Forbidden Animation: Censored Cartoons and Blacklisted Animators in America

Book Description

Tweety Bird was colored yellow because censors felt the original pink made the bird look nude. Betty Boop's dress was lengthened so that her garter didn't show. And in recent years, a segment of Mighty Mouse was dropped after protest groups claimed the mouse was actually sniffing cocaine, not flower petals. These changes and many others like them have been demanded by official censors or organized groups before the cartoons could be shown in theaters or on television.

How the slightly risqué gags in some silent cartoons were replaced by rigid standards in the sound film era is the first misadventure covered in this history of censorship in the animation industry. The perpetuation of racial stereotypes in many early cartoons is examined, as are the studios' efforts to stop producing such animation. This is followed by a look at many of the uncensored cartoons, such as Lenny Bruce's Thank You Mask Man and Ralph Bakshi's Fritz the Cat. The censorship of television cartoons is next covered, from the changes made in theatrical releases shown on television to the different standards that apply to small screen animation. The final chapter discusses the many animators who were blacklisted from the industry in the 1950s for alleged sympathies to the Communist Party.

Customer Reviews:

Animation - not just cartoons.......2002-12-04

Animation has always been a reflection of popular culture, sometimes on the cutting edge, sometimes just a mainstream reaction. Yet because of the popular idea that animation is "kids stuff," it is sometimes not taken seriously. Cohen tries to shine a light on how animation goes way beyond "kids stuff" and reflects on the social forces that went into the creation of animated shorts and features. Despite being seen as a niche, animation has been subjected to a lot of self imposed rules of what can and cannot be shown, and to a lot of outside forces by both organized efforts such as the Hayes Office and less organized efforts such as popular protests against films like Coonskin or Fritz the Cat.

You do not have to know a lot about animation to enjoy this book. It helps, but most of us have been exposed to a number of the examples cited over the course of growing up. And what is politically incorrect is a moving target, so what was acceptable in one era is wholly out now. We see it even today with the television censorship of violence in classic cartoons.

It's also important to note that despite being seen as a less serious medium that could often get away with more than film, animators were still subject to the same winds of politics as illustrated by the final chapter on blacklisting. Animators were asked to name names to the HUAC, and many did not work in Hollywood again for defying the committee. Until I read this book I had no idea of the breadth of this blacklisting upon animators and it reinforces the shame of this era of our history.

Rather than passing judgment, Cohen uses mostly illustrations to show his point, letting the reader decide how much was/is too much. And he brings this battle of content into the late 20th century with examples of battles over The Simpsons, and Ren and Stimpy. Overall a very fascinating look into an area that is usually glossed over or ignored.

Cohen exposes the petty reasons for cartoon censorship.......1999-08-12

Cohen does a remarkable job illustrating the history of cartoon censorship. From Walt Disney's Song of the South and its questionable portrayal of African American's to the altering of the hemline of Betty Boop's dress, Cohen explores significant and petty reasons for censorship. He also discusses how cartoonists would sometimes censor themselves. A discussion of pre code cartoons, such as the early Betty Boop pictures, is also included. Truly a superb book for anyone interested in cartoon censorship.

This book is a thorough look into the history of animation........1999-05-03

I enjoyed "Forbidden Animation". I am a huge fan of animation history, and I am happy that books about the political censoring of animation in the past and present are finally being produced. Karl Cohen should be commended for his thorough research of the subject, he definetly tried his hardest to bring an objectional perspective to the recorded documents involving the censoring of cartoons and animators. The books only real downfall is its lack of images-I'm not someone who has to have pictures, but when art and animation is the subject, you understand it more when you have something to look at-. I highly recommend this book to any animation historians out there, as well as people who want a better understanding of cartoons and their makers.

nice.......1999-02-27

nic

Book Description

"Mathematics can be as effortless as humming a tune, if you know the tune," writes Gareth Loy. In Musimathics, Loy teaches us the tune, providing a friendly and spirited tour of the mathematics of music--a commonsense, self-contained introduction for the nonspecialist reader. It is designed for musicians who find their art increasingly mediated by technology, and for anyone who is interested in the intersection of art and science.

In this volume, Loy presents the materials of music (notes, intervals, and scales); the physical properties of music (frequency, amplitude, duration, and timbre); the perception of music and sound (how we hear); and music composition. Musimathics is carefully structured so that new topics depend strictly on topics already presented, carrying the reader progressively from basic subjects to more advanced ones. Cross-references point to related topics and an extensive glossary defines commonly used terms. The book explains the mathematics and physics of music for the reader whose mathematics may not have gone beyond the early undergraduate level. Calling himself "a composer seduced into mathematics," Loy provides answers to foundational questions about the mathematics of music accessibly yet rigorously. The topics are all subjects that contemporary composers, musicians, and musical engineers have found to be important. The examples given are all practical problems in music and audio. The level of scholarship and the pedagogical approach also make Musimathics ideal for classroom use. Additional material can be found at a companion web site.

