Since the Victorian era, Edward Lear’s “The Owl and the Pussy-Cat” has been, for generation upon generation in the English-speaking world, the kind of poem that one simply knows, whether one remembers actually having read it or not. As with most such works that seep so permanently into the culture, it doesn’t quite represent its author in full. Though more or less of a piece with his celebrated “nonsense” verse (which I myself read in childhood, more than a century after its initial publication), it hints only vaguely at his intense artistic engagement with the natural world, through the observation and lively portrayal of which he made his name as an illustrator.
“Lear was an attentive and informed reader of Darwin; he worked with John Gould, the natural-history entrepreneur who had actually picked apart the varieties of finch that Darwin had brought back from the Galápagos Islands,” writes the New Yorker’s Adam Gopnik, noting that his work evidences a Linnaean obsession “with the power of naming, with sticking a tag on a thing which gives it a place at, and on, the table.” Lear gave Latin names to at least two real species of parrots, but he also fabricated such chimeras as Phattfacia Stupenda, Armchairia Comfortabilis, Tigerlilia Terribilis, examples of which he also illustrates in his Nonsense Botany series of the eighteen-seventies.
Lear’s “penchant for the natural world,” says The Dilettante, shaped his “knack for inventing ridiculous landscapes and anthropomorphizing all kind of creatures and objects. The result is a surreal Learean world of Scroobious Pips, Quangle Wangles, and Great Gromboolian Plains.” His “fanciful re-sculpting of the physical world is brilliantly exemplified” in his Nonsense Botany, with its “sketches and entertaining captions read as a taxonomy of incongruous plant-creatures.” Whether at the Public Domain Review or Project Gutenberg, you can gaze upon them all and experience not just light amusement, but also a kind of astonishment at Lear’s peculiar talent: he doesn’t “find the amazing in the ordinary,” as Gopnik puts it; “he finds the ordinary in the amazing.”
Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His projects include the Substack newsletterBooks on Cities and the book The Stateless City: a Walk through 21st-Century Los Angeles. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Facebook.
This past May, YouTuber Jenny Nicholson set off waves of social-media discourse with “The Spectacular Failure of the Star Wars Hotel,” a four-hour-long video critique of Disney’s hugely expensive, now-shuttered Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser in Orlando, Florida. Having gone viral enough to rack up over nine million views in less than two months, it’s arguably become more of a success than some recent Star Wars movies. In part, that owes to Nicholson’s having tapped into a growing discomfort, felt even among die-hard fans, with the transformation of an escapist space opera into an ever-vaster and less accountable business empire. The time has come, many seem to feel, to pop the Star Wars bubble.
Some, of course, have felt that way for a long time. “I dutifully thrilled to the earlier films, to their contrast of black-velvet skies and blinding white sands, but I was a little too old to worship them or study their variorum editions,” writes New Yorker film critic Anthony Lane in his review of The Phantom Menace, from 1999.
“Even in the late seventies, we had a suspicion that Star Wars was nerd territory.” That suspicion inspired such works as the Hardware Wars, the very first Star Wars parody. Released in 1978, this micro-budget production shot on Super 8 film spoofs the ramshackle bombast of the original StarWars, then still playing in theaters, in the form of a thirteen-minute-long fictional trailer.
“Steam irons and toasters suspended by clearly visible strings were the spaceships, a basketball was a planet on the brink of destruction, and the robot Artie Decko was a defunct vacuum cleaner,” writes Salon’s Bob Calhoun. But “from its cardboard sets to the costumes, Hardware Wars is an amazing facsimile of its source material, despite obvious budget and time constraints.” The goal of its creators Ernie Fosselius and Michael Wiese had been to meet Star Wars creator George Lucas, who later called it his favorite Star Wars parody. And indeed, its humor holds up these 46 years later, though younger viewers may need some help understanding the joke in a name like Augie Ben-Doggie, to say nothing of the final line, delivered by famed voice actor Paul Frees: “You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll kiss three bucks goodbye.” Above, you can watch Hardware Wars in a brand new HD transfer.
Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His projects include the Substack newsletterBooks on Cities and the book The Stateless City: a Walk through 21st-Century Los Angeles. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Facebook.
This weekend, Jerry Seinfeld gave the commencement speech at Duke University and offered the graduates his three keys to life: 1. bust your ass, 2. pay attention, and 3. fall in love. Then, 10 minutes later, he added essentially a fourth key to life: “Do not lose your sense of humor. You can have no idea at this point in your life how much you’re going to need it to get through. Not enough of life makes sense for you to be able to survive it without humor.” “It is worth the sacrifice of an occasional discomfort to have some laughs. Don’t lose that.” “Humor is the most powerful, most survival-essential quality you will ever have or need to navigate through the human experience.” Amen.
Your hosts Mark, Lawrence, Sarahlyn, and Al explore the characteristics of Jewish comedy with stand-up/graphic novelist Daniel, whose film Reconquistador explores his ancestors being kicked out of Spain. What’s the connection of Jewish humor to anti-semitism?
