Hard to hunt rabbits without a beagle or some other trained dog. Elmer needs his dog back. Some needs to go to Toontown, find Laramore, and get him his job back.
The idea of Elmer hunting with a scythe makes me think of the Ted Nugent types who make it harder to be more sporting. But it’s kind of a dark reflection on our culture that our reaction to guns being used too much against humans is to be so against showing them at all that we replace them in depictions of animal hunting with far more brutal weapons.
GUNS ARE BAD! Brutally slaughtering an animal by hacking it to death with a pointy blade instead of putting it down quick with a gun? Sounds good to me, much better message for my kids.
^Again, it's not about the relative humaneness of the weapons, it's about the likelihood of children getting their hands on them and imitating what they see. Whether children actually are likely to imitate acts of violence they see in a cartoon is questionable, but censors assume they are, or at least want to avoid exposing themselves to the accusation. I mean, this is the reason that '80s and '90s cartoons couldn't animate someone punching someone else in the face, whereas it was perfectly fine to animate them firing a missile or planting a huge bomb (as long as nobody actually died). Then again, I suppose that some children, like those living on farms, might have no more difficulty getting their hands on a scythe than on a shotgun.
I don't, overall, like it. Elmer Fudd is a hunter. do these Hollywood people have such a hate boner over firearms they have to have a cartoon hunter hunting down an animals without a firearm? Plus, if I recall correctly, most times Bugs was defending himself, but it seems here he was just attacking Fudd over little and then just keeps doing it. And Fudd seems unphased and each more powerful blast is exactly the same; Fudd in the old ones (that I remember) usually had moments where he recovered, and he got worse damage each time. Amnd then there's the weird music credits. Talented composer Carl Johnson is credited with the music, but then there's a separate screen that show all the music was adapted by him, so there was no original scoring and that means there was zero need for a music credit; the adaptations listing should have been a enough. I did like: That quick kiss he have Fudd to piss him off. And how he took some time to make Fudd dance with him. LOL.
For the third time, the rationale behind the censorship of guns and certain other forms of violence in children's cartoons is the fear that the acts onscreen could be imitated. Thus, weapons that might be found in the home are censored while more fanciful or uncommon weapons (swords, lasers, throwing stars, etc.) are not. This has been standard in kids' cartoons for decades (G.I. Joe used laser guns), so it's hardly some new or unprecedented policy. Not how it works. Even with adapted music, it was presumably newly arranged and performed, and Johnson would've been the one in charge of getting that done. He did the work, therefore he got credited for that work. After all, most of the music by Carl Stalling, Milt Franklyn, or whoever in the classic cartoons was similarly adapted from classical music, popular songs, and the like. Yet they still got music credits.
It's interesting that Looney Tunes started to be thought of specifically as children's entertainment in the television era. The Looney Tunes shorts were originally meant for more grown-up cinema audiences, and it shows in the amounts of violence and innuendo in the older cartoons (some of which ended up censored for TV). Kor
In your opinion. Can you show me where the creators of this short stated your opinion as their rationale? And that notion you express, isn't even a new one, it was around back in the days when elmer Fudd was carrying a firearm. It just wasn't as prevalent as today. Actually, it can and does work that way. I've seen the credits in films and some TV movies where a composer only adapted/arranged existing music and did not get a composer credit like Johnson did here. Are we done here? You took me to task for your personal opinion and then what you attempted to pass off as fact, but indeed isn't so. I'm a film and TV score lover -- I know better. If you just wanted to argue that the old shorts did it and not tell me "Not how it works", that would have been another thing.
I'm just saying it stands to reason, since it's a common practice. If a cartoon avoids showing guns but depicts other, less common weapons, it's logical to surmise that it's doing so for the same reason many earlier cartoons have done so. Again, I'm just trying to offer a plausible reason why it might have been the case. The fact that it isn't done 100% of the time doesn't rule out the possibility that it was the reason here. There is no reason to take this personally. I don't know anything about you; all I see are words on a screen, and if I see a question raised, I just try to offer suggestions in response. Maybe you already know those answers, but this is a public forum with potentially hundreds or thousands of readers. Even if you know the answer, other people reading this thread might not, and might be edified by the information I have to offer. That is always my mindset when I try to offer information here on this public discussion board.
Yes, a huge amount of Looney Tunes are on disc. I have a ton of them ripped to a terabyte drive ready to watch at a moment's notice. I grew up with guns in the house and Bugs on TV. I always knew the cartoons were fake, and real guns hurt people. I don't know why kids today are thought to be stupider than kids in 1960. *shrug*
I'm not sure if it's case of kids today are stupider or simply easily lead. Just look at the way they follow and try and duplicate youtube videos (tide pods, cinnamon to name two). Maybe it's always been around and the internet has just made it easier to spread the stupid.
This kind of censorship has been around since long before the Internet. All it would've taken was one or two cases where someone blamed TV shows for kids' violence or threatened to sue them, and the lawyers would've recommended erring on the side of caution, even if the link was never proven. On the other hand, there's an old trope going back decades of kids injuring themselves from putting on blankets and jumping off the roof in attempts to fly like Superman. In some cases, it might even have been true.
Somehow I'm reminded of the episode of the 1950s "Dragnet" TV and radio series in which a nine-year-old boy got a .22 for Christmas, and his friend accidentally shot himself with it and died. The tragic story ends with this profound thought: "Well, what's it all prove, Joe?" "You don't give a kid a gun for Christmas." DUN DUN DUUUN DUNNNN! Kor
Somehow a scythe just seems way more demented than a hunter with a gun. I'd bet that kids that can't understand fictional guns have parents that buy them Call of Duty and think I'd come ahead more often than not. I had to remember how that tune went, when I read this all I could think of was the Law & Order sound lol.