Negra de Carbón y los Siete Enanos

I've seen my fair share of racial, sexist, and/or politically incorrect humor. Some of it is funny, some just downright offensive, but this animated short is curiously not much of either.

I bought the bootleg tape after reading the praise in The 50 Greatest Cartoons book. OK soundtrack, some cute takes on Snow White, but really, I can't see what all the fuss is about. Kind of like the Disney film, Song of the South. WB's Coal Black is not terrible, but no great loss, either.

Coal Black's obscurity helps cartoon buffs to describe it in gushing terms. Animation historians call it one of the greatest cartoons that Warner Brothers put out. It's a product of its time, they write—it came from an America that still enjoyed a minstrel show. Hollywood was giving the public black mammies, Steppin Fetchit, shucking and jiving, Amos and Andy. We can view those live-action films with a sense of historical distance— the film stock looks ancient, the acting looks hammy, and the actors themselves are generally dead. However, cartoons don't age like that. Though the film needs restoration, Prince Chawmin' looks to be as ludicrously vibrant today as he was in 1942— just more shocking.

To those who say, "The film exists and it's wrong to deny that…" Well, yeah. That doesn't mean we should put this into rotation on Cartoon Network. Your average viewer doesn't know or care about context. Coal Black provokes a visceral reaction. It churns up the ugliest parts of American history, reminding us that we're still a long way from having racial inequities worked out. Maybe Clampett was just having fun, but in today's climate and without commentary (i.e., without couching it in a documentary), Coal Black can look degrading.

Bob Clampett's style was to exaggerate, stretch, distort, and rubberize. Applying this style to the racial stereotypes of the day—even if he did so in fun, or even in admiration—Clampett produced some truly grotesque character designs. It makes Coal Black hard to reconcile. Freeze-frame it at some points and it looks like racist propaganda. Watch it as a cartoon, however, and it rollicks along good-naturedly.

Coal Black is Clampett's celebration of black culture and jazz, and to make it he fought with the studio to bring in as many black musicians and voices as he could. It's a jubilant film, and to watch it ignorant of race is to enjoy a bunch of rubbery cartoon characters in a twisted, high-speed parody of Snow White (there's even a jab at Disney's overuse of rotoscoping—check the beginning of the dance number). Jazz and action bounce along in wonderful syncopation, and seven minutes fly by so fast that they feel like two. Rod Scribner's animation is often astounding.

It's worth hunting for, it's worth talking about, and in ten years maybe it'll be time for Cartoon Network to dust it off, restore it, and put it on an official DVD. In the meantime, enthusiasts can have the satisfaction of tracking down a rare, paradoxical cartoon made by a brilliant collaboration.

This is a pretty good film technically,...but boy is the film likely to cause extremely high blood pressure or even heart attacks in modern audiences!!! And I DON'T recommend that the average person watch this, as the film is so racially offensive. In the 1940s, drawing characters of giant-lipped Black characters who spoke in Jive must have seemed very funny, but today it will most likely make many recoil in horror! However, I do recommend you see this film if you are interested in history or the progress we've made in race relations. As a history teacher, I see this as a wonderful film just as a teaching tool--to show us how far we've come. Plus, being a strong, strong advocate of free speech, I am loathe to encourage ANY film to be banned outright.

The film is on at least a superficial level, a pretty funny and interesting piece--particularly the wonderful ending. Just be forewarned--it is an awful aspect of race relations that some want to forget ever existed. Of course, if you ignore or forget your past, you are opening up the possibility you won't learn from our mistakes.

For years, I had heard of this cartoon yet never seen it. One of the infamous "Censored 11" (almost a dozen Warner Bros. theatrical cartoons that were forever suspended from television broadcast in the 1960s), it looked as if my chances would always be slim to none. But I have recently obtained a video copy of it and several other restricted "Looney Tunes" and "Merrie Melodies" and can now judge for myself how good it is.

As it turns out, all those critics were dead right! "Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs" is undoubtedly the flat-out funniest and most frenetically paced Bob Clampett cartoon I've ever laid eyes on - and this is up there with "The Great Piggy Bank Robbery", "Kitty Kornered", "Baby Bottleneck", "The Big Snooze", "Tortoise Wins By a Hare", Draftee Daffy", "A Tale of Two Kitties", and scads of others. Sure, its caricatures are seen today as appalling, but I know the context that this cartoon was supposed to be seen in. When thought of as a morale-raising wartime cartoon with one foot steadied in the world of jazz and black entertainment, this film is hilarious. In fact, several people have noted that this film's positive portrayal of blacks in the US Army was actually one of the few instances of such in film at the time. And the animation is certainly some of the best to come out of the Clampett unit - the dance scenes between Prince Chawmin' and So White, the flailing and unrestrained movements of the characters, and the Dwarfs' final attack on "Queenie" are all virtuoso pieces of work. The music and singing are astoundingly well-done, adding a jazzy spin to this particular Merrie Melodie. And as always, Treg Brown's sound effects make the film that much better (the numerous "p-zings" and "beyowhups" and "trombone gobbles" throughout the soundtrack never get old). Altogether this is a true winning effort. Despite its reputation, this cartoon can't be overlooked when observing Clampett's efforts at the Warner studio. As Steve Schneider put it in his 1988 book "That's All Folks! The Art of Warner Bros. Animation", this is a film masterpiece in miniature. And that is not a military secret.

Now, if I can only get my hands on "Tin Pan Alley Cats" and "Russian Rhapsody"...

Merrie Melodies short, directed by Bob Clampett, 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, a spin on Snow White with a black cast of characters (mostly voiced by black actors), is arguably the best of all the cartoons on the Censored Eleven list. It's hailed as one of Clampett's masterpieces by many animation historians. Some viewers today might not see what all the fuss is about and will almost certainly be put off by the exaggerated racial stereotypes. But there is value here, particularly with the energetic animation and the incorporation of jazz music. And honestly it's funny in spots, too. Recommending cartoons like this is tricky business because people have strong reactions to anything racial. Many people will likely not enjoy it and may even find themselves uncomfortable watching a minute of it. But those who are able to view it through something other than a "modern lens" I think will see that there's a lot of artistic merit to it and, yes, even some entertainment. It's not for all tastes, though, obviously.