From: jack.bohn64@gmail.com   
      
   Cartoon shorts, one a remake of the other, in widescreen and the clean line   
   style of the the time (by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, it looks more like   
   their Tom and Jerry than the "chasing Disney" of the '30s).  TCM ran the first   
   in their Saturday    
   matinee, but I have both in a DVD collection of Academy Award cartoons, among   
   the nominees, and a few days later pulled out the other one for comparison.   
      
   One detail I noticed Saturday was that the bombed-out church at the beginning   
   of "Peace" had a stained glass window of The Good Shepherd, but the face is   
   obliterated by a hole, as if a cannon took the halo for a target.  This ties   
   in with the opening, as    
   cartoon animals are singing a version of "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing" that's   
   rewritten to be mostly variations of the phrases "peace on Earth" and   
   "goodwill to Men."  (The '55 version does not efface the religious aspects of   
   the song as much, possibly    
   to offset its implications that we should work with them commies.)  Younger   
   animals ask an older, wiser one what the "Men" of the song are, and it   
   describes them as horrible creatures that finally wiped themselves out in   
   constant warfare.  In the 1939    
   version this is very much World War I imagery; gassings and trenches, and   
   possibly epidemics.  In the 1955 version we still have the clash of armies,   
   but it culminates in airplanes of each side dropping The Bomb on each other,   
   the global effect seen from    
   space; a cleaner, but still disturbing, image.   
      
   In a ruined church the animals find The Good Book, open to the page, "Thou   
   Shalt Not Kill."  This is more fable than science fiction, so no snark as the   
   wise old owl tells the mice and squirrels that that sounds like a good rule.    
   The owl then reads    
   edited highlights, such as "Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself," and a passage about   
   rebuilding the wastes.  This leads to the happy ending, as the animals, a   
   generation later, have built a comfortable life among what humanity has left   
   behind, and sing again, "   
   Peace on Earth, Good Will to Men."   
      
   --    
   -Jack   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)