Is Th-Th-Th-That All, Folks?
It’s been a while since I blogged here (and on my other three blogs), but I have a good reason for that. The good news is: I got into Job Corps and will be spending the next year or two training to be employable. The catch is that the position I want (medical assistant) is in Indiana Kentucky, which means I’ll be moving out of Pennsylvania. Yeah, I know, the Internet knows no bounds and I can reach you guys anywhere that has a halfway decent connection, but I’ll probably be working so hard that I won’t have time to blog.
I know, you guys, I’m upset too, but things like this can’t last forever (even if it is kinda short-lived). Besides, once I get my personal shit together, I’ll come back. If the Looney Tunes can spend 2009 not being available on DVD, then come back in 2010 as a single-disc DVD set centered on one character, then there’s hope for me.
With this knowledge, I’ve decided to dedicate this blog space for any corrections, retractions, additions, plugs, and admissions that have to do with classic cartoon information.
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Type: Correction/Plug
Re: Cartoon Short Edit/New DVDs
On the second half of my “Cut and Drawn” piece (the piece about the classic cartoon shorts with the worst edits when shown on TV), I stated that “Hare Trimmed” has yet to be released on DVD. In April 2010, “Hare Trimmed” will be released on DVD as part of a new cartoon shorts-only DVD set replacing the 4-disc Golden Collection. This collection is called Looney Tunes Superstars and will consist of one disc featuring cartoons by one character (kinda like the Golden Jubilee VHS collection where you have one video dedicated to Bugs Bunny cartoons, another focused on Daffy Duck [when he was a screwball *and* when he was a jerkass], etc). It’s pretty bare-bones (no commentaries or special features), but if you don’t want any frills with your cartoon short DVDs and just want the cartoons (Goddamnit!), then this is a sure buy. Don’t believe me? See for yourself
The Bugs Bunny DVD contains the following cartoons, a lot of which have been shown cut on TV:
1) Apes of Wrath (edited on ABC)
2) Bedevilled Rabbit (edited on ABC)
3) Bushy Hare (edited on Nickelodeon; banned on Cartoon Network)
4) Dr. Devil and Mr. Hare (edited on ABC and CBS — that thing about it being edited on The Merrie Melodies Show was a lie and has now been erased from Wikipedia).
5) False Hare (edited on CBS)
6) Foxy By Proxy (edited on ABC and some prints that have aired on local TV stations)
7) From Hair to Heir (edited on ABC)
8 ) Hare Trimmed (oh, you better believe this was edited on ABC. I’ll bet some of you out there have been watching the edited version for so long that watching it uncut will come as a shock to you).
9) Hare We Go (edited on ABC)
10) Lighter Than Hare (edited on CBS, The WB, and FOX)
11) Lumberjack Rabbit (far as I know, this was shown uncut, though I didn’t see the cartoon with the special 3D opening and closing cards until Cartoon Network starting airing it)
12) Mad As A Mars Hare (no edits, though I had never heard of this cartoon until I bought a VHS that had Marvin the Martian cartoons on it for my 16th birthday [along with a Pepe Le Pew pen] at a WB store in 2001. I vaguely remember seeing it on Nickelodeon, but didn’t remember the title. All I remembered was Bugs as some sort of monster who crushes Marvin the Martian).
13) The Million Hare (no edits, and I remember seeing this a lot on Nickelodeon, especially the part where Bugs says to himself, “I wonder if Daffy will ever realize that he can fly,” and a later, similar line that replaces “fly” with “swim”).
14) Mutiny on the Bunny (edited on ABC)
15) Napoleon Bunny-Part (edited on ABC)
The Daffy Duck DVD contains the following cartoons, some of which have been shown edited on TV:
1) Daffy’s Inn Trouble (edited on WB, TNT, and Cartoon Network [though CN did air this uncut at one point. I probably missed it because I don't remember seeing it uncut]).
2) Design for Leaving (edited on ABC and some syndicated versions)
3) Dime to Retire (it’s been said that Nickelodeon edited the ending where Daffy runs out the hotel with his butt on fire, but I’ve never seen it cut on Nickelodeon, so it’s been uncut on TV as far as I know).
4) Ducking the Devil (no edits, though I would have figured ABC or CBS would have cut the end where Daffy beats up Taz for the dollar Daffy dropped on the ground. Guess violence in cartoons is only allowed if it’s for money or the affections of a woman [or a cross-dressed Bugs Bunny]).
5) The Iceman Ducketh (edited on FOX’s version of “The Merrie Melodies Show,” the syndie run of “The Merrie Melodies Show,” and The WB)
6) People Are Bunny (edited on the FOX version of “The Merrie Melodies Show” and the syndie version of “The Merrie Melodies Show”)
7) Person to Bunny (edited on ABC and the FOX “Merrie Melodies Show”)
8 ) The Prize Pest (no edits, though $10 says that someone out there comes forward and says that ABC never aired this short after 1994 because Daffy says he has a split personality is a “schizophreniac.” Schizophrenia and a split personality [or multiple personality disorder] aren’t the same thing, and ABC has [or had] a Standards and Practices rule for its shows stating that mental illness couldn’t be mentioned or mocked).
9) Stork Naked (no edits, but Cartoon Network didn’t really air this one because of the part where the Drunken Stork visits an Indian reservation and celebrates with the tribe by drinking firewater. In the rare times I saw this cartoon, the Indian reservation part wasn’t cut).