Customer Reviews:

Excellent book combines music, math, and programming.......2007-01-11

After about a ten year hiatus on books of this type being published, this is one of several new books combining mathematics, music, and programming aimed at musicians who want to know more about the math behind their musical compositions and are not content to just know what drop-down windows to click on using the latest musical software. The book starts with the basics of music and sound and works up to basic music theory, physics and sound, and acoustics and psychoacoustics. The final chapter of the book is the most interesting, since it concerns mathematics and composition techniques using the author's C++ based library "Musimat". Both this book and Musimat have companion websites, although the Musimat site is the most interesting with plenty of downloads in case you are interested in how to use this compositional library. There is a volume two scheduled for release in Spring 2007 that gets into signal processing, the role of digital signals, and the wave equation, so together they are a very complete treatise on math, music, and programming aimed at the musical composer. I highly recommend it. Of course, if you want to dig deep into individual subjects such as acoustics and psychoacoustics, you are going to need additional references. But this text is clear enough to get you started. The following is the table of contents:

1 Music and Sound 1
1.1 Basic Properties of Sound 1
1.2 Waves 3
1.3 Summary 9

2 Representing Music 11
2.1 Notation 11
2.2 Tones, Notes, and Scores 12
2.3 Pitch 13
2.4 Scales 16
2.5 Interval Sonorities 18
2.6 Onset and Duration 26
2.7 Musical Loudness 27
2.8 Timbre 28
2.9 Summary 37

3 Musical Scales, Tuning, and Intonation 39
3.1 Equal-Tempered Intervals 39
3.2 Equal-Tempered Scale 40
3.3 Just Intervals and Scales 43
3.4 The Cent Scale 45
3.5 A Taxonomy of Scales 46
3.6 Do Scales Come from Timbre or Proportion? 47
3.7 Harmonic Proportion 48
3.8 Pythagorean Diatonic Scale 49
3.9 The Problem of Transposing Just Scales 51
3.10 Consonance of Intervals 56
3.11 The Powers of the Fifth and the Octave Do Not Form a Closed System 66
3.12 Designing Useful Scales Requires Compromise 67
3.13 Tempered Tuning Systems 68
3.14 Microtonality 72
3.15 Rule of 18 82
3.16 Deconstructing Tonal Harmony 85
3.17 Deconstructing the Octave 86
3.18 The Prospects for Alternative Tunings 93
3.19 Summary 93
3.20 Suggested Reading 95

4 Physical Basis of Sound 97
4.1 Distance 97
4.2 Dimension 97
4.3 Time 98
4.4 Mass 99
4.5 Density 100
4.6 Displacement 100
4.7 Speed 101
4.8 Velocity 102
4.9 Instantaneous Velocity 102
4.10 Acceleration 104
4.11 Relating Displacement,Velocity, Acceleration, and Time 106
4.12 Newton's Laws of Motion 108
4.13 Types of Force 109
4.14 Work and Energy 110
4.15 Internal and External Forces 112
4.16 The Work-Energy Theorem 112
4.17 Conservative and Nonconservative Forces 113
4.18 Power 114
4.19 Power of Vibrating Systems 114
4.20 Wave Propagation 116
4.21 Amplitude and Pressure 117
4.22 Intensity 118
4.23 Inverse Square Law 118
4.24 Measuring Sound Intensity 119
4.25 Summary 125

5 Geometrical Basis of Sound 129
5.1 Circular Motion and Simple Harmonic Motion 129
5.2 Rotational Motion 129
5.3 Projection of Circular Motion 136
5.4 Constructing a Sinusoid 139
5.5 Energy of Waveforms 143
5.6 Summary 147

6 Psychophysical Basis of Sound 149
6.1 Signaling Systems 149
6.2 The Ear 150
6.3 Psychoacoustics and Psychophysics 154
6.4 Pitch 156
6.5 Loudness 166
6.6 Frequency Domain Masking 171
6.7 Beats 173
6.8 Combination Tones 175
6.9 Critical Bands 176
6.10 Duration 182
6.11 Consonance and Dissonance 184
6.12 Localization 187
6.13 Externalization 191
6.14 Timbre 195
6.15 Summary 198
6.16 Suggested Reading 198

