Looney Tunes: Difference between revisions

''When he plays his fiddle I just go on a spree''

''It's a cinch that every time I go on the air''

 

 

Originally, [[Artifact Title|as the names indicate]], these cartoons were meant to rip off the sweet, sentimental musical shorts then in vogue: for instance, Disney's ''[[Silly Symphonies]]''. That basing cartoons around popular public-domain songs—or, even better, ones the studio already owned—was a fast and relatively cheap way of producing them didn't hurt any, either.

 

 

When ''Looney Tunes'' switched to color in 1942, and the ''Merrie Melodies'' line ditched the music around the same time in favor of its own rising star—one [[Bugs Bunny/Characters|Bugs Bunny]]—differences between the two were limited to their distinctive theme songs, until 1964 (when both series wound up using the same theme music as a result of using a modernized, and slightly bizarre, opening/closing sequence).

** One particular example is in "The Whizzard of Ow", wherein during the climax, Wile E. Coyote's mode of transportation turns into a crocodile, which proceeds to bite the Coyote's nose off.

* [[Born in the Theatre]]: Most Looney Tunes, classic or modern, aired in theaters before they aired on television, and they often have gags messing with the [[Fourth Wall]] of [[Film]].

* [[Breaking the Fourth Wall]]: The damage done to it ranges from large cracks to pulverizing it to a fine powder. On more than one occasion, near the end of a cartoon, the film suddenly breaks, leaving the screen white. A character from the cartoon then steps out onto the white screen and says, "Ladies and gentlemen, due to circumstances beyond our control, we are unable to continue with this picture."

* [[Breakout Character]]: THE WHOLE SERIES has lived and breathed this trope. It all started with Friz's [[Batman Gambit]] in 1935 to jump start Leon's ailing cartoon studio with several new cartoon characters in the short "I Haven't Got A Hat"-two pups named Ham and Ex, Kitty, Oliver Owl, Beans the Cat and Porky Pig. Porky was an instant hit with audiences, even though the studio thought for some reason that [[Flat Character|Beans]] would be the studio's next bankable star-but he too quickly faded into obscurity while Porky became the studio's star--'''THEN''', two more stars broke out from Porky's cartoons-a little [[Daffy Duck]] from "Porky's Duck Hunt" and the [[Bugs Bunny]] prototype "Happy Hare/Bugs' Bunny" from "Porky's Hare Hunt", "Hare-Um Scare-Um" and "Presto-Change-O." Oh, and Bugs Bunny himself obviously.

** 1939's "[[Old Glory]]" is educational as well, though unlike the aforementioned Sloan shorts, it doesn't contain comedy at all. Rather, it's a history lesson on the Revolutionary War and the formation of the U.S., with Porky learning about it from Uncle Sam in the wraparounds.

* [[Eek! A Mouse!]]

* [[Epic Fail]]: Wile E. Coyote's specialty.

* [[Era Specific Personality]]

* [[Flanderization]]: Different directors often focussed on different aspects of a character, most notably with Daffy, Bugs, Elmer Fudd, and Porky.

** This even got a [[Lampshade]] during an [[Affectionate Parody]] of ''[[Invasion of the Body Snatchers]]''.

* [[Fluffy Cloud Heaven]]: "Sunday Go To Meetin' Time," "Clean Pastures," "Daffy Duck And The Dinosaur," "Back Alley Oproar."

* [[Force Feeding]]: "Pigs Is Pigs", "A Tale of Two Mice" and "Chow Hound"

* [[Forgot I Could Fly]]: This became a running gag for Daffy in the Duck Dodgers spin-off and recent webtoons on the Looney Tunes website.

* [[Glove Slap]]: Seen in numerous cartoons when a character challenges another to a duel, but perhaps the most widely remembered one comes from "Hare Trimmed".

* [[The Golden Age of Animation]]: The original shorts were a product of this. Since then the characters have been successively (if not always successfully) deployed in the medium's [[The Dark Age of Animation|Dark]], [[The Renaissance Age of Animation|Renaissance]], and [[The Millennium Age of Animation|Millennium]] ages.

* [[Gravity Is a Harsh Mistress]]: And it's ''always'' a looooong way down, especially in Wile E. Coyote's case. [[Gravity Is a Harsh Seamstress]], too.

* [[Hair-Trigger Avalanche]]: Demonstrated in "The Iceman Ducketh" when Daffy accidentally sets off an avalanche by shouting.

* [[Lazy Artist]]: It's extremely rare, but it's quite noticeable when it happens. Two occur in 1943's "Porky Pig's Feat": As Daffy issues a challenge to the hotel manager, a cel of Daffy is photographed painted side up in a frame (The redrawn version even renders that errant cel drawing!). At the end when Porky and Daffy discover Bugs Bunny in the adjacent room, Daffy's left arm is shown unpainted.

** Lampshaded in "Invasion Of The Bunny Snatchers" (1992). Pod carrots from space replace Daffy, Yosemite Sam and Elmer with poorly drawn and animated duplicates.

