Clean Pastures
Encyclopedia
Clean Pastures is a Merrie Melodies
animated
cartoon directed by I. Freleng
, produced by Leon Schlesinger
, and released to theatres on May 22, 1937 by Warner Bros.
and Vitaphone
. The cartoon is a parody
of Warner Bros.' 1936 film, The Green Pastures. It tells of an ersatz Heaven
called "Pair-O-Dice" and its angels' efforts to win souls from "Hades Inc." A Stepin Fetchit
caricature fails to recruit any souls in Harlem
, New York City
. However, jazz-singing angels incorporate "rhythm" into the pitch, and Harlem's African Americans follow them as they dance their way to Heaven.
Schlesinger and Warner Bros. had problems with Clean Pastures from the start. Hollywood censors alleged that the film ran afoul of the Hays Production Code
because it burlesqued religion. Later commentators surmise that the censors also objected to the portrayal of a Heaven run by African Americans. In 1968, the short's stereotypical portrayal of black characters prompted United Artists
to withhold it from distribution as one of the infamous Censored Eleven
.
Modern critics have been no kinder to the film and cite its portrayal of black characters as offensive and reliant on negative stereotypes. Musicologist Daniel Goldmark interprets the film as a send-up of black religion and culture and the increasing identification of 1930s white audiences of jazz
music with black culture. Religion scholar Judith Weisenfeld sees Clean Pastures as a metaphor for the replacement of rural, minstrel show
stereotypes of blacks for modern, urban ones.
, New York City
, where African American caricatures gamble, drink, and dance in a sea of bars, clubs, and dancing girls. In Heaven, known as "Pair-O-Dice", a black Saint Peter
reads the headline, "Pair-O-Dice Preferred Hits New Low As Hades Inc. Soars". The angel rings an angelic Stepin Fetchit
with enormous lips—probably a reference to Oscar Polk
's performance as Gabriel
in The Green Pastures— and orders him to rectify the situation. Gabriel descends to Harlem and stands by a sign (modeled after James Montgomery Flagg
's World War I Uncle Sam
poster) that reads, "Pair O Dice Needs You! Opportunity, Travel, Good Food, Water Melon, Clean Living, Music, Talkies". Nevertheless, the denizens of Harlem continue with their iniquity.
Angels, caricatures of jazz
performers Louis Armstrong
, Cab Calloway
, Fats Waller
, and Jimmie Lunceford
, tell Saint Peter that to get people to paradise he will need "rhythm" (the short's credits list no voice actors, but a member of the all-black jazz group the Four Blackbirds —possibly Leroy Hurt—provides the cartoon's celebrity impressions). The musicians go to Harlem and break into a performance of "Swing for Sale", and the Harlemites flock to listen. The film's climax takes on the characteristics of "a revivalist camp meeting
" as the band makes its way to Pair-O-Dice, and people follow them in droves. The newcomers receive their halos, and in the cartoon's final gag, the Devil himself asks to be admitted.
Clean Pastures is a musical film
, which means that it shifts between musical and non-musical sections, both of which are integral to the story. Carl Stalling
's musical score makes use of both public-domain music and songs owned by Warner Bros. Stalling's music "supplies both the foundation for the story and the driving force behind the animation." Music is of such importance that characters in Clean Pastures dance about even when no performers are pictured. The all-black jazz group the Four Blackbirds performs the backing vocals for these songs.
A choir of a capella, black male voices opens the cartoon with "Save Me, Sister, from Temptation", a song from the 1936 Warner Bros. film The Singing Kid featuring Al Jolson
. Thus, Stalling establishes one of the cartoon's themes, that sinners may be redeemed, from the opening credits. As the scene shifts to Harlem, the jazz standards "Nagasaki
" and "Sweet Georgia Brown
" accompany the bevy of African American vices. Caricatures of Bill "Bojangles" Robinson
and Al Jolson perform snippets of the blackface
tunes "Old Folks at Home
" and "I Love to Singa
". However, the short's major number is "Swing for Sale", performed by caricatures of popular black jazz performers. The short ends with a jazzed-up version of James A. Bland
's minstrel spiritual "Oh! Dem Golden Slippers
".
