Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)This tape offers a selection of 11 of the many cartoons that Warner Studios churned out during the Second World War. For me, watching them was a trip down memory lane; though I wasn't alive back then, I remember watching many of these on the local children's television show as I was growing up. Even after all these years, these cartoons still have the ability to make me laugh.
Yet such a collection raises the usual questions about what was included and was left out. Some of the cartoons -- most notably "Draftee Daffy" and "Falling Hare" -- are virtually timeless and often appear on television today, while others -- such as "The Weakly Reporter" and "Russian Rhapsody" -- are interesting from a historical standpoint ("Fifth Column Mouse" was especially fascinating as a none-too-subtle fable about the failure of appeasement). But with a couple of them, their inclusion in a collection of World War II cartoons seemed a stretch. "Super Rabbit" had only a end-scene plug for enlisting in the military, while the link between "Little Red Riding Rabbit" and the war was even more tenuous -- a note seen for five seconds early in the cartoon.
What makes this an issue is what cartoons were excluded. Most immediately apparent was the exclusive focus on the war against Germany; none of the infamously racist anti-Japanese cartoons -- such as "Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips" and "Tokio Jokio" -- appear in the collection. While undeniably offensive by today's standards, excluding them has the effect of distorting history; such racist portrayals were typical of how the Japanese were depicted throughout the conflict, and including them could have served as an important reminder of how we viewed our enemy during the war. Almost as glaring is the absence of the "Private Snafu" cartoons that Chuck Jones did with Theodore Geisel (the future Dr. Seuss), though they are now available seperately on DVD. These exclusions mar what is otherwise a uniquely enjoyable way of looking at how we depicted the Second World War.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Bugs & Daffy: Wartime Cartoons (1943)
Click here for more information about Bugs & Daffy: Wartime Cartoons (1943)
0 comments:
Post a Comment