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Chapter 5. Black Representation and World War II Political Concerns
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73 FIVE Black Representation and World War II Political Concerns From the very beginning of America’s involvement in World War II, the blackface image contributed to the war effort of the U.S. animation industry. Leon Schlesinger Productions started work on the war bonds commercial Leon Schlesinger Presents Bugs Bunny in late November 1941, completing it only eight days after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7. According to the Hollywood Reporter, a cartoon of similar length and quality usually took two months to produce. The film displays patriotic symbols such as Bugs dressed as Uncle Sam, and he, Porky Pig, and Elmer Fudd wear American army uniforms while singing the song “Any Bonds Today.” The cartoon places blackface minstrelsy within the context of these national symbols. Bugs puts on blackface makeup and imitates Al Jolson, singing “Sammy,” a reference to Uncle Sam as well as to Jolson’s popular theme song, “Mammy.” Bugs’s appearance in blackface correlated with the trend at the time for white characters to wear blackface in live-action movie musicals; this genre of film celebrated blackface minstrelsy as the only form of popular entertainment to have originated in America. Thus blackface, with its uniquely American roots, was considered a patriotic image.1 African American stereotypes had become so ingrained in American animation by World War II that gags such as Bugs Bunny’s Jolson imitation seemed only natural to white animators. The blackface character, though no longer a dominant image in animated cartoons, was still familiar to audiences, and studios tended to use it in brief scenes to add humorous touches to musical cartoons, thus, relying on blackface even when it was not central to a cartoon. As Martha Sigall, who painted celluloid sheets for the film, remembered: “I don’t think that Any Bonds Today needed the black face segment. But I also don’t feel that it hindered it, either.” She 74 Chapter Five recalled that the scene accounted for only ten of the ninety seconds of the film’s duration. Indeed, the parody did not add to or detract from the film’s central message, “Buy war bonds.” But neither did blackface help endear the cartoon to black viewers.2 In fact, the appearance of century-old racial caricature in wartime cartoons like Leon Schlesinger Presents Bugs Bunny did not sit well with a number of Americans. Ever since the first release of the pro–Ku Klux Klan movie Birth of a Nation (1916), individuals and organizations devoted to the cause of civil rights had lodged complaints with Hollywood studios about the derogatory treatment of African Americans in motion pictures. They called on the studios to develop roles beyond servant characters for African American actors and to end “sambo” and “mammy” depictions altogether. Hollywood initially paid little attention to the concerns of the activists. As outsiders to the film industry, they lacked the power to influence either the business practices of studio executives or the creative decisions of writers and directors. Their arguments hit home during World War II, however, by effectively associating the filmed stereotypes with racism in the United States and around the world. The struggle against the fascist Axis powers raised questions about the social status and civil rights of African Americans that had been too long ignored. In 1942, in the African American newspaper the Pittsburgh Courier, reporter William Nunn coined the phrase “Double V,” which meant victory both abroad in World War II and at home against Jim Crow. Some African Americans who fought in or supported the war hoped that their liberation of Europe from Hitler’s “master race” plan would result in the dismantling of Jim Crow laws in the United States. Under the banner of the newspaper’s “Double V” campaign, the journalists frequently cited incidents of domestic violence against African Americans and reported on black soldiers who were fighting enemies abroad. As blacks battled Nazi and Japanese forces, new “race riots” erupted in major cities across America.3 The Pittsburgh Courier best illustrated the role of animation in the problems the “Double V” campaign was exposing by drawing attention to a wartime reissue of the Warner Brothers cartoon Sunday Go to Meetin’ Time (1936), which features several crude racial jokes at the expense of African Americans. The item addressing this film was one of the many [34.229.223.223] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 06:37 GMT) Black Representation and World War II Political Concerns 75 articles, editorials, and...