Odds & Ends
Saturday, February 19, 2005
Buggered Bunny, Part 2
As a follow-up to Thursday's post, here is the full line-up of Loonatics:  At the risk of devoting too much time and thought to a show that will quickly flop and be forgotten, Amid Amidi at Cartoon Brew followed up Jerry Beck's post with an interesting take: A friend last night made this perceptive comment about the new Looney Tunes-inspired TV series LOONATICS: "Warners has already desecrated these characters so many times, why the hell would anybody care at this point?" That pretty succinctly sums up how I feel about the new series. When you've had BABY LOONEY TUNES, DUCK DODGERS, SPACE JAM, LOONEY TUNES: BACK IN ACTION, and the new Looney Tunes theatrical shorts that were so atrociously incompetent that Warner Bros. declined to publicly release them, why would audiences suddenly, now of all times, feel an urge to get up in arms over this particular misinterpretation of the Warner stock company. Let's face it, Warner Bros. cartoons were done and over with forty years ago. Isn't it about time we rid ourselves of this unhealthy fetish for geriatric cartoon characters? We can enjoy them and appreciate them anytime we want on the Looney Tunes Golden DVD collection and in any number of revival screenings. Shouldn't that be enough? Chuck, Friz, Tex; they're all dead and don't give a rat's ass about what's going on. Why should we? It's pointless to shed tears because Beloved Bugs is now named "Buzz Bunny" (apparently after a popular women's sex toy) and drawn anime-style by some white boy who's watched one too many episodes of FLCL. My problem with this argument - apart from the fairly gratuitous references to Bugs as "tired," "geriatric," etc - is that I don't buy that a project like this happens instead of some inspired new work by an up-and-coming animator. The last few decades have seen plenty of inspired animation, and it hasn't been threatened by the presence of the low end of the market: crappy superhero cartoons made for TV. The problem is when you pull the classic characters down to that level and deface them. That said, I'm actually not that worried or offended about things like Loonatics. It's more funny than offensive. (I think I would feel differently if it were hard to get hold of the originals, but Disney and Warner Brothers are being pretty good about releasing their classic cartoons uncut on DVD). But I don't accept Amidi's take that the characters should be put out to pasture either. What I'd like to see is some quality new work done with Bugs and the rest. After all, in the classic Warner days, the characters were handed from one director to another, with different approaches to them over a couple of decades. Chuck Jones's Daffy of the fifties was very different from Bob Clampett's in the thirties. It would be nice if Warners could could continue that tradition by doing quality new Looney Tunes cartoons, and seeing if new artists could spark with them in new and interesting ways. Good new work with old characters doesn't stifle opportunity for new artists and new characters: it creates it by fuelling interest in animation across the board. When the legacy of an animation studio is in healthy shape and reaping rewards, it just creates new opportunities for other original work to occur also. What started the 90s animation boom? It was the revival of forties animation in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and the rebirth of the classical Disney tradition with The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and the rest. And despite the fact that boom superficially seems to have ended in disaster, those fairly old-fashioned cartoons did indirectly lead the way to all sorts of interesting stuff: the Pixar films, The Simpsons, South Park, Futurama... A healthy nostalgia market for classic animation is, I think, good for the industry as a whole. And finally, before I sign off on this subject once and for all, you can enjoy the mind-boggling Loonatics promo film here. Labels: buzz bunny Posted by Stephen Rowley @ 19.2.05  
Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home
|
This page is for assorted musings and editorialising that don't fit elsewhere on Cinephobia. It's Whatever Turns You On: The Goodies on DVD Whose Casino Royale is it though? Eternal Autumn of the Brainless Oscar Revenge of the Sith - The Opening Crawl The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy The Cinephobia Blog? The Incredibles & The Polar Express Mike Moore's Palme D'Or and Quentin Tarantino's Ca... The Departure of Disney December 2003 May 2004 December 2004 January 2005 February 2005 March 2005 April 2005 May 2005 June 2005 July 2005 August 2005 September 2005 October 2005 November 2005 December 2005 January 2006 February 2006 March 2006 April 2006 May 2006 June 2006 August 2006 September 2006 October 2006 December 2006 January 2007 February 2007 March 2007 April 2007 May 2007 June 2007 July 2007 August 2007 September 2007 October 2007 December 2007 January 2008 February 2008 March 2008 April 2008 May 2008 Want to contact me? |