Disclaimer: This is the second entry in the Censored Eleven. while there are at least triple the amount of cartoons that aren’t included in the list that are just as racist, this should tell you what we’re dealing with. The review you’re about to read entails racist content, imagery, concepts, and ideas. I do NOT at all endorse this content. I find these depictions, gross, demeaning, and wrong. I don’t take pleasure plastering it up on my blog. but to gloss over it and act like these prejudices never existed would be just as wrong. Thank you for bearing with me and I hope you can understand.
Release date: August 8th, 1936
Series: Merrie Melodies
Director: Friz Freleng
Starring: Ben Carter (Nicodemus), Roy Glenn (Reverend, Judge)
As I mentioned in the disclaimer, this is the second entry in the Censored 11. The Censored 11 in itself is a pretty menial title, seeing as there are unfortunately many more cartoons just as ugly and racist as the ones in the Censored 11 but aren’t included in the list. The first entry, as you might recall, was all the way in 1931 with Hittin’ the Trail for Hallelujah Land, which was relatively tame in comparison to this one. Here, Nicodemus refuses to go to church. Instead, he spends his time trying to kill a chicken. When knocked unconscious, he comes face to face with the devil himself, who tries to sort him out.
Open to a remote, neighborly town in the country. We hone in on a church, where a pastor (of course caricatured in blackface, but that’s only the beginning) greets the churchgoers inside, singing an original score by Norman Spencer. There’s very little to appreciate in this cartoon, but there are some beautiful vocals. The music is the only good part of the cartoon.
Church bells accompany the song, and we peer into the steeple itself. A man clings to the rope as he rings the bells, repeatedly jumping in and out of his pants. A gag that would have been amusing in 1932, but feels outdated, even for 1936. We see that the rope is connected to a rocking chair, where a sleeping man rocks back and forth, his head repeatedly hitting the sides of the bell to ring. Get it? Because he’s got a thick skull? What a lovely cartoon already.
Now we launch into the eponymous song, sung by a man strolling down the sidewalk with his sweetie. The song is very catchy and the animation itself in a technical aspect is nice, good synchronization with occasional tap dances and the animation of the wooden planks receding is very skillful. But, obviously, the scene is hard to appreciate. A very catchy song that’s too good for its own cartoon. We also get a view of a random man shuffling along and lazily tipping his hat.
And, because we had one good aspect of the cartoon, we must balance it out with something twice as bad. A mother slathers shoe polish on the heads of her children, who all run to their father. He shines their heads with a rag, and their heads are freshly polished and shiny. I don’t need to follow that up with any explanation as to why that’s bad. Another woman strolls along with her children, tying a bra around their heads like a sun bonnet.
Elsewhere, the church bells are still ringing. A woman walks along outside, calling “ Nicodemus! Nicodemus!” and scanning her surroundings to no avail. She carries a bible and a Sunday hat, her walk determined and angry. Just as she strolls past a fence, she hears a voice. We see two hands shaking a pair of dice as a man calls “Come on dice, come to your pappy!” It seems Nicodemus has been found at last.
The woman (seemingly his mother) yanks him out to the other side of the fence and chastises him, slapping the hat on his head and pushing him along to church. Nicodemus protests (“I don’t wanna go to no church!”), and eventually she resorts to dragging him along by the ear. They approach the church, Nicodemus still complaining and urging to be let go. The doors close and we pan over to the exterior of the church, viewing the silhouettes of the churchgoers inside singing some gospel. After a moment, the front doors open again, and out creeps Nicodemus. He tiptoes away, turning around to assert the coast is clear. Confirming that he isn’t being followed, he breaks out into a scrambled run.
Suddenly he skids to a halt, where he overhears clucking. Nicodemus stands right outside a yard fenced in by chicken wire, and sure enough a telltale chicken is inside. An idea hatched and Nicodemus snags a nearby club, pushing the gate open and sneaking inside. He approaches the chicken, club behind his back as he urges the chicken to come closer. The chicken senses something is up and demands to see what he’s hiding in his hand. A simple switch of the grip, and Nicodemus holds out his now empty hand, the other hand hiding the club. The charade continues on for a bit, until Nicodemus resorts to running after the chicken, thrashing his club around aimlessly while the chicken scrambles around in terror.
