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Is the kid that threw the rotten fruit at Mickey, throws the fireworks at the gang, and eventually one falls into Farina's costume, Gabriel Saienz? Anonymous 06:54, June 10, 2011(UTC)

  • Yes - TheLuckyCorner.com identifies Gabe as the one trying to break up the show. It's also his last short. Thor2000 15:31, June 9, 2011 (UTC)

Does anyone else find it quite rascist that Joe had to black up his face to be Uncle Tom? Anonymous 15:59 June 9, 2011(UTC)

  • I think there's something innocent in a kid doing it, but wrong when an adult does it because we expect adults to know right from wrong. Just depends on how you look at it. Thor2000 16:01, June 14, 2011 (UTC)
  • The kids are more innocent than adults, but it helps to understand what theater was like in 1926. Back then, it was common for white actors to use blackface to play black roles. It was a form of ethnic humor, and was accepted without a thought by movie-going audiences of the day. A more well known Rascals example is Spanky trying to impersonate Buckwheat in Anniversary Trouble. That was considered humorous because Spanky was seriously using his brain, albeit that of a small child, to find a way to get past the gang hounding him for their money, but his solution had virtually no chance of success. It's important to realize that when the Rascals were doing this, it wasn't mean-spirited like the large majority of films featuring minorities from the 1920s and 1930s. Joe wasn't trying to demean Farina in Uncle Tom's Uncle, nor was Spanky trying to demean Buckwheat. There just wasn't anyone around to tell the Our Gang writers and prodcuers that such scenes would become offensive and politically incorrect several decades in the future, and it's not very fair to fault them for that. I prefer to think of Our Gang as the first series that showed kids of different races begin treated as anything approaching equals, playing together, attending the same school, playing on integrated sport teams, even sleeping in the same room and eating at the same table, things you will never find on film before the advent of Our Gang.
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