty...and very industrious...

  • Good heavens...

    Your observations about the birds liking the music being black is ridiculous. The first is black because it's a crow (the joke being that crows are the birds who can't sing). The others are partially "black" because the film is old and unrestored, and the colours have become darker than they were originally. EVERY bird seems to be partly black because of this.

  • Your example of a crow as caricature for black people comes from 1950s America, made AFTER this film. In any case, the attitude to blacks in the USSR was very favourable at that time. Their cause was taken up and used for propaganda against racism in America. See this Soviet cartoon from 1932: v=CzAwmcA-R8c

  • See also this quote from the Telegraph article "How jazz survived the soviets": "the history of jazz in Russia has been inextricably entwined with politics, from the early years after the Revolution, when the avant-garde flourished (the era of Malevich and Mayakovsky), jazz was embraced and the likes of Josephine Baker played in Moscow to great acclaim,

  • "(cont.) to the famous '30s debates between Pravda (for jazz) and Izvestia (against) as to whether jazz was merely an expression of "decadent, bourgeois individualism" or should be supported as emblematic of the struggle of black people against imperialism."

  • The Izvestia side eventually won (for a time) in the 1940s. But this was part of a broader effort against all music deviating from a very narrow official line (and against any Western influences), and not a singling-out of blacks.

  • but, essentially, without knowing the finer aspects of USSR cultural history, this cartoon is here so that those who saw banned American cartoons, can see that ARTwise the same racism could be seen in USSR cartoons, despite what one might hear about tolerance for blacks in ussr.

    A critic who would say an American cartoon that shows cartoony black people, is obliged to say this is just as racist as any American racist cartoon.

  • Showing "cartoony black people" per se is no more racist than showing "cartoony white people". But as for that, there are no "cartoony black people" in this cartoon. The singing bird with the Josephine Baker dance moves is a "local" who went overseas and learned jazz. The black crow has no black mannerisms at all - it is there not as a stand-in for a black character, but because crows can't sing (as in the famous fable by Krylov).

  • no no, and no. Black have been portrayed as black cartoony crows in American cartoons before this 1949 for sure. More importantly I believe we cannot look at the fact that attitude to blacks was nicer in USSR in the time, therefore cartoon is not racist. I precisely want to point out, that despite different social situation ,the cartoon appears JUST AS racist as American cartoons. Although some Jazz was played in ussr, obviously in this cartoon they criticize FOREIGN jazz.

  • First, blacks were more than "tolerated"; the official line was to champion their cause, because it served as a vivid illustration of capitalist oppression (see the 1932 cartoon I linked to). Another example is the famous 1936 musical, "Circus".

    Second of all, it is not RACIST to criticize a certain type of music. Yes, the singer does do certain jazz moves that are reminiscent of Josephine Baker (who also toured in Moscow). But how is it racist to show the birds not liking her music?

  • Ironically, that 1936 movie was anti-American and anti-racism (it starred a black heroine), but also anti-jazz.

  • So it appears that jazz was associated with more than just "black people". Also, I have already said that the crow in this cartoon has no black mannerisms like the crow in that American cartoon has.

    Anyway, I've been trying to find more information about Soviet jazz. I found a book about it called "Red and Hot", so I'm going to comment more after I read it...

  • (full title: "Red and hot: the fate of jazz in the Soviet Union, 1917-1991: with a new chapter on the final years")

  • you dont understand because its too much for your narrow mind

  • That response isn't particularly open-minded either, mind...

  • Why is the cartoon racist?

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