Bugs is the American1 trickster god.
1Immigrant not Native - they have the coyote, spider, etc.
Edit to correct for my steel trap mind – thanks, @OtherMichael
Isn’t Anansi also an immigrant to the americas? Or is there another spider?
So there can be no Buggs without Elmer. The two are created simultaneously, like a particle-antiparticle pair.
Is that who has the spider? Was just channeling memories of folklore books – was thinking that it was another Turtle Island deity.
Edit: Vindication – damn, I am brilliant
Iktomi (Sioux Spider Trickster)
I’d be curious to hear happy mutant opinions of windowframing content you don’t own to avoid automated copyright detection in order to get paid for ads? Plus naming the channel to resemble ownership of a trademark?
Plagiarism or fighting the good fight?
It’s always intrigued me that the immigrant Americans then proceeded to adopt the coyote but robbed him of his trickster abilities, instead setting him in opposition to the roadrunner. Wile E. Coyote appropriates “western” technologies only to have them backfire on him, presumably because the Roadrunner has powers beyond his understanding. Wile E. Coyote’s misadventures also seem like mid-century European existentialism/absurdism, although usually much funnier.
I don’t know whether Chuck Jones was consciously influenced by Native American folklore or vogue European philosophy, but it sure seems like it.
Bugs bunny gave voice to my angst as a youth.
Use your words baby! !!!
Well, I happen to be standing about fifty yards from the old animation building at Warner Bros in Burbank (not Termite Terrace, of course, but the building the animators worked in from 1955 until 1963, after which it became home to DePatie-Freleng for a few years, and now it’s home to the Warner Bros Pictures music library and various production offices).
It’s kinda funny when the studio tour golf carts come by and I can hear the tour guides pointing out the building and cheerfully misinforming the tourists that that crappy old building behind the 10-year-old production bungalows was where Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny were created. About one in ten tour guides gets it correct.
Anyway, the practice you describe isn’t cool. It’s all very well to put copyrighted material you don’t own up on YouTube for people to enjoy if they wouldn’t otherwise be able to see it. Windowframing to dodge detection (especially to grab some ad revenue for media you have absolutely no legal claim to) isn’t cool. Plenty of people hereabouts on BB will think I’m just a stooge for Jack Warner, but come on.
For comparison, this is what they are producing nowadays:
Garbage.
Meanwhile Disney shorts have returned to their roots, sort of. Not a slavish recreation of the 1930s style, but a far cry from the saccharine ciphers the characters had become over the decades. I never cared much for Disney stuff growing up (aside from Fantasia) but that’s because these didn’t exist yet.
(I can’t figure out how to get a shareable link to the whole Disney Shorts channel so here’s a random one.)
I think of the new Disney shorts as part 30’s style, part the vibe of Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros, with their colorful anarchism and cultural outreach/appropriation.
A paaaawticle - anti-paaaaawticle payeh.
Agreed on the Mickey Mouse Shorts. I find it interesting how much the style of an individual episode varies in order to be thematically correct, while still looking consistent with the others.
As far as the movie I referenced above. I have seen most of it. It’s disappointing to say the least. Ostensibly the characters are actors playing parts in a story, but they characterization seems off. The animation also seems flat, sloppy, and rushed. The writing feels amateurish as well. The only funny gag I can remember is when Yosemite Sam’s truck has those Back Off mud flaps and he comments on how he took a bath on those.
In short, watch all of the Mickey Mouse Shorts and Ignore Rabbit Run unless you like watching train wrecks, and hope they don’t similarly mangle Space Jam 2.
I used to indirectly work for WB doing, among other things, cross-licensed Looney Tunes apparel (Gangsta Taz, Rasta Taz, Bugs & co. wearing {LOCAL_SPORTS_TEAM} gear, etc. You may remember that stuff from the early 90s. I apologize.) and can attest that the people in charge over there have zero understanding or appreciation of animation, history, art, humor, or anything else. They wouldn’t recognize Chuck Jones if he rose from the grave and impassively played his own ribs like a xylophone. They shot down Valentine’s Day themed Pepe Le Pew boxers because they didn’t recognize the character. Because he wasn’t on their top five character sales chart.
WB went off the rails a long long time ago and shows no signs of a renaissance.
That’s interesting. Perhaps they changed their thinking at some point, since I remember them coming out with lots of merchandise featuring relatively obscure characters like Marvin the Martian, Gossamer, and Michigan J Frog at some point during the 90s.
Let’s be honest – we’re both stooges on the open market. It’s all about the color of the money. Is it green? I’m in!
The retcon-named characters, yeah. Marvin was very popular, so somehow they knew about him. They shot down a Gossamer proposal without comment and then turned around and okayed one from our main competitor. I don’t know if it was the same people handling their account, but they did seem to have a high turnover. Every few months we’d be introduced to a new account manager and have to suss out what he/she considered acceptable. Michigan was off-limits due to being the mascot of the then-upcoming WB television channel iirc.
Then again, they’re also doing Justice League: Gods and Monsters. I don’t keep up with the cartoons these days, but this one looks pretty intriguing to me. Certainly darker than any Looney Tune.
Animation is a very different medium these days. I remember seeing some very clever writing on Tiny Toon Adventures and Animaniacs, but I have no idea what they’re making for the kids anymore.
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