Clean Pastures

Clean Pastures is a 1937 Merrie Melodies directed by I. Freleng.
== Plot ==
The Lord sees that the stock value of "Pair-O-Dice" is dropping on the exchange so he dispatches a slow-witted and slow-talking angel to sinful Harlem to recruit new customers. When this fails, God finds success sending a group of musical angels with a little more swing in their style, so much so that even the Devil wants to join up!
== Caricatures ==
* Oscar Polk
* Louis Armstrong
* Cab Calloway
* Fats Waller
* Stepin Fetchit
* Jimmie Lunceford
* Bill "Bojangles" Robinson
* Al Jolson
* The Mills Brothers
== Notes ==
* The cartoon is a parody of Warner Bros.' 1936 film The Green Pastures.
* Schlesinger and Warner Bros. had problems with the cartoon from the start. Hollywood censors alleged that the film ran afoul of the Hays Production Code because it burlesqued religion and glamorized gambling, drinking, and sex. Later commentators surmise that the censors also objected to the portrayal of a Heaven run by African Americans and the very idea that Satan himself gets into Heaven because of how popular it's become. As such, the short's stereotypical portrayal of black characters prompted United Artists to withhold it from United States television in 1968, adding it to a group known as the infamous Censored Eleven.
* Modern critics have been no kinder to the short and cite its portrayal of black characters as offensive and reliant on negative stereotypes. 
:* Musicologist Daniel Goldmark interprets the film as a metaphor for religious faith, showing the increasing identification of 1930s white audiences of jazz music with black culture and religion.
:* Religion scholar Judith Weisenfeld sees "Clean Pastures" as a metaphor for the replacement of rural, minstrel show stereotypes of blacks for modern, urban ones.
* Scenes from this short were reused for the Frank Tashlin cartoon "Have You Got Any Castles?" Despite airing the reissue version with all of Alex Woolcott's appearances removed, Cartoon Network and Boomerang have aired this with the "Swing for Sale" part uncut, making this the closest that a Censored Eleven cartoon has ever aired on a contemporary American TV channel. 
* Waller's line, "That's all, that's all," would be reused in "September in the Rain" and later in "Tin Pan Alley Cats".
== Gallery ==
Cleanpasturelob.jpg|Lobby Card #1
Clean-pastures-350.jpg|Lobby Card #2
File:Clean layout.png|Layout drawing #1
File:Clean lay 2.png|Layout drawing #2
== References ==
== External links ==
* "Clean Pastures" at the Big Cartoon DataBase
Category:Merrie Melodies Shorts
Category:1937
Category:Shorts
Category:Cartoons directed by Friz Freleng
Category:Cartoons with music by Carl W. Stalling
Category:Plagiarized Pages
Category:Cartoons produced by Leon Schlesinger
Category:Cartoons with film editing by Treg Brown
Category:Cartoons with sound effects edited by Treg Brown
Category:Cartoons with orchestrations by Milt Franklyn
Category:Cartoons with characters voiced by Mel Blanc
Category:Caricatures of real people
Category:Cartoons in a.a.p. package
Category:One-Shot Cartoons