Clean Pastures

This article contains mature content and may not be suitable for all readers.
This article particularly deals with content blacklisted from contemporary television for containing harmful, outdated racial stereotypes and/or imagery. This article is not censored, as to censor the article would be to pretend that these prejudices never existed.
Please continue at your own risk.

Clean Pastures

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Porky and Gabby	Uncle Tom's Bungalow

Airdate:
22 May 1937

Series:

Merrie Melodies

MPAA Number:	Production Number:	Vitaphone Number:
3265	MM-11-6	7876

Copyright Renewed:

2 September 1964^[1]

Crew

Voice Characterizations:

Mel Blanc
Lillian Randolph
Bill Days
Scott Whitaker
Harland C. Evans
Ben Carter's Plantation Choir
Paul Taylor's Sportsmen
The Basin Street Boys^[2]

Clean Pastures is a 1937 Merrie Melodies directed by I. Freleng.

Plot[]

The Lord sees that the stock value of "Pair-O-Dice" is dropping on the exchange so he dispatches a slow-witted and slow-talking angel to sinful Harlem to recruit new customers. When this fails, God finds success sending a group of musical angels with a little more swing in their style, so much so that even the Devil wants to join up!

Caricatures[]

Reception[]

"Clean Pastures" is notable for, not just being a member of the infamous Censored Eleven shorts due to its outdated depictions of African-Americans, but was also a problem with the Hays Office when it was created and released in the 1930s. Hollywood censors of the time alleged that the film was in violation of the Hays Code because it burlesqued religion and glamorized such vices as gambling, drinking, and sex (in the form of the line of Josephine Baker-esque dancing girls during the beginning). Later commentators and animation historians surmised that the censors also objected to the portrayal of a Heaven run by African Americans and the very idea that Satan himself gets into Heaven because of how popular it's become.

Modern critics have been no kinder to the short. However, instead of criticizing its burlesque on religion and glamorization of sex and vice, "Clean Pastures," like all of the Censored Eleven shorts (and some that aren't, but do qualify, like "Goin' to Heaven on a Mule"), has come under fire for its unflattering depictions and caricatures of African-Americans. Musicologist Daniel Goldmark interprets the film as a metaphor for religious faith, showing the increasing identification of 1930s white audiences of jazz music with black culture and religion.^[4] Religion scholar Judith Weisenfeld sees "Clean Pastures" as a metaphor for the replacement of rural, minstrel show stereotypes of blacks for modern, urban ones.^[5]

Notes[]

The cartoon is a parody of Warner Bros.' 1936 film The Green Pastures.
Waller's line, "That's all, that's all," would be reused in "September in the Rain" (which has that scene cut in most televised versions in America) and later in "Tin Pan Alley Cats" (another member of The Censored Eleven).
Scenes from this short were reused for the Frank Tashlin cartoon "Have You Got Any Castles?"
- Cartoon Network and Boomerang airing the aforementioned cartoon with the "Swing for Sale" part uncut makes this the closest that a Censored Eleven cartoon has ever aired on a contemporary American TV channel.

Gallery[]

References[]

↑ Catalog of Copyright Entries
↑ https://wplc.overdrive.com/wplc-107/available/media/9248078
↑ http://www.michaelbarrier.com/Interviews/Monroe/Monroe1987.html
↑ Goldmark, Daniel (2005). "Jungle Jive: Animation, Jazz Music, and Swing Culture", Tunes for 'Toons: Music and the Hollywood Cartoon (in en). University of California Press, page 96. ISBN 978-0520253117.
↑ Weisenfeld, Judith (2007). "'De Lawd' a Natchel Man: The Green Pastures in the American Cultural Imagination", Hollywood Be Thy Name – African American Religion in American Film 1929–1949 (in en). University of California Press, page 80. ISBN 978-0520251007.

External links[]

"Clean Pastures" at the Big Cartoon DataBase

[1] Catalog of Copyright Entries

[2] ttps://wplc.overdrive.com/wplc-107/available/media/9248078

[3] ttp://www.michaelbarrier.com/Interviews/Monroe/Monroe1987.html

[4] Goldmark, Daniel (2005). "Jungle Jive: Animation, Jazz Music, and Swing Culture", Tunes for 'Toons: Music and the Hollywood Cartoon (in en). University of California Press, page 96. ISBN 978-0520253117.

[5] Weisenfeld, Judith (2007). "'De Lawd' a Natchel Man: The Green Pastures in the American Cultural Imagination", Hollywood Be Thy Name – African American Religion in American Film 1929–1949 (in en). University of California Press, page 80. ISBN 978-0520251007.

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