's cartoon studio to parody the 1936 Warner Bros. musical film The Green Pastures, itself an adaptation of a play by Marc Connelly
. The Green Pastures features an all-black cast and proved a success for Warner Bros., despite generating controversy. Animator Friz Freleng
had directed the short Sunday Go to Meetin' Time
in 1936. The cartoon lampoons African American religious beliefs to the backdrop of jazz music and tells the story of a rural black man who shirks church on Sunday in favor of worldly pastimes and finds himself in Hell as a result. Clean Pastures was thus keeping with his past work. Freleng even reuses animation of a jitterbugging couple from the Sunday Go to Meetin' Time in Clean Pastures. The short's use of caricatures of famous performers was in the same vein as such Freleng films as At Your Service, Madam and Coo-Coo Nut Grove.
Warner Bros. had trouble distributing the film. In an interview for Look
magazine, producer Leon Schlesinger complained that Clean Pastures gave him more trouble with Hollywood censors than any live-action film. Censor Joseph I. Breen alleged that the cartoon violated the Hays Production Code
, a set of rules for the content of American films, because it burlesqued religion. In a letter to Schlesinger, Breen complained about the scenes set in a parodic Heaven known as "Pair-O-Dice" and said, "I am certain that such scenes would give serious offense to many people in all parts of the world." Authorities also requested that Schlesinger remove the halo from one of the black characters. The letter does not specify to what exactly Breen objected, but musicologist Daniel Goldmark speculates that it was the idea of Heaven being run by blacks and the cartoon's implication that Heaven holds a place for "gamblers, dancers, drinkers, and, above all else, jazz fans", making it "even more threatening to white viewers." Schlesinger managed to quell the censors by making alterations, such as cutting the phrase "De Lawd". The short debuted in theatres on May 22, 1937. Tin Pan Alley Cats
, a 1943 cartoon directed by Bob Clampett
, was inspired in part by Clean Pastures and has a similar theme of redemption.
In 1958, United Artists
(UA) bought the Associated Artists Productions
(a.a.p.) library of cartoons and, 10 years later, removed Clean Pastures and ten other Warner Bros. cartoons from circulation on television or in theaters due to their racist portrayal of black characters. UA and later Ted Turner
and Warner Bros. (after re-acquiring the rights) have upheld this ban and kept Clean Pastures from being distributed on home video
, laser disc, or DVD
. Both Sunday Go to Meetin' Time and Tin Pan Alley Cats are also on this list. The Green Pastures, on the other hand, is still in distribution.
, Goldilocks and the Jivin' Bears
, and the Speedy Gonzales
cartoons. Lindvall and Fraser are more forgiving and call the cartoon "playful", "light", and "mischievous".
Daniel Goldmark alleges that the film is a burlesque of black religion and culture in its portrayal of Pair-O-Dice as "heavenly Harlem shops and singing choirs". In his interpretation, the film's use of rhythm is a metaphor for faith. This demonstrates white Americans' placement of jazz alongside religion and "the unfettered expressions of emotion associated with it" as aspects of African American culture. The cartoon implies that jazz cannot be replaced in the black psyche, as the musicians in the film must appropriate jazz, not compete with it, to draw Harlemites to Pair-O-Dice. The mortal characters are given no information about why Pair-O-Dice is better than Harlem, but the upbeat music is enough to lure them there. Even the Devil himself takes the bait. In the end, the film reaffirms the vision of Paradise from The Green Pastures, with its "perpetual Negro holiday [and] everlasting weekend fish fry."
On the other hand, Judith Weisenfeld sees Clean Pastures as an explicit rejection of Connelly's fish fry. Instead, she argues that the short is a metaphor for the replacement of one generation of African American performers and stereotypes for a new one as the result of African Americans moving to urban areas. In contrast to The Green Pastures and its portrayal of rural black culture, the cartoon is set in a solidly urban framework. Clean Pastures replaces stereotypes of black watermelon eaters and chicken stealers with black dancers, drinkers, and gamblers. Old-style black stereotypes are represented by the Stephin Fetchit angel and his recruitment sign, which promises delights that only appeal to rural black stereotypes. Yet even Bill "Bojangles" Robinson and Al Jolson, who built their careers on blackface depictions of rural blacks, reject Fetchit's plea for souls and opt for the Kotton Klub nightclub. The angelic jazz performers represent new, urban black culture. Through their rendition of "Swing for Sale", the souls of the Harlemites are saved, and the cartoon makes the point that the African American culture of the period was increasingly urban culture, and by extension, that the black Heaven is an urban, Northern place. Lindvall and Fraser take a similar view, seeing the cartoon as part of the Warner directors' transition from stereotyping blacks as "rural bumpkins" to featuring them as "urban hepcat[s]".
