Abstract

Voice actress June Foray once recalled how Chuck Jones was able to quote Mark Twain and, in the same breath, discuss Aeschylus (King, 2013). Yet culture and animation have often shared an uneasy relationship. As critic Steve Schneider claims, “in all the vivisections of popular culture, non-Disney animation was either ignored, scorned or given the shortest of shrift” (1994: 18). In its classical period, only Disney was viewed as representing ‘art’ by critics; Looney Tunes, conversely, was seen as being “deficient in grace” (White, 1998, p. 40). The argument of culture resounds through the annals of film and animation. The question: if it can be applied to cinema why not animation? becomes: if it can then be applied to Disney, why not Warner Bros.? This critical shift didn’t occur until much later, in the 1960s. However, the period between the late 1930s and 1950s reveals that the cartoons of Looney Tunes are multi-layered, with revolutionary themes, complex connections and characters possessing psychological traits. Schneider (1994), Sandler (1998), Crafton (1998), Wells (2002), Maltin (1987) and others have written about the importance of Looney Tunes. Beyond the anarchic slapstick and hard, hilarious confrontations, Warner Bros. created an animation filmography that is culturally very significant and reveals itself within, whilst also alluding to what is beyond, the frame.