** Carl Stalling had a tendency to associate tunes with specific characters. Foghorn Leghorn sings or hums "The Camptown Races" in numerous shorts.

** "I Cover the Waterfront" was often used during establishing shots of docks and harbors.

* [[Musical Episode]]: "Swooner Crooner".

** "Katnip Kollege".

** Owl Jolson's, too, in "I Love to Singa".

* [[My God, What Have I Done?]]: This is pretty much Elmer Fudd's reaction whenever he ''thinks'' he's finally killed Bugs. No matter how hard he's been trying throughout the episode to shoot Bugs he always breaks down in tears when he thinks he's finally done it, calling himself a murderer. Which calls into question why he's a hunter in the first place.

** In ''Hare-Um Scare-Um'' (1939), hunter John Sourpuss tells proto-Bugs Bunny that "I can whip you and your whole family!" A bunch of bunnies arrive to take him up on the challenge—then the film cuts off. In the original ending, the looney rabbits beat Sourpuss up on-camera, eventually driving him looney himself. Though no hard evidence has been found, it's often speculated that the scene was deleted for being too similar to the ending of ''Daffy Duck And Egghead'' one year prior.

** "Ride Him, Bosko!" is probably the standout example; [[Breaking the Fourth Wall|the animators]] just [[Screw This, I'm Outta Here|up and leave]] without showing if Bosko rescues Honey or not.

* [[No Fourth Wall]]: [[Duck Amuck]] is one of the most famous and insane examples ever made.

* [[No Guy Wants to Be Chased]]: Is used quite often whenever a female [[Abhorrent Admirer]] goes after one of the male characters. Was also used in three Pepé Le Pew cartoons (1949's "For Scent-imental Reasons," 1952's "Little Beau Pepé ," and 1959's "Really Scent"), proving to modern audiences that, yeah, Pepé may be seen as a "rapist," but he's not a [[Karma Houdini]] (in those instances at least).

* [[Real Joke Name]]: Doctor Quack in ''The Daffy Doc''

* [[Rearrange the Song]]: There are different arrangements of each of the Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes opening themes. In particular, "Merrily We Roll Along" and "The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down" got a ton of adjustments over the years.

* [[Rebus Bubble]] combined with [[Talking with Signs]] gets you Bugs' mockery of his foes by holding up a sign with "(picture of a screw) + (picture of a baseball)" or a picture of bats circling a belfry.

* [[Recitation Handclasp]]: Giovanni Jones (the fat opera singer) assumes this posture in "Long Haired Hare."

* [[Stalker with a Crush]]: Though a lot of major and minor Looney Tunes characters have been this on occasion, Pepé Le Pew is possibly (nay, undisputedly) the only character whose schtick is this (along with [[Handsome Lech]], [[Mad Love]], [[Chivalrous Pervert]], [[Abhorrent Admirer]] [for both sexes], [[The Masochism Tango]] [1953's "Wild Over You"], [[Black Comedy Rape]] [if you believe Dave Chappelle and those uptight [[Moral Guardians]]], a pinch of [[No Guy Wants to Be Chased]], some [[The Hunter Becomes the Hunted]] for taste, and a nice helping of [[Double Entendre]])

* [[Stock Audio Clip]]: The Roadrunner's "Meep Meep".

** The first opening to The Bugs Bunny and Tweety Show (i.e. the one without the new Darrell Van Citters animation) reuses the Bugs and Daffy song and dance animation from The Bugs Bunny Show's opening.

* [[Stuff Blowing Up]]: To the point where they [[Stock Footage|recycle the same explosion footage]] at almost every opportunity.

* [[Turtle Island]]: In "The Ducktators," an Emperor Hirohito duck places a sign on a turtle, who gets mad and beats him up with said sign (despite that the duck briefly stops him to show a button that reads, "I am Chinese"—a reference to Chinese-American immigrants who were mistaken for Japanese and were put in internment camps because of it).

* [[Uncancelled]]: A few times. The first was in 1953 when WB temporarily closed the cartoon unit for a few months, due to a variety of factors like the 3-D fad; the unit opened a few months later. The next was in 1963 when WB, facing increasingly stiff competition from TV and less theaters running theatrical shorts before movies, shut the cartoon unit down again. From 1964 to 1967, cartoons were produced at DePatie-Freleng instead. In 1967, production resumed at Warner Bros. but only two years later, the cartoon division was shut down for good.

* [[Unexplained Recovery]]:

** A [[Running Gag]] involves characters like Wile E. Coyote getting seriously injured and then being perfectly fine in the next scene with no explanation as to how they recovered from their injuries.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Animated Films]]

[[Category:Cartoon Network]]

[[Category:The Golden Age of Animation]]

[[Category:Kids WB]]

[[Category:Looney Tunes in the Thirties]]

[[Category:Looney Tunes in the Fifties]]

[[Category:Trope Overdosed]]

[[Category:Western Animation]]

[[Category:Zany Cartoon]]