7 Introduction to Acoustics 199
7.1 Sound and Signal 199
7.2 A Simple Transmission Model 199
7.3 How Vibrations Travel in Air 200
7.4 Speed of Sound 202
7.5 Pressure Waves 207
7.6 Sound Radiation Models 208
7.7 Superposition and Interference 210
7.8 Reflection 210
7.9 Refraction 218
7.10 Absorption 221
7.11 Diffraction 222
7.12 Doppler Effect 228
7.13 Room Acoustics 233
7.14 Summary 238
7.15 Suggested Reading 238

8 Vibrating Systems 239
8.1 Simple Harmonic Motion Revisited 239
8.2 Frequency of Vibrating Systems 241
8.3 Some Simple Vibrating Systems 243
8.4 The Harmonic Oscillator 247
8.5 Modes of Vibration 249
8.6 A Taxonomy of Vibrating Systems 251
8.7 One-Dimensional Vibrating Systems 252
8.8 Two-Dimensional Vibrating Elements 266
8.9 Resonance (Continued) 270
8.10 Transiently Driven Vibrating Systems 278
8.11 Summary 282
8.12 Suggested Reading 283

9 Composition and Methodology 285
9.1 Guido's Method 285
9.2 Methodology and Composition 288
9.3 Musimat: A Simple Programming Language for Music 290
9.4 Program for Guido's Method 291
9.5 Other Music Representation Systems 292
9.6 Delegating Choice 293
9.7 Randomness 299
9.8 Chaos and Determinism 304
9.9 Combinatorics 306
9.10 Atonality 311
9.11 Composing Functions 317
9.12 Traversing and Manipulating Musical Materials 319
9.13 Stochastic Techniques 332
9.14 Probability 333
9.15 Information Theory and the Mathematics of Expectation 343
9.16 Music, Information, and Expectation 347
9.17 Form in Unpredictability 350
9.18 Monte Carlo Methods 360
9.19 Markov Chains 363
9.20 Causality and Composition 371
9.21 Learning 372
9.22 Music and Connectionism 376
9.23 Representing Musical Knowledge 390
9.24 Next-Generation Musikalische Würfelspiel 400
9.25 Calculating Beauty 406

Appendix A 409
A.1 Exponents 409
A.2 Logarithms 409
A.3 Series and Summations 410
A.4 About Trigonometry 411
A.5 Xeno's Paradox 414
A.6 Modulo Arithmetic and Congruence 414
A.7 Whence 0.161 in Sabine's Equation? 416
A.8 Excerpts from Pope John XXII's Bull Regarding Church Music 418
A.9 Greek Alphabet 419

Appendix B 421
B.1 Musimat 421
B.2 Music Datatypes in Musimat 439
B.3 Unicode (ASCII) Character Codes 450
B.4 Operator Associativity and Precedence in Musimat 450

Average customer rating:

Finally, I got the book's CD.
No CD-ROM ! Don't buy this book !

Foundations of Music (with CD-ROM)
Robert Nelson , and Carl J. Christensen
Manufacturer: Schirmer
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0534595561

Book Description

Learn the fundamentals of music the fun way with FOUNDATIONS OF MUSIC with accompanying CD-ROM! Offering musical training through the use of computer assistance, this interactive music text allows you to learn at your own pace. Recorded examples found on the CD-ROM, extensive content, and the clear organization of the text help you master difficult concepts with ease.

Customer Reviews:

Finally, I got the book's CD........2000-01-12

I finally received e-mail from the author. I have to thank Amazon.com here for sending me the CD free of charge.

No CD-ROM ! Don't buy this book !.......1999-11-19

There is NO cd-rom inside. Yes, Nothing, not even a floppy disk !

What is the use of a book titled "Computer-Assisted" without any CD/disk ? Tell me !

They mention about the CD everywhere! From the front cover to back cover, book description, book content, their web site, etc. GOD, where is the CD?

I think this is not Amazon's mistake. The front cover and the back cover of the book clearly say "FREE CD-ROM INSIDE".

I will try to contact the Authors to see if they will give me the CD! I will post an update here if they do. Until then, please save your money, DON'T BUY THIS BOOK.

Book Description

Music Accessing and Retrieval is the first comprehensive survey of the vast new field of Music Information Retrieval (MIR). It describes a number of issues which are peculiar to the language of music - including forms, formats, and dimensions of music - together with the typologies of users and their information needs. To fulfil these needs a number of approaches are discussed, from direct search to information filtering and clustering of music documents. The emphasis is on tools, techniques, and approaches for content-based MIR, rather than on the systems that implement them. The interested reader can, however, find descriptions of more than 35 systems for music retrieval with links to their Web sites. Music Accessing and Retrieval can be used as both a guide for beginners who are embarking on research in this relatively new area, and a useful reference for established researchers in this field.

