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JERRY BECK
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AMID AMIDI
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101 Farting Dalmatians?
by amid
March 12, 2008 6:37 pm


An animator/director friend, who asked to remain anonymous, emailed me with a bizarre observation: that Disney is adding fart gags to some of its TV ads for the dvd rerelease of 101 Dalmatians. Can anybody else confirm this or post the TV spots onto YouTube? I find it a little difficult to believe, and yet, it’s ill-conceived enough that I can just imagine some exec approving this idea. Here’s my friend’s description of what he saw:

I recently saw a commercial for “101 Dalmatians” and they put in a fart gag—brilliant. You not only hear it—they took the time to have this horse’s ass digitally distort as you hear the sound…then they cut to one of the dogs saying “that sounds strange” or something like that. AND I’ve only seen that version on Cartoon Network. I’ve seen a separate commercial for it when it’s on primetime network TV without the fart.

I guess it’s to be expected nowadays, but still. It’s crazy how Disney feels the need to have to add something like this to sell its classics… kinda false advertising, I suppose. Kids will probably be pissed when they don’t see that gag in the actual film.

03/12/08  7:03pm
Vixie says:

Guess I didn’t imagine seeing this after all. Only saw it briefly, as I wasn’t paying too close of attention, and did a double take, then wondered if I really saw what I thought.

03/12/08  7:07pm

I saw that too, & it really irked me. It really caught me by surprise. I was animating with the TV on behind me, & all I heard was something like “101 Dalmatians is coming to Disney DVD this Tuesday- PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFT!…”. I turned around wondering “what the hell was that?”, backed up my DVNR box to see it again & I see the horse’s ass inflate & deflate like a balloon.

Why would they add a fart joke in a commercial promoting 101 Dalmatians of all films. I could understand a fart joke in an ad for Lion King with Pumbaa, but not for 101. Did they really have to stoop that low to promote the film with that put in?

03/12/08  7:42pm
Keith Paynter says:

Seen it. Not impressed. Bad form, Disney, bad form…

03/12/08  7:55pm
Emil says:

Forget cramming flatulence into forty year old animated flicks. The Mouse loves to brag about its innovation, so why not “Disney’s Farting Executives?” Live on ice at a mall near you! Bigger than “High School Musical.” And every bit as creative. White guys in suits passing gas, giving proper voice to the Great Disney Songbook! Imagine the merchandising and theme park rides. The world IS a carousel of sulfur.

03/12/08  7:56pm

I’m sorry, but this is the first I’ve heard of this and I’m laughing like a monkey over here. I hope I get to see the ad myself.

All the wrong reasons, I know.

03/12/08  8:10pm
jpox says:

I saw that ad more than once unfortunately. What a disappointment.

03/12/08  8:13pm
yash says:

I’m surprised no one has youtubed it yet.

03/12/08  8:25pm
Jon Cooke says:

I also recall them adding burp jokes in their TV ads for the DVDs of “Jungle Book” and “Lady and the Tramp”. Seriously.

03/12/08  8:32pm

They added belches to ads for Lady and the Tramp, so I wouldn’t doubt it.

03/12/08  9:38pm
Pedro Nakama says:

Hopefully they didn’t remove Cruella’s cigarette a la Pecos Bill.

03/12/08  10:13pm
Zekey says:

I also recall a loud BELCH sound effect added to the ad for the Jungle Book. It was when Baloo was roaring at Mowgli. They took out the sound and added a belch.

They also added a fart to the ad for ARCTIC TALE, which was a march-of-the-penguins esque documentary.
I facepalmed.

03/12/08  10:20pm

I’ve seen it quite a lot.
This is bad, if not worse than the times they added belching gags to the ads for DVD releases of the Little Mermaid and other recent DVD releases.

03/13/08  1:41am
David says:

Am I a strange person for being able to see both sides of this? Of course I see that it’s destroying any sense of “dignity” and “elegance.” But I also see that farts are funny, especially when they are not acknowledged by the farter. It’s funny to perceive the farter as visibly shamed even though they’re continuing to play ignorant. It’s an easy way to “plus” in this repressed era–add a fartleak track. Maybe that could be an audio selection on the DVD. If we keep fearing our bodies into the future, maybe the leaking farts will be added via earphones into every moment of our waking lives.

