Animation Nation
Demolishing the Fourth Wall
By
Steve Herte
Duck
Amuck (WB,
1953) – Director: Charles M. Jones. Writer: Michael Maltese
(story). Animation: Philip DeGuard (background), Ken Harris
(animator), Maurice Noble (layout), Lloyd Vaughan (animator), &
Ben Washam (animator). Music: Carl Stalling. Voices: Mel Blanc.
Released on February 28, 1953. Color, 7 minutes.
From
1946 to 1958, Warner Brothers made some of the best and most
remembered (and quoted, if I may add) cartoons in the history of
animation. In the forefront was the dynamic duo of directors, Isadore
“Friz” Freleng and Charles M. “Chuck” Jones. Most notably, it
was Jones who contributed most to the art of animation. Bugs Bunny
and Daffy Duck have him to thank for the characterizations we know
today, and in the process he made some of today’s best-loved and
most innovative cartoons.
In
1953, he created Duck Amuck, a cartoon that not only
totally demolishes the fourth wall, but also asks “Just who is
Daffy Duck?”
The
short proved so popular with critics that in 1994 it was voted #2 on
a list of the 50 greatest cartoons of all time by members in the
animation field, second only to the remarkable 1956 short What’s
Opera, Doc? (also by Jones). In 1999, the film was deemed
"culturally significant" by the United States Library of
Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.
The
cartoon opens in a conventional manner; the titles, in an Old English
font, suggest Robin Hood or other swashbuckling characters. The
heroic opening music by Carl Stalling reinforces this notion. A
medieval setting appears with a castle in the background. Daffy Duck
bursts onto the scene brandishing a sword saying, “Stand back,
Musketeers! Let them sample my blade!” Daffy continues to charge
forward to discover the scenery has disappeared and he’s now on a
blank background. Confused, he lowers his sword, and almost
embarrassed, he leaves the scene, later sticking his head out and
reminding the animator about the empty whiteness: “Hey, whoever’s
in charge here, the scenery … Where’s the scenery?”
A
farm scene is hastily drawn and Daffy reappears in Musketeer costume,
repeating his opening line, until he looks behind him. “OK, have it
your way,” he says as he walks offstage. He reappears in overalls
and a straw hat, singing, “Daffy Duck, he had a farm…” right
onto a snow scene, “and on this farm he had an … igloo?”
He
turns to the unseen animator, “Would it be too much to ask if we
make up our minds?” Suddenly, on skis he sings “Dashing through
the snow” into a Hawaiian jungle set. Quickly changing into a
flowered sarong and strumming a ukulele, he switches to “Farewell
to thee, farewell to thee.” And the scenery goes blank again.
There
is no better way to get Daffy’s goat, as he is by now totally
flustered. “Buster, it may come as a complete surprise to you to
find that this is an animated cartoon. And that in animated cartoons
they have scenery…“ But before Daffy can finish his sentence, a
giant pencil comes into the scene and erases him. “All right, where
am I?” he growls.
He
is quickly drawn as a cowboy with a guitar, but as he tries to play
the guitar, there is no sound. He holds up a sign asking for sound
and gets every sound but the right one. Even when he tries to
remonstrate, all he gets are auto horns, barnyard squawks, and the
sound of a kookaburra.
By
now he’s red-eyed angry, and throws a tantrum. All we hear is the
end of the tantrum “...and I’ve never been so humiliated in all
my life!”Embarrassed at what has been done, he looks at the
animator, asking him to get organized and repeating his demand for
some scenery. The animator answers by pencil-sketching a simple black
and white cityscape. “That’s dandy. Ho, ho. That’s rich, I’ll
say. Now how about some color, stupid?” But instead it’s Daffy
that is painted in bright patterns. “Hey! Not me, you slop artist!”
Once
again he’s erased, except for his beak. “Well, where’s the rest
of me?” he asks. He’s redrawn as a flipper-footed quadruped with
a purple daisy around his head and a yellow flag flying from his
upright tail. On the flag are a screw and a baseball, signifying
‘screwball.” “That’s strange, all of sudden I don’t quite
feel like myself,” he says. The artist draws a mirror and Daffy
sees himself. He screams. “EEEK! You know better than that!”
Another
erasure and redrawing shows Daffy as a sailor and he’s pleased; he
says he’s always wanted to do a sea epic, until the background
drawing sets him over water and he sinks. He swims to a deserted
island in the distance. Demanding a close-up, he finds the frame
shrinks around him. “This is a close-up? A close-up, you jerk! A
close-up!” Then the opposite, the camera zooms in until all we see
are his eyes.
