ANIMATION
WORLD MAGAZINE - ISSUE 3.9 - December 1998
Reading the Rabbit: Warner Bros. According to the Academics
book review by Mark Mayerson
Reading
the Rabbit is a collection of essays regarding
various aspects of Warner cartoons. Most of the authors are academics, and
so this collection is marked by all the shortcomings of academic prose and
the academic approach.
As there are people who are not familiar with this approach, it's best that
I outline it briefly. It's possible to live an informed life without ever
running into words like dietetic, eponymous, metonymic, hermeneutic, hegemonic
or imbrication. However, readers of this book will trip over these words regularly.
This jargon is the academic's way of marking territory; a way of claiming
the serious high ground from people who write for general consumption.
Then there are footnotes, the academic version of steroids; they bulk up the
size and gravity of the author's ideas. Why simply state something when the
words of great minds (written in completely different contexts) can be attached
to the thoughts of the author? Who can fail to be impressed by a quote from
Freud, Kracauer, Metz, Baudrillard or their bosom companions Friedwald and
Beck?
Finally, there is the polemical nature of the articles. Academic articles
are not merely information, they are arguments. Because the success of the
article is measured by how persuasively the author argues the point, academic
authors frequently fall prey to gross generalizations and historical distortions.
That is certainly the case with Reading the Rabbit.
A Look Into The Content
Donald Crafton's article "The View from Termite Terrace: Caricature
and Parody in Warner Bros. Animation" claims that the Warner attitude
in caricaturing Hollywood stars was due to working conditions at the studio.
In detailing the working conditions, Crafton quotes from "The Exposure
Sheet," a Schlesinger in-house newsletter, and interviews with former
Schlesinger employees Ben Shenkman and Martha Goldman Sigall. This information
is the best material in the article. However, Crafton does not convince me
of his thesis. I could argue that caricature in Disney cartoons like Mother
Goose Goes Hollywood is more savage, though done at a studio that had
more prestige and better working conditions. In addition, caricature and satire
of Marlon Brando in Mad Magazine in the 1950's is also more savage
than anything done by Warners, yet Harvey Kurtzman and Wally Wood were not
employees of Hollywood studios and worked 3,000 miles away. The link between
working conditions and Warner caricature is not as strong as Crafton implies
and so his article is only half good.
Terry Lindvall and Ben Fraser write a well-balanced study of racism in Warner
cartoons called "Darker Shades of Animation: African-American Images
in the Warner Bros. Cartoon." Unfortunately, they hurt their case with
some stereotyping of their own and a major historical slip. They refer to
Chuck Jones' Inki character as a "cute burlesque of a little cannibal
hunter with a big bone in the topknot of his hair." I defy anyone to
point out an example of Inki eating human flesh or even hunting humans. It
didn't happen. The authors have stereotyped Inki, an African boy, as a cannibal.
Later in the article, they write, "A critical difference between Warner
Bros.' hepcat portrayals of race in Clampett's cartoons and the Jim Crow cartoons
of Columbia's Heckle and Jeckle was this very celebration of the hot urban
music of the emerging black culture." I doubt the authors have even seen
a Heckle and Jeckle cartoon. For one thing, they were distributed by Fox and
not Columbia. For another, the characters were magpies and not crows. In addition,
the characters are not treated as black caricatures. One speaks with a New
York accent and the other is British. Nothing about their movements or behavior
is stereotypically black. They are no more black caricatures than Daffy Duck.
Therefore, their "critical difference" is non-existent.
Simplifications
Gene Walz continues his excellent research into the life and work of character
designer Charles Thorson. His article "Charlie Thorson and the Temporary
Disneyfication of Warner Bros. Cartoons" covers Thorson's time at Warners
from approximately 1938 to 1940, where Thorson contributed character designs
for cartoons directed by Chuck Jones, Tex Avery, and Bugs Hardaway and Cal
Dalton. Walz does a thorough job of documenting Thorson's influence on the
Jones unit but the Merrie Melodies that Thorson worked on were only a part
of the Warner output. Whatever Disneyfication was going on through Thorson's
work was being counterbalanced by the black and white Looney Tunes of the
same period. Walz statement that, "Prior to 1940 the [Warner] studio
paid homage to Disney's creations or used them in a lighthearted spirit of
fun. After 1940, the animators felt free to satirize Disney characters and
stories, to assume a position that was, for the most part, intellectually
superior to Disney's sentimentality and artfulness," is a simplification
that ignores work in the 1930's by Avery, Tashlin, Clampett and Freleng.
Bill Mikulak's article, "Fans versus Time Warner: Who Owns Looney Tunes?"
examines legal battles between Time-Warner and fans who use the World Wide
Web to post images and fiction featuring Warner characters. Unfortunately,
the article veers off the track by examining work that is deemed by some to
be offensive or pornographic. These works not only potentially violate copyright
and trademark laws, they also potentially violate obscenity laws. This obscures
the main question that needs to be examined. In a society where culture is
manufactured by corporations, is it possible for individuals to comment on
their own culture in any fixed medium without violating commercial law? Is
Time-Warner stronger than the first amendment of the U.S. constitution?
It Isn't Pretty
Those interested in the history of Warner cartoons will find this volume
very slight. Those interested in speculation on how Warner cartoons have affected
pop culture or have been affected by it will find more of interest here, but
on the whole the articles are a disappointment. Whose ironic comment is it
that the cover image of Bugs Bunny is one where he has been squashed flat?
One can only regret that Mike Maltese is not alive to write a Bugs Bunny cartoon
where Bugs burrows into a university after making a wrong turn at Albuquerque.
Now there's a confrontation between Warner cartoons and academia that would
be far more enlightening.
Reading the Rabbit: Explorations in Warner Bros. Animation, edited
by Kevin S. Sandler. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press,
1998. 288 pages. ISBN: 0-8135-2538-1 (U.S. $19.00 paperback). This book is
available on-line in the Animation
World Store.
Mark Mayerson has worked in the animation business since 1976. He is currently
directing episodes of Monster By Mistake, a computer animated TV series
he created.
Note: Readers may contact any Animation World Magazine contributor by sending an e-mail to editor@awn.com.
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