Warner Brothers Stars:

Bugs Bunny, Road Runner, Daffy Duck

William L. Benzon Summer 2015

Warner Brothers Stars:

Bugs Bunny, Road Runner, Daffy Duck

William L. Benzon
Abstract: Chuck Jones believed in the disciplines one had to maintain for a cartoon, the
constraints within which one acted. In the Road Runner cartoons, no one talked, though there
could be signage, the action always centered on two, and only two, characters, Road Runner and
Wile E. Coyote, and it always takes place in the outdoors in the American Southwest. These
cartoons play with reality and engage in a guessing game with the audience in doing so. Whats
Opera, Doc? goes beyond a string of gags end engages in a story about the relationship between
Elmer Fudd and Bugs Bunny. Finally Daffy Duck and Porky Pig venture into space in Duck
Dodgers in the 24th Century, which satirizes incompetence and self-generating conflict.
Introduction: Cartoons are for kids, NOT! ................................................................................................. 3
Road Runner........................................................................................................................................................ 5
Uh Oh! Hosni Mubarak and Wile E. Coyote ........................................................................................... 5
Desire and Causality in Road Runner Cartoons .................................................................................... 7
Reason in the Social Mind: Road Runner II .......................................................................................... 16
Bugs in Drag ..................................................................................................................................................... 22
Method in Cartoonology .......................................................................................................................... 22
Intimate Enemies: Whats Opera, Doc? ................................................................................................... 23
Elmer Loves Bugs Redux .......................................................................................................................... 33
Whats Up between Cartoonist and Audience?.................................................................................. 42
Duck Dodgers and Some Gags into the Unknown ................................................................................. 44
Duck Dodgers Instructs His Pupil .......................................................................................................... 44
Life Lessons .................................................................................................................................................. 48
Words and Things ...................................................................................................................................... 49
And the Larger Issues? .............................................................................................................................. 52

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Introduction: Cartoons are for kids, NOT!

Ive been trying to think of something engaging and insightful to say about the cartoons Im
covering in this post three Road Runners, a Bugs and Elmer, and a Daffy and Porky and am
drawing a blank. The little gray cells are protesting that theyve been working too hard. So Im
thrown back on the obvious.
Cartoons are for kids1 NOT!
Not when these cartoons were made. They were made for the general movie-going
audience. They were made to be shown before a feature film, also made for the general
audience.
I suppose that I could then pose the question: What makes these cartoons worthy of adult
attention? Wrong question.
We might be better off asking what makes an adult worthy of these cartoons? The answer
to that seems obvious: That the adult be alive, awake, and curious about the world. What these
cartoons do is play with reality and in so doing reveal our assumptions about it.
I was drawn to the Road Runner cartoons because of what their director, Chuck Jones, calls
their disciplines, the rules that each cartoon must follow. The Road Runners are among the
most disciplined cartoons ever made. Or, perhaps more accurately, their disciplines are among
the most austere.
They involve only two characters, the Road Runner and his nemesis, Wile Coyote. There is
only one plot, if it is even that: the coyote chases the road runner and fails to catch him. The
setting is always the same: the desert of the American Southwest. And there is no dialogue,
though there may be writing in signs and such. Thats it.
And from those simple constraints Chuck Jones spun cartoon after cartoon. What makes
them work is the gags. And the gags work on two levels. Within the cartoon Wile Coyote is
always being outfoxed even as he attempts to trap Road Runner. Sometimes hes outfoxed by
Road Runner and sometime its just the nature of things that outfoxes him. But the nature of
things in Cartoonland isnt quite so regular is in the real world.
And that brings in the second level of operation, where the cartoons play with us. Coyote
rarely suspects that hes about to be fooled. We always suspect it, but never know just how.
The gags always on us.
Of course, all these cartoons work the same way. But the others under examination here
also allow dialog. And yet they are still austere. Compare any of these to an episode of The
Simpsons. To be sure, those episodes run 22 minutes or so rather than six or seven, but that
alone doesnt account for the proliferation of characters and dialog. Its a different regime at
work.
The Bugs and Elmer cartoon has only those two characters, unless you count the rotund
horse that bugs rides for a bit. Whats Opera, Doc? is perhaps the most lavish cartoon Chuck
Jones ever produced. Its a satire of classical music, Wagner in particular, but also of Disneys
Fantasia. For example, there are shots reminiscent of Chernobog from Night on Bald Mountain.
But whereas the large looming figure in the Disney was a devil, albeit a tragic one, the large
looming figure in Whats Opera, Doc? is Elmer Fudds shadow.
Elmers after Bugs, as he always is. But this time he gets him, or at least Bugs allows him to
think hes gotten him. Whats more Bugs plays in this cartoon in two ways. Elmer is in Nordic
warrior drag from beginning to end. But when Bugs first appears hes simply Bugs Bunny and, as
such, is not a player in the music drama that has captured Elmer. Then Bugs puts on a costume
and inserts himself into the drama where Elmer serenades him in that role. Is Elmer revealing a
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hidden bond with Bugs? If not, then why is he distraught when he believes that he has finally
killed Bugs? Why isnt he happy in his triumph?
There is there more to this cartoon that meets the eye. Its an odd tale of unrequited love,
Elmer for Bugs. Or, rather, its a distortion of such a tale.
Finally, we have Duck Dodgers in the 24th Century, starring Daffy Duck and Porky Pig, with
Marvin the Martian as the villain. Is suppose I was drawn to this cartoon because of the science
fiction premise it has Daffy was using a transporter a decade and a half before Kirk and Spock.
And it plays on an important motif in popular culture: the incompetence of those in power.
Daffy is captain of a spaceship while Porky is his cadet crewman. Daffy is utterly incompetent
while Porky is not. Porky gets Daffy out of a jam, twice, but is unable to save him from utterly
destroying the planet they set out to find.
It is tempting to see this cartoon as a foretelling of the space race and missile race that
would characterize relations between the United States and the Soviet Union during the 1950s
and 1960s, but it has the themes nailed cold: the pursuit of a distant and largely pointless
objective (a planet rich in an ingredient for shaving cream), the incompetence of the high and
mighty, and the dangers of pointless technical mumbo-jumbo. Did Chuck Jones and his team
foresee all that in 1952 when they made this cartoon?
But then, did they have to foresee it at all? Isnt all that intrinsic to life in the modern world?
They simply looked and reported whats already there. Its reality that took things out of
control.

Road Runner
Chuck Jones believed in the disciplines one had to maintain for a cartoon, the constraints
within which one acted. In the Road Runner cartoons, no one talked, though there could be
signage, the action always centered on two, and only two, characters, Road Runner and Wile E.
Coyote, and it always takes place in the outdoors in the American Southwest.