We talk about relating as a creator to your identity, Jewish people seeing themselves in film and TV, the experience of literally seeing yourself in a film, Jewish comedy as philosophy or social commentary, and “Jewish humor” vs. humor by people who happen to be Jewish.
We touch on Mel Brooks, Larry David, Adam Sandler, Woody Allen, Lenny Bruce, and feminist Jewish comedy shows such as Broad City, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, and Inside Amy Schumer.
FYI this was recorded back in early November when the Gaza war and its accompanying flurry of anti-Semitism was a bit more raw.
Hear more Pretty Much Pop, including many recent episodes that you haven’t seen on this site. Support the show and hear bonus talking for this and nearly every other episode at patreon.com/prettymuchpop or by choosing a paid subscription through Apple Podcasts. This week our supporter-exclusive Aftertalk includes our stories of seeing elderly performers; should you run out and see so-and-so before they’re dead?
Early in his collecting odyssey, animation historian, archivist, and educator Tommy José Stathes earned the honorific Cartoon Cryptozoologist from Cinebeasts, a “New York-based collective of film nerds, vidiots, and programmers investigating the furthest reaches of the moving image universe.”
More recently, George Willeman, a nitrate film expert on the Library of Congress’ film preservation team dubbed him “the King of Silent Animation.”
The seed of Stathes’ enduring passion took root in his 90s childhood, when slapped together VHS anthologies of cartoons from the 30s and 40s could be picked up for a couple of bucks in groceries and drugstores. These finds typically included one or two silent-era rarities, which is how he became acquainted with Felix the Cat and other favorites who now dominate his Early Animation Archive.
He squeezed his parents and grandparents for memories of cartoons screened on television and in theaters during their youth, and began researching the history of animation.
Realizing how few of the early cartoons he was learning about could be widely viewed, he set out to collect and archive as many examples as possible, and to share these treasures with new audiences.
His collection currently consists of some 4,000 animated reels, truffled up from antique shops, flea markets, and eBay. In addition to his Cartoons on Film YouTube channel, he hosts regular in-person Cartoon Carnivals, often curated around holiday themes.
Stathes’ passion project is giving many once-popular characters a second and in some cases, third act.
Take Farmer Alfalfa, (occasionally rendered as Al Falfa), the star of 1923’s The Fable of the Alley Cat, an installment in the Aesop’s Fables series, which ran from 1921 to 1929.
His first appearance was in director Paul Terry’s Down on Phoney Farm from 1915, but as Stathes observes, baby boomers grew up watching him on TV:
Nearly all of these folks who mention the character will also reference ‘hundreds’ of mice. Few may have realized that, while the Farmer Alfalfa cartoons running on television at that time were already old, the films starred one of the earliest recurring cartoon characters, and one that enjoyed an incredibly long career compared with his cartoon contemporaries.
The Fable of the Alley Cat honks a lot of familiar vintage cartoon horns — slapstick, mayhem, David triumphing over Goliath… cats and mice.
Stathes describes it as “a rather sinister day in the life of Farmer Al Falfa — It’s clear that the animal kingdom tends to despise him! — and his documentation is meticulous:
The version seen here was prepared for TV distribution in the 1950s by Stuart Productions. The music tracks were originally composed by Winston Sharples for the Van Beuren ‘Rainbow Parade’ cartoons in the mid-1930s.
The mismatched duo, Mutt and Jeff, got their start in daily newspaper comics, before making the leap to animated shorts.
Animation connoisseurs go bananas for the perspective shift at the 14 second mark of Laughing Gas (1917), a rarity Stathes shares as a reference copy from the original 35mm nitrate form, with the promise of a full restoration in the future.
(A number of Stathes’ acquisitions have deteriorated over the years or sustained damage through improper storage.)
Dinky Doodle and his dog Weakheart were 1920s Bray Studios crowdpleasers whose stint on television is evidenced by the midcentury voice over that was added to Dinky Doodle’s Bedtime Story (1926).
The characters’ creator, director Walter Lantz appears as “Pop” in the above live sequences.
Stathes’ collection also dredges up some objectionable period titles and content, Little Black Sambo, Redskin Blues, and Korn Plastered in Africa to name a few.
Stathes is mindful of contemporary sensibilities, but stops short of allowing them to scrub these works from the historic record. He warns would-be viewers of The Chinaman that it contains a “racist speech balloon as well as an intertitle that was cut from the later TV version for obvious reasons:”
Such was the vulgar terminology in those days. To question or censor these films would be denying our history.
Bugs Bunny is a quick-thinking, fast-talking, wascally force of nature, and a preternaturally gifted physical comedian, too.
But unlike such lasting greats as Charlie Chapin and Buster Keaton, it took him a while to find his iconic look.
His first appearance, as “Happy Rabbit” in the 1938 black and white theatrical short, Porky’s Hare Hunt, might remind you of those yearbook photos of celebrities before they were famous.
In a video essay considering how Bugs Bunny’s look has evolved over his eight-decade career, animation fan Dave Lee of the popular YouTube series Dave Lee Down Under breaks down some early characteristics, from an undefined, small body and oval-shaped head to white fur and a fluffy cotton ball of a tail.
