Fred Avery | A Wild Hare / 1940

kissing the enemy

by Douglas Messerli

 

Rich Hogan (story), Virgil Ross (animation), Fred Avery (director) A Wild Hare / 1940

 

In this Bugs Bunny’s premiere, writer Rich Hogan, animator Virgil Ross, and director Fred Avery try out numerous of the aspects of Bug’s personality that will remain with him throughout the years, including the famed line, “What’s up, Doc?” and his flirtatious reaction to most forms of danger, as if to suggest that nature—to which in no way the rather sophisticated and campy Bugs is truly related—always knows best, winning the day against any attack.

 

    In this case the attack comes from Elmer Fudd who immediately explains his activity as he tiptoes through the woods, “Shh. Be vewy, vewy quiet. I’m hunting wabbits.” Coming upon Bugs’ rabbit hole, he puts down a carrot as lure and hides behind a tree.

     We see only the rabbit’s hand leave the hole, as it dances forward to feel out the object set before him as it quickly snatches it up.

     The hand reaches out once more, perhaps in expectation of yet another carrot, but this time feeling the metal of Elmer’s double-barreled shotgun, withdrawing his fingers as fast as he can. When Elmer shoves the barrel into the hole, a struggle ensures, with Bug’s incredibly tying up the barrel into a bow, his first “gift” to his hunter.

       Frustrated, Elmer begins to dig into the hole, although seeming to get nowhere, while Bugs pops up from another nearby warren, watches Elmer at work, lifts the digger’s hat, and knocks upon his cranium, chewing a carrot and uttering his memorable first words, “What’s up Doc?”

      Elmer explains that he’s hunting “wabbits,” Bugs, curious to know what a rabbit is, inquires while chewing a carrot whether it has a white tale (displaying his own) and merrily hopping through the forest, proceeding to hop until finally Elmer wonders whether he might, in fact, be a “wabbit,” as the chase momentarily resumes.

     Bugs quickly hides, however, and comes behind the always unsuspecting Elmer, putting his hands over his eyes and asking, “Guess who?” Elmer names several famed female movie stars who names, given his speech impediment, are nearly unpronounceable, before finally again guessing that it is the “wabbit,” Bugs awarding him a big kiss on his lips—the very first of many such impulsive expressions of love Bugs would award his enemies and friends in what might at first have just been perceived as just a tease, but gradually would be recognized as Bugs Bunny’s totally transgender nature.

      When Elmer sticks his head down the hole soon after, Bugs kisses him yet again, and soon after when Elmer pulls out a skunk for his “foolproof” rabbit trap, kisses him one more time as the skunk himself winks flirtingly at his startled embracer, as if to suggest that no one has ever bothered to show him so much love.

       One can’t exactly describe these rather bizarre incidents as being “gay” or even sexually intended, but they almost immediately push the Bugs Bunny cartoons into a dimension wherein through his unpredictable, outsider status, it is established that Bugs is willing to straddle not only our logical expectations but matters of the relationship of the natural world to so-called “civilization,” straddling gender, sex, and even matters of religion and race. The “wild hare,” truly is a hair-raising phenomenon as, near the end of the film, he even enacts, quite melodramatically, his own death before kissing Elmer once more and marching off to the utter frustration and fury of the man who momentarily found himself sympathizing with his victim.

       Bugs, so Warner Brothers quickly established in their Merrie Melodies series, is the disarmingly clever and carefree self we wish we could be when faced with societal, political, and sexual adversity.

 

      I should note that there is another version of this same cartoon, titled The Wild Hare that used the same frames but was colored almost entirely in gray, browns, and beiges. Perhaps it was re-released during the war years when the rich colors of the original paints were no longer available, or it is a pirated edition that simply mistakenly (or intentionally) changed the title.

 

Los Angeles, February 4, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (February 2023).