Uh Oh! Hosni Mubarak and Wile E. Coyote

Ive been so busy doing one thing and another that I havent had time to make any substantial
posts, not one doing a wrap-up on Porky in Wackyland, nor one on anything else.
And that includes the situation in Egypt. But I saw an Al-Jeezera clip that suggested a way to
combine cartoons with the Egyptian revolution. The clip involves a discussion between Tariq
Ramadan, a Muslim scholar, and Slavoj iek, philosophical provocateur. iek suggested that
Mubarak is facing a situation covered by one of the best-known laws of cartoon physics: A
character who is suspended in space will remain in suspension only until he realizes that fact.1
Once he realizes that hes standing on nothing, gravity kicks in.
ieks comment starts a bit after 20:30 in this clip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29NffzEh2b0
Heres an elaborated example from a Warner Brothers Road Runner cartoon, Zoom and
Bored. In this shot Wile Coyotes situation is obscured by a dust cloud:

URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartoon_physics

Of course, we dont know whats going on any more than Wile and Road Runner do. For all we
know, both are standing on solid ground the default assumption. Now Wile senses
somethings wrong:

And so he explores the situation:

At this point we too know whats wrong and know more or less what to expect, but not exactly
when to suspect it.
Finally, the dust cloud begins to dissipate and Wile takes yet another fall:

As the dust completely disappears well see that Road Runners standing on a jutting
promontory.
My sense is that the Egyptian situation is currently somewhere between the second and the
third frame grab. Mubarak & Co. know that somethings wrong, but they dont quite know what.
Nor is it at all obvious that the protesters are on firm ground. Even if Mubarak goes, which does
seem likely, his cronies might remain in power.

Desire and Causality in Road Runner Cartoons

Whats the Road Runner series about?
The cartoons adhere to a formula: Theyre set in a desert landscape in the southwestern US
and have just two characters, Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote. Coyote is hungry; Road Runner
is a (potential) meal. Coyote concocts schemes to catch Road Runner; some of these are
elaborate; and some use equipment supplied by the Acme Corp. All the schemes fail. Coyote
has no particular animosity toward the Road Runner; nor Road Runner toward Coyote, though
he does taunt him. The end.
Simple. But whats it about? Take Coyote as a figure for human desire and Road Runner as a
figure for the world at large. Desire wishes to bend the world toward its ends. All those
elaborate, but failed, schemes are a figure for causality. Conclusion: causality operates according
to laws that are independent of human desire. Ergo, there is a world out there, and it is
independent of us.
Lets consider an early example in the series, Beep, Beep (1951). Chuck Jones, the director,
invokes a scientific frame of mind at the very beginning by giving us the scientific designations of
the protagonists:

Jones enforces the sense of science by first presenting us with a blueprint for one of Coyotes
schemes:

We, of course, occupy the Coyotes point of view; hes a stand-in for us, and our desires.
Notice the three-part explication of the plan. Theres a bit of a gap between steps two and
three as a number of unnamed things must happen to transform a (presumably) squashed Road
Runner into a burger. We might think of that gap as a figure for the gap between desire and
reality.
Of course, the plan doesnt work. When Coyote steps out onto the wire with the anvil in
hand, then wire simply sags:

Road Runner then taunts Coyote beep, beep and rushes off:

Coyote drops the anvil to give chase and is promptly catapulted into the air:

At every point Coyote is foiled by the devices he enlists in his scheme. The world simply doesnt
do what he wants it to do. Its continually asserting its independence.
And its asserting its independence of us as well. Coyotes scheme, after all, appears logical
enough. We may wonder about his ability carry a heavy anvil out onto the wire hows his
sense of balance? and about his ability to time the drop so it hits Road Runner. But surely, if it
hits, Road Runner will be smashed. Our expectations are foiled as soon as Coyote steps onto
the wire, and theyre foiled at every point.
We, of course, know that this will happen. Thats the game of this cartoon: can we guess
just how the world will foil Coyotes plan? We cannot, and thus the cartoon asserts its
independence of us.
A bit later we see another blueprint. This one is more elaborate, and were given more time
to study it:

No sooner do we finish studying the blueprint than we see Coyote rushing to hide (blueprint in
hand) while Road Runner approaches the stand:

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Road Runner stops at the stand, whizzes by and returns with a sign:

Well, I suppose that explains why Road Runner didnt fall into the trap, but if he cant read, then
just how is it that he got that sign and is showing it to Coyote? If he cant read then he doesnt
know that the sign said anything about water. If he cant read then surely he cant write. And so
on. Theres a lot of explaining to be done, and no time to think it through, as were off to the
next series of gags.
Which take place in the cactus mine:

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Just what IS a cactus mine? A place where they mine cactuses? Or is that just the name of the
mine? No matter. What matters is the chase, which we see largely in elevation view:

Both Coyote and Road Runner are wearing miners helmets. Road Runner is the green light;
Coyote is the red. So we follow the two lights round and round through the mine tunnels and
corridors. This is a very abstracted view of the chase. And thats what science does, abstracts.
The chase, predictably, does not end well. The exact details of that failure are irrelevant
here, though they are very relevant to the viewer whos trying to figure out what comes next.
And after that we have more gags, gags built on various kinds of rockets. I dont know how
rockets would have appeared to viewers in 1951, which is before the Missile Race and the Moon
Race paced the Cold War through the 1950s and into the 1960s. I suspect they appeared to be
pretty high-tech stuff, especially the rockets mounted on skates.
And, after a series of gags, those rocket skates leave Coyote exhausted and thirsty. And,
wouldnt you know it, hes in front of a stand offering a free glass of water.

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No sooner does Coyote drink the water than he realizes the implications of lifting the glass
from the table:

Notice the puff of smoke just above the box, either from the match, the fuse, or both. A
moment later:

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Success! This contraption worked like a champ. It did just what the blueprint implied it would
do. But it did it to Coyote, not Road Runner. Where the anvil plan failed for physical reasons
the wire was more elastic than Coyote anticipated the water contraption failed for semiotic
reasons, Road Runner couldnt read. The contraption got Coyote himself because he was too
exhausted to remember the apparatus hed built.
Thus Jones has clearly established two different realms of causal relations: 1) the physical
world, and 2) the mental and social world of signs. Not bad for a cartoon.
We have time for one final gag. Coyote builds a fake railroad crossing and poses as a guard,
presumably to stop Road Runner:

Road Runner roars on by, flattening Coyote in the process, who is then struck by an on-rushing
train:

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Just howd that very real train get onto what had been a faked-up piece of railroad track?
As the train goes by, we see Road Runner lounging in a porch at the rear of the final car:

Desire is once again foiled. Reality gets the last word.

