South Park and Tom Cruise
In 2005, Comedy Central aired “Trapped in the Closet”, an episode of their controversial cartoon series “South Park” that poked vicious fun at movie superstar Tom Cruise and Scientology. In the episode, the Tom Cruise character believes that Stan, one of the South Park kid characters is the reincarnation of Church founder L. Ron Hubbard. But, the most offensive scene was where the Nicole Kidman character (Cruise’s then wife) and the John Travolta (a fellow Scientologist) character try to coax the Tom Cruise character out of a locked clothes closet. To the actor, this added insult to injury because he had suffered from years of unfair tabloid speculation on his sexual orientation.
Comedy Central
At the time of the controversial South Park episode, Cruise was shooting the third installment of his successful “Mission Impossible” series. Because Comedy Central and Paramount Pictures were owned by the media conglomerate Viacom, Hollywood sources claimed that Tom Cruise had threatened to pull out of the picture unless the South Park episode was pulled out of Comedy Central’s reruns. Cruise himself denies putting any pressure on the network. However, “Trapped in the Closet” was indeed pulled out of the rerun schedule.
The Los Angeles Times dubbed the incident “Closetgate.”
Isaac Hayes
Soul singer Isaac Hayes played the South Park character Chef. Because he’s a Scientologist, he also found the “Trapped in the Closet” episode to be offensive, and quit the show in protest.
Reprieve
To Comedy Central’s credit, they wound up putting the episode on their web site and have recently begun to rerun it.
Ren and Stimpy
John Kricfalusi (AKA “John K”) is modern animation’s unsung genius. Turn on the Cartoon Network or network Saturday morning toons and the main stylistic influences are either John K or Genndy Tarkovsky. In 1989, when Kricfalusi sold “The Ren and Stimpy Show” to the Nickelodeon Children’s network, he achieved the near impossible by brilliantly combining the irreverence of sixties alternative Zap-style comix with sixties Hanna-Barbera funny-animal-style animation.
Ralph Bakshi
In some ways, it figured that Kricfalusi’s mentor in the animation business was Ralph Bakshi, producer of the 1972 X-rated animated version of Robert Crumb’s “Fritz the Cat”. Unfortunately, Bakshi’s attempt at bringing sixties alternative Zap-style comix to the big screen, while a box office success, was a critical failure. Crumb was especially disappointed because Bakshi had failed to see the political and social subtext of his work, presenting only it as a series of dirty jokes. As a cartoonist’s cartoonist, it was apparent that John K fully understood Crumb’s subtext and the result was the spaced-out social anarchy of Ren and Stimpy with a generous helping of third grade gross-out humor.
George Liquor
The first season was a smash hit. In the second season, John K introduced a new character, George Liquor, a drunk blustering loudmouth far-right-wing fanatic; certainly not the stuff of children’s television. Nickelodeon executives hated George Liquor, especially his last name. Their relationship with John K came to a head with the episode “Man’s Best Friend” where George Liquor is bludgeoned with an oar by Ren after abusing all his pets. The network pulled the plug on the episode citing brutality and animal cruelty. Then they pulled the plug on Kricfalusi and Spumco, his production company, and hired a new staff. When John K left, Nickelodeon gladly gave him the rights to the George Liquor character.
As for the character, it had an afterlife on Spumco’s web site as a Flash-animated series, “The Goddamn George Liquor Show.”
Spike TV
In 2003, Spike TV brought back Ren and Stimpy in a new show, “The Ren and Stimpy Adult Cartoon Party.” This version included reruns of old episodes, including the banned “Man’s Best Friend.” Unfortunately, while the new R-rated made-for-Spike episodes allowed for unlimited poop and boob jokes, more turned out to be less.
Mighty Mouse
Ren and Stimpy wasn’t John K’s first network television censorship battle. In 1987, Ralph Bakshi hired Kricfalusi as supervising director for “Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures”, a revival of the Paul Terry classic fifties cartoon series. The show was a strange mash-up of scenes from old Mighty Mouse cartoons and new John K-created scenes, all reconfigured into new demented storylines. It first appeared on the Cartoon Network and was then picked up by CBS. That’s when Kricfalusi’s troubles began.
Reverend Donald Wildmon
It was the Mighty Mouse episode “The Littlest Tramp” that raised the ire of Rev. Donald E. Wildmon, the founder and chairman of the American Family Association, a media watchdog group that had 3 million members at its peak. In particular, Wildmon objected to a scene where Mighty Mouse reached into his pocket and snorted a white powder that was in his hand, thus charging his superpowers. The Reverend charged that the show was promoting cocaine usage. John K and Bakshi claimed that Mighty Mouse was sniffing crushed flowers.
CBS folded and cancelled the series.
Here’s the episode on YouTube. You be the judge.
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