Goldmark and Weisenfeld agree that the film's portrayal of black culture is a negative one. Goldmark criticizes the film's implication that certain kinds of black music or black performers are better than others. He interprets the short's jazzy finale, which juxtaposes contemporary popular jazz with a traditional African American spiritual
, as representative of this theme:
Contemporary black commentators argued that to white audiences, Connelly's The Green Pastures simply reinforced the notion that black people presented a danger that needed to be contained. Weisenfeld argues that this is also the case with Freleng's parody. To white viewers in the 1930s, the film's implication that blacks care for nothing but gambling, drinking, and dancing only reinforces notions of the dangers posed by urban blacks. According to Goldmark, the choice of performers caricatured is telling; that Armstrong and Calloway are depicted as angels indicates that their crossover appeal was strong enough among whites that white audiences would not have felt threatened by the notion that they were angels in Heaven. Weisenfeld notes that by focusing the narrative on Saint Peter and his Stepin Fetchit underling, the animators ducked the potential offense white audiences might have felt upon seeing a black God.
Merrie Melodies
Merrie Melodies is the name of a series of animated cartoons distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures between 1931 and 1969.Originally produced by Harman-Ising Pictures, Merrie Melodies were produced by Leon Schlesinger Productions from 1933 to 1944. Schlesinger sold his studio to Warner Bros. in 1944,...
animated
Animation
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...
cartoon directed by I. Freleng
Friz Freleng
Isadore "Friz" Freleng was an animator, cartoonist, director, and producer best known for his work on the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons from Warner Bros....
, produced by Leon Schlesinger
Leon Schlesinger
Leon Schlesinger was an American film producer, most noted for founding Leon Schlesinger Productions, which later became the Warner Bros. Cartoons studio, during the golden age of Hollywood animation.-Early life and career:...
, and released to theatres on May 22, 1937 by Warner Bros.
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
and Vitaphone
Vitaphone
Vitaphone was a sound film process used on feature films and nearly 1,000 short subjects produced by Warner Bros. and its sister studio First National from 1926 to 1930. Vitaphone was the last, but most successful, of the sound-on-disc processes...
. The cartoon is a parody
Parody
A parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...
of Warner Bros.' 1936 film, The Green Pastures. It tells of an ersatz Heaven
Heaven
Heaven, the Heavens or Seven Heavens, is a common religious cosmological or metaphysical term for the physical or transcendent place from which heavenly beings originate, are enthroned or inhabit...
called "Pair-O-Dice" and its angels' efforts to win souls from "Hades Inc." A Stepin Fetchit
Stepin Fetchit
Stepin Fetchit was the stage name of American comedian and film actor Lincoln Theodore Monroe Andrew Perry....
caricature fails to recruit any souls in Harlem
Harlem
Harlem is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan, which since the 1920s has been a major African-American residential, cultural and business center. Originally a Dutch village, formally organized in 1658, it is named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands...
, New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. However, jazz-singing angels incorporate "rhythm" into the pitch, and Harlem's African Americans follow them as they dance their way to Heaven.
Schlesinger and Warner Bros. had problems with Clean Pastures from the start. Hollywood censors alleged that the film ran afoul of the Hays Production Code
Production Code
The Motion Picture Production Code was the set of industry moral censorship guidelines that governed the production of the vast majority of United States motion pictures released by major studios from 1930 to 1968. It is also popularly known as the Hays Code, after Hollywood's chief censor of the...
because it burlesqued religion. Later commentators surmise that the censors also objected to the portrayal of a Heaven run by African Americans. In 1968, the short's stereotypical portrayal of black characters prompted United Artists
United Artists
United Artists Corporation is an American film studio. The original studio of that name was founded in 1919 by D. W. Griffith, Charles Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks....
to withhold it from distribution as one of the infamous Censored Eleven
Censored Eleven
The Censored Eleven is a group of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons that were withheld from syndication by United Artists in 1968...
.
Modern critics have been no kinder to the film and cite its portrayal of black characters as offensive and reliant on negative stereotypes. Musicologist Daniel Goldmark interprets the film as a send-up of black religion and culture and the increasing identification of 1930s white audiences of jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
music with black culture. Religion scholar Judith Weisenfeld sees Clean Pastures as a metaphor for the replacement of rural, minstrel show
Minstrel show
The minstrel show, or minstrelsy, was an American entertainment consisting of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music, performed by white people in blackface or, especially after the Civil War, black people in blackface....
stereotypes of blacks for modern, urban ones.