And a good thing it does, otherwise wed be imprisoned in a world where we cant
distinguish between what we desire of the world and what the world offers to us. Causality is
not, in fact, easy to determine; and we are often, in fact, fooled by events. This is never more so
than in relations with others, where cause and desire chase one another in endless cycles.
In the Road Runner cartoons Chuck Jones has distilled interaction confusion to the simplest
situation: one hungry creature wants to use some other creature as food. In order to achieve
that end, to accomplish his desire, that first creature enters into a complex mesh of physical and
semiotic causality that is the world. And the world asserts its independence of creaturely desire.
In this figure interaction with the world-at-large and interaction with an Other are fused into a
single activity:
Wile E. Coyote pursues Road Runner.
THE END

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Reason in the Social Mind: Road Runner II

Lets return to Beep, Beep, the Road Runner cartoon weve been looking at. I want to take up a
motif Id noticed, but passed over.
As I indicated, one series of gags takes Coyote and Road Runner into an old cactus mine,
where both wear lamped miners helmets. As the chase comes to a close, they enter a
zigzagging passage which eventually splits, with Road Runner taking the upper passage:

Coyote takes the lower passage, but continues his zigzag course, bouncing off the ceiling:

He comes to rest in a dark passage:

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And lights a match, revealing that hes surrounded by TNT:

Of course, the TNT explodes. But we dont see the explosion underground. We see it
aboveground, where cactuses go flying:

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Heres the motif that interests me:

When the cactuses reseat themselves on the ground, they spell out Yipe! as though theyre
yelling on behalf of Coyote. Its a good gag. But, I believe that its more than that.
Jones repeats it, albeit in a different form. Coyote ties himself to a rocket, presumably so
that he can catch up to Road Runner:

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When the rocket takes off, however, it doesnt go horizontal, it goes vertical . . .

explodes in a shower of fireworks . . .

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and they form themselves into an advertisement:

Again, an explosion leads to writing, first by cactuses, now by burning particles.

Why the writing? Yes, it makes a good gag, but why?
Let me speculate.
As I argued Saturday, the Road Runner cartoons are about the distinction between human
desire toward the world and the causal mechanisms operating in the world. One might even say
theyre about objectivity, reason, science. Hence every cartoon in the series opens with pseudo
Latin names for Road Runner cartoons and every cartoon emphasizes Coyotes ingenuity in
constructing contraptions to catch Road Runner. He reasons things out, and tests his devices
before using them. And yet they fail.
Two thoughts: one old, one a bit newer. The old thought is that abstract reason starts in
anthropomorphism and then, at least sometimes, proceeds to carve away the human elements
until nothing is left but impersonal causal forces operating between impersonal objects. The
newer thought is from evolutionary psychology, that the human brain is, above all, a social brain.
The massive size increase, relative to the brains of other primates, is to accommodate the needs
of a richer and more complex social life.
As a corollary to the second thought, the newer one, let us posit that the neural machinery
for dealing with social life is the richest and most versatile neural machinery weve got. Thus,
were going to use it to think about our most difficult problems, even when they are not
problems of social life. That leads us to the first thought, the older one. Abstract reason begins
in anthropomorphism because thats how it gains access to our most sophisticated
computational machinery. To use Mark Changizis term,2 the social brain has been harnessed by
reason and, in particular, by scientific and technical reason.
And thats whats going on when the cactuses come down spelling Yikes! and the
fireworks enjoin us to Eat at Joes. The social brain is peeking through, using a medium natural
to it, language.
There is in fact almost no social interaction in Road Runner cartoons. We have only two
characters and their only face-to-face interaction comes when Road Runner taunts Coyote. Thus
the social brains of the audience can be given almost entirely to the parody of scientific reasoning that is
the substance of these cartoons. That parody, however, DOES make and preserve a crucial
distinction, as I argued in Desire and Causality in Road Runner Cartoons. Wile E. Coyotes desire to
2

URL: http://changizi.wordpress.com/2010/05/19/how-to-put-art-and-brain-together/
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convert Road Runner into food has no effect on the causal interactions exhibited by his devices,
schemes, and contraptions. Instead of regulating the interaction between two or more actors,
ego (that is, itself) and one or more alters, the social brain is regulating the interaction between
desire and causality. Yet its still a conversation, and, as such, requires a conversational space.
As Mike Barrier points out in his commentary (in Vol. 2 of the Looney Tunes Golden
Collection), we, the audience, enter the cartoon looking over Wile E. Coyotes shoulder; he plays
to us and thus draws us in, on his side. At the same time were aware of things Wile is not.
Were the ones who see Yikes! and Eat at Joes. Were the ones who exercise the
distinction between desire and causality. Were the ones who learn that, no matter how
ingenious it is, no matter how fast it can move, desire can never overtake causality. Its a bitter
lesson, but one essential to the conduct of reason.

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Bugs in Drag
I start my examination of Whats Opera, Doc? after the fact, with a statement of methodology
prompted by Mike Barrier, then I get down to actual analysis.

Method in Cartoonology
In the process of posting a link to some of my cartoon commentary [Thanks! Mike] Michael
Barrier made some qualifying remarks:
I sometimes feel when I read Bill's pieces that he is taking a long way around
when a more direct route is available, but what the hey, he's doing intellectual
work that almost no one else writing about animation is doing. I've just read
through his What's Opera, Doc? postings, and my reaction could be summed up
as impatience, followed by second thoughts along the lines of, wait a minute,
there are some ideas here that really deserve a careful look.
I dont know quite what he has in mind when he refers to taking the long way around, but I do
know what impatience is and I can certainly see why Mike, or anyone else, would react to my
work in that way. For better or worse, a more direct route is unavailable to me.
So let me say a thing or two about what Im up to.
Anyone who reads my stuff sees that I spend a lot of time simply describing what happens. If
you know the cartoon I'm working onand Mike certainly knows these cartoons, very well
that descriptive work is going to seem obvious and so may be a bit irritatingI know, I know, I've
watched the cartoon! Im looking for a pattern, or a detail or two, and these things may not spring
into relief until the cartoon has been described in some detail (think, for example, of my
discussions of ring form in Fantasia and Heart of Darkness). And, often enough, I dont even spot
the pattern or detail until Ive sunk knee-deep in description. I start with some vague idea that
somethings there, but it takes a bit of work actually to see it.
Consider Whats Opera, Doc? It wasnt until I was deep into the analysis and description that
I noticed that Elmers anger at Bugs could, and should, be attributed to Bugs deceiving him by
dressing in drag and responding to his courtship apparently in kind. I then asserted that this is
different from what happens in the other (some, most, all?) Elmer and Bugs cartoons where
Elmers animosity, if you can call it that, is given in the basic framework of the cartoon. Elmer
comes out hunting rabbits and Bugs is his target. Conflict is inherent in the situation and one
expects it to intensify as the cartoon moves forward.
My assertion, then, was and is that Elmers anger in the last third of Whats Opera, Doc? is
something other than this normal intensification. This anger arose from romantic
disappointment generated within the cartoon itself, rather than being part of the cartoons basic
framework. For what its worth, I doubt that I would have noticed that if I hadnt been going
through the cartoon slowly and carefully, taking screen shots, then describing them, and, in the
process, paying attention to how much screen time was allotted to this that and the other. This
was no ordinary gag, taking 10, 20, 30 so seconds of running time. It ran well over two minutes
(from 2:58 when Elmer first sees Bugs atop the horse to 5:18 when Bugs helmet falls off); thats
a third of the running time for the cartoon (not counting the credit sequences). Thats a long
time.