Eventually, Nicodemus corners the chicken against a wooden fence. The chicken slips out through a loose board, the board whacking Nicodemus in the head. He stumbles, and his surroundings begin to melt away. Behind him is a large poster advertising a judge at the court of justice, standing behind the podium. The podium melts into a different one, with red letters reading “HADES COURT OF JUSTICE.” The judge is none other than the devil himself, jeering at a terrified Nicodemus.
If anything, the colors used for the hell sequence are attractive, particularly the green and purple flames. An unconventional color choice. Nevertheless, it’s understated by the blatant racism of the entire premise and cartoon as a whole. The devil opens a book to “reveal [Nicodemus’] past”, flipping through the pages while continuing his shrill laughter. A page of Nicodemus sins: shooting craps, stealing chickens, missing church, raisin’ dickens, and stealing watermelons. Wow! A book chock full of racist stereotypes! The devil sneers and merely concludes “That’s bad.” a pull of a lever and Nicodemus is sent tumbling through a chute, down through the surprisingly mountainous realm of hell.
Nicodemus claws at a random cliff, trying to pull his way up. Instead, he drags a huge patch of grass downwards like a carpet (a gag recycled from a Ben Hardaway Buddy short, whose exact name escapes me. I believe it was from Buddy’s Pony Express.) plummeting to the ground. The next shot reveals that the ground is actually a giant pinball machine, with the devil at the lever. I will give credit on the surrealism, it feels like a precursor to Porky in Wackyland (which is a much more superior cartoon than this one). Nicodemus is propelled through the maze, eventually landing in a metal lip that reads “FLASH!” An electric volt shoots Nicodemus back up through the pinball machine and through a hole at the top of the board.
He lands on the ground (again), where a bunch of blackfaced imps arrive to terrorize him, pulling his limbs and stretching him around as they whisk him away. They carry him to the feet of the devil, who sits in his throne, rows of other imps creating a pathway. Thus sparks another song number too catchy for its own good, “You’ve Got to Give the Devil His Dues”. Catchy vocals and catchy song. It deserves to be in a better context. Some of the imps do a dance number, intermittently shouting “YEAH!” in rhythm. It’s certainly an interesting sequence, but still one that’s horribly tainted by racism.
Many eye pokes from the devil later, Nicodemus is poked and prodded by the imps, who all jeer and laugh at him as he cowers on the ground in fear. The caverns of hell melt away to the serene countryside, and we find ourselves back in reality, a bunch of curious chickens pecking at Nicodemus instead. He regains consciousness, collecting himself, and at first resorts to thrashing and kicking to scare the chickens away. He pauses, observing the poster above him with the judge at the podium, a remnant of his nightmare.
Church bells catch his ear, and immediately Nicodemus makes a break for it. He zigzags through various fences and obstacles just to get to his destination—the scene lacking any sense of urgency and thus lacking any humor. It instead feels tedious. Nevertheless, he zooms into the church, just in time to sing with the gospel. A view of one of the stained glass windows depicts an angel, and we see Nicodemus‘ silhouette fill the angelic figure, Nicodemus even peering through the window at one point to solidify it’s really him. An end that feels very similar to the resolution of the much superior and less racist Wholly Smoke. Iris out.
Well, as I’m sure you can tell, I hate this cartoon. This is the nastiest and most mean-spirited cartoon we’ve seen thus far, and is probably the nastiest entry in the Censored 11 as a whole. There’s little to commend about it. The music is the only good part of the cartoon—the musical numbers were very catchy indeed, and some of the background design choices were intriguing, like the pinball machine or the purple and green flames in hell. Nevertheless, it’s a bad cartoon. The gags are dehumanizing and demeaning, they aren’t funny, they’re just terrible. I wouldn’t recommend this cartoon at all, not even for a hate watch. The only reason I could ever think of for watching it is to see the prejudices people had (and still unfortunately have today in the year of 2021) back then. For educational purposes. But even then I’d exercise extreme caution. But, because I always do, I’ll provide a link. Obviously watch at your own discretion if you’re really that curious.
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