Jungle Jitters

Merrie Melodies short, directed by Friz Freleng, notable today for being one of the Censored Eleven. For those who don't know, the Censored Eleven are cartoons that were withheld from syndication because they were considered to be too offensive due to their use of racial stereotypes and imagery. This one takes place in an African village populated with black people, except for the queen, who is an old white woman (or some kind of bird, I couldn't really tell). The natives are dancing and carrying on at the start of the cartoon when a traveling salesman shows up and gets himself into trouble. Not a funny cartoon and, yes, as politically incorrect as they come. At one point one of the African natives even does an Asian accent. Most of the jokes are dumb, including the dated parodies of Robert Taylor, Clark Gable, and the now-forgotten Al Pearce. The animation is actually quite nice, grotesque depictions of black people aside. It's colorful and the action is well-animated. The music is also good, including the Looney Tunes theme song used during the merry-go-round bit. But really there's no reason to see this unless you are an animation buff or curious about the Censored Eleven.

This film isn't all that bad. After all, when the Queen made an appearance in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?", those who remembered her howled with laughter. The animation is clever in spoofing Elmer as Clark Gable and Robert Taylor as seen by the queen; to the cannibals, he looks like fried chicken. Elmer, the shy salesman is a parody of the radio comedian Al Pierce's character, Elmer Blurt. The characteristic knock on the door, the stammer, "I Hope, I hope, I hope.", are all part of what became Warner's biggest trademark--parodies of radio comedians. After all, every time someone would pick up the telephone, Daffy might say, "Oh, is that you Myrt?", which came from "Fibber McGee and Molly." Also, how many times have Jack Benny and Rochester, not to mention Eddie Cantor, been used to good advantage?

This film starts slow, but does pick up speed when Elmer makes his entrance. He also has a great closing line, something the writers of some of these cartoons desperately needed. I recommend this film for students of old radio.

Jungle Jitters isn't a complete waste of time, the animation backgrounds are crisp and detailed, rarely feeling stiff, and the whole cartoon looks colourful and vibrant. Carl Stalling's music is as characterful, rhythmically energetic and lushly orchestrated as always, the action always enhanced. Jungle Jitters has two amusing moments, one was the tribe envisioning the salesman as a turkey and the other being the final line. The two biggest problems however that Jungle Jitters has is that it is not particularly funny and that none of the characters are engaging. Apart from those two moments, the cartoon barely raises a smile, the main problem being that it's stupid in a mind-numbing sense and also that the style of humour would have been funny then but some people(myself included, coming from a huge animation fan and someone fond of a vast majority of Fritz Freleng's work) will find that it goes over their heads now. The Clark Gable and Robert Taylor references could have been funny but weren't executed well. Even more problematic are the characters, the tribe are very stereotypically characterised and while the stereotypes are not as blatantly racist as something like Scrub Me Mama with a Boogie Beat it is easy to see why they would offend some, they show very little personality either. The salesman is also incredibly annoying. The story is lacking in energy, while I did dislike the character designs especially after the rest of the animation being done as well as it was. Okay sure it's a cartoon and it makes sense for them to be exaggerated but these character designs looked ridiculous and borderline stupid(especially for the queen). Mel Blanc is one of the greatest voice actors who ever lived and had a knack of elevating the weakest of material, but here his material is some of the weakest he's ever had and this is one of few times where his voice work did nothing for me. Overall, a lot of stupidity here and unengaging characters but also apart from a couple of moments short of laughs. 4/10 Bethany Cox

Typical racist cartoon from back in the days when it was acceptable to portray Africa as people dancing around in loincloths. As it is, I got the feeling that "Jungle Jitters" was one of the cartoons that they made as a place holder in between the really good cartoons (1938 also saw the release of "Daffy Duck in Hollywood").

So, while the offensive material is the most obvious thing, the other point is that there is one clever scene: the merry-go-round (to the tune of "Merry-Go-Round Broke Down"). And there's the common situation of a cultural reference that people won't get nowadays; I'd certainly never heard of Elmer Burt.

So, I recommend this one as a historical reference.

I'd heard no end of horror stories about how 'Jungle Jitters' is allegedly so mind-bogglingly racist that it has been banned from polite society for all eternity. It turns out that this cartoon's major crime is that it isn't very funny. The single most racist gag involves a black man who looks like Stepin Fetchit but with enormous lips. He eats a persimmon, and his lips pucker until they're normal size. Elsewhere there are moronic gags involving African natives (all male) with nose rings and metal bands elongating their necks. (Apparently the gang at Termite Terrace have got African men confused with Burmese women.) I was surprised that there weren't any plate-lip gags ... but, really, most of this toon is just so stupid and unfunny that it's not worth the credibility of being called racist. Some other Hollywood toons from this same period are far more racist, maliciously so. Step forward, Chuck Jones's Inki.

After the initial gags, we get two interesting examples of Dorgan's Syndrome, a term I invented. Dorgan's Syndrome (named for comic-strip artist Tad Dorgan) is when a comic-strip character or cartoon character (almost invariably male) is drawn to look like an exaggerated human (fully clothed), but very minor details -- such as floppy spaniel ears or a black button nose -- indicate that he's actually a humanised animal, nearly always a dog. (Tad Dorgan drew comic-strip dogs who were so completely anthropomorphised, you have to look carefully to see they aren't comic-strip humans.) Into this cartoon jungle comes a commercial traveller who appears to be a white man, except that he has a dog's nose. The African natives (who are clearly human beings, at least by cartoon standards) want to put him in a big cauldron and eat him. Before anybody cries 'cannibalism', how can they be cannibals if they're humans eating a dog? The talking dog's flesh tones resemble a caucasian human's, so I guess he's 'white'.

Now we veer into H. Rider Haggard territory, as it turns out that all these black men are ruled by a white queen ... a very old queen, in fact, wearing Mammy Yokum high-button shoes. She too appears to suffer from Dorgan's Syndrome, as she looks nominally human but her mouth and nose are drawn to resemble a chicken's beak. (An old biddy?) She takes one look at the dog and starts screeching 'A man!'. She's surrounded by black men, but apparently she's been waiting for a talking dog with caucasian flesh tones. While the dog is talking, the hen imagines him morphing into Clark Gable (very unpleasantly drawn) and Robert Taylor. It shows how defeatist the makers of this Warner Brothers cartoon were, that they had to invoke two MGM contract actors as examples of male sex appeal. Couldn't they have used Warners actors Cagney, Raft ... even Dick Powell?

This whole toon is too dumb to bear much scrutiny. When the African men look at the dog, he morphs into a fried chicken. But their queen IS a chicken, so why don't they eat HER?

A previous IMDb reviewer, Randy H Farb, observes that the travelling salesman in this cartoon is a parody of a radio character named Elmer Blurt. He's correct, but Mr Farb has misspelt the name of the radio actor who invented the character: that would be Al Pearce, not Pierce. Al Pearce's radio character Elmer Blurt was nicknamed 'the Low Pressure Salesman'. As Farb notes, quite a few Warners toons featured parodies of radio or movie actors. Which brings me to the one good thing about this cartoon: the dog character (an imitation of Blurt) is actually fairly interesting in his own right, and could have been quite effective in a funnier cartoon. It's a shame that Warners never used him again. Maybe he'll show up in a Tiny Toon. I'll rate 'Jungle Jitters' just 2 out of 10. That's all, folks.