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And, though I didnt mention that duration in my original posts, that was certainly on my
mind when I made my assertion that this cartoon is different from the others. And thats all I
did, ASSERT the difference. To actually ARGUE the point Id have to discuss other Bugs and
Elmer cartoons and show that, in them, Elmers late-cartoon anger is simply part of the natural
escalation of the basic conflict and not something arising from a change in his relationship to
Bugs that takes place within cartoon itself.
How do you make such an argument? Obviously you need to discuss other cartoons. How
many: two, three, 10, all the Bugs and Elmers? And just how would you go about it? The answer
to that, obviously enough, depends on the cartoons themselves.
But, you might start with those where Bugs puts on drag, for this is not the only such
cartoonthink, for example, of Bugs in Rabbit Seasoning. In these cases one would have to
distinguish these cases from what happens in Opera. How? And why confine ourselves to Bugs
and Elmers? Bugs dresses as a bobby-soxer in Long-Haired Hare for example. Once weve made
that argument . . .
And then theres my argument about breaking the fourth wall, that not only is it frequent in
gag-based cartoons, but it seems natural in then. Its one thing to make the suggestion, which
Ive done in a post, but an actual argument will take many cases. And theyre going to have to be
examined in some detail.
It just goes on and on.
The fact is, all I hope to accomplish in these posts, all I CAN hope to accomplish, is to come
up with some ideas here that really deserve a careful look. To actually establish any of these
ideas in a strong way, that will take a lot of work, not only by me, but by others interested in
cartoons. Thats a job for a village, a community, of scholars.

Intimate Enemies: Whats Opera, Doc?

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Whats Opera, Doc? is one of the finest cartoons ever
made.3 It satirizes opera, Wagner in particular; it parodies Disneys Fantasia, and, for that matter,
it parodies the routines of its stars, Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd. The production was, by
Warner Brothers standards, lavish, and the layouts, by Maurice Noble, are inspired.
All of thats obvious. Whats not so obvious is that the film plays on the nature of reality in a
way thats reminiscent of Dance of the Hours from Disneys Fantasia. As Ive argued in Animal
Passion? Hyacinth Hippo and Ben Ali Gator,4 that episode depicts the inability of animal dancers to
stay in role with the result that, when Ben Ali Gator courts Hyacinth Hippo we dont know
whether theyre acting roles or whether their passion is, well, real. Something like that is going
on in Whats Opera, Doc? Elmer Fudd is in role as, well, Siegfried I guess, from beginning to end,
but Bugs is not.
Note: Im not going to comment on the design. But you should pay attention to it. Note
the colors, the camera angles, and the use of lines. Its really exquisite.
Kill the W abbit
Lets start at the beginning. As the title card and credits roll we hear an orchestra warming up.
We thus know that, yep, as the title says, this is going to be opera. The opening music is wild
and stormy and we see a stormy sky, and then a large hulking shadow appears projected against
a cliff. More sky and lightening, and then we see that the large shadow is projected by a rather
small fellow:
3
4

URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What%27s_Opera,_Doc
URL: http://new-savanna.blogspot.com/2010/11/animal-passion-hyacinth-hippo-and-ben.html

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It this point a simple, and rather old, point has been made: things arent always what they seem
to be. The camera zooms in and its Elmer Fudd, in heroic costume as a Nordic warrior,
informing us that hes hunting wabbits.

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As Elmer sings Kill the wabbit while poking his spear into a rabbit hole, Bugs hears him and is
rather distressed. Bugs approaches and delivers his classic line, Whats up, Doc? Bugs,
however, is not in costume and so not, presumably, in role. Hes just Bugs.

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For whatever reason, Elmer is completely oblivious to the identity of this character, which has
us, the audience, wondering what indeed is up? When Bugs asks the mighty Nordic warrior just
how he expects to kill the rabbit, Elmer replies that hell use his spear and magic helmet. The
spear, of course, is just a standard weapon, the Nordic warrior equivalent of Elmers more usual
shotgun. But a magic helmet, thats something else entirely and gives the Nordic warrior powers
that Elmer never had. Note how the helmet glows when Elmer mentions it:

Perhaps sensing a challenge, Elmer offers to demonstrate the helmets powers and climbs to the
top of a tall promontory and summons up foul weather in a scene reminiscent of the dream
sequence from The Sorcerers Apprentice. Lightening strikes a tree next to Bugs, whos OK. But
he starts running.

26

Its then, when theyre far apart, then Elmer realizes that that creature, thats the wabbit!

27

True Love
Elmer sets out in hot pursuit until he comes to a halt at the foot of another promontory, atop
of which he spies, and is smitten by, Brnnhilde. Brnnhilde, we see instantly, is Bugs in drag, and
shes plunked atop an enormously overweight horse, as though the horse had to make up for
the lack of fat on the proverbial operatic Fat Lady as played by Bugs. We assume, of course, that
Bugs knows full well hes in costume, playing a role.
They dance a pas de deux, Elmer looking rather boyish, at the end of which Bugs retreats
atop another tower, this one with steps up the side and a gazebo at the top. They sing a
passionate duet as Elmer climbs the steps. He reaches her, she falls into his arms, and her
helmet falls away, revealing rabbits ears. The jig is up!

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Elmer is enraged. As Bugs flees, the Nordic warrior invokes his powers again and conjures up a
powerful storm, leaving Bugs apparently dead from a lightening strike.

29

Upon spotting Bugs body, Elmer is suddenly filled with remorse. He rushes to the body, picks it
up, and carries it off to, well, its not clear exactly where, Valhalla one presumes. As he does so
the camera zooms in on Bugs, who reveals that hes alive, asking: What did ya expect in an opera,
a happy ending?

