#1 - Bugs Bunny - "Fresh Hare"

This video is located at Archives.org, which has many archived media items available. http://www.archive.org/details/merry_melodies_fresh_hare

Due to some technical difficulties, I've since embedded this video from YouTube.

This first media piece that I chose to look at is a Bugs Bunny (Merry Melodies) cartoon produced by I. Freeleng called Fresh Hare. The cartoon was created in 1942, but ran as recently as the mid/early-90’s because I remember watching it as a child and it actually being one of my favorite Bugs Bunny cartoons. In this episode, Canadian Mounted Policeman, Elmer Fudd, is looking to catch Bugs “dead or alive.” Throughout Elmer Fudd chases the beloved rabbit through the snow, and almost catches him several times only to be thwarted by superior wit. The whole episode is innocent until the very end. After being asked if he has any last wishes Bugs breaks into the song “Camp-town Races” and before you know it all of the characters are represented in black face singing happily and bouncing to the song. I chose this media item because, like I said, it was one of my favorite cartoons as a child and now the ending doesn’t mean the same thing to me that it did then. Once it was just a funny song, sang by brown-faced characters. At that time I didn’t know what “Black-face” was nor had I encountered much diversity what-so-ever.

This piece relates to a couple different class pieces to me, some more directly than others. The main piece that it really represents is the Ethnic Notions video that we watched. Not only were Bugs, Elmer and the others shown in “Black-face” which has a negative connotative effect on black culture itself, the characters are also perfect examples of the “happy Sambo” explained in Ethnic Notions. I also feel that this piece sort of ties into the chapters of Johnson that we read dealing with privilege. At 6/7/8 years old, it was because of white privilege that I had never encountered (or at least consciously encountered) racism before. I was allowed to be innocent and take scenes such as this Bugs Bunny one in and think nothing of it. However, now, looking back on it, I feel that my watching it as a child helped build up an immunity to racial issue.

Although one could argue that the cartoon is in no way making fun of Black culture, that it was only representing popular entertainment outlets of its time (as some viewers on its review board at Archives.org have posted), the fact that the scene really doesn’t tie into the story at all, and isn’t even prompted by anything in the end to explain its appearance, says something about the writers intentions. As I started to allude to at the end of the last paragraph, I feel that adult writers put these sorts of scenes into cartoons (because let’s face it, this is not the only discriminatory cartoon watched by children) to build up the next generation of children’s tolerance for such bigotry and to even help them form negative opinions about other races. For example, watching this clip may cause a young child to form the opinion that because Bugs looks funny in “Black-face,” black people look funny and break into song nonsensically. Many of the same reviewers of the message board, ask more offended authors to “lighten up” because the cartoon is just “entertainment,” but is entertainment at the expense of another group of people (especially entertainment aimed at very impressionable young children) really to be looked at with a blind-eye? This cartoon is a very good indication of the views of the day and how adults had no convictions about starting discrimination in their children early and through whatever means available.