Easter Quarantine Special: "Mouse Cleaning" (Patreon)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Cx0T09ZSuX9e0T8z0WQN6z0qKv1rSvws/view?usp=sharing

Since we're all still deep into isolation and keeping things scrubbed down, here's an Easter treat that isn't Easter related at all: the uncensored Tom & Jerry classic, Mouse Cleaning. It's a raw HD transfer of the IB Technicolor 16mm print in my collection. (Apologies for the wear and tear, the horizontal cinch marks were caused by poor rewinding many decades ago.) As we all know, this is one of two titles that have notoriously kept the second chronological HD T&J collection off the market (the other being Casanova Cat). 

This issue has had a strange history of hypocrisy and backpedaling. There was one point in the first half of the 2010s that they were just going to move forward and include the two cartoons (I was on the "call" list of historians to be recorded for a special feature on actress Lillian Randolph and the maid character she voiced for most of the cartoons), then they shut it down. Then, after the success of the first Popeye Blu-Ray, there was serious chatter of just shoving T&J Vol. 2 through Warner Archive quickly since all the work was done, but higher-ups put a stop to it. Not sure where it stands now, but it is quite a paradox that these two particular titles are causing such unrest with Warner Legal due to their brief blackface gags when His Mouse Friday, the most racist of all Tom & Jerrys built entirely around blackface, has been available completely uncensored through Kids & Family channels on YouTube and Amazon for the last seven years.

I'm of the opinion that I've seen the Tom & Jerrys so many times, and purchased them so many times, that I can pretty much play any of the cartoons out in my head frame-for-frame, note-for-note, so if Warners wants to "curate" what is supposed to be an adult-aimed, collectors set, they might as well not do it at all. Especially since, while Casanova Cat is strictly mediocre, Mouse Cleaning remains one of the series' all-time greatest. It's the principle of the thing.