one of the special features on the benny's bathtub blu-ray is a trio of episodes of cirkeline/circleen, a danish kids' show from the late 60s/early 70s. they specifically point out the episode 'escape from america,' which was so controversial it was banned from danish public broadcast.
'surely it can't be THAT insane,' i said.
well, in the span of 15 minutes, we go from 'elf and her mice buddies enjoy a mug of honey' to 'elf and mice buddies are separated while soldiers and pig-faced cops shoot at them, the statue of liberty brandishes a gun (a line from 'all you need is love' plays here), an unseen black mouse who claims to be a member of the black panther party sings a song about racism (with lines like 'so hard is my life because i'm not white' and 'in darkness, all things can happen / and you never know it before / you hear a shot') played over photos of police brutality, culminating in a gunshot and the mouse's death, and a group of native americans engage in a tomahawk-vs-guns fight with the american military while the protagonists talk about how they nearly died.'
sorry i doubted you, denmark.
(benny's bathtub is available directly from deaf crocodile's website or from vinegar syndrome. i highly recommend picking up a copy; it's expensive, but limited-run, and deaf crocodile does great restoration work for obscure media.)