Plot
Clean Pastures opens in HarlemHarlem
Harlem is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan, which since the 1920s has been a major African-American residential, cultural and business center. Originally a Dutch village, formally organized in 1658, it is named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands...
, New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, where African American caricatures gamble, drink, and dance in a sea of bars, clubs, and dancing girls. In Heaven, known as "Pair-O-Dice", a black Saint Peter
Saint Peter
Saint Peter or Simon Peter was an early Christian leader, who is featured prominently in the New Testament Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles. The son of John or of Jonah and from the village of Bethsaida in the province of Galilee, his brother Andrew was also an apostle...
reads the headline, "Pair-O-Dice Preferred Hits New Low As Hades Inc. Soars". The angel rings an angelic Stepin Fetchit
Stepin Fetchit
Stepin Fetchit was the stage name of American comedian and film actor Lincoln Theodore Monroe Andrew Perry....
with enormous lips—probably a reference to Oscar Polk
Oscar Polk
Oscar Polk was an American actor, best known for his portrayal as the servant "Pork" in the 1939 film Gone with the Wind. On January 4, 1949, he was fatally struck by a taxi cab as he stepped off a curb in Times Square. At the time of his death he was scheduled to have a major role in the play...
's performance as Gabriel
Gabriel
In Abrahamic religions, Gabriel is an Archangel who typically serves as a messenger to humans from God.He first appears in the Book of Daniel, delivering explanations of Daniel's visions. In the Gospel of Luke Gabriel foretells the births of both John the Baptist and of Jesus...
in The Green Pastures— and orders him to rectify the situation. Gabriel descends to Harlem and stands by a sign (modeled after James Montgomery Flagg
James Montgomery Flagg
James Montgomery Flagg was an American artist and illustrator. He worked in media ranging from fine art painting to cartooning, but is best remembered for his political posters....
's World War I Uncle Sam
Uncle Sam
Uncle Sam is a common national personification of the American government originally used during the War of 1812. He is depicted as a stern elderly man with white hair and a goatee beard...
poster) that reads, "Pair O Dice Needs You! Opportunity, Travel, Good Food, Water Melon, Clean Living, Music, Talkies". Nevertheless, the denizens of Harlem continue with their iniquity.
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
performers Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong , nicknamed Satchmo or Pops, was an American jazz trumpeter and singer from New Orleans, Louisiana....
, Cab Calloway
Cab Calloway
Cabell "Cab" Calloway III was an American jazz singer and bandleader. He was strongly associated with the Cotton Club in Harlem, New York City where he was a regular performer....
, Fats Waller
Fats Waller
Fats Waller , born Thomas Wright Waller, was a jazz pianist, organist, composer, singer, and comedic entertainer...
, and Jimmie Lunceford
Jimmie Lunceford
James Melvin "Jimmie" Lunceford was an American jazz alto saxophonist and bandleader in the swing era.-Biography:...
, tell Saint Peter that to get people to paradise he will need "rhythm" (the short's credits list no voice actors, but a member of the all-black jazz group the Four Blackbirds —possibly Leroy Hurt—provides the cartoon's celebrity impressions). The musicians go to Harlem and break into a performance of "Swing for Sale", and the Harlemites flock to listen. The film's climax takes on the characteristics of "a revivalist camp meeting
Revival meeting
A revival meeting is a series of Christian religious services held in order to inspire active members of a church body, to raise funds and to gain new converts...
" as the band makes its way to Pair-O-Dice, and people follow them in droves. The newcomers receive their halos, and in the cartoon's final gag, the Devil himself asks to be admitted.
Clean Pastures is a musical film
Musical film
The musical film is a film genre in which songs sung by the characters are interwoven into the narrative, sometimes accompanied by dancing. The songs usually advance the plot or develop the film's characters, though in some cases they serve merely as breaks in the storyline, often as elaborate...
, which means that it shifts between musical and non-musical sections, both of which are integral to the story. Carl Stalling
Carl Stalling
Carl W. Stalling was an American composer and arranger for music in animated films. He is most closely associated with the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts produced by Warner Bros., where he averaged one complete score each week, for 22 years.-Biography:Stalling was born to Ernest and...