As
he walks away, he mutters, “Thanks for the sour persimmons,
cousin.” (A line Jones and Maltese picked up from Ben Washam. It
was one of his favorite sayings.) Daffy walks into a background of
neutral green. He tries to reason with his tormentor, suggesting
letting bygones be bygones, when the frame suddenly begins sagging in
from the top. Daffy futilely tries to prop it up with a stick
provided by the animator, but it breaks (“Brother, what a way to
run a railroad!”), and the frame keeps sagging until Daffy
eventually shreds it in a loud tantrum.
“All
right! Let’s get this picture started!” Suddenly, the end title
card comes into view. “No, No!” Daffy shrieks as he pushes the
card out of the frame. Dismissing the artist (he thinks), “You go
your way and I’ll go my way,” he apologizes to the audience and
tries to entertain them with a tap dance when the scene rolls up and
his bottom half is on top and his top half is on bottom. He winds up
arguing with himself. “Listen brother, if you wasn’t me, I’d
smack you in the puss!” “Don’t let that stop you, Jack!” But
as he swings at this twin the animator erases the twin and Daffy’s
punch goes wild into empty space, landing him on his butt.
Daffy
is now redrawn as a pilot in a plane, “Oh brother, I’m a 'Buzz
Boy,'” he exclaims as he flies the plane. But the animator quickly
draws a mountain and we hear the crash of the plane, which is gone
except for the canopy. Daffy bails out and deploys his parachute,
which is erased and replaced with an anvil, and Daffy quickly
crashes.
In
a daze, he’s next seen hammering the anvil and quoting the “Village
Smithy” when the animator replaces the anvil with a blockbuster
bomb, which explodes.
Now,
burnt, blackened and beyond rage and frustration Daffy demands to see
his tormentor. “Enough is enough. Who’s responsible for this …
this! I demand you show yourself! Who are you, hmm?” A door is
drawn in front of him and a pencil shuts the door. The frame pulls
back to reveal that the artist is none other than Bugs Bunny, who
looks at us, and snickers, “Ain’t I a stinker?”
We
have mentioned that Duck Amuck, breaks (an
understatement) the fourth wall. Other critics have mentioned that as
well. But this act is hardly revolutionary, for cartoons have
shattered the fourth wall since the late 1930s. Tex Avery was the
first, with I Love to Singa (1936), when the
policeman giving the report on the radio about the missing young
owlet answers his mother after she asks her husband if the police
have found him yet. In Avery’s Thugs with Dirty
Mugs (1939), a patron viewing the cartoon in the audience
gets up to inform the police about the plans of Killer and his gang.
In
Bob Clampett’s Falling Hare (1943), the plummeting
sabotaged plane stops seconds before hitting the ground. The gremlin
responsible tells us “Sorry, folks, but we ran out of gas.” To
which Bugs adds, “Yeah, you know how it is with these 'A' cards,”
pointing with his carrot to the card in the plane’s window, a
reference to gas rationing. And in Clampett’s The Big
Snooze (1946), Elmer Fudd tears up his contract and quits,
tired of being made a fool of by Bugs Bunny. After a Bugs-induced
nightmare, not only does Elmer (in drag) turn to the audience with
“Has this ever happened to any of you girls?” but he returns to
the studio and pieces his contract back together, saying, “Oh, Mr.
Warner. I’m back.”
But
in Duck Amuck there is no fourth wall. The
entire cartoon is a confrontation between its star – Daffy Duck –
and the unseen animator who is foiling his every move, later revealed
to us as Bugs Bunny. The only remnant of the wall left standing is
visibility. Daffy cannot see the cause of his frustration and has no
idea who it is.
What
is revolutionary about the genius of Chuck Jones is actually more
evolutionary. He is the catalyst that allows the character of Daffy
Duck to ascend the cartoon development scale. When Avery first
created Daffy in Porky’s Duck Hunt (1937), the
character was totally loony and out of control, serving as a foil for
the likes of Porky Pig and Egghead (early Elmer Fudd).
As
the years wore on, Daffy began to headline cartoons, but was still a
loose cannon and prone to surreal wackiness. After the war, Robert
McKimson and Chuck Jones began to work on the character, giving him a
sense of savvy to counteract his explosive tendencies. But whereas
the character of Bugs Bunny was dominated by reason, Daffy’s
emotions controlled him: he was vainglorious, staunch in his
assumptions (even when usually proven wrong), mercurial, and quick to
erupt. Given the chance to do the right thing, as in Tom,
Turk, and Daffy (Jones, 1944), it only lasts until he
realizes that in doing the wrong thing, there’s something more in
it for him. He agrees to hide Tom Turkey from hunter Porky until
Porky mentions all the Thanksgiving goodies Daffy would miss out on
if Porky didn’t kill Tom. After a short wrestle with his
conscience, Daffy is only too glad to reveal Tom’s location. But
things backfire when Tom places his tail feathers on Daffy, gobbles
loudly, causing Porky to mistake Daffy for a turkey.
