Racist Overtones in Tom and Jerry

 

Do you know who the faceless woman in Tom and Jerry cartoons is? Why do we get to see only one half of her body? You would say that obviously she is a maid in Tom's owner's house. Actually, the official line is that we don't know if she is a maid or the owner of the house. Right there you can tell that something isn't right, because she is always in a maid uniform doing house chords. Besides, we can see Tom's owners in a couple of episodes. It is obvious that screenwriters were trying to hide the real truth behind Mammy Two Shoes character. The cartoon was created during racial segregation (separation of the races in the US (1865-1964) in public spaces and public institutions, etc.). Therefore, we can conclude she was a maid in their house as it was one of the few available jobs for African-Americans at the time. It's never explained why  her face is always hidden. Although it is mentioned in Tomandjerryfandom.com and similar sites that her appearance in general is often edited out, dubbed or re-animated, and afterwards fully removed, it can be concluded that she, as a member of the black race and US citizen, was deliberately depersonalized with this act. The cartoon is abundant in segregational and slavery practices.

There is one episode of Tom and Jerry I remember watching as a child. It involves human branding iron. Human branding iron was usually used to mark slaves by their owners. Allegedly, it can be used cold too, but it was definitely used hot at Tom's, as portrayed in the picture below. Nonetheless, the implication is that the twentieth-century US had a hard time relinquishing its slavery practices. What's worse is that it instilled these ideas worldwide with the cartoon in question.

The extent to which human branding and segregation were normalized abashes people to this day - to the extent of putting it in a cartoon. Children would watch it and grow up thinking it was normal. To prevent that, we could take some extra time to check the cartoons before letting our child watch them and absorb them.

Tom and Jerry is banned in a number of countries for its violence, popularization of alcohol, suicide and smoking, and racism. It's weird how there are so many horrifying things about this cartoon, yet everyone had watched it and it is one of the favorite cartoons among children. This Tom and Jerry story should open our eyes that often don't see the subtext.

Mušinović Emina