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Com parative W abbitology

According to the Wikipedia article on Whats Opera, Doc? this is one of only three cartoons in
which Elmer gets the upper hand on Bugs.5 The others are Rabbit Rampage6 and Hare Brush.7
Neither of them is, shall we say, a standard Bugs and Elmer cartoon. And in neither of them
does Elmer think that hes killed Bugs.
Rabbit Rampage is an exercise in meta-level surrealism comparable to Duck Amuck. Bugs is
the lone on-screen character addressing himself to an unseen artist who keeps redrawing both
the setting and Bugs himself. The camera pulls back at the very end to reveal that Elmers the
animator. Far from being Bugs killer, Elmer is, in a sense, the one who creates bugs, who gives
him, if not life, at least visible substance.
In Hare Brush, Bugs and Elmer switch roles. As the cartoon opens Elmer is a wealthy
industrialist who thinks hes a rabbit; he hops on all fours and munches a carrot. His board
commits him to an asylum, where we see him in his room in a rabbit suit. This that and the
other happens; Bugs takes a mind-altering pill; and voil! bunny-suit Elmer gets chased around the
countryside by Bugs-as-Elmer with a shotgun and wearing hunting clothes. A tax agent nabs
URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What's_Opera,_Doc
URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit_Rampage
7 URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hare_Brush
5
6

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Bugs-as-Elmer and hauls him off to prison, with bunny-suit Elmer basking in his triumph. But: he
doesnt think Bugs is dead and theres no mourning.
So, in one case, Rabbit Rampage, Elmer has had the upper hand from the beginning, but we
dont know that because we arent aware of his role until the end. In the other case we have, if
not quite role reversal from the beginning, certainly role confusion; Elmer thinks hes a rabbit
and Bugs hunts him. The point is that Elmer having the upper hand at the END isnt just a matter
of the final moves in the plot. Rather, it seems to entail a reconfiguration of the whole cartoon
from beginning to end. Were in the intellectual territory Lvi-Strauss entered in his studies of
myth, where he showed how a large body of South American myths was based on the strategic
rearrangement and transformation of a relatively few underlying elements (see my working
paper, Beyond Lvi-Strauss on Myth: Objectification, Computation, and Cognition8).
And that reconfiguration certainly includes playing with the conventions of reality. In Rabbit
Rampage the so-called fourth wall is destroyed from the very beginning. At every step of the
way we are told, in one way or another, that this is a cartoon. In Hare Brush Elmer is crazy and
Bugs is drugged.
Things arent what they seem.
W hats Up, Really?
Thats certainly the case with Whats Opera, Doc? From the beginning to the end, Elmer is caught
up in a role in an opera; he never appears as ordinary Elmer. When he enters, Bugs does not
appear to be playing a role. But hes worried about this Nordic warrior whos after him. At first
hes just Bugs. But, when Nordic warrior sees him as the wabbit he dons a costume and takes
a role in the opera. He becomes Nordic warriors beloved Brnnhilde.
The two then dance together and serenade one another. That is quite unlike anything that
happened in either Hare Brush or Rabbit Rampage. And this, I suggest, is why, at the end, Elmer
mourns the dead Bugswho isnt really dead. Yes, when he realizes the deception he goes into
a rage and, in that rage, conjures up a storm that lays Bugs/Brnnhilde out for dead. When the
storm dissipates and he sees Bugs/Brnhilde there, well his rage is gone too and so he mourns
the wabbit, the wabbit with whom hed danced a dance of love and sang a song of love.
What else could he do?
Were in the land of myth logic and the rules are different from those in the real world. In
myth logic mourning is the necessary answer to passionate love, as destructive rage is the
necessary answer to deception. And perhaps thats it, it was the deception that angered
Elmer/Nordic warrior and it was the deception for which he sought revenge. That is, he wasnt
merely hunting a wabbit, as he was at the beginning, he was exacting revenge.
And thats different from simply hunting rabbits.
At this point I see a pile of questions which Im not prepared to address. For one thing,
Elmer vs. Bugs had been a staple of Warner Brothers cartoons for years. Most people in the
audience would know this. But how would Whats Opera, Doc? play for those who didnt know
that? And what about relatively young children who had not yet absorbed the conventions of
cartoons, such as the fact that, no matter how much violence we see, no one is injured?
Not only is the Bugs/Elmer conflict a known item, but its almost always presented as an ongoing conflict. Elmer and Bugs have a long-standing relationship. Elmers not hunting any
arbitrary rabbit, hes hunting this particular wabbit. Its personal, and has been for some time.
Fam ily M atters
What does it mean to be locked into THAT kind of conflict? Its as though a significant
component of Elmers identity is invested in his conflict with Bugs. That kind of conflict is
8

URL: https://www.academia.edu/10541585/Beyond_L%C3%A9viStrauss_on_Myth_Objectification_Computation_and_Cognition
32

steeped in ambivalence. The love duet in this cartoon was no mere act; it revealed an aspect of
the relationship between Bugs and Elmer thats otherwise been completely masked in standardissue cartoon violence and conflict.
While Bugs and Elmer arent even the same species, much less the same family, that is only
appearance. Or, if you will, thats art. The response these cartoons evoke in us, the audience,
that response speaks to close personal relationships. Its about family. Wife and husband, parent
and child, sibling and sibling, thats what were dealing with. Those relationships are fraught with
ambivalence, ambivalence thats on full display in Whats Opera, Doc?
Now all I needs a good explicit argument to that effect, rather than a few paragraphs
of tap dancing and hand waving. That argument, thats going to take more than a blog
post, much more.
BTW, did you look closely at those screen shots, the color and layout?
*****
Bonus points: As you know, Michael Barrier insists on the importance of animate
acting. That is extraordinarily important in this cartoon. Pick one scene an explicate the
acting subtleties it displays.

Elmer Loves Bugs Redux

In my previous post on Whats Opera, Doc? (Intimate Enemies above) Id hit upon the idea that
when, nearing the end, Elmer called upon all the forces at his command to destroy Bugs he was
motivated by Bugs deception.* Hed sung and danced his love to and with Brnnhilde and she
turned out to be Bugs in drag. Its that disappointment, that frustrated love, that drove him into
a rage. And thats different from, in addition to, the almost pro forma antagonism that drove him
at the beginning of this cartoon and that drives him at the beginning of all his encounters with
Bugs.
Id liked that idea when I had it, which was in the process of writing that post, but afterward
I had some misgivings. For Id long felt that one good answerperhaps the best answerto the
question Whyd he do it? is: Because the author made him do it. The author wanted to
achieve a certain effect, and having the character do whatever, thats the way to achieve that
effect.