When
teamed with Porky in Drip-Along Daffy (Jones,
1951), Duck Dodgers in the 24½ Century (Jones,
1953), and Deduce, You Say (Jones, 1956), Daffy is
the arrogant Know-It-All hero-type and Porky is his comic-relief
assistant. While Daffy blusters and strides boldly into inextricable
traps, Porky quietly saves the day. When up against Bugs Bunny
in Rabbit Fire (Jones, 1951), Rabbit
Seasoning (Jones, 1952), and Duck! Rabbit,
Duck! (Jones, 1953), Daffy is again a slave of his emotions,
arguing to have Bugs killed by Elmer. But he’s the one who always
gets shot, as Bugs traps Daffy in his own verbiage. In
Freleng’s Show-Biz Bugs (1958), Daffy’s ego and
his jealousy of his co-star leads him to perform a dangerous trick
that finally wins the audience applause. But when Bugs tells him he’s
a hit and that they want him to do it again, Daffy replies that he
can only do it once as he ascends to Heaven.
Remarkably
though, in Duck Amuck Daffy is not the
instigator (for once, if ever). He’s the victim. He’s the one
trying to bring reason into an unreasonable situation, and try as he
might, he never gets through to his tormentor. He even questions what
he might have done to deserve such treatment. As he’s being
depicted as a screwball, he says to himself, “Goodness knows, it
isn’t as if I haven’t lived up to my contract, Goodness knows.
And Goodness knows it isn’t as if I haven’t kept myself trim,
Goodness knows. I ... I’ve done that.” But he still keeps to
whatever script he’s given because he wants to be the good employee
(and star of the cartoon, for once). It’s only at the end that
Daffy totally loses it and demands to see who it is.
The
true magic of Jones shows in the unmistakable personalities of his
characters no matter what their appearance, environment, or even
their voice. According to Jones, the ending, showing Bugs as the
animator, is for comedic purposes only. He’s asking the audience to
identify Daffy Duck. Would they still recognize him if the artist
changed something about him? What if he didn’t live in the woods,
or didn’t live anywhere in particular? What if he had no voice, or
no face? In fact, what if he wasn’t even a duck anymore? It doesn’t
matter. Whatever happens, even if he’s totally erased, Daffy is
Daffy. (“All right, where am I?”) If Bugs is for comedic purposes
only, then we ask, is there a real life figure he’s allegorically
symbolizing? Who would be so conniving as to deliberately
misunderstand everything Daffy requests? The simple answer is Edward
Selzer, the unit’s producer.
After
Leon Schlesinger sold his studio to Warner Brothers in 1944, the
studio assigned Selzer to head the department. In his delightful
autobiography, Chuck Amuck: The Life and Times of an Animated
Cartoonist, Jones painted a grim portrait of Selzer, depicting him
as beyond difficult, boorish, and totally without an understanding of
or talent for animation. His inept managerial style was more like the
man beating the drum for the slave rowers on a galley. His obtuse
Judge, Jury and Hangman attitude nearly caused Freleng to quit when
he poo-pooed the pairing of Sylvester and Tweety. (Tweetie Pie,
the first cartoon to co-star the two, won the Academy Award for Best
Animated Short in 1947.) Thank goodness that difference of opinion
was resolved.
In
a way, Selzer’s humorless lack of instinct was a boon for animation
directors. Whatever he disapproved of would no doubt turn out to be a
hilarious hit. For instance, Selzer thought that camels and
bullfighting weren’t funny!” Hence, Freleng’s Sahara
Hare (1955) with Yosemite Sam and a dim-witted camel, and
Jones’ and Mike Maltese’s Bully for Bugs (1953)
– one of the funniest Bugs Bunny cartoons. Selzer proved a
dependable source for doing exactly the opposite and the clever
directors cashed in on it.
One
of his own quotes sums up his genius level for being wrong: One, upon
entering a room and seeing his animators standing around a storyboard
laughing, he asked aloud, “What in the Hell does all this laughter
have to do with the making of animated cartoons?” In Duck
Amuck Selzer is represented by Bugs as the interfering
supervisor. The poor beset Daffy is Jones himself. He knows his own
worth as an employee makes him immune to change or deletion. Jones
once said, “We all want to be Bugs Bunny, but most of us are Daffy
Duck.”
Trivia:
In
1955, Jones created Rabbit Rampage recasting Bugs
Bunny as the harassed victim and Elmer Fudd as the manipulator. It
was not nearly as funny. It didn’t work. Bugs is cool, savvy and
doesn’t get flustered. Bugs finally gets even, but only does when
backed into a corner. Elmer’s last line, “Well, anyway, I finally
got even with that scwewy wabbit!” may satisfy him but not the
cartