Look - Bob Clampett was an extremely talented animator. He made some of the more distinctive shorts for Loony Tunes and Merry Melodies over the years, and always his frames were alive with action and intensity and physical comedy. There's always something going on when it comes to his cartoons, and it's not simply gags; Clampett's cartoons are effective because of the bursting energy within the frame, how many movements his animation team accomplish with the characters, all the personality and mayhem (this was especially an influence years later for Kricfalusi in his Ren & Stimpy series). It's a shame then that he poured his efforts into this, which is a tasteless and insensitive 'parody' of Snow White.
One of the buzzword-terms going about right now is 'White privilege' and for good reason - this is what it means to live in a society when white people have all the power and influence. I have no idea whether Clampett was a racist or had feelings that black people all had big lips and acted like fools and buffoons, but the depiction at the least shows that he and his animators could've given less than a rat's ass about the intentions.
This isn't satirical in any way because there's no point, it's simply showing these characters in the most cartoonish way, but not with anything creative or cleverness. If there was a point to it or the point of view had something to say about black stereotypes (using Snow White as the jumping off point), but there is none. That there were zero black animators may seem like moot, but it isn't, as there's clearly no voice to be shared from the other side - it's just a bunch of white guys using black figures for the hell of it.
I give the short a couple of marks only because it is animated with the same passion and verve as the other works that made Clampett so valuable to Warners. But in its way it's as bad as something like Birth of a Nation - it didn't have that movie's affect on culture of course (a 7 minute cartoon didn't inadvertently bring back the KKK), and yet it's kind of unwatchable as something so tone-deaf. It's currently one of those "banned" cartoons that you can only find online or in bootleg form, and maybe for good reason; while there may be some historical reason to watch it, to check it out for the same reason one would like One Froggy Evening or Duck Amuck is insanity.
One of the buzzword-terms going about right now is 'White privilege' and for good reason - this is what it means to live in a society when white people have all the power and influence. I have no idea whether Clampett was a racist or had feelings that black people all had big lips and acted like fools and buffoons, but the depiction at the least shows that he and his animators could've given less than a rat's ass about the intentions.
This isn't satirical in any way because there's no point, it's simply showing these characters in the most cartoonish way, but not with anything creative or cleverness. If there was a point to it or the point of view had something to say about black stereotypes (using Snow White as the jumping off point), but there is none. That there were zero black animators may seem like moot, but it isn't, as there's clearly no voice to be shared from the other side - it's just a bunch of white guys using black figures for the hell of it.
I give the short a couple of marks only because it is animated with the same passion and verve as the other works that made Clampett so valuable to Warners. But in its way it's as bad as something like Birth of a Nation - it didn't have that movie's affect on culture of course (a 7 minute cartoon didn't inadvertently bring back the KKK), and yet it's kind of unwatchable as something so tone-deaf. It's currently one of those "banned" cartoons that you can only find online or in bootleg form, and maybe for good reason; while there may be some historical reason to watch it, to check it out for the same reason one would like One Froggy Evening or Duck Amuck is insanity.