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So, whats the immediate effect of Elmers remorse? Surprise! Thats not what we were
expecting.
And that, of course, is what goes on in the typical Bugs and Elmer cartoon. Its a game in
which the cartoonist keeps us guessing about how Bugs which trick Elmer and keeps surprising
us with new gags. Just as Bugs (apparent) death was a new move, so is Elmer/Nordic warrors
(real) remorse.
With that in mind, lets reconsider Whats Opera, Doc?
Pacing
The Bugs and Elmer cartoon revolves around pairs of moves: Elmer threatens Bugs, Bugs evades
the threat. Consider a not-so-standard example from 1951, Rabbit Seasoning. In this case Daffy
Duck is trying to get Elmer to shoot Bugs. So the threat comes from Daffy, and the deflection
takes the form of Bugs getting Elmer to shoot Daffy. By my count this happens six times. (One
of those times Bugs dresses in drag, and Elmer falls for it. So Bugs-as-Brnnhilde is not a new
kind of move for Bugs.)
In Whats Opera, Doc? we have only two threat-evade pairs. The first happens when, after
demonstrating the powers of his helmet, Elmer notices that Bugs is indeed the wabbit. He gives
chase and, in relatively short order, Bugs dons drag and we have a relatively long courtship
sequence which ends when Bugs helmet falls off while hes in Elmers fond embrace. And that
leads to the second threat-evade pair. Elmer goes into a rage and, once again, calls on his helmet
powers, this time to kill Bugs. Bugs evades this threat by playing dead. He reveals that only to us,
the audience, and then only at the very end of the cartoon.
So, the pace of this cartoon, when measured in threat-evade moves, is very different from
the other Bugs and Elmers. Its much slower. And that slower pace changes the scope and
valence of Bugss and Elmers actions. It changes the nature of Bugss first evasion and of Elmers
reaction against it.
Its not simply that Elmer buys-in to Bugs-in-drag. Hes done that before. Its that we have
two sung duets and a pas de deux lasting a bit over two minutes before Bugss cover is blown.
Yes, we can see that Bugs simpers and fidgets even if Elmer cant, but that second duet, Return
My Love, is so good, even if the voices are cartoon voices. The singing is on pitch and
expressive. Its sincere. Forget the effect it works on Elmer, what effect does it work on us, the
audience?
What can possibly come of this? We know, of course, that its just got to fall through
somehow, but just howwe cant wait to find out.
With all this in mind, lets go back to the beginning and take another trip through the
cartoon, this time picking up some things we passed over on the first trip.
The Turn to Love
Once the title credits and music are over, we see a lightening-struck sky and hear violent
storming music. These sky shots are intermingled with the huge shadow of a helmeted and
thickly muscled figure apparently directing the music and, thought that, the stormy sky. This
goes on long enough that we just have time to ask ourselves, who or what is this creature?

34

No sooner do we formulate that question than the camera zooms down, and in, to reveal the
answer: Its Elmer Fudd in costume as a mighty Nordic warrior. At this point Elmer becomes
separated from the hulking shadow, the music quiets, and hes now chasing wabbits.

35

That opening is important, however, because it establishes the connection between Elmer
and storming even before we know its Elmer and it also establishes Elmer almost outside the
film itself. An Elmer who commands the very weather is more than a mere Nordic warrior. Hes
close to the Elmer of Rabbit Rampage, who played the off-screen animator of Bugs.
Once Elmers hunting the wabbit, he sees the rabbit tracks and, shortly thereafter, Bugs
himself, though he doesnt seem to recognize Bugs as a rabbit. When Bugs wonders about his
magic helmet, Elmer offers a demonstration. He climbs to the top of a pinnacle (podium?) and, in
effect, evokes the opening sequence by, once again, bringing on violent music and violent
weather. Lightening strikes a tree next to Bugs, who then scampers away.
Why invest Elmer with this kind of power? Thats the question: Why this kind of power? What
effect is Jones trying to achieve that requires this? As an ordinary Wagnerian Nordic warrior
Elmers pretty much what he is in a standard cartoon, a peevish little man out to get a wabbit.
When he invokes that helmet power, well, were in the land of myth logic. Elmer has become a
wizard, a mage.
Bugs is always aware of himself as Bugs. When he dons his Brnnhilde drag hes aware that
hes playing a role. Elmer never gives any indication that hes playing a role, but though his
helmet powers he inflates himself to achieve a power over this Wagnerian world and so, even
over Bugs-as-Brnnhilde. But not over Bugs as, well, Bugs Bunny. That Bugs is safe.
Theres two versions of Elmer: Elmer as Nordic warrior, Elmer as mage weather master.
And theres two versions of Bugs: Bugs as Bugs Bunny, and Bugs as Brnhilde. If you will, Bugs as
Bunny escapes the Wagnerian world by retreating into mere mundane reality. Elmer animates
the Wagnerian world by inflating into primordial pagan magic. Theres a peculiar symmetry
about this arrangement that Im at a loss to formulate in a coherent way.
In any event, once Elmers invoke his helmet powers and Bugs scampers away, Elmer is able
to recognize him as the wabbit and he gives chase. Its at that point that Bugs enters the
Wagnerian world by donning his Brnnhilde drag. That leads to over two minutes of passionate
courtship that ends when Bugss helmet falls offnotice that, its the helmet that gives him
away. Accident or not?
Now weve got to pay close attention. Bugs immediately scampers away. Weve got the
same white-black-grey-pink color scheme we had during Return My Love. Notice that little
Bugs casts a big shadow on the wall, as though echoing Elmers shadow at the opening:

As soon as Elmer goes into a rage the color changes dramatically, into deep blues, reds, and
magentas. Once again hes become a mage, and the world has changed.

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Notice Bugs way down there running off toward the mountains:

37

Elmer invokes the North winds, the South winds, typhoone, hurricanes, earthquakes, and, of
course, smog. Bugs continues running.

Now Magic Elmer orders the lightening to stwike the wabbit. It is one thing to kill a rabbit
with a shotgun, or a spear. But to do so by invoking the weather, thats action of a whole
different order.

Elmer runs to see the fruits of his magic-enhanced rage. Notice the anger on his face as he looks
down:

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This is what he sees, presumably:

39

Bugs appears to be dead. The storming ceases and the music becomes calmer. We see Bugs,
recumbent on a rock as a flower sheds tears on his dead body, as though the natural world itself
mourned his death.

