Sesame Street Episode 847 with Margaret Hamilton

[gravy]

If WB did this for their cartoons, why can't Sesame Workshop do this for controversial classic episodes, if they end up getting released? Is the Wicked Witch episode really worse than WWII-era cartoons that made fun of Japanese people and even Adolf Hitler?

I mean, they kind of did that on the Old School set.

 

[minor muppetz]

That's what Warner Brothers did when they released the Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVD sets. There were several cartoons back in the 1930s and 1940s that had negative racial stereotypes and mature themes (war, violence, peril, sex, etc.), but there was a disclaimer on each DVD that went like this:
"The cartoons you are about to see are products of their time. They may depict some of the ethnic and racial prejudices that were commonplace in American society. These depictions were wrong then and are wrong today. While the following does not represent the Warner Brothers view of today's society, these cartoons are being presented as they were originally created, because to do otherwise would be the same as claiming these prejudices never existed."

And yet Warner Bros. still won't allow certain racial cartoons like the censored eleven (which came very close to getting a DVD release back in 2010) or certain Japanese-themed WWII cartoons (which, outside of some Private Snafu shorts and Any Bonds Today?, are the only WWII-themed cartoons that still haven't been released on DVD by Warner Home Video; surely if Warner didn't have a problem with those, we would have gotten them on volume 6 instead of all those economic-themed shorts that came years after the war ended). Not to mention there's two Tom and Jerry shorts they won't release (though I don't know if the T&J DVDs have the same kind of disclaimer).

 

[LittleJerry92]

Definitely hypocritical on Warner's part.

 

[PumpkinJ]

In fairness, Sesame Workshop still has a say, so that's pretty much the obvious reason why.

If I may add, Sesame Workshop can say "Sorry, we will not be able to release the episode at all. Please stop asking. Thank you for understanding." It's just like they said with the "Crack Master" short, until an anonymous person illegally sent the clip to Dycaite in Christmas of 2013.

 

[Blue Frackle]

If I may add, Sesame Workshop can say "Sorry, we will not be able to release the episode at all. Please stop asking. Thank you for understanding." It's just like they said with the "Crack Master" short, until an anonymous person illegally sent the clip to Dycaite in Christmas of 2013.

I don't know if I would call it illegal, but yeah; it's a good thing they never flat out said they won't release the episode.

Cracks is like some weird spinoff that doesn't even feel like Sesame Street, and for anyone that doesn't know, it did indeed get a commercial release on a Plaza Sesamo VHS.

 

[gravy]

If SW really didn't want Cracks out there then they would have taken it down already. They knew it was, at that point, inevitable for it to release, and chose to keep it online.

 

[LittleJerry92]

Yeah, I mean, I never remember hearing the Workshop say they never intended to release it; that just sounds like a bunch of conspiracy theory crap fans made up just because it's not publicly available.

 

[gravy]

Yeah, I mean, I never remember hearing the Workshop say they never intended to release it; that just sounds like a bunch of conspiracy theory crap fans made up just because it's not publicly available.

I think there was a contract whatshisface signed requiring he not release it anywhere, though.

 

[LittleJerry92]

Whatshisface.

 

[Blue Frackle]

Yeah, a guy named Jon Armond acquired the short from an heir of the creator in the late-2000s and they made him sign a contract that he wouldn't put it online. I wonder what the repercussions would've been if he did... fascinating.

Someone said they were uncomfortable that the short even existed in the first place.