I always wanted to use the “CENSORED” stamp from one of MAD’s funniest comic strips: “Book! Movie!” Way, way back in the 1950s, people were expected to conform to everything that the elites, the ruling class and the media told people to think and believe. As a result movies and comic books were censored when the government didn’t approve of the content (mostly sex, gore and violence). Thankfully I grew up in a more enlightened age, the 1960s and ’70s, when those barriers were being dismantled. And it was thanks to comic strips like Harvey Kurtzman’s “Book! Movie!” that a young person (like me) learned about absurd attempts to squelch free speech and prohibit ideas.
But… How could I get away with it? I couldn’t create an adult-themed comic strip that would actually be “censored” by Bananas magazine. Joe was a prepubescent adolescent. Sex stuff just wouldn’t work. Most important of all, it needed to be funny! (Or at least try to be.)
So I thought about it: The next best thing would be a trip to the doctor, when my cartoon character would have to strip naked! Yeah, what better way to censor someone other than to use the medical system, right? (Not that anyone would try to do this in real life, of course!)
Why would Joe see a doctor? Again, I thought about it: What the hey, since JOE changed his drawing style once upon a time, I could change his species and turn him into a funny animal! (Reminiscent of Eugene Ionseco’s “Rhinoceros” play, which was filmed with Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder (shortly after their success in Mel Brook’s The Producers if you’re interested in obscure cinema trivia)).
The censorship gag/image was lifted from MAD comics (Book! Movie! by Harvey Kurtzman and Jack Davis from Mad #13, July 1954), one of my favorites. You can see all of the old MAD comic book material online at:
https://archive.org/details/mad-magazine-collection_202106/Mad%20Comics%20001/
Scroll to Mad Comics 013.cbr, then advance to pages 10-11 to read the “Book! Movie!” Comic strip (illustrated by Jack Davis, one of the all-time great 20th century illustrators). It’s still funny, although in today’s climate they would probably not censor the sex (and certainly not the violence) as much, but they would still glamorize the book characters to a ridiculous level. And ruin a good book by making a bad movie. Not always! (But often…)
Also, feel free to explore the Internet Archive! It’s an amazing resource.
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