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Hey Hey Hey! Animation Inspired Exhibit, Funky Turns 40, Opens at Brown v. Board Site
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Hey Hey Hey! Animation Inspired Exhibit, Funky Turns 40, Opens at Brown v. Board Site
July 01, 2015
Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site is pleased to open a new exhibition, Funky Turns 40: Black Character Revolution, a nostalgic collection of images of black characters of popular cartoons of the 1970s. The exhibit is free and open to the public through July 30.
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Co-curated by cartoon aficionados Pamela Thomas and Loreen Williamson, Funky Turns 40 commemorates the 40th anniversaries of popular Saturday morning cartoons that featured positive black characters for the first time in television history and draws on collections from the Museum of Uncut Funk. "I believe these cartoons are national treasures," says Thomas. "They were seen by a generation of children and not only changed the way that black kids saw themselves but the way white kids saw them as well."
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Portrayals of blacks in comic strips and cartoon films in the 20th century were often racially derogatory and stereotyped. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Saturday morning television cartoons began to feature black animated characters in a positive and realistic manner. Fueled by the civil rights movement and commercial success of black musicians and athletes, television producers began to explore projects with wider, multicultural appeal.
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Bill Cosby's Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids paved the way for a host of characters and shows featuring music icons, sports heroes, and multicultural casts like the The Jackson 5ive, Josie and the Pussy Cats, The Harlem Globetrotters and I Am the Greatest, featuring Muhammad Ali. For the first time, children saw black cartoon characters that looked and talked like real people, full of warmth, intelligence, and humor. The production of these cartoons also employed black animators, musicians, and actors – jobs that were traditionally filled by non-blacks who often approximated their understanding of black culture. Forty years later, the legacy of these revolutionary cartoons has eclipsed the http://www.thewamegosmokesignal.com/Articles-News-c-2015-07-01-194…-Inspired-Exhibit-Funky-Turns-40-Opens-at-Brown-v-Board-Site.html
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Hey Hey Hey! Animation Inspired Exhibit, Funky Turns 40, Opens at Brown v. Board Site
7/13/15 11:10 PM
stereotypical images that came before and paved the way for new productions like The Proud Family, Little Bill, Static Shock, Fillmore and Doc McStuffins. Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site tells the story of the U.S. Supreme Court decision that ended legal segregation in public schools. The site is located at 1515 SE Monroe Street in Topeka, Kansas, and is open free of charge from 9 am to 5 pm daily, except for Thanksgiving, Christmas Day and New Year's Day. For more information call 785-354-4273 or visit www.nps.gov/brvb and www.facebook.com/brownvboardnps
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Exhibit celebrates history of positive black characters in animation By Katherine Peterson | Staff Writer Outright racism and negative stereotypes were prevalent in the early days of cartoons and animation, with only few black characters who not portrayed as villains or idiots. As a result of the civil rights movement however, there was a reversal in the way black individuals were portrayed in cartoons from the late 1960s and 1970s onwards. An art exhibit “Funky Turns 40: Black Character Revolution” has opened at Purdue’s Black Cultural Center. It celebrates the history of this thread in the blanket of racism that the black community has fought through the centuries to untangle. Cartoons and animation may not seem like important topics, but they display the social context of the time in which they are produced. The negative way in which African Americans were portrayed in television before the 1960s was an important symbol of the inequality that ravaged the United States at the time. “The main objective of the exhibition,” said Jamillah Gabriel, who coordinated the exhibit at Purdue, “is to highlight the historic significance of the appearance of positive, black animated characters in television cartoons during a time when it was rare to see any positive portrayals of black people on television in any capacity, cartoon or otherwise.” Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, among other animated series, were known for producing exceptionally racist cartoons in their early days. They emphasized many, if not all, racist stereotypes held against African Americans. One Merry Melodies episode, “Clean Pastures,” released in 1937, depicts a lazy black angel who is trying to get more black people in Harlem to go to “black heaven,” which is called “Pair- O-Dice.” At one point, the angel has a sign with all of the benefits of going to black heaven written on it, including watermelons. Many individuals do not know the extent to which black people th
were persecuted in the 20 century and “silly cartoons” are the true window into the past of America’s racist side. “Racial stereotypes were pervasive in all types of media, including cartoons such as those produced by Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies,” said Gabriel. “So the emergence of positive black characters, ‘from stereotype to superhero,’ is rightfully portrayed and acknowledged as revolutionary in this exhibition.”
