Jungle Jitters

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Merrie Melodies - Jungle Jitters (1938) - Lobby Card.jpg

Jungle Jitters is a 1938 Warner Bros. Merrie Melodies cartoon directed by Friz Freleng. The short was released on February 19, 1938 [1]
Because of the racial stereotypes of black people throughout the short, it prompted United Artists to withhold it from syndication within the United States in 1968. Hence, the short was placed into the Censored Eleven, a group of eleven Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes shorts withheld from television distribution in the United States since 1968 due to heavy stereotyping of black people.[2]

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Plot

The first 2 minutes is unnecessary portrayed how African doing in their daily life in African jungle. Then a traveling dog-like but in pale-skinned salesman named Manny comes by to offer them the latest in "assorted useful, useless, utensils". The natives, after initially trying their hardest to avoid him, decide he would make a delicious dinner for the natives, so they invite him in, ransack his goods, and throw him into a cauldron while a mammy chef prepares him as soup. They proceed to familiarize themselves with the goods brought by the salesman like vacuum cleaners, batteries, light bulbs, etc.

The village queen (depicted as an old, chicken-like white woman) hears of the arrival of the salesman, she brings him in. As Manny delivers his sales pitch, the queen sees him as Clark Gable and Robert Taylor and is smitten. Desperate for a husband, the queen demanding to be married right away. The two are rushed into a marriage and the salesman was forced to say yes by the native with poking the salesman's back with spear. When asked to kiss the bride, Manny panics and runaway jumps back into the cauldron; in a closing shot, he curses his captors with the hope that "they all get indigestion" as he submerges into the pot to his death.

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The Controversy

Not forget to mentioned all African characters portrayed in dark skin tone with enormous big lips but the main issue that leads this short banned from syndication is the ethnic stereotyped as cannibal.

External Link

Jungle Jitters fully restored HD at Youtube

References