LONDON (Reuters) – Turner Broadcasting is scouring more than 1,500 classic Hanna-Barbera cartoons, including old favorites “Tom and Jerry,” “The Flinstones” and “Scooby-Doo,” to edit out scenes that glamorize smoking.
The review was triggered by a complaint to British media regulator Ofcom by one viewer who took offence to two episodes of “Tom and Jerry” shown on the Boomerang channel, part of Turner Broadcasting which itself belongs to Time Warner Inc.
“We are going through the entire catalog,” Yinka Akindele, spokeswoman for Turner in Europe said on Monday.
[…]
The regulator’s latest news bulletin stated that a viewer, who was not identified, had complained about two smoking scenes on “Tom and Jerry,” saying they “were not appropriate in a cartoon aimed at children.”
In the first, “Texas Tom,” the hapless cat Tom tries to impress a feline female by rolling a cigarette, lighting it and smoking it with one hand. In the second, “Tennis Chumps,” Tom’s opponent in a match smokes a large cigar.
What bullshit! What absolute, utter, inconsequential revisionism. Let’s go ahead and start listing the movies that need to be hacked up next. They, too, glamorize smoking in some way, do they not? Casablanca will never be the same…
And neither will history. With this one move, people are violating the integrity of the public record, assaulting the art of others, and intentionally damaging original works that are innocent and indicative of their times.
Should we not begin taking such action against any work with regards to slavery? And terrorism? And violence? And racism, bigotry, incest, drug use, hate, prejudice, intolerance, war, theft, kidnapping, alcoholism, fraud, conspiracy, mental illness, and any other act or belief that suddenly has become unpopular in modern times?
Do you see how rapidly this spirals out of control? Do you see the level of our own heritage that is now being cut away with the ignorant knife of hindsight? Again, revisionism.
Oh, and this is all because ONE viewer complained. Imagine the power… Imagine how much of history you can now modify with a single call or e-mail… Imagine how dumb these idiots have to be…
Give me a fucking break.