Topic: Looney Tunes And Merrie Melodies Thread

I like good old Daffy too. The Tex Avery cartoons were his best IMO. He was a complete screwball then. Far better than the Chuck Jones version.
Daffy singing "The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down" from the 1939 short "Daffy Duck and Egghead":
[youtube:8TFO1MgwFJ0]

Australian pay TV has a channel called Boomerang. It basically consists of all those brilliant shows from ages ago like The Flinstones, Yogi Bear and Looney Tunes. It's always great to go from the latest retarded reality show to the classic scenario of Bugs Bunny getting one over on Elmer Fudd.
Also the Bugs Bunny propganda short against the japanese was called 'Bugs nips the Nips'.

I love Speedy Gonzales. "¡Andale! ¡Andale! ¡Arriba! ¡Arriba! ¡Eha, eha eha, eha, andale...!"

I watch that station often. It's Cartoon Network's sister station. Doesn't show Looney Tunes in US though.

So, anybody watched any good Looney Tunes lately? I just got through watching a couple of Road Runner/Coyote shorts on Youtube. Great stuff. I might just have to see if I can find one of the LT DVD collections the next time I go to the store.

That Road Runner stuff is brilliant. I really like the one where Wile-E tries to mess with Buggs Bunny for a change

Coyote is DA MAN! The best Warner character, followed close by Sylvester.

For those who haven't seen it, I strongly suggest tracking down "Rabbit Seasoning" right now. It's the best cartoon ever.

Road Runner is the best

For those interested, 'Bugs Bunny nips the Nips'
[youtube:MvQP8njW9Q4]

@FATEM

My goodness that was offensive

.....That's nothing compared to what they did to my relatives. I'm told that one of my grandparent's whole family was massacred by the Japanese. (They are Chinese.) This short is no less offensive than the one about the Nazi's. That one had Hitler eating a rug! If it wasn't for the fact that he is a known devil today, people would be offended by it. But people forget that the Japanese tortured and killed way more people than the Nazi's did.
I have nothing against modern Japanese. They have definitely been reformed; but that short was devised in the days when the Japanese soldiers were terrorizing the Pacific. Context needs to be kept in mind. (Course, my dad and my grandparents still didn't/don't like the Japanese way after the war.)

I've watched a bunch of LT propaganda shorts. They never show them on TV.

I can't believe that I've failed to mention Foghorn Leghorn. Definitely one of my top three favorite Looney Tune characters ever.
[youtube:T0UnN_OuQL4]
I apologise for the sound quality.

Foghorn Leghorn is brilliant. He's definitely one of the best characters out of the Looneyverse.
And has anyone here seen any of "The Banned Eleven"? The eleven cartoons that due to offensive stereotypes and themes being so interwoven into the plot that it was impossible to censor them so they were removed from circulation by Warner Brothers. I recommend tracking one down and watching it if you want an education into american cinema history.

I've seen several Censored Eleven shorts before. Bugs Bunny had one called "All This And Rabbit Stew".

Recently, I picked up an interest in classic animation and I've mainly been watching and learning more of the old Tom & Jerry and Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies cartoons. I dug into the history of Looney Tunes and found that before Bugs Bunny, before Daffy Duck, and before Porky Pig, there was "Bosko".

Now, why has this character became a forgotten figure in the history of Warner Bros. animated portfolio? First, they lost the rights to the character after a few years when their creators started to work at MGM to their own series of cartoons, Happy Harmonies. Second, after Warner Bros. gained much of MGM's cartoon properties, they realized that the character is most likely a racist stereotype of African Americans.

From what I understand, he was first copyrighted in the late '20s as a "Negro boy" and in his early outings, he spoke with an unsophisticated accent that has been seen as a stereotypical trait of African Americans. Later on, this type of voice was dropped and what he really was had became unclear. I also found an article where I think one of the animators admitted that he was a black kid but the crew tended to avoid mentioning this, possibly out of racial conscience, which helped perpetuate the ambiguity on what he was supposed to be. One of his creators claimed that he was actually an "inkspot kind of thing" but that statement doesn't seem truthful as he was redesigned in Happy Harmonies and he is clearly a young black kid so it seems like that the creators were kinda covering up their tracks,

I hear that, for the time, Bosko was actually a decent portrayal of black people as his appearances generally weren't disrespectful. He was nice, cheerful, and pretty much did the same sort of things that Mickey Mouse would do back in the '30s. One glaring and painful exception, however, is when he ends up in a jungle and stands right between a chimpanzee and a gorilla and you can see that their faces are practically the same.

So due to being based upon a racially insensitive concept, the character has been practically discontinued, especially with the core characters like Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck doing just fine for the brand. He did make an appearance in a Tiny Toons episode but he and girlfriend were redesigned to look more like characters from Animaniacs in an obvious attempt to step away from his offensive design.

Now that I'm done talking about the beginnings of Looney Tunes, what do you guys think about Bosko? Should he stay in the past due to the potentially racist history or should Warner Bros. bring him back as he was the first Looney Tunes character and it is not like Bugs Bunny has been very P.C. himself ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censored_Eleven )?

My opinion is that he probably shouldn't come back but I would be interested to see how he would be handled if he did come back. It hurts to know that this is what Looney Tunes started off with but I kind of wish that Warner Bros. didn't just sweep him under the rug as if he never existed.

P.S. I hope I didn't offend anyone by bringing this up. It really wasn't my intention. It's just my fascination with the history of American Animation.