Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin basically caused the Civil War and yet it did so through comedy and sarcasm and not calls to violence. Of all that we discussed about Stowe's work UTC in class what struck me the most was the mention of a cartoon, thus I set out to find such a cartoon and did. The above is best described as the abridged version of UTC where abridged means butchered.

This cartoon takes everything that powerful and makes it ineffectual to the extent that the original purpose and meaning is lost and all that is left are the stereotypes and bare bones of a story. All the whit and humor is gone as well as the senator and Honest John making the cartoon a white versus black issue instead of the intended issue. The intended issue was to pull at the hear-strings of the reader and convince them to not let this happen anymore. Where in the cartoon all we see are images and depictions of blacks in poor to stereotypical behavior. The black characters just dance around and act silly and without order it seems and the climax at the river is concluded through a deus ex machina moment then they dance.

Overall the hardest part of watching was seeing how the producers of this cartoon twisted a story that empowered the powerless and shows the inhumane nature of the slave trade, into a short film featuring nothing but stereotypes meant entirely to amuse and entertain others at the expense of the blacks.

Finally I leave you with two more short cartoons with racist tones, one of Felix the cat and the other Van Beuren's Tom and Jerry (think Laurel and Hardy) both shorts have their characters go to Africa.

Tom and Jerry in "Plane Dumb" (1932)

Felix the Cat in The Non Stop Fright