Wednesday, August 01, 2007

I'm on round 2 of my cartoon collection. I looked over the very unflattering Native American cartoon (Little Hawk) that Disc 2 began with, and the black and white one that put monkeys on auction so that hound dogs could buy them. But the one I watched today I just cannot go without discussing its outwardly sexist message.

(The cartoon can be found HERE)

It's about a lady who buys a vacuum cleaner from a traveling salesman. Well, it turns out to play like a tuba. The woman practices and gets better and better. That's all she does. Meanwhile, her husband and son cannot function without her. They are sitting in a corner dirty, clothless and starving. She performs and eventually the salesman comes back. He sells her a tuba that sucks like a Hoover. Then, the next screen is a cross stitch like view that reads: "MORAL: A woman's place is in the home." Granted, this was 1965, but come on! I cannot believe audiences were, first of all, subjected to a screen that showed them what the moral was like they couldn't figure it out themselves, but to be so blatantly sexist... jeez. I'm glad that I only have one more week of free time... then it's back to work and school. then maybe I won't get as upset about the horrible messages hidden in my classic cartoons.

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