His voice was also a work in progress, more Woody Woodpecker than the hybrid Brooklyn-Bronx patois that would make him, and voice actor Mel Blanc, famous.
The following year, the rabbit who would become Bugs Bunny returned in Prest‑o Change‑o, a Merry Melodies Technicolor short directed by Chuck Jones.
A few months later character designer (and former Disney animator) Charlie Thorson subjected him to a pretty noticeable makeover for Hare-um Scare-um, another rabbit hunting-themed romp.
The two-toned grey and white coat, oval muzzle, and mischievous buck-toothed grin are much more aligned with the Bugs most of us grew up watching.
His pear-shaped bod’, long neck, high-rumped stance, and pontoon feet allowed for a much greater range of motion.
A notation on the model sheet alluding to director Ben Hardaway’s nickname — “Bugs” — gives some hint as to how the world’s most popular cartoon character came by his stage name.
For 1940’s Elmer’s Candid Camera, the pink-muzzled Bugs dropped the yellow gloves Thorsen had given him and affected some black ear tips.
Tex Avery, who was in line to direct the pair in the Academy Award-nominated short A Wild Hare, found this look objectionably cute.
He tasked animator Bob Givens with giving the rabbit, now officially known as Bugs Bunny, an edgier appearance.
In the Givens design, Bugs was no longer defined by Thorson’s tangle of curves. His head was now oval, rather than round. In that respect, Bugs recalled the white rabbit in Porky’s Hare Hunt, but Givens’s design preserved so many of Thorson’s refinements—whiskers, a more naturalistic nose—and introduced so many others—cheek ruffs, less prominent teeth—that there was very little similarity between the new version of Bugs and the Hare Hunt rabbit.
Barrier also details a number of similarities between the titular rabbit character from Disney’s 1935 Silly Symphonies short,The Tortoise and the Hare, and former Disney employee Givens’ design.
While Avery boasted to cartoon historian Milt Gray in 1977 that “the construction was almost identical”, adding, “It’s a wonder I wasn’t sued,” Givens insisted in an interview with the Animation Guild’s oral history project that Bugs wasn’t a Max Hare rip off. ( “I was there. I ought to know.”)
Whatever parallels may exist between Givens’ Bugs and Disney’s Hare, YouTuber Lee sees A Wild Hare as the moment when Bugs Bunny’s character coalesced as “more of a lovable prankster than a malicious deviant,” nonchalantly chomping a carrot like Clark Gable in It Happened One Night, and turning a bit of regional Texas teen slang — “What’s up, Doc?”- into one of the most immortal catch phrases in entertainment history.
A star was born, so much so that four directors — Jones, Avery, Friz Freleng and Bob Clampett — were enlisted to keep up with the demand for Bugs Bunny vehicles.
This multi-pronged approach led to some visual inconsistencies, that were eventually checked by the creation of definitive model sheets, drawn by Bob McKimson, who animated the Clampett-directed shorts.
Historian Barrier takes stock:
Bugs’s cheeks were broader, his chin stronger, his teeth a little more prominent, his eyes larger and slanted a little outward instead of in. The most expressive elements of the rabbit’s face had all been strengthened …but because the triangular shape of Bugs’s head had been subtly accentuated, Bugs was, if anything, futher removed from cuteness than ever before. McKimson’s model sheet must be given some of the credit for the marked improvement in Bugs’s looks in all the directors’ cartoons starting in 1943. Not that everyone drew Bugs to match the model sheet, but the awkwardness and uncertainty of the early forties were gone; it was if everyone had suddenly figured out what Bugs really looked like.
Now one of the most recognizable stars on earth, Bugs remained unmistakably himself while spoofing Charles Dickens, Alfred Hitchcock and Wagner; held his own in live action appearances with such heavy hitters as Doris Day and Michael Jordan; and had a memorable cameo in the 1988 feature Who Framed RogerRabbit, after producers agreed to a deal that guaranteed him the same amount of screen time as his far squarer rival, Mickey Mouse.
This millennium got off to a rockier start, owing to an over-reliance on low budget, simplified flash animation, and the truly execrable trend of shows that reimagine classic characters as cloying toddlers.
In 2011, on the strength of her 2‑minute animated short I Like Pandas, an initially reluctant 24-year-old Jessica Borutski was asked to “freshen up” Bugs’ look for The Looney Tunes Show,a series of longer format cartoons which required its cast to perform such 21st-century activities as texting:
I made their heads a bit bigger because I didn’t like [how] in the ’60s, ’70s Bugs Bunny’s head started to get really small and his body really long. He started to look like a weird guy in a bunny suit.
Lee’s Evolution of Bugs Bunny- 80 Years Explained was released in 2019.
In a push led by Looney Tunes Cartoons’ Alex Kirwan—who spearheads the franchise’s current slate of shorts on HBO Max—the beloved animation icons will soon expand into even more content. There’s the upcoming Tiny Toons Loooniversityrevival, a Halloween special, Cartoonito’s Bugs Bunny Builders for kids, and two feature-length animated movies on the way—and we have a feeling that’s not all, folks!
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