One Purdue student thinks that this exhibit would be an interesting insight into the history of animation and racism and that Purdue students would benefit in going to see it. “I think it will be a very cool to see this exhibition and learn more about how these cartoons got started and changed the way black people were represented on television,” said Purdue student Joselyn Cooks. The exhibit displays animation cells from the cartoons it features. Images will include those of Fat Albert and the Jackson Five. It opened Feb. 1 and is at the Black Cultural Center until Mar. 31. This being Black History Month, it is especially important for students to take this unique opportunity to see the reversal of racism in animation. It is the small things that we are introduced to every day that help to shape and define our thoughts on important, key issues. “Kids are a very impressionable population,” said Cooks. “And I think introducing positive black characters to cartoons had a great impact on how the next generation saw African Americans. In turn, this affects our society today, and I think it’s important that we all pay respect to that big leap in our culture. It’s a really interesting part of history that I’m excited to learn more about.”
Domenica Bongiovanni, dbongiovan@jconline.com 12:01 p.m. EST February 10, 2016
Cartoon exhibit folds in history, fun Not often do you come across an exhibition that offers as much hard-hitting history and culture as it does personal connection. "Funky Turns 40: Black Character Revolution Firsts National Panel Exhibition Tour" accomplishes both. The traveling exhibit, now on display at Purdue University's Black Cultural Center, traces the first appearances of positive black characters in cartoons and animation and their historical importance in the late 1960s and 1970s, a marked departure from degrading caricatures in cartoons. "It's fun but also educational, and the significance of it is that so often we would find negative portrayals of black people on TV, especially in animation. And so this exhibition actually highlights that shift from those negative stereotypical portrayals toward those that actually were positive," said Jamillah Gabriel, the librarian and metadata specialist at the Black Cultural Center. The collection of informational panels and images is a smaller version of the full exhibition from the Museum of UnCut Funk, an online archive of black culture from the 1970s. According to the organization's website, the full-sized show has traveled to New York's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and Chicago's DuSable Museum for African-American History, among others, and the panels are meant to extend its outreach in smaller spaces. Walking through the exhibit at the center can place you in a time capsule. "Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids" pop off one panel. Peter Jones of "The Hardy Boys" runs on another. The Space Sentinels' Astrea, a superhero who can morph into almost any living animal, is featured as well. Each panel sets the cartoons and characters in perspective with quick
historical facts on the roles, series' original run span, producer and behind-the-scenes work of black animators. "I thought it was really awesome to see the progression and to be able to walk through the exhibit and just see how fast the impacts were made in the cartoon television industry," said Alexandra Brown-Anderson, a Purdue freshman majoring in marketing and management who hadn't seen any of the cartoons except reruns of "Fat Albert." The characters offer a stark contrast to the stock caricatures with oversized facial features. The late 1960s and 1970s cartoons, Gabriel said, showed real, well-rounded portrayals of African-Americans. At the exhibit, Brown-Anderson snapped a picture of Valerie Brown of "Josie and the Pussycats," who the exhibit identifies as the first positive black female character and musician in a Saturday morning cartoon series. She said she found Brown a beautiful and positive addition to the iconic "Archie" comic family. What ties into this history is viewers' own personal bond with the animations. Because Gabriel grew up after the original production of many of the cartoons, she watched some of the shows through reruns. She specifically remembers "Fat Albert," "The Harlem Globetrotters" and "The Jackson 5ive" as a kid. She said she identified with the group of kids who hung out together in "Fat Albert." "The Jackson 5ive" introduced her to the family, and Gabriel recalled her then-crush on Michael Jackson as he began his solo career. "It's fun to look at all the panels and kind of see ones that you do remember and ones that you didn't and be reminded of some of those things you used to watch when you were a child," Gabriel said. Students who didn't grow up with the cartoons in the exhibit can take away a great deal as well. "(It's important) to understand what it meant to see characters that represent you in a positive manner on TV because that was lacking before these cartoons came out and these particular characters, Fat Albert being one of the first," Gabriel said. "So it's definitely a reminder of that — it's something we still deal with today, maybe not in animation but in other ways."
Representation is something Brown-Anderson noticed as she grew up watching cartoons including "Courage the Cowardly Dog" and "The Proud Family." She also followed other kids' shows, including "Hannah Montana" and "That's So Raven." "(The Disney Channel) really impacted me because it sort of taught you, like, how middle school should be and how high school should be and how you should act in certain situations," she said. She said she noticed parallels with the cartoons in the exhibit and the shows she grew up with in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Black characters often donned hip and urban clothes, she said, and those who weren't part of predominately black casts often played the role of a sassy and well-dressed best friend. She finds the latter to be a good character but said kids would relate to more diversity in black roles. "I think that representation in cartoons is so important because you're at such an impressionable age when you're watching, and you're learning what's OK based off of that," Brown-Anderson said.