Blasphemers!

by Liberty and Power

This sacrilege against a revered pantheon seems to me to be unspeakably stupid.

More Comments:

Chris Matthew Sciabarra - 2/19/2005

than the original. Now, truth be told: Even the original went through various incarnations before settling on "Classic Bugs." The same can be said for virtually all cartoon characters from Mickey Mouse to Popeye. But this "new" Bugs is just BULL. I realize that they want to "speak" to a new generation, but I'm an unreconstructed Classic Bugs Bunny fan.

And I agree with everything Aeon and Steve have said about the dialectical subtext here. :)

On principle, I will continue to watch the Cartoon Network cable channel Boomerang.

Aeon J. Skoble - 2/19/2005

Jesse Walker has some interesting thoughts on this issue here.

Sheldon Richman - 2/18/2005

Chuck Jones and Mel Blanc are spinning in their graves.

Kenneth R Gregg - 2/18/2005

The old WB cartoons are rarely seen on television intact today. The "wham, bam, fall off the cliff" scenes are cut so as not to show violence on the screen.

Many of them are so trimmed down that it is difficult even to follow the story line.

The more recent ones are so "PC" that they cannot keep the interest of kids today, which is why there is a significant rise of anime. They are just not imaginative or creative, and Warner Brothers knows this.

By using scary characters (and I'm curious to see how they handle conflict in the plots), but ones that have a connection with their stable of regulars, WB is experimenting with ways to make a comeback in animation.

We shall see.

Just a thought.
Just Ken

Steven Horwitz - 2/18/2005

I take the classic "Duck Season!" -- "Rabbit Season!" exchange as recapitulating the hegelian thesis-antithesis dialectic. But maybe Chris has a better line on that.

Brilliant Aeon! That explains the later version where it turns out that it's really "Elmer Season" which is, of course, the synthesis of the dialectic. And perhaps Elmer's famous retort "Oh, that's okay, I'm a vegetarian" is the negation of the thesis-antithesis dialectic.

I must also resupply a relevant link I provided last month: http://www.nonstick.com/sounds

Aeon J. Skoble - 2/18/2005

Not sure how cruel they were. Bugs Bunny only gives grief to those who deserve it. Sylvester wants to eat Tweety, but that's natural for cats, not cruelty. Ditto for the Coyote; the Road Runner exclusively acts in self-defense. I concede Marvin the Martian is cruel, but his designs are thwarted -- by none other than Bugs Bunny, who this, clearly, _isn't_ amoral. It's his sense of Justice (not to mention enlightened self-interest) which motivates him to act against Marvin. Bugs and Daffy sometimes seem to treat each other cruelly, but perhaps that's better understood as friendly rivalry. I take the classic "Duck Season!" -- "Rabbit Season!" exchange as recapitulating the hegelian thesis-antithesis dialectic. But maybe Chris has a better line on that.

Jonathan Dresner - 2/18/2005

The original cartoons were named "loony" in a time when that term carried a great deal more weight as a descriptor of twisted psychosis than it does now, and the characters are amoral and cruel, with varying levels of intelligence being their only real difference. The visual impact of the new characters is much more in line with that fundamental tradition: changing them to "superheroes" is much deeper and more troubling a change, though it is entirely in line with the strain of "good guys who do not play by the rules" heroes in popular culture.

Max Swing - 2/18/2005

Well, there is nothing with a redo of the original show, but I don't think that this "modernizing" is true to art itself.
They don't represent what the old cartoon personas stood for. They nether look amiably nor do they have the handsome tweak the old Rabbits, ducks and so on had.

If you have to do a remake, then do it properly - At least, that is my opinion. And I can't really identify the loony toons in any of these "evilly"-thin caricatures that look like a mix of diet-fashionable minimalism in painting :)
There is no heart and no charme in these pushed shapes...

William Marina - 2/18/2005

Gosh, I never imagined the Rabbit was a sacred object on the level with, say, Randian Scriptures.
The cartoonist, by picking such a distant date, with such nasty appearing lunatics might be trying to convey the sense that America is not headed in the best direction.
MSNBC also carried an excellent piece, picked up to my knowledge only by Gary North in his newsletter about criminals having broken into a data base which has the greatest info on all of us, and which also serves gov't agencies as well as corporations as clients.
Big Brother has had his pocket picked.

Steven Horwitz - 2/18/2005

Now THIS is a sacrilege ALL libertarians can agree on. ;)