BUGGIN' :

THE TAO OF BUGS (Mark Goldblatt, 7/31/02, NY Post)

The news that Bugs Bunny heads TV Guide's list of Top 50 cartoon characters is welcome, but it fails to acknowledge the waskallywabbit's status as one of the leading intellectuals of his time.

For example, after caging a runaway circus lion, Bugs turns to the captive beast and says, "Iron bars do not a prison make . . . but they sure help, eh, doc?" This one-sentence demolition of postmodernism is the first and final riposte to a half century of Continental Thought which insists that reality is a construct of language.

People may think I'm merely being argumentative when I say this, but seriously, what art did Western Europe produce in the 20th Century that can compare to the brilliance of Bugs, who was a mere children's cartoon here during our childhoods (though they'd originally been movie shorts)? No music, no painting, a couple movies and a very few authors (Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Waugh, Orwell, a couple others), but that's about it. And with a few British exceptions (mainly involving Alec Guiness and John Cleese) there's no comedy. The French worship Jerry Lewis for cripes sake and the only thing the Germans find amusing is marching on the French (well, there they have a point). The rest of the countries seem to exist for the sole purpose of being the objects of humor--Poland, Italy, all of Scandinavia, the Dutch--they don't tell jokes; they're the punchlines.
Posted by Orrin Judd at July 31, 2002 4:39 PM