40

It is only now, after weve seen that flower weeping, after weve been able to register Bugss
death, that Elmer, once again merely a Nordic warrior, feels remorse: What have I done? This
is important. Its as though Elmers remorse serves as a vehicle for our own sadness over Bugss
death.

Notice that the lurid color scheme has disappeared; it disappeared as soon as the camera turned
toward the dead Bugs.
Elmer rushes to Bugs, picks up the corpse, and carries it off to glory. Bugs, of course,
escapes from the Wagnerian scenario by simply informing us, but not Elmer, that hes alive. And
this, in the logic of myth, seems parallel to opening where Elmer first appears through his
shadow as conductor of the orchestra and master of the weather.
Redux
There you have it, a second run through Whats Opera, Doc? The observations I made in my first
post still stand, I believe, including the assertion that Elmers rage is to be seen as being
occasioned, not by the cartoon situation itself, but by a specific set of actions within the cartoon,
the courtship sequence and its collapse. But that observation has been refined by a sense of how
the relatively relaxed pacing of this cartoon facilitated a change in the valence both of Bugss
donning drag and of the exposure of his deception.
I also want to emphasize the importance of Elmers duality as both Nordic warrior and
helmet-powered wizard. Such a duality doesnt exist in other Bugs Bunny cartoons, but its
central to this one. This is more than an extraordinary device for pursuing Bugs. Its doing work
that Im not sure how to characterize.
Yeah, myth logic, thats what it is.
Its as though when Elmer invokes storms and lightening, he changes the world from one
state to another. The first change made Bugss identity as a rabbit visible, and thereby
necessitated the Brnnhilde guise and the attendant courtship. The second change reversed the
first but at the cost of eliminating Bugs from action.
When Chuck Jones decided to take on Wagner he did more than simply cut way back on
the gags. He moved into a different kind of psychological and narrative territory. The fact is that
our sense of this as being performed on a stage is weaker, weaker than in the case of Disneys
Dance of the Hours. Once we get past the opening credits with the warm-up music and the
opening shadow play theres very little sense that this is taking place on a stage. The physical
structure of the world is larger and more complex than sets on any stage. No, this story is
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taking place in a Nordic world and Bugs is more like an interloper from an alternative universe
than a wise-guy whos wandered into an opera.
What was hatched as something of an uber-gag, Bugs and Elmer do Wagner, became almost
a new kind of cartoon. While Bugs never becomes completely absorbed into the high
Wagnerian seriousness that has captured Elmer, that seriousness has managed to move Whats
Opera, Doc? into new narrative, emotional, and expressive territory. While the film doesnt quite
distil 14 hours of Wagner into six minutes, as Chuck Jones used to say, it does expand what a
cartoon can accomplish in six minutes. Thats a lot.
*****
*I note that Daniel Goldmark makes this point in his excellent discussion of Whats Opera, Doc?
in his Tunes for Toons: Music and the Hollywood Cartoon (2005. p. 155). Since Id read this book a
couple of years ago its possible that I got the idea from Goldmark and simply forgot the source.

Whats Up between Cartoonist and Audience?

Preliminary thoughts, very sketchy. Comments and questions, please!
This post is about two things: the frame, and various details. By frame I mean the overall
governing aegis of the cartoon, the compact, if you will, between cartoonist and audience. As
for details, theres lots of them.
The details that sent me down this particular conceptual path happen at about two minutes
and 40 seconds into Whats Opera, Doc? when Elmer turns to the audience and says, That was
the wabbit.

One detail is the fact that he looks right at the audience and addresses himself to us. This isnt
the first time this happens in this cartoon. It happened early on when the camera first zoomed in
on Elmer and, after asking us to be vewy quiet and he told us that he was hunting wabbits
notice the plural. Between these two instances Bugs addresses the audience twice and the he
does so once at the very end when he tells us that hes not dead but, in effect, is pretending to
be so in order to satisfy operatic conventions.

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So, in the space of a six-minute cartoon we have five violations of the so-called fourth
wall, the one between the fictional world and the live audience. Well, they may be violations of
the fourth wall, but Ive come to suspect that such violations are consistent with the
conventions of a certain kind of cartoon, and whatever kind that is, it is not particularly,
cerebral, meta, or avant-garde.
On the contrary, it is typical and quite common in many cartoon shorts of the Golden Age.
Thats the frame Im talking about, the compact with the audience. It stages the relationship
between artist and audience in a way thats quite different from most live action features and
from feature-length animation. Its not just that these cartoons are shorter, but that theyre
constructed on different principles. They arent stories that just happen to be short. Theyre
something else.
The cartoons that are constructed in this way dont really have plots. The stories are strung
together from gags, gags which generally depend on word play e.g. a gun labeled disintegrating
gun that disintegrates or on physical tricks e.g. being suspended over a cliff until you look
down. Were compelled through the cartoon by our expectation of another gag, not by our
interest in what the characters are trying to achieve. We know that Wily Coyote is trying to
catch and eat Road Runner and that Road Runner is trying to evade Wily Coyote; we know also
that Wily will not succeed. And so it is with Tweety Bird and Sylvester, Elmer Fudd and Bugs
Bunny, and so on.
These characters have personalities and those personalities are important, very important.
But the personality isnt important as a locus of a characters desires and motivations. Those are
fixed. The cartoon isnt exploring them. Rather, its exploring their participation in and reactions
to the gags. When Daffys pistol disintegrates in his hand, what does he do? When Wily starts
falling, what does he do?
Now, and this is a tricky question, what does the use of gag-based narratives have to do
with the relatively casual inclusion of remarks to the audience? Why are these aspects of the
same mode of cartoon-making?
Whatever it is thats going on, it seems to me that a cartoon like Duck Amuck is simply
taking it to one logical extreme. Daffy is swamped in gags, gags happening over around under
and through him. At the same time hes constantly addressing us, except that it isnt us hes
addressing. Hes addressing an unseen cartoonist whos executing all those gags. So the cartoon
is a back-and-forth interaction between Daffy and the unseen cartoonist such that, when Daffy
addresses that cartoonist, he also addresses us.
By contrast, Whats Opera, Doc? comes close to eliminating gags of the usual sort, under
Wagnerian influence, moves to the very edge of a story. Elmers revenge arises from within the
story itself. Its not something he brings with him as one of the factors generating the string of
gags.
What Im getting at, then, is that the gag-based cartoon is staged as a conversation between
the cartoonist and the audience. They are, if only implicitly, back and forth interactions. These
cartoonic conversation turn on gags, with addresses to the audience functioning as a type of
gag. The gags violate OUR sense of reality in one way or another, but not the reality of the
cartoon characters. Speech addressed to the audience violates the reality that cartoon
characters cannot, in fact, talk with real people.
In saying THAT Im also asserting that both live action and animated features ARE NOT
staged as conversations between the film-maker and the audience. Those films are not
conversationally directed at the audience in the way these cartoons are. They just flow on, and
the audience watches. When, on relatively rare occasions, the audience is addressed, thats
special.
More later.
I hope.

