The Loonies Take Over Looney Tunes

Those of us who grew up watching the Looney Tunes cartoons well remember that they were not always what we today would call "politically correct", but they were funny. In fact you can find examples of stuff that could never be made today throughout many of the old cartoons from Warner Brothers, Disney, or anyone else (remember the crows in Dumbo - do you think you could make that movie today?)

Mark Steyn is a cartoon aficionado, and he recently purchased the new collection of Looney Tunes cartoons. Here's what he found when he started up the DVD:

Already, 85 percent of Hollywood's business comes from home entertainment -- DVDs and the like. Suits me. Or so I thought until, on the way home from the hell of Harry Potter, I stopped to buy the third boxed set in the ''Looney Tunes Golden Collection.'' Loved the first two: Daffy, Bugs, Porky, beautifully restored, tons of special features. But, for some reason, this new set begins with a special announcement by Whoopi Goldberg explaining what it is we're not meant to find funny: ''Unfortunately at that time racial and ethnic differences were caricatured in ways that may have embarrassed and even hurt people of color, women and ethnic groups,'' she tells us sternly. ''These jokes were wrong then and they're wrong today'' -- unlike, say, Whoopi Goldberg's most memorable joke of recent years, the one at that 2004 all-star Democratic Party gala in New York where she compared President Bush to her, um, private parts. There's a gag for the ages.

I don't know what Whoopi's making such a meal about. It's true you don't see many positive images of people of color on ''Looney Tunes,'' but then the images of people of non-color aren't terribly positive either (Elmer Fudd, Yosemite Sam). Instead, you see positive images of ducks of color, roadrunners of color and tweety birds of color. How weirdly reductive to be so obsessed about something so peripheral to these cartoons that you stick the same damn Whoopi Goldberg health warning on all four DVDs in the box. And don't think about hitting the "Next" button and skipping to the cartoons: You can't; you gotta sit through it.

Whoopi's statement that ''These jokes were wrong then and they're wrong today'' is clearly nonsense. The jokes may be wrong if you look at them with today's sensibilities, but they clearly weren't wrong back then or else they wouldn't have been in the cartoons.

One of the problems I have with revisionist history like this is that it attempts to judge historical events using today's morality. You cannot do that and be fair to history. You have to look at historical events, whether they be cartoons or political decisions, in the light of the morality of that day in order to fairly judge the decisions and outcomes that resulted.

James Lileks had a similar reaction as did Steyn:

Picked up my "Looney Tunes vol. 3", and was very excited. Finally: a chance to see if "Hillbilly Hare" was as funny as I recalled. I hadn't seen it in ten years - used to come around once every few months in the morning Warner Brothers cartoon show in DC. (I would get up, check local Fox TV - the best morning show at the time - then move directly to Looney Tunes.) I put in the disc and was instantly horrified to see Whoopie Goldberg enter the frame, looking like a character cut from "Battlefield Earth." She brings with her a strange set of implications: in another dimension, people think she is funny, but in private even those people do not think she is funny, but they do not dwell on the matter. Apparently to us yokels her presence is meant to indicate the presence, or at least the imminence, of hilarity. She warns us about the cartoons we are soon to behold. Warns us! It seems - odd as this may sound - they had many unexamined casual stereotypes back then, and these images found their way into cartoons. These jokes "hurt people of color, women and ethnic groups." Somehow I doubt stupid barefoot idiot hillbillies are an ethnic group. But they're mercilessly mocked - not only for their appearance or lack of intelligence, but their inability to resist the instructions of a rabbit whose square-dancing calls have the force of law.
And it gets worse: Bugs dresses up as a girl in this one - which could be seen as a shout-out to the transgendered-rabbit community, but once again he does it only to deceive and harm someone. From this we all learn the iron lesson of life: boys dressed up as girls are not dealing with the fluid nature of gender, but are attempting to make you flustered and grinny so they can either shoot you in the face or compel you to shoot yourself. (The effect of which usually clarifies the whole gender confusion, as it happens.) So don't trust cross-dressing rabbits.

You know, I would never expect a cross-dresser to make that argument. But I would expect someone else to make it on their behalf.

Note: "Hillbilly Hare" is better than I remember.

Apparently Hollywood wants to make millions by selling these classic cartoons, but is desperately afraid you'll actually laugh at them. I guess we're just supposed to look at them and shake our head in dismay at the ignorance of the writers and artists of the early days of cartooning.

So why sell them? If the work portrayed in these early cartoons is so desperately "wrong" as the Whoopster alludes in her opening monologue, how could a responsible media firm allow them to be released?

It's all about the bucks, folks. By putting the unfunny Goldberg as the opener, and who by virtue of being a black woman can get away with about anything, the studios think they can inoculate themselves from any politically correct criticism they may receive from the perpetually offended who are likely to complain.

Just run the cartoons, media folks. We're big people now and can judge the content for ourselves.