httpv:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Nny5KfI_nks&feature=related<\/p>\n
“Beanstock Bunny”<\/em><\/p>\n I can’t even pretend embarrassment here. These Warner Brothers cartoons are classics — they’re funny and grownup and look pretty good after almost sixty years.<\/p>\n I also confess a preference. Sure, Bugs Bunny is the breadwinner, but I always sorta preferred Daffy Duck. The two of them in combination is of course irresistible: eiron<\/em> vs alazon<\/em>.<\/p>\n And that reference provides the cue to exploitable Frye-relevance. Here he is in “Towards a Theory of Cultural History”:<\/p>\n The conception of irony meets us in Aristotle’s Ethics<\/em>, where the eiron<\/em> is the man who deprecates himself, as opposed to the alazon<\/em>.\u00a0 Such a man makes himself invulnerable, and, though Aristotle disapproves of him, there is no question that he is a predestined artist, just as the alazon<\/em> is one of his predestined victims.\u00a0 The term “irony,” then, indicates a technique of appearing to be less than one is, which in literature becomes most commonly a technique of saying as little and meaning as much as possible, or, in a more general way, a pattern of words that turns away from direct statement or its own obvious meaning.\u00a0 (CW<\/em> 21, 157)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n And here he puts the animated cartoon in the context of the “media revolutions” he’d experienced in his lifetime:<\/p>\n In my childhood were the silent movies, which were lineally descended from the puppet show.\u00a0 The comedies of Larry Seton, Harold Lloyd, Mack Sennett, were funny in a way that no spoken comedy can possibly be: naturally the spoken lines, which had to be printed, were kept to a minimum in any case.\u00a0 I remember seeing a movie, colored and talking, which was a comedy, and being bored by it: but at the beginning there was a reference to the early knockabout silent comedies of the pie-throwing kind, with a brief illustration, and I laughed until I nearly fell out of my seat.\u00a0 Similarly, with children at a Punch and Judy show.\u00a0 Some types of movie, notably the Disney and other animated cartoons, continued this totally disembodied puppet convention: in television it only survives in things like Sesame Street, which are addressed to small children.\u00a0 (CW<\/em> 25, 197)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Phew! Without further ado, more Bugs and Daffy after the jump.<\/p>\n httpv:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Yrse3WqmNv4&feature=related<\/p>\n The meta-cartoon “Duck Amuck.”\u00a0 (This is my first use of the term “meta-cartoon.”) httpv:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=LyPFQKpRnd0&feature=related<\/p>\n A brilliant two minutes from “Rabbit Seasoning,” with the simultaneously side-splitting and heart-rending line, “Pronoun trouble.”<\/em><\/p>\n httpv:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=GQjcJgHvkRg&feature=related<\/p>\n Variations on the same theme in a compilation from a number of cartoons.\u00a0 It never gets old.<\/em><\/p>\n httpv:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=-pChZeIE_3o<\/p>\n Finally, the place this bit eventually has to go. . .<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" httpv:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Nny5KfI_nks&feature=related “Beanstock Bunny” I can’t even pretend embarrassment here. These Warner Brothers cartoons are classics — they’re funny and grownup and look pretty good after almost sixty years. I also confess a preference. Sure, Bugs Bunny is the breadwinner, but I always sorta preferred Daffy Duck. The two of them in combination is of course […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[101,123,140],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movies","category-popular-culture","category-saturday-night"],"yoast_head":"\n
\n<\/em><\/p>\n