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Perhaps the biggest news from last weekend's NYCC was the discovery that a wide release of the "Censored Eleven" is planned for sometime in 2011. This may not seem that important but this has long been seen as little more than a dream for Golden Age Animation fans and shows a major shift in corporate attitudes.
For those not familiar with the "Censored Eleven" they are a set of 11 Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts that have been withheld from release since 1968 for racist content. Despite this there has been call for their release in part due to their place in animation's history, one of the eleven Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs is considered to be one of Bob Clampett's greatest works. Furthermore it is argued that it is important that these and other works like them (Song of the South in particular) shouldn't be hidden from the public since not only does it try to sanitize the past it also robs us of any lessons we may be able to learn from them. No one is trying to defend the content of the work outside framing the argument with the fact they all drew on larger contemporary views of their time, which is in part why their release is so important. If we as a society do not face our past as what it truly was we run the serious of repeating the same mistakes. For better or worse this is part of our history and nothing good can ever come from hiding from it.
Perhaps the biggest news from last weekend's NYCC was the discovery that a wide release of the "Censored Eleven" is planned for sometime in 2011. This may not seem that important but this has long been seen as little more than a dream for Golden Age Animation fans and shows a major shift in corporate attitudes.
For those not familiar with the "Censored Eleven" they are a set of 11 Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts that have been withheld from release since 1968 for racist content. Despite this there has been call for their release in part due to their place in animation's history, one of the eleven Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs is considered to be one of Bob Clampett's greatest works. Furthermore it is argued that it is important that these and other works like them (Song of the South in particular) shouldn't be hidden from the public since not only does it try to sanitize the past it also robs us of any lessons we may be able to learn from them. No one is trying to defend the content of the work outside framing the argument with the fact they all drew on larger contemporary views of their time, which is in part why their release is so important. If we as a society do not face our past as what it truly was we run the serious of repeating the same mistakes. For better or worse this is part of our history and nothing good can ever come from hiding from it.
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