Description
"Looney Tunes cartoons, writes celebrated television critic Jaime Weinman, are the high-water mark of American filmed comedy. Surreal, irreverent, philosophical, and riotously funny, they have maintained their power over audiences for generations and inspired such giants of the cinema as Mel Brooks, Steven Spielberg, and George Lucas. Here, finally, Weinman gives Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Yosemite Sam, Foghorn Leghorn, Tweety, Sylvester, and the whole cast of animated icons their long-awaited due. With meticulous research, he takes us inside the Warners' studio to unlock the mystery of how an unlikely band of directors and artists working in the shadow of Walt Disney created a wild, visually stunning and oh-so-violent brand of comedy that has never been matched for sheer volume of laughs. The result is an unexpected and fascinating story that matches the Looney Tunes themselves for energy, humor, and ingenuity."--… (more)
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What made this book fun to read, in addition to it being about cartoons I loved,
A lot of emphasis is given to the earlier cartoons for both artistic consideration and because of the marked difference between them. That said, the entire history is indeed covered. While this is a history it is less of simply a chronological history that gives equal weight to every period. This is a critical history that argues for why these cartoons are, in the writer's opinion, the apex of cartoons. So if you want just a chronological regurgitation of who came first, then who, and so on, this will just barely meet your needs. But if you want to understand the differences between Disney and WB, or between early and later Looney Tunes, this is the book for you.
In looking at any art of the past we have to walk a tightrope of looking at the art as art as well as what it says about that time. When addressing, for example, racism in the cartoons Weinman avoids dumping out the baby with the bath water. He does put everything in historical context but doesn't absolve anyone of using what even then were acknowledged as racist portrayals. They were just more widely accepted so they were used.
Anyway, I would recommend this book to anyone interested in Looney Tunes as entertainment as well as those interested in them as part of mid-twentieth century popular culture.
Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.