YMMV / Uncle Toms Crabbin

• Fair for Its Day: While the blackface designs and deep south slavery setting would turn heads today, its surprising in that it clearly shows Felix on the side of a sympathetically portrayed Uncle Tom against Simon Legree (with his race and plight not being played for laughs), with Felix even helping Tom against Legree and coming out on top in the end.
• Moment of Awesome: Felix gets one of his shining moments in this short, which is a surprising example of Fair for Its Day—Felix travels to the deep south and finds the eponymous Uncle Tom, who is antagonized by Simon Legree by whipping him and smashing apart his banjo for keeping him awake with his music. While Tom is drawn in stereotypical cartoon blackface of the time, his race and plight is not played for laughs at all, and Felix is clearly on his side. He not only improvises a new banjo for Tom, but when Simon Legree shows up again, Felix distracts him into chasing after him and even hurls rocks back at Legree while he gives chase. And when Legree sicks a hunting dog after him, Felix proceeds to beat the animal into a limp noodle. Considering the institutionalized racism of the 1920's (and that other Felix cartoons sometimes used unfortunate black stereotypes), its amazing that they were able to get away with making a cartoon like this.

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