What I Researched/Why: I originally wanted to find some clips of the anime “Adventures of Tom Sawyer” cartoons from the early 1980s that were mentioned in class. I remembered watching these when I was younger and was also curious to see how a Japanese director might have interpreted a classic American story. Unfortunately, I could not find any clips of this cartoon in English (Click Here if you’d like to see one of the non-English versions, they’re pretty funny.)
So, I looked for other cartoon versions of Tom Sawyer, hoping that I could find an interesting interpretation of the story.
What I Found: I found a short (about 6 minutes) “Mel-O-Toons” cartoon titled “Tom Sawyer.”You can Click Here to view it if you can't see it below. It is part of a series of 104 short cartoons released in 1960. The series also featured well known folk-tales, myths and bible stories. such as Cinderella, Noah’s
Interpretation/What This Adds to Class Discussions: Some of the choices made in shortening the story were very interesting. First, Huck Finn’s character is totally left out in favor of Joe Harper. I think that this must have something to do with the possible moral difficulties of presenting a very poor (yet happy/satisfied) child to young viewers. Maybe showing Huck would somehow threaten the “American dream,” “Pull yourself up by your bootstraps!” mentality that was so prevalent in the 50s-60s. I was also particularly interested in the portrayal of Injun Joe’s character in this cartoon. He has a feather on his head and says things like “I go in peace.” In the book, he was certainly a very evil character, but he was also taken much more seriously.
This cartoon shows the way cultural values and norms can change over time. Clearly what was valued in 1960’s
I wonder how a modern adaptation of Tom Sawyer would deal with the character of Injun Joe. I don’t know if anyone has read or seen Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice,” but I was reminded of this play in thinking about what a modern interpretation of Tom Sawyer might be like. “The Merchant of Venice” used to be most frequently performed with an emphasis on its anti-Semitic aspects. Now that this has become culturally unacceptable, many scholars and theaters have re-interpreted the play as actually being sympathetic to its Jewish character, and perform it emphasizing this aspect. I wonder if modern adaptations of Tom Sawyer might take a similar approach, or if they might just leave out Injun Joe’s character altogether, as the cartoon I found did with Huck Finn? Does anyone remember how the movie Tom and Huck dealt with Injun Joe’s character?
4 comments:
I found this cartoon very entertaining, and fully agree with you about the portrayal of Injun Joe. It makes him a more comical figure than in the book. But more than this, I felt that the portrayal of Becky Thatcher was a bit disturbing. With her big, blond curls and lipstick-stained lips, she is portrayed as a girl-vixen of sorts.
Just something to consider...
Anyway, kudos on the entertaining cartoon.
I LOVED this cartoon!!! Hilarious! I found it odd how old they portrayed Aunt Polly to be in comparison with other interpretations. In the Disney version, "Tom and Huck," she was portrayed as being much younger. They also say "injun" a lot more in the cartoon than I really noticed in the book. I also think it's notable that Injun Joe is caught and punished instead of dying, which may have scared the target audience.
on another note: did anyone notice that the lawyer looks like a Colonal Sanders/Mark Twain mix?
I think this is very true that they felt Huck Finn in order to keep with 'Pull yourself up with your bootstraps' idea. I believe that editing books for movies also happens today. They makers of the movies take out parts of the book (that sometimes pull the book together) in order to appeal to the people. This is very sad because the viewers of the movie may not be getting full concepts and also the book is not completely represented.
I absolutely love old cartoons like this, I think they are a lot of fun. That lawyer was definately supposed to be Mark Twain, no doubt about it. I think they left out the character of Huck Finn because there was a cartoon about him as well. I wish i could find it. It was hard to not laugh at the lousy animation (ok, i laughed pretty hard), i mean, this came out after looney toons and it really looks infantile in comparison. Perhaps it was aimed at a younger audience that the Warner Bros. and MGM produced cartoons that had inuendos and puns that only adults could get?
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