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Duck Dodgers and Some Gags into the

Unknown
Since last weeks post, Whats Up Between Cartoonist and Audience? Ive been thinking about the
fact that so many (most? almost all?) Golden Age cartoons are constructed with gags. We all
know this, and yet, I must confess, that I for one dont know whats going on. What are these
things, these gags? How do they work, why should we take such pleasure in a sequence of them?
And why did they come to occupy such a large place in popular culture when they did?
I dont know the answers to any of those questions, but I do know something about how to
describe and analyze cartoons. I can at least take a look at some more cartoons and see how
they work. As for those large questions, theyll just have to wait.

Duck Dodgers Instructs His Pupil

Lets take a look at Duck Dodgers in the 24th Century,9 a 1952 Chuck Jones cartoon
featuring Daffy Duck, as Duck Dodgers, and Porky Pig and his space cadet sidekick. The earth is
running out of Illudium Phosdex, the essential ingredient in shaving cream, and Duck Dodgers is
sent to claim the only remaining source, on Planet X. And Planet X is in a zone thats simply
marked unknown on a huge space chartnotice that Daffy and his boss are standing on a
podium high up in the room, which is itself on the 17,000th floor of the building. Daffy accepts
the mission, of course.
Those whove been through middle school algebra are likely to pick up some resonance at
this point, for the mysterious UNKNOWN in an equation is typically represented by a variable
labeled X. X is the unknown, and thats where the hapless Daffy is going with the help of
Porky.
Skipping over this and that, were under way and Daffy is going to explain to his young
charge just how theyre going to find their way to Planet X:

URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_Dodgers_in_the_24%C2%BDth_Century
44

Heres how its going to go:

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The explanation that goes along with this is pure gibberish:

Now then, eager young space cadet, here is the course we shall pursue to find
Planet X. Starting from where we are we go thirty-three thousand six hundred
turbo miles due up. Then West in an astroarc deviation to here. Then following
the great circle down seven radial lubes South by down East, by asto astrobal to
here, here, and here, then by space navigal compass to here, here, and then to
here and here, by thirteen stratocumulus bearing four million light years and
thus to our destination.
I suspect that then, as now, there were many in the audience for whom science and math made
exactly that much sense, whatever they may have thought about space travel as adventure. Daffy
doesnt seen too convinced by his own explanation and asks Porky what he thinks:
Daffy: Now do you know how to reach Planet X?
Porky: Ah, yeh yeh ah yeh ah yehyehyehyeh oh sure.
Daffy: Well I wish youd explain it to me sometime, buster.
Daffy finds Porkys confidence both surprising and unnerving:

46

Porky notes, however, that if you look out there, youll see that the planets are labeled in
alphabetic order. Perhaps we can get to Planet X by following that order. Daffy rejects the idea,
then reconsiders, discovers that it was his idea, and off they go. Note that not only is Planet X
marked with a large X, but its furnished with Xs as well.

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Life Lessons
So, whats going on here? First, while Daffy is the one in charge, hes incompetent. Porkys
competent but also quite willing to let Daffy run things. He even seems to respect Daffys
position of authority, as though he can separate the authority from the competence.
This situation plays well from different angles. Sooner or later all adults have been in Porkys
position and so can appreciate seeing it played out this way on the screen. In particular, Porkys
willingness to let Daffy take credit for his ideafollow the lettersexemplifies standard advice
for how to do with difficult people. Similarly, the adult world often seems baffling to a child and
so its comforting to see Porky surreptitiously prevail over Daffy.
What is comforting to all is that the solution to the problemfollow the lettersis such a
simple one. Things have labels and those labels are useful. They tell us what the things are and
how theyre ordered. Weve left the world of How to Win Friends and Influence People and
entered the sacred precincts of philosophy, the relationship between words and things.
On that last point, however, we are being set-up for a sequence of gags based on the tricky
relationship between words and things.

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Words and Things

No sooner has Daffy claimed the planet in the name of the earth than an odd little creature
claims it in the name of Mars. And that odd creature has a disintegrating pistol; it says so right
on the label:

Daffys not worried, though, as he informs us (yes, he addresses us, the audience), hes wearing
a disintegration proof vest. But alas, the vest doesnt protect him:

49

Now weve got a problem. The cartoons only two-thirds over and our protagonist is a pile of
dust. Whats going to happen?
Well, Porky saved Daffy once, when he showed him how to follow the letters. Hes going to
do it again, with an integrating pistol? But whats an integrating pistol? Disintegrating
rays/guns/pistols are ubiquitous in science fiction, but who ever heard of an integrating
ray/gun/pistol. It must be somehow related to the disintegrating pistol, as the words are related,
but ...

50

By the time youve figured it out, its already happened on the screen. Daffys little bits have
reintegrated into the heroic Duck Dodgers.
Far from being appreciative, however, Daffy acts like he had the strange little Martian
cornered and orders Porky back to the spaceship.

He then pulls HIS disintegrating pistol on the Martian: Got the drop on you with MY
disintegrating pistol. And, brother, when it disintegrates, it disintegrates! Which it does, but not
in the way Daffy intends:

51

At the point Daffy beats a retreat into the safety of his spaceship and we have more gags, and
more word play. But this is enough for now.
One thing about this sequence is that the order of the gags is important. You couldnt
change the order and have the same effect. Obviously you cant integrate Daffy before hes been
disintegrated. And the play on the label of Daffys own pistol gets its force and surprise from the
two previous gags, the vest that doesnt protect Daffy and the pistol that reassembles him.
So thats one thing, order is importantmy impression is that thats generally true in gagdriven cartoons. The other thing is that, as the previous scene, we see the peculiar powerrelationship between Daffy and Porky. In both cases Porky saves Daffys bacon, as it were, and in
both cases he has to do so from a position of subservience.
That wont happen again in the cartoon. At the point Porkys effectively out of the action.
Daffy and the Martian will fight one another to a stalemate and destroy the planet in the
process. The End.

And the Larger Issues?

Of course, this little bit of analysis cant contribute much to resolving the large issues I raised at
the beginning. That would require many more cases, many.
But I would like to end with one simple and obvious point: These gags are intrinsic to the
medium. They require the play of images and of words, both spoken and written.
But what does that have to do with the relationship between cartoon and audience? How
does that support the way these characters are playing to and for the audience? Thats a matter
Ill continue to think about.

52