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Coal Black & De Sebben Dwarfs

Bob Clampett's 1943 toon which, well, uh, you'll see. Wooooah nelly. One of the "Censored Eleven", the Coal Black short looks real harsh these days, however in truth the short had kinder goals: it was meant as a Jazz-infected poke at the unbearable softness of Disney's tutonic Snow White. Jazz was in its way the major "fuck you" music of the 40s, and Coal Black was inspired by Clampett's love of Duke Ellington's Jump for Joy, with Ellington subsequently suggesting to Bob that he do a Black musical cartoon. The blackface caricatures in Coal Black are sort of the equivalent of people self-applying the term "nigger" these days, a kind of "yeah, we'll take your stupid bullshit and use it as we please" stance... how well that comes off from a white cartoonist in 1940s America is open to debate, but the goal with Coal Black was subversion, not pissing on Black people. We take pains to point all that out because if you're new to it, just flipping Coal Black & De Sebben Dwarfs on in 2006 can be a little rough.


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