Director(s): Frank Tashlin
Summary: Porky is a fireman who, along with his fellow firefighters, has to save a theatrical boarding house from burning down. Most of the cartoon is just visual gags centered on a harrowing situation like this, but they’re good gags and do showcase Tashlin’s skills as an animation director, which would serve him well when he did live-action years later.
The Channel(s): Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network (and possibly unnamed syndication)
Part(s) Edited: The Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network versions both cut the scene of the falling white guy screaming, “Help! Help! Catch me! Get the net ready! Hurry! Hurry!”, going through a black cloud, and coming out as a caricature of Stepin Fetchit lazily calling for help as he now floats down. There is also word that the scene after that where Porky collects the flames and dumps them into a fishbowl, leaving the fish in blackface was also cut on Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network, but that’s the half-truth. The computer-colorized versions never edited that part, but a redrawn-colorized version exists where the “falling white guy turns into Stepin Fetchit” part is completely cut and the fishbowl part is altered so that way the fish are red instead of black (similar to how the matches were recolored red instead of black on “Wholly Smoke” -- stay tuned for that one. It’s coming), though I don’t know if that’s a censorship cut or yet another example of redrawns being so bad that miscoloring objects is common.
What Grinds My Gears About the Edit: There’s nothing that grinds my gears about the edit (though you could still tell what the punchline was going to be…unless this is your first Looney Tunes cartoon and you have no idea of the racially insensitive jokes that the shorts used to have). However, there was a time where a lot of online commentators thought that the scene that was cut never existed in the first place. What’s worse is that I believed them and didn’t have that critical voice in the back of my head that said, “No! They’re wrong! Do research to make sure that the scene actually existed.” I’ve had faint whisperings of it, but I was firmly in the camp of “The scene might not have existed, and if it did, it’s lost to time.” Turns out when it was released on home media, the scene was real and any doubts I had vanished (plus, it’s fun to see online commentators be proven wrong with cold, hard, substantial evidence. Admit it).
Video Comparison:
Availability Uncut: As of this writing, it’s on two DVD releases: The Looney Tunes Golden Collection, volume 4 (disc 2) and the Porky Pig 101 DVD set (disc 3).
Is/Was It Available on Streaming?: Sadly, no. It’s not even available on digital download. I understand if HBO Max (“Max”) or Tubi won’t touch it, but this feels like it could have been available on iTunes or Amazon Prime Video before being taken off for racially-insensitive content, like with what happened to episodes of 30 Rock and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia following the George Floyd riots in 2020 when Hollywood finally realized that the blackface scenes they let slip by in their modern shows aren’t appropriate (though it did lead to an episode of Community getting cut because a dark elf costume was mistaken for blackface. I’m so sure the episode is back now thanks to viewer complaints). It’s just one part that’s the problem. But, hey, that’s what physical media and the Internet are for: to find evidence to lost media, whether it’s the actual media or witness testimonial.
‘Til next time…
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