I’m not sure if complete acceptance will end the tyranny of bodily functions. We’d have to make them illegal so that the characters would once again resort to entertaining the audience using the top hole. I’d love for someone to suggest a plan for cultural remediation.

03/13/08  2:06am

“Kids will probably be pissed when they don’t see that gag in the actual film.”

Oh, who says it’s not going to be in the actual film? Lucas changed “Star Wars.” Spielberg changed “E.T.” Certainly a bunch of marketing geniuses at Disney can change “101 Dalmatians” if they believe there’s a buck to be made.

03/13/08  3:12am
slowtiger says:

Of course farts can be funny. In the right mood, I may find them entertaining. But what’s about the integrity of a piece of art as it was done once, at a certain moment in time?

Oh wait. Animation can’t be art. Films can’t be art. They’re just “property”. And with their property Disney or whoever can do what they want to, right? Anything goes if it just sells.

So, wait for the bible in the all-new and shiny “fart edition”. After all, there’s an audience out there who doesn’t deserve better.

03/13/08  4:14am
Animation Pimp says:

What do you expect from a horse ass company that markets the Dalmations with the big bold lines: “FIRST TIME EVER ON 2 DVDs!”

(Cr)ass.

03/13/08  6:18am
Joe says:

well its kind of fitting, having owned a dalmation, they are a breed that farts a lot! And I mean A LOT!

03/13/08  6:23am
J Lee says:

Avery snuck a fart gag into “The Blitz Wolf” and loved burp jokes, so gas-passing is a long-honored cartoon tradition. Unfortunately, instead of seeing them as throwaway gags, today’s execs apparently think they’re the highlight of the picture, or should have been if they weren’t in the picture to begin with.

03/13/08  6:46am
Sara says:

I’ve seen it at least twice and I was seriously hoping it was just a weird dream I had the first time. What really irks me is that Disney sees no problem with playing the “art” and “tradition” cards when it benefits them and then plugging a fart joke into their “heritage” to….i don’t know sell a couple thousand more DVDs or compete with “Shrek goes to Mars” or whatever.

03/13/08  6:52am
goofy with an afro !!!!!!! says:

I cant wait for snow white and the 7 farting dwarfs !!! How about pinnochio farting ???? Enchanted farting ???

03/13/08  7:11am
hans bacher says:

I am afraid i am too old for this. so - you mean,
farting is funny. wow, so - what else is funny. I
don’t quite get it. but being a german and being
not funny at all - fahrvergnuegen - I guess
I am in the wrong movie…

03/13/08  7:31am

haha…this is hilarious! I was just talking to my wife about this the other night.

I noticed the digitally-warped horse’s butt fart gag the first time i saw the spot almost 2 weeks ago, but it was so quick I thought maybe I had imagined it. But I saw it again a couple more times in the past week and realized it was for real. I couldn’t believe they would do something like that but go figure…

03/13/08  8:09am
Inkan1969 says:

I’ve seen the commercial a couple of times on Cartoon Network. They’ve been talking about the commercial at the Toonzone forums. A LOT of people are angry about this, including me. This is a insulting misrepresentation of the movie. I think most of 101D’s humor is classy and mildly satirical, like gags from Pongo’s observations of human pets. Disney is undignified to try to misconstrue to movie to appeal to the grossout crowd.

03/13/08  9:55am

Yep I saw, or rather, heard this one. (I missed the digital horse-butt alteration.)

You didn’t hear about the Federal law REQUIRING every kids’ movie to contain at least 1 fart gag? I just saw a Nim’s Island preview and - SPOILER - its contribution to the flatulent arts is a farting seal.

Of course, it’s a slippery slope - almost literally in fact, now that kid movies have moved onto on-camera pooping scenes. (What, you don’t remember those unforgettable moments in ‘The Barnyard’ and ‘Open Season’?)

03/13/08  10:06am
Brian O. says:

Well, that can explain why Peter Pan can fly, he runs on pixie farts!

