For National Bugs Bunny Day: Bugs Bunny vs. The Nazis

Having mentioned Bugs Bunny some 50 times on Travalanche, I wanted to finally do a post on the rascally rabbit for Bugs Bunny Day (April 30, in honor of the anniversary of his appearance, sorta, in 1938). I hesitated briefly about doing so this year on account of a more sober and timely statement I had just made in my previous post — but luckily I thought of an obvious way to tie the two posts together.

There have been times when I have been tempted to call Bugs Bunny America’s greatest comedian. I have certainly spent more hours of my life watching him, I suspect, than any flesh-and-blood funny man. It feels that way anyway — the reality is probably that I spent more years watching him with frequency — probably 15 years watching Bugs Bunny cartoons at first weekly on Saturday mornings, and then by high school and for a short time afterward, watching them almost daily. Only later did I realize certain things about him, for instance that there are ways that the character resembles those of Charlie Chaplin and the Marx Brothers (his quicksilver mutability and his knee-jerk anti-authoritarianism) and there are lots of early shorts in which he seems very similar to the young Milton Berle (Milty has those rabbity teeth). His brash familiarity (calling strangers “doc” or “mac” or “shorty”) reminds me also of Phil Silvers. His love of carrots is his vice, and note that he is usually holding one, munching it between lines like a comedian (Groucho, George Burns, etc) smoking a cigar). He is like all comedians rolled into one.

The craziest thing to me is that (admittedly like most cartoon characters, and plenty of screen comedians too, for that matter) is that Bugs Bunny was created essentially by COMMITTEE, numerous Warner Brothers animators, writers, directors, and of course the voice over actor Mel Blanc, who breathed life into him. And of course he evolved over time. In the first short in which a prototypical Bugs appears in 1938, the character is quite different from what he became. By around 1940 the idea begins to coalesce, and he continues to grow and change throughout the years. New Bugs Bunny cartoons of the classic era were produced through 1964. When he returned in later years for various purposes (commercials, revivals, feature films), the results were always far from satisfactory.

But the classic Bugs of the ’40s and ’50s was glorious, and we knew this even as kids. Oh how America loved BROOKLYN during those decades (come to think of it, Bugs talks kind of like a Bowery Boy, too). He was one of the people, rabbithood notwithstanding. His accent is working class, and that dese and dose New York dialect suggests an immigrant identity. This is never explicit and I hate people who are too literal about interpreting such things. But it’s just…vaguely at the back of our minds, as we watch. We love Bugs because, despite his bottomless hole of magic tricks, he is one of us. He doesn’t put on airs.

The formula is that he’s usually just minding his own business, taking a bath, going on vacation, indulging in some hobby — when a HOSTILE INTRUDER arrives. Often it is a hunter (Porky Pig or Elmer Fudd) who wants to shoot him for dinner. Or, say Marvin the Martian, who wants to dis-integrate him. Others like Yosemite Sam, or the Tasmanian Devil, or that Bull in the arena, are simply scary and violent. These are bad guys punching down, so it is delicious when Bugs repeatedly foils them repeatedly in their designs, and particularly entertaining when they get more and more furious. And then sometimes the dynamic is reversed. Another formula is that Daffy Duck or another character come in as foils or rivals and want to compete with Bugs for some prize. In those cases, it’s the other character that’s the underdog, but they don’t get our sympathy because they play dirty. They have mean spirits. And Bugs remains the hero, because he is aloof. He doesn’t care about the victory so much, he just wants to teach the irritant a lesson.

Which brings us to the World War Two years. This is when the Bugs Bunny character EXPLODED (see what I did there?) in popularity, and shot above the other Warner Brothers characters permanently as the primary star of the animation unit. I always thought that he was Warner Brothers’ equivalent to Disney’s Mickey Mouse as a mascot for the brand, which made it so stupid when the WB used Michigan J. Frog for that purpose. That’s just bad marketing. You gotta go with your assets. Anyway, during WWII Bugs got to tussle with some MAJOR antagonists: Hitler and various Japanese characters. These shorts often lean on ugly racial and ethnic stereotypes, but the U.S. were fighting these countries in a war at the time, and well, this was 80 years ago. Vaudeville was a mere decade in the rear view mirror. What were they going to be in an animated cartoon about enemies at the time — respectful? Hey, it would be nice, but frankly, it’s a bit much to expect given the context. Still, Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips (1944) goes too far. You can’t even get your hand on that one anymore. Easier to take is Herr Meets Herr (1945) in which Herrmann Goering is presented like this, a corpulent oaf in leiderhosen, hunting with a medieval blunderbuss:

It’s like Elmer Fudd squared. And if it’s fun to infuriate Elmer, how fun is it to piss off these stupid Nazi, Fascist, and Imperial stiffs on the other side of the world? It is very much in this tradition. Little guys punching back at the pigs and maniacs who want to rule the world and need to be taken down a few pegs.

After the war, the Warner Brothers team maintained the anti-tyrant formula. One of my favorite of the later ones is Shiskabugs (1962), in which Yosemite Sam is a cook acting on behalf of an English king who keeps demanding hasenpfeffer (the protein for which will consist of a carved-up Bugs). The depiction of the king in this cartoon is a satirical feast, one part Charles Laughton, one part Mad King George, a loathsome slug of a baby-man who never moves his ass off the throne he’s parked on as he keeps demanding his chow. In 1962 these artists still remembered how Americans are supposed to feel about kings. Somewhere down the line that seems to have been forgotten. Having lived through those years, I can tell you precisely when that was lost. It was during the Reagan years. So happy the No Kings spirit is back.