![]() ![]() ![]() These cartoons have not been broadcast since 1968, though they are available online. Such elements are abundantly clear in the “Censored Eleven,” shorts from the Warner Bros catalogue that were withheld from syndication due to racially offensive content. While this certainly makes these shorts more interesting, it also means that some of the uglier elements of the time are on full display. These cartoons were far from the squeaky-clean version of today: They were vibrant, innovative, and often subversive. Yet Looney Tunes was a definite forerunner to the adult animation of today, poking fun at contemporary politics and pop culture. As a kid watching cartoons on Saturday mornings, I didn’t catch many of the forty-year-old references. I was also surprised to discover how topical these cartoons were. Coyote’s design was inspired by Mark Twain’s description of the coyote as “a long, slim, sick and sorry-looking skeleton … with a despairing expression of forsakenness and misery, a furtive and evil eye, and a long, sharp face … The coyote is a living, breathing allegory of Want.” I learned that Bugs Bunny’s smart-alecky attitude and cigar-like carrot were based on Groucho Marx, and Wile E. Titled “What’s Up Doc? The Animation Art of Chuck Jones,” this retrospective illuminates the originality and charm of Jones in particular and the Looney Tunes in general. Yet this was not always the case, as demonstrated by the excellent Chuck Jones exhibit at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens. Today is no better, with the Roadrunner and Foghorn Leghorn perhaps most recognizable as shills for companies like Time Warner and Geico. To be fair, my exposure to Looney Tunes at the time bore that out pretty well: I grew up in the age of Space Jam and the slew of jerseys, sneakers, McDonald’s toys, pogs, and cookie jars that film spawned. For all the pandemonium that Bugs Bunny and his ilk ostensibly represent, their chaos is bland, their destruction is predictable, and their lineage is corporate. Despite the cultural pervasiveness of these characters, and a lifelong love of animation on my part, they’ve always struck me as annoying, repetitive, and boring. I have an uncomfortable confession to make: I have never liked the Looney Tunes. On the left, there's a group of folks uncomfortably smashed together.From blatant plagiarism to offensive and stereotypical subject matter, the 1930s Looney Tunes cartoons have a dark history. In the middle, there's Camilla looking like a Disney villain. If you try to look for the other people in the photo, you see that it's basically three pictures in one. Your eye is first drawn towards Charlotte, up to Meghan (given her unique hand positioning), then to Harry. He even "othered" Charlotte (higher in line than Louis) here, putting her on the other side of Camilla and nearer to Harry and Meghan.īUT since Camilla planted herself dead-center, Charlotte had to take up a lot of S-P-A-C-E, drawing the visual interest to the right side of the picture. You can see that the photographer attempted to give prominence to what he considered the "main royals" by clustering Kate, William, Charles, and the two boys together. (He also didn't think through the focal points, which is very annoying, but this is about composition.) I think he thought he did, but he didn't. I don't know who they hired to take the picture, but he didn't think through the composition very well. They ended up going with the photo on the left, and I still find this picture hilarious. ![]()
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