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Foundations of Computer Music

Manufacturer: The MIT Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0262680513

Book Description

This survey chronicles the major advances in computer music that have changed the way music is composed, performed, and recorded. It contains many of the classic, seminal articles in the field (most of which are now out of print) in revised and updated versions. Computer music pioneers, digital audio specialists, and highly knowledgeable practitioners have contributed to the book. Thirty-six articles written in the 1970s and 1980s cover sound synthesis techniques, synthesizer hardware and engineering, software systems for music, and perception and digital signal processing. The editors have provided extensive summaries for each section.

Curtis Roads is editor of Computer Music Journal. John Strawn is a Research Associate at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) at Stanford University.

Current Directions in Computer Music Research (System Development Foundation Benchmark Series)

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A must have for computer music enthusiasts

Current Directions in Computer Music Research (System Development Foundation Benchmark Series)

Manufacturer: MIT Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0262132419

Book Description

These twenty-one original contributions by composers, behavioral scientists, engineers, and other specialists from many of the international centers of research in computer music provide an inside report on the most sophisticated aspects of digital synthesis, control and understanding of musical sound, and related work on perception. Among the specific topics covered are speech songs, synthesis of the singing voice, spatial reverberation, the simulation of bowed instruments, and a conductor program utilizing a mechanical baton. A chapter authored jointly by Mathews and Pierce describes a new musical scale they have been working on for the past few years.

Customer Reviews:

A must have for computer music enthusiasts.......2000-06-10

The articles in collection are very readable - a great deal of care seems to have been made in the editing process. Various authors give summaries of different parts of the area of computer music. Some of the articles I particularly like include the following: i) several articles by different authors on synthesis of the singing voice; ii) the article by Mathews and Pierce on the Bohlen-Pierce scale, a non-octave-based scale of odd harmonics, with 3:5:7 and 5:7:9 chords; iii) Risset's article on paradoxical sounds; iv) Schottstaedt's article on automatic counterpoint. The subject is moving very rapidly, so some of the information is outdated, but most is not.

Foundations of Music: A Computer-Assisted Introduction/Book&Apple II Disk

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Foundations of Music: A Computer-Assisted Introduction/Book&Apple II Disk
Robert Nelson , and Carl J. Christensen
Manufacturer: Wadsworth Publishing Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Foundations of Music: A Computer-Assisted Introduction/Book&Macintosh Disk

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Foundations of Music: A Computer-Assisted Introduction/Book&Macintosh Disk
Robert Nelson , and Carl J. Christensen
Manufacturer: Wadsworth Publishing Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Implementation and Application of Automata: 10th International Conference, CIAA 2005, Sophia Antipolis, France, June 27-29, 2005, Revised Selected Papers (Lecture Notes in Computer Science)

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Implementation and Application of Automata: 10th International Conference, CIAA 2005, Sophia Antipolis, France, June 27-29, 2005, Revised Selected Papers (Lecture Notes in Computer Science)

Manufacturer: Springer
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 3540310231

Book Description

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Implementation and Application of Automata, CIAA 2005, held in Sophia Antipolis, France, in June 2005.

The 26 revised full papers and 8 revised poster papers presented together with 2 invited contributions were selected from 87 submissions and have gone through two rounds of reviewing and improvement. The topics covered show applications of automata in many fields, including mathematics, linguistics, networks, XML processing, biology and music.

Music and Schema Theory: Cognitive Foundations of Systematic Musicology (Springer Series in Information Sciences)

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Music and Schema Theory: Cognitive Foundations of Systematic Musicology (Springer Series in Information Sciences)
Marc Leman
Manufacturer: Springer
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 3540600213

Book Description

Music is an important domain of application for schema theory. The perceptual structures for pitch and timbre have been mapped via schemata, with results that have contributed to a better understanding of music perception. Yet we still need to know how a schema comes into existence, or how it functions in a particular perception task. This book provides a foundation for the understanding of the emergence and functionality of schemata by means of computer-based simulations of tone center perception. It is about how memory structures self-organize and how they use contextual information to guide perception.

Music retrieval: a tutorial and review.: An article from: Foundations and Trends in Information Retrieval

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Music retrieval: a tutorial and review.: An article from: Foundations and Trends in Information Retrieval
Nicola Orio
Manufacturer: Thomson Gale
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

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Book Description

This digital document is an article from Foundations and Trends in Information Retrieval, published by Thomson Gale on November 1, 2006. The length of the article is 29880 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Music retrieval: a tutorial and review.
Author: Nicola Orio
Publication: Foundations and Trends in Information Retrieval (Magazine/Journal)
Date: November 1, 2006
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 1 Issue: 1 Page: NA

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