's musical score makes use of both public-domain music and songs owned by Warner Bros. Stalling's music "supplies both the foundation for the story and the driving force behind the animation." Music is of such importance that characters in Clean Pastures dance about even when no performers are pictured. The all-black jazz group the Four Blackbirds performs the backing vocals for these songs.
A choir of a capella, black male voices opens the cartoon with "Save Me, Sister, from Temptation", a song from the 1936 Warner Bros. film The Singing Kid featuring Al Jolson
Al Jolson
Al Jolson was an American singer, comedian and actor. In his heyday, he was dubbed "The World's Greatest Entertainer"....
. Thus, Stalling establishes one of the cartoon's themes, that sinners may be redeemed, from the opening credits. As the scene shifts to Harlem, the jazz standards "Nagasaki
Nagasaki (song)
"Nagasaki" is a jazz song from 1928 by Harry Warren and Mort Dixon that became a popular Tin Pan Alley hit. The silly, bawdy lyrics have only the vaguest relation to the Japanese port city of Nagasaki...
" and "Sweet Georgia Brown
Sweet Georgia Brown
"Sweet Georgia Brown" is a jazz standard and pop tune written in 1925 by Ben Bernie and Maceo Pinkard and Kenneth Casey .The tune was first recorded on March 19, 1925 by bandleader Ben Bernie, resulting in a five-week No. 1 for Ben Bernie and his Hotel Roosevelt Orchestra...
" accompany the bevy of African American vices. Caricatures of Bill "Bojangles" Robinson
Bill Robinson
Bill “Bojangles” Robinson was an American tap dancer and actor of stage and film. Audiences enjoyed his understated style, which eschewed the frenetic manner of the jitterbug in favor of cool and reserve; rarely did he use his upper body, relying instead on busy, inventive feet, and an expressive...
and Al Jolson perform snippets of the blackface
Blackface
Blackface is a form of theatrical makeup used in minstrel shows, and later vaudeville, in which performers create a stereotyped caricature of a black person. The practice gained popularity during the 19th century and contributed to the proliferation of stereotypes such as the "happy-go-lucky darky...
tunes "Old Folks at Home
Old Folks at Home
"Old Folks at Home" is a minstrel song written by Stephen Foster in 1851. It was intended to be performed by the New York blackface troupe Christy's Minstrels. E. P. Christy, the troupe's leader, appears on early printings of the sheet music as the song's creator...
" and "I Love to Singa
I Love to Singa
I Love to Singa is a Merrie Melodies animated cartoon directed by Tex Avery, produced by Leon Schlesinger, and released to theatres on July 18, 1936 by Warner Bros. and Vitaphone. I Love to Singa depicts the story of a young owlet who wants to sing jazz, instead of the classical music that his...
". However, the short's major number is "Swing for Sale", performed by caricatures of popular black jazz performers. The short ends with a jazzed-up version of James A. Bland
James A. Bland
James Alan Bland , also known as Jimmy Bland, was an African American musician and song writer.-Biography:...
's minstrel spiritual "Oh! Dem Golden Slippers
O Dem Golden Slippers
"Oh, Dem Golden Slippers" is a popular song commonly sung by blackface performers in the 19th century. The song, penned by African-American James A. Bland in 1879, is considered an American standard today...
".
Production and distribution
Many Hollywood cartoons from the 1930s are based on feature films. Therefore, it was only natural for Leon SchlesingerLeon Schlesinger
Leon Schlesinger was an American film producer, most noted for founding Leon Schlesinger Productions, which later became the Warner Bros. Cartoons studio, during the golden age of Hollywood animation.-Early life and career:...
's cartoon studio to parody the 1936 Warner Bros. musical film The Green Pastures, itself an adaptation of a play by Marc Connelly
Marc Connelly
Marcus Cook Connelly was an American playwright, director, producer, performer, and lyricist. He was a key member of the Algonquin Round Table, and received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1930.-Biography:...