03/13/08  10:20am
Rhett Wickham says:

Anyone who thinks Germans aren’t funny obviously never enjoyed the antics of Bertolt “Hand Buzzer” Brecht or enjoyed the side-splitting novels of Günter “Goofy” Grass (I wish I had a nickle for every time he said “Nehmen Sie meine Frau. Bitte!”…now THAT’S funny!) Of course, I suppose you could make a case for the incredibly depressing films of Ernst “Slit My Wrists” Lubitsch being proof of the lack of German humor, but that’s an exception, don’t you think?
P.S. - Hans, if you’re in the wrong movie, would you mind casting me? Because any movie that you’re in, I’d be happy to just be in the background. Seriously.

03/13/08  10:49am
MattSullivan says:

It’s probably just a marketing ploy to attract younger, more cynical you-tubers who get their kicks off free low-brow humor.

But…

I wouldn’t put it past Disney to insert a fart joke. But if I were say, the film’s director, and my lasting legacy was being toyed with for profit…well…I’d be just a TAD pissed off about that.

03/13/08  11:35am
fluffy says:

This reminds me of the movie “The TV Set,” which was about a struggling writer whose serious drama series gets picked up by a TV network but slowly altered (via various network viewership-optimizing processes) into a low-brow comedy which doesn’t have any resemblance to the original story. The writer realizes things have gone irrevocably out-of-control when the promo for the show includes a number of fart gags.

03/13/08  2:36pm
David says:

Yeah, I feel stupid now that Hans has taken the opposite side.
I have this awful suspicion that I will never be a great artist like Hans so long as I think farts are funny.
Stupid farts, I hate you! Never fart, NEVER! (*shakes fist*)

03/13/08  6:22pm
Richard says:

Not only do I hate fart jokes, but when did Disney realize that animal-farts are funny? They almost never showcase people-farts.

03/13/08  9:01pm
A Longtime Observer says:

The first commercial promoting the movie that I saw….

It practically killed my interest to buy the movie even though I’m sure it won’t be in the Special Edition DVDs. It’s called counter-marketing Disney Ad Dept. The (funniest?) thing is, I noticed literally from 15-ft that the digitally changed backside of the horse didn’t seem to maintain the same color as the movie’s. Was it just me or did somebody else notice that?

03/13/08  11:48pm
Christian says:

You have to wonder if it’ll actually boost sales.

03/14/08  5:16am

Thank goodness there are no fart gags in the final film (though you could say that Disney are themselves to blame, having started all this fart business with The Lion King).

03/14/08  6:02am
Jason Richards says:

FARTS ARE FUNNY! I Buy DVDS TO HEAR STINKY FARTS!!!! TEE HEE HEE STINKY POOPY FARTS!!! THEY SELL DVDS TO TWERPS LIKE ME! FART FART FART!!!!

03/14/08  12:43pm
Talmudic Scholar says:

A moment of silence while DreamWorks registers the name “Fartstream” as a house trademark.

03/14/08  5:50pm
IKR says:

If I was a chairman in the marketing department and if the guy who came up with this retarded idea told me, I would go: “Dude, that’s messed up, and screwing art is not cool.”

03/15/08  6:49am

What’s sad is that Disney has probably done extensive studies on attention span and advertising and has discovered that the .04 seconds a kid is actually conscious of their commercial coincides directly with the .04 seconds it takes for the human mind to register a fart.

05/17/08  8:36am
Smash says:

MattSullivan says:

It’s probably just a marketing ploy to attract younger, more cynical you-tubers who get their kicks off free low-brow humor.

But…

I wouldn’t put it past Disney to insert a fart joke. But if I were say, the film’s director, and my lasting legacy was being toyed with for profit…well…I’d be just a TAD pissed off about that.

Unless of course lets be honest you got a reasonable cut of that profit and wanted to make some more money to say fund a classier project? And let’s face it with the rising pricing on gas, groceries and other necessities a little extra money going to you for the work you’ve done can’t be all bad can it? We aren’t exactly a rich country any more and the gas pricing is affecting everyone not just us americans.

05/30/08  3:51am
Steve Carras says:

Nim’s Island did not have hardly a fart joke, just the one described by
Mr.Strike! (Flick’s actually poretty safe from that other than that, pretty wholesome btw). But we’re talking about animation here, and IMO the biggest humiliaiton to me to that a klot of the culprits seem to ignore the contribution to this started by John Kricfalusi (we hhere do, of course).

05/30/08  3:57am
Steve Carras says:

Inkan1969 said it best about how it represents “101D”..

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