In May, HBO launched its new Max streaming service with a relaunch of this vast Looney Tunes library. Last month, Warner added to the merrie trove by releasing a three-disc Blu Ray set, The Bugs Bunny 80th Anniversary Collection. Be forewarned: even such seemingly encyclopedic collections come to our censorious age with amendments and redactions. On HBO, with their skipped numbers, the episodes omitted from the 31 seasons of Looney Tunes are easy to spot. They are much harder to track down and see. When combined, copyright extension and political correctness are potent content killers, two of the horsemen of our oncoming techno-apocalypse.
‘All This and Rabbit Stew’, a 1941 Freleng episode, was among the original ‘Censored Eleven’ Warners shorts of 1931-44 that were pulled from syndication in 1968 for their ethnic stereotypes. ‘Hiawatha’s Rabbit Hunt’, a 1941 Freleng episode that was an Academy Award nominee, is also absent from the HBO archive. ‘Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips’ of 1944 and ‘Herr Meets Hare’ of 1945 established Bugs in full wartime mobilization as he outsmarts both Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany. These two historic episodes are nowhere to be seen as well. The latter episode, set in the Black Forest — Bugs gets lost on his way to Las Vegas — sees our hero face off against none other than Hermann Göring and Adolf Hitler. Was this episode pulled because it might upset today’s Axis viewers? In its use of Wagnerian music and imagery — Bugs mesmerizes Göring by riding on a white horse dressed as Brünhilde to the tune of the ‘Pilgrims’ Chorus’ from Tannhäuser — Freleng’s ‘Herr Meets Hare’ serves as the key prelude to Chuck Jones’s ‘What’s Opera, Doc?’ from 1957.
That episode, Jones’s masterpiece, has been called the best cartoon of all time. It was the first cartoon to be deemed ‘culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant’ by the Library of Congress. Here the melodies of Warner Brothers all come together in one Gesamtkunst-cartoon. Elmer Fudd now plays the antagonist as he and Bugs take on quick-changing Wagnerian roles. The music of the ‘Ring’, Tannhäuser, Rienzi and The Flying Dutchman are all woven into the tapestry of the score. For many children, including this former one, their first exposure to the ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ was set to the libretto of ‘Kill the Wabbit!’