10) Suppressed Duck (no edits)
11) This Is a Life? (edited on ABC and the syndie version of “The Merrie Melodies Show”)
12) Tick Tock Tuckered (no edits)
13) Nasty Quacks (no edits, though the director credit has been removed, but that was by design. At the time, Frank Tashlin left the studio and WB studio decided to let the cartoon go director-less)
14) Daffy Dilly (no edits, but a lot of people claim that this has been banned from network TV because of Daffy smoking when he accuses the butler of committing murder. Maybe it’s true, but I prefer to believe that this didn’t air on network TV because the short was made before July 1948 and network TV only aired cartoon shorts from July 1948 to the end of 1964 since those are the toons that are in color and the toons that most people remember when they think of Looney Tunes).
15) Wise Quackers (edited on ABC and the FOX version of Merrie Melodies; banned from…every other channel. I guess when the premise of the cartoon involves a black duck being a slave to a white hunter, there’s really no way in hell these modern, politically-correct TV exec types will ever air it, even if a few minor edits can be done to “fix” it).
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Type: Admission/Apology
Re: TVTropes.org entry
For those out of the know, TVTropes.org is a website where all the character types, plot devices, setting descriptions, and other entertainment phenomena are given names (and your favorite TV shows are analyzed for tropes). My personal favorite tropes are: Genki Girl (a hyperactive girl character), Getting Crap Past the Radar (when a TV show does something borderline risqué), Crapsack World (a place where everything bad happens all the time), What Happened to the Mouse (when a character or object is set up for a potential plotline or joke, but never given one), Brick Joke (the opposite of a “What Happened to the Mouse” moment where a character or object set up for a potential plotline or joke gets his/her/its punchline/storyline somewhere within the TV show or movie), Butt Monkey (a character who constantly gets pushed around, beaten up, or verbally berated — i.e., Krillin from Dragon Ball Z or Buster Bluth on Arrested Development), Funny Aneurysm Moment (a joke or funny reference that loses its humor when something tragic happens in connection with that joke/funny reference), and the different types of Fuels (Nightmare Fuel to scare and traumatize children, Paranoia Fuel to make people afraid of the world around them, Nausea Fuel to make people ill, and Fetish Fuel to sexually excite people with common [and not-so-common] kinks).
Anyway, a while back, while viewing the “Looney Tunes” entry to see if there were any good tropes (there are), I came across one called “Too Kinky to Torture,” where a character is put through so much physical hell and yet, isn’t the worse for wear from it (and in fact, comes to like it). I just saw the Bob Clampett cartoon, “The Wise Quacking Duck” and thought the ending to that would make a perfect example for it (see here and scroll down: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LooneyTunes). What followed was a three-page GoldenAgeCartoons.com thread about what I put down. Fortunately, no one knew I did it, and, yes, I should be happy that the blame was passed on to TVTropes, but I’m coming clean now to say that I, lauriedoublevie24, did it (my TVTropes name is XuxiRawe22), and I did it because I thought it would be funny. I didn’t mean for anyone to be traumatized over it.
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Type: Unknown/Unspecified
Re: Blog Entry
On June 23rd, 2009, David Germain (a moderator for Big Cartoon Database and creator of my personal favorite comic strip, The Censor Monkeys, from the Canadian province of Nova Scotia) wrote a blog essay about Looney Tunes character, Pepe Le Pew. He covered the things I would have covered had I done something similar: how the Pepe Le Pew character is a parody to Charles Boyer’s Pepe Le Moko character from the film, Algiers, how Pepe’s “great lovair” personality was not only an exaggeration of the French lover stereotype, but also based on Ted Pierce, a Termite Terrace writer known for being a party animal and a womanizer, and how the Pepe cartoons translate to modern audiences (the answer is “not well,” if you believe those who think the Pepe cartoons are sexist).
What I wanted to tell David Germain (which I’m doing now) is that not everyone has gotten the memo that the moral guardians have sapped the fun out of Pepe and made him out to be something wicked. The Looney Tunes comics published by DC Comics have Pepe as his womanizing self, only now, instead of Penelope the Cat, Pepe has gone after human women and, in one case, the bull from Bully for Bugs (this isn’t too surprising when you consider that Pepe Le Pew can come off as a Depraved Bisexual teetering on the edge of Anything That Moves (see TVTropes for the definitions of both terms) in the Golden Age cartoons. For crying out loud, the first cartoon had Pepe go after a male cat painted as a skunk — made all the more head-tilting when it’s revealed that Pepe has a wife and kids) and the cheesy French puns and innuendo are now bound by the Comic Code (which has surprisingly looser standards than the Hayes Office) and some of the stories even include third-party action from other characters — something that the classic cartoons didn’t do (though if you’re a purist, this make come across as a slap in the face to tradition).
I recommend reading the following DC Comics Looney Tunes stories as proof of what I just said:
La Cage Aux Pew (issue #46; November 1998)
Mind Your Manners: Polite Pre-Reek-Quisites (issue #47; December 1998 — this is a very good one because it even shows that Pepe can still offend while trying to be PC)
The Right Stink (issue #121; February 2005 — proof of just how much Pepe is a DB teetering on the edge of ATM)
There’s a website called Comics Overview of Looney Tunes that has summaries of issues #1-122 of the DC Comics Looney Tunes (though the summaries really don’t do the stories justice. You have to go to comic book store websites to find the issues in question).
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Well, that’s everything I wanted to admit. Hope no one’s worse off for it.
