On a lark, I checked out the original "Jonny Quest" series on DVD while at the library this morning. I LOVED that show for two reasons: 1) A kid was the hero and, more importantly, 2) people got killed ALL THE TIME on it. This was not your mamby-pamby morning cartoon. Sure, "The Bugs Bunny & Road Runner Show" was fine and, unquestionably, a classic in mine and my sister's Saturday lineup, but for sheer balls-to-the-wall adventure, you couldn't beat "Jonny Quest." (Okay, "The Herculoids" was a close second, but I never understood how Tundro shot flaming balls out of his horn.)
So, I pop the first dvd in and I smiled as a lot of good memories came rushing back to me: sitting under a blanket and gnawing on a pop-tart that my sister had acquired for me, and having absolutely nothing better to do with my time than to watch endless cartoons.
And then I slowly began to realize something: Hanna-Barbera was just as racist as a lot of the country back in the late 60's.
Within minutes, I was assailed by lazy-eyed, befuddled Mexicans who don't understand why "Seenyore Kwest" is "unner wadder in a leetle boat." Malicious-looking-yet-oddly-apologetic Asians who, to a man, cannot pronounce the letter R and invite ridicule and scorn accordingly. Moreover, it actually became more and more obvious to me that in Jonny Quest's world, anyone but Americans were, by natural default, the bad guys.
At least, I KNEW that "The Herculoids" were xenophobes. Even at five or six, I may not have known the word, but I understood that ANYONE who came to their home planet of Amzot/Quasar was evil and deserving of a quick and violent death. Zandor did not tolerate that shit; if they weren't native to the planet then they were statistics.
Again, this was all up front, even to me as a small child.
But this, THIS revelation is all the more disturbing for it's insidiousness. And I'm quite sure that I never questioned it as a child. I can't actually recall asking my mother why that funny, yellow Chinaman had buck teeth and said, "so solly" all the time, but I know that Mom would have had some words for my sister and me if she HAD known about that tide of stereotypical racism. Not that I would have really understood it at the time.
I guess I'll still enjoy the cartoons for their nostalgia but I'm a little more jaded for the journey.
