Tex Avery

Saturday Matinee Banned Cartoons

When you grow up on the periphery of an Empire such as the United States, the kind of consumable culture you are exposed to is not necessarily that which would be considered popular by the Empire's mainstream standards.

So, for example, I grew up watching a lot of what constitutes today's treasure trove of Warner Bros.' banned cartoons. It was so common to see every morning jazz jivin' sambos, looney dwarf-like Hitlers and wascally wabbits dressed in drag on TV that I was actually shocked to learn those cartoons were censored and outright banned here in the U.S.

GOLDILOCKS AND THE JIVIN' BEARS (1944), is part of the now infamous Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies, Censored Eleven. I find it fascinating that the dogs of animation, Harman and Ising, are included in this list, as well as Fritz Freleng, Chuck Jones, Robert Clampett and Tex Avery.

Harman and Ising founded Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes, and became famous for a little sambo-like character called Bosko. They basically translated the minstrel theater of the time into cartoons --and in the process made film and animation history.

I think it is unwise to ban these cultural gems from TV. Forget about the puritanical sensitivities of the political correctness police. I think that contextualized as part of the country's popular culture, they are invaluable tools for the world to understand the cultural development of the United States.

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Nobody needs to be told how to use the lounge chair. "Users" of any age, background, or degree of sophistication can immediately comprehend it: take it in, in almost all of its details, at a single glance. It is self-revealing to the point of transparency, and the same can be said of most domestic furniture: you lie on a bed, put books and DVDs and tchotchkes on shelves, laptops and flowers and dinner on tables. Did anyone ever have to tell you this?

The same cannot be said of the iPod - which, remember, is one of the best-thought-out and comparatively simple digital artifacts ever developed, demonstrating market-leading insight into users and what they want to do with the things they buy. Take off your power user hat, try to imagine life without the chops you've earned over the course of your involvement with these complex artifacts, and you'll see that to people encountering an iPod for the first time it's not obvious what it does, or how to get it to do that. It may not even be obvious how to turn the thing on.

You don't have to configure the chair, or set preferences. You needn't worry about compatible file formats. You can take it out of one room or house and drop it into another, and it still works exactly the same way as it did before, with no adjustment. It never reminds you that a new version of its firmware is available, and that certain of its features will not be available until you do choose to upgrade. As much as I love the iPod, none of this can be said for it.

— Adam Greenfield
v-2 Organisation | interface usability | The dumb furniture manifesto