Tom’s Last Cigar.

It is interesting to note that, following a complaint from a viewer to British media regulator Ofcom, Turner Broadcasting is presently sorting through over 1,500 Hanna-Barbera cartoons such as Tom and Jerry, Scooby-Doo and the Flintstones with view to removing all scenes that depict their characters smoking on the basis that such scenes “might encourage imitation”.

So, if you happen to be considering a sudden bout of systematic violence in the near future, and you happen to be a smoker, please remember to refrain from lighting up during the attack as this would obviously set rather a poor example to others.

Curiously, whilst I have little doubt that Turner Broadcasting and Ofcom would claim that they are acting in our (children’s) best interests, it seems to me that the wider message this act of censorship ultimately conveys has wholly escaped them – and that is that the portrayal of violence is more socially acceptable and morally reprehensible these days than lighting up.

Of course, any violence being depicted in such cartoons, they would argue, is depicted without significant physical repercussions and that, ultimately, the characters involved are animations who are unaffected by the injuries they repeatedly endure in the name of entertainment. Nevertheless, to censor scenes of smoking on the basis that it may encourage imitation whilst casting a blind eye to the depiction of violence seems to me to be wholly absurd as, certainly in the case of many cartoons – and especially (but by no means limited to) Tom & Jerry – is it not the case that the entire foundation of the cartoon itself is the continuous portrayal of acts of cruelty and violence which escalate throughout each episode to a crescendo of complete brutality. Curiously, however, it would seem that, though the fear of imitation is enough to see scenes of smoking thrown to the cutting room floor, the fear of the possible imitation of violence that is so very often the entire basis of these plotlines is apparently of little concern.

Naturally, any responsible parent would not want their child to take up smoking. But surely, if a production company or regulatory body such as Ofcom wishes to be taken seriously in the role of “moral guardian”, how could the fact that, in opting to edit out smoking but preserve the portrayal of violence, actually in some way serves to condone if not endorse violence as a medium of self expression have possibly escaped them?

With the health concerns over the escalating weight of the population in general, and amongst children especially, should we now expect Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble to be digitally doctored so as to shed the excess pounds, when our magazines are already packed full of images of women whose figures have been meticulously Photoshopped so that they may truly represent the media’s somewhat puerile notion of beauty.

Before we know where we are we’ll be wanting to establish once and for all what exact ingredients were in Scooby-Doo’s particularly energising snacks.