. The Green Pastures features an all-black cast and proved a success for Warner Bros., despite generating controversy. Animator Friz Freleng
Friz Freleng
Isadore "Friz" Freleng was an animator, cartoonist, director, and producer best known for his work on the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons from Warner Bros....
had directed the short Sunday Go to Meetin' Time
Sunday Go to Meetin' Time
Sunday Go to Meetin' Time is a Merrie Melodies animated cartoon directed by Friz Freleng, produced by Leon Schlesinger Productions, and released to theatres on August 8, 1936 by Warner Bros. Pictures and The Vitaphone Corporation. The plot follows the misadventures of a black man in the...
in 1936. The cartoon lampoons African American religious beliefs to the backdrop of jazz music and tells the story of a rural black man who shirks church on Sunday in favor of worldly pastimes and finds himself in Hell as a result. Clean Pastures was thus keeping with his past work. Freleng even reuses animation of a jitterbugging couple from the Sunday Go to Meetin' Time in Clean Pastures. The short's use of caricatures of famous performers was in the same vein as such Freleng films as At Your Service, Madam and Coo-Coo Nut Grove.
Warner Bros. had trouble distributing the film. In an interview for Look
Look (American magazine)
Look was a bi-weekly, general-interest magazine published in Des Moines, Iowa from 1937 to 1971, with more of an emphasis on photographs than articles...
magazine, producer Leon Schlesinger complained that Clean Pastures gave him more trouble with Hollywood censors than any live-action film. Censor Joseph I. Breen alleged that the cartoon violated the Hays Production Code
Production Code
The Motion Picture Production Code was the set of industry moral censorship guidelines that governed the production of the vast majority of United States motion pictures released by major studios from 1930 to 1968. It is also popularly known as the Hays Code, after Hollywood's chief censor of the...
, a set of rules for the content of American films, because it burlesqued religion. In a letter to Schlesinger, Breen complained about the scenes set in a parodic Heaven known as "Pair-O-Dice" and said, "I am certain that such scenes would give serious offense to many people in all parts of the world." Authorities also requested that Schlesinger remove the halo from one of the black characters. The letter does not specify to what exactly Breen objected, but musicologist Daniel Goldmark speculates that it was the idea of Heaven being run by blacks and the cartoon's implication that Heaven holds a place for "gamblers, dancers, drinkers, and, above all else, jazz fans", making it "even more threatening to white viewers." Schlesinger managed to quell the censors by making alterations, such as cutting the phrase "De Lawd". The short debuted in theatres on May 22, 1937. Tin Pan Alley Cats
Tin Pan Alley Cats
Tin Pan Alley Cats is a 1943 animated short subject, directed by Bob Clampett for Leon Schlesinger Productions as part of Warner Bros.' Merrie Melodies series...
, a 1943 cartoon directed by Bob Clampett
Bob Clampett
Robert Emerson "Bob" Clampett was an American animator, producer, director, and puppeteer best known for his work on the Looney Tunes animated series from Warner Bros., and the television shows Time for Beany and Beany and Cecil...
, was inspired in part by Clean Pastures and has a similar theme of redemption.
In 1958, United Artists
United Artists
United Artists Corporation is an American film studio. The original studio of that name was founded in 1919 by D. W. Griffith, Charles Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks....
(UA) bought the Associated Artists Productions
Associated Artists Productions
Associated Artists Productions was a distributor of theatrical feature films and short subjects for television. It existed from 1953 to 1958. It was later folded into United Artists. The former a.a.p. library was later owned by MGM/UA Entertainment and then Turner Entertainment. Turner continues...
(a.a.p.) library of cartoons and, 10 years later, removed Clean Pastures and ten other Warner Bros. cartoons from circulation on television or in theaters due to their racist portrayal of black characters. UA and later Ted Turner
Ted Turner
Robert Edward "Ted" Turner III is an American media mogul and philanthropist. As a businessman, he is known as founder of the cable news network CNN, the first dedicated 24-hour cable news channel. In addition, he founded WTBS, which pioneered the superstation concept in cable television...
and Warner Bros. (after re-acquiring the rights) have upheld this ban and kept Clean Pastures from being distributed on home video
Home video
Home video is a blanket term used for pre-recorded media that is either sold or rented/hired for home cinema entertainment. The term originates from the VHS/Betamax era but has carried over into current optical disc formats like DVD and Blu-ray Disc and, to a lesser extent, into methods of digital...
, laser disc, or DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
. Both Sunday Go to Meetin' Time and Tin Pan Alley Cats are also on this list. The Green Pastures, on the other hand, is still in distribution.
Reaction
Black critics in the 1930s wrote about the play and film The Green Pastures, but they were silent on its animated parody. Weisenfeld speculates that this is because animated cartoons were not seen as significant at the time. Modern critics of Clean Pastures fault the film for its stereotypical depictions of black culture. Cultural studies scholar William Anthony Nericcio sees the film as representative of a pattern in the works of Friz Freleng, who also produced such stereotype-ridden films as Jungle JittersJungle Jitters
Jungle Jitters is a one-reel animated cartoon short subject in the Merrie Melodies series, produced in Technicolor and released to theatres on February 19, 1938 by Warner Bros. Pictures and The Vitaphone Corporation. It was produced by Leon Schlesinger and directed by Friz Freleng, with musical...
, Goldilocks and the Jivin' Bears
Goldilocks and the Jivin' Bears
Goldilocks and the Jivin' Bears is an animated cartoon short written by Tedd Pierce and directed by Friz Freleng. It was released on September 2, 1944, by Warner Brothers as part of its Merrie Melodies series....
, and the Speedy Gonzales
Speedy Gonzales
Speedy Gonzales is an animated caricature of a mouse in the Warner Brothers Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons. He is portrayed as "The Fastest Mouse in all Mexico" with his major traits being the ability to run extremely fast and speaking with an exaggerated Mexican accent...
cartoons. Lindvall and Fraser are more forgiving and call the cartoon "playful", "light", and "mischievous".
Daniel Goldmark alleges that the film is a burlesque of black religion and culture in its portrayal of Pair-O-Dice as "heavenly Harlem shops and singing choirs". In his interpretation, the film's use of rhythm is a metaphor for faith. This demonstrates white Americans' placement of jazz alongside religion and "the unfettered expressions of emotion associated with it" as aspects of African American culture. The cartoon implies that jazz cannot be replaced in the black psyche, as the musicians in the film must appropriate jazz, not compete with it, to draw Harlemites to Pair-O-Dice. The mortal characters are given no information about why Pair-O-Dice is better than Harlem, but the upbeat music is enough to lure them there. Even the Devil himself takes the bait. In the end, the film reaffirms the vision of Paradise from The Green Pastures, with its "perpetual Negro holiday [and] everlasting weekend fish fry."
On the other hand, Judith Weisenfeld sees Clean Pastures as an explicit rejection of Connelly's fish fry. Instead, she argues that the short is a metaphor for the replacement of one generation of African American performers and stereotypes for a new one as the result of African Americans moving to urban areas. In contrast to The Green Pastures and its portrayal of rural black culture, the cartoon is set in a solidly urban framework. Clean Pastures replaces stereotypes of black watermelon eaters and chicken stealers with black dancers, drinkers, and gamblers. Old-style black stereotypes are represented by the Stephin Fetchit angel and his recruitment sign, which promises delights that only appeal to rural black stereotypes. Yet even Bill "Bojangles" Robinson and Al Jolson, who built their careers on blackface depictions of rural blacks, reject Fetchit's plea for souls and opt for the Kotton Klub nightclub. The angelic jazz performers represent new, urban black culture. Through their rendition of "Swing for Sale", the souls of the Harlemites are saved, and the cartoon makes the point that the African American culture of the period was increasingly urban culture, and by extension, that the black Heaven is an urban, Northern place. Lindvall and Fraser take a similar view, seeing the cartoon as part of the Warner directors' transition from stereotyping blacks as "rural bumpkins" to featuring them as "urban hepcat[s]".
Spiritual (music)
Spirituals are religious songs which were created by enslaved African people in America.-Terminology and origin:...
, as representative of this theme:
Furthermore, placing the creators of "good" hot jazz in heaven suggests that certain types of black music are better than others: "hot" music made in such places as Harlem would lead to debauchery and eventually to Hades, Inc. Only through the noble efforts of famous black musicians could souls be turned to a better direction.
Contemporary black commentators argued that to white audiences, Connelly's The Green Pastures simply reinforced the notion that black people presented a danger that needed to be contained. Weisenfeld argues that this is also the case with Freleng's parody. To white viewers in the 1930s, the film's implication that blacks care for nothing but gambling, drinking, and dancing only reinforces notions of the dangers posed by urban blacks. According to Goldmark, the choice of performers caricatured is telling; that Armstrong and Calloway are depicted as angels indicates that their crossover appeal was strong enough among whites that white audiences would not have felt threatened by the notion that they were angels in Heaven. Weisenfeld notes that by focusing the narrative on Saint Peter and his Stepin Fetchit underling, the animators ducked the potential offense white audiences might have felt upon seeing a black God.