Reading the Rabbit: Explorations in Warner Bros. Animation

by Kevin S. Sandler

"A wide-ranging inquiry into an important area of contemporary scholarly interest, and also an engaging, well written and intelligently conceived collection." -Eric Smoodin, author of Animating Hollywood Cartoons From the Sound Era



Despite the success of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and their Looney cohorts, Warner Bros. animation worked in the shadow of Disney for many years. The past ten years have seen a resurgence in Warner Bros. animation as they produce new Bugs Bunny cartoons and theatrical features like Space Jam as well as television shows like Tiny Toon Adventures and Animaniacs. While Disney's animation plays it safe and mirrors traditional cinema stories, Warner Bros. is known for a more original and even anarchistic style of narration, a willingness to take risks in story construction, a fearlessness in crossing gender lines with its characters, and a freedom in breaking boundaries. This collection of essays looks at the history of Warner Bros. animation, compares and contrasts the two studios, charts the rise and fall of creativity and daring at Warner's, and analyzes the ways in which the studio was for a time transgressive in its treatment of class, race, and gender. It reveals how safety and commercialization have, in the end, triumphed at Warner Bros. just as they much earlier conquered Disney.



The book also discusses fan parodies of Warner Bros. animation on the Internet today, the Bugs Bunny cross-dressing cartoons, cartoons that were censored by the studio, and the merchandising and licensing strategies of the Warner Bros. studio stores. Contributors are Donald Crafton, Ben Fraser, Michael Frierson, Norman M. Klein, Terry Lindvall, Bill Mikulak, Barry Putterman, Kevin S. Sandler, Hank Sartin, Linda Simensky, Kirsten Moana Thompson, Gene Walz, and Timothy R. White.

Genres: Nonfiction, Film, Pop Culture

288 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 1, 1998

Reviews

[Jessica O · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book in preparation for a class I taught that focused on cartoons as a reflection of society. For that purpose, this book is perfect. If that were my only consideration, I would have given it 5/5 stars. However, this book falls prey to the same problem that so much of academic writing does: high falutin' language where plain language would be much better. The ideas here are exciting (although I didn't always agree with them), but they would be so much more exciting if I hadn't needed a dictionary next to me as I read. Good stuff, and it was perfect for teaching college freshmen how to dissect academic texts, but it was a bit of a slog at times.

[dejah_thoris · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great collection of essays interrogating the Warner Bros. cartoon oeuvre. People are almost always split between whether they prefer Disney or Warner Bros. and now I have a better understanding as to why. Putterman's critical history is a solid introduction as is White's essay on the critical shift from Disney to Warner Bros. Then follow several essays on the portrayal of the hillbilly, celebrities, African-Americans, heterosexual romance, and cross-dressing/drag/gender roles. Simensky then discusses the merchandising boom in the 1990s and the rise of the official Warner Bros. stores and Mikulak follows with the problems of fandom and intellectual property. Finally, Klein closes the collection by discussing the recently released Jim Carey's Mask, which is like a Warner Bros. cartoon come to "life". Overall, an excellent read for anyone interested in learning more or questioning more about our cultural productions.