Daily Blague

Red State, Blue State? I think I've hit on the perfect litmus test for determining which kind of state you belong in. Do you prefer Donald Duck to Daffy Duck? Pluto to Sylvester? Fantasia to "Hollywood Steps Out"? Then you're - not Blue. If you think you have no preference, it's been too long since you've watched our pop culture's seminal cartoons. I think you'll find that they're hugely different. Disney's cartoons are, well, just what you'd expect: sweet. They're 'family fare.' Warner Bros.' Looney Tunes, in stark contrast, are sarcastic, risqué, and  culturally sophisticated. Mel Blanc's vocal characterizations and Carl W. Stalling's music are as sharp and rude as Hell's Kitchen used to be - well, they've got the same tang. Kathleen noticed something else: while the Disney characters are normally gendered (Donald Duck, Minnie Mouse), the creatures at Looney Tunes fall into a rather different pair of bins: male and dim or doomed (Sylvester, Elmer Fudd, Wile E Coyote) or 'other,' neither masculine nor feminine. Bugs Bunny acts like a wise guy most of the time, but he's awfully prone to cross-dressing. Daffy Duck - well, now that we're more frank about these things, we can see that Daffy Duck is a drama queen.