Sunday Go to Meetin' Time

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Sunday Go to Meetin' Time is a 1936 Warner Bros. Merrie Melodies cartoon directed by Friz Freleng[1]. The short was released on August 8, 1936. Because of the racial stereotypes of black people throughout the short, it is withheld from circulation, one of the Censored Eleven shorts.

This cartoon was the first of three among the Censored Eleven to be reissued as a “Blue Ribbon” release (in 1944). Henry Sampson’s book That’s Enough Folks mentions that one person wrote to an African American newspaper to complain about the film’s re-release during World War II. That person’s complaints not taken seriously, and the film stays aired and then moved on to television broadcasts in the 1950s and ’60s.[2]
Nevertheless, the cartoon’s handsome animation and harmonious musical numbers could not rescue it from removal in 1968; the ethnic content was redundant.

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Plot

The setting of a rural, religious African American community on Sunday morning unites both parts of the cartoon, but the parts differ in their depictions of African Americans. All the characters are dark-skinned and have enormously big lips.
The first half starts with the church’s minister greeting his arrivals in song. Then, a well-dressed couple tap-dances to church while singing the film’s title-song. A succession of gags featuring stereotyped black characters follows: a mammy and old uncle shine the heads of pickaninny children; a woman takes a bra off a clothesline to use as a bonnet for her twin children.
Following on the second half Nicodemus the cartoon's protagonist found by his wife while playing dice. She exclaims, "You good for nothing! Get yourself to that church. The Devil's gonna get you sure as you're born!" and drags him off by the ear. Nevertheless, Nicodemus slinks out the door, opting to steal some chickens instead. A knock on the head sends him to the "Hades Court of Justice".
A demon reviews all his crimes: "Shooting craps, stealing chickens, missing church, raisin' dickens!" and through some kind of pinball game Nicodemus sent into deeper hell. Big-lipped demons carry him to the Devil himself, who sings to Nicodemus that "you've got to give the Devil his due." The boss orders some demons to "give 'em the works," but Nicodemus wakes to find the prods of pitchforks are really the pecks of chickens in the land of the living. Scared by his hallucination Nicodemus hears the church bells and rushed toward the church to attend the meeting and join singing along with the others.

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The Controversy

However, that first half also contains ethnic gags, and they likely raised red flags for United Artists when the company chose cartoons to withdraw from television syndication in 1968. The stereotype of African American lethargy appears in multiple scenes here. In between the first two songs, a sleepy African American’s bald head serves as a clapper for the church bell, but his laziness and sleepiness keep him from waking up inside the bell.
Then, a cutaway from the tap-dancing shows a shuffling man with shut eyelids. Although he appears to be sleepwalking (or sleep-shuffling),he tips his hat on cue when a woman passes by him. One gag centering on skin color, in which adults rub soot on children and polish them to “clean” them for church, was stolen from Ub Iwerks’s cartoon Little Black Sambo from the previous year.
The second half starts with gags based on more stereotyped behavior. Nicodemus is shooting craps when his wife grabs him by the ear and drags him to church. They are both speaking in minstrel dialect, and Nicodemus sounds like the African American character-actor Stepin Fetchit, who made a career out of the sleepy persona. After a few seconds of the song “All God’s Chillun Got Shoes,” Nicodemus sneaks out and tries to steal chickens. The gambling with dice and the chicken-stealing were hoary ethnic generalizations by 1968.


External Link

Sunday Go to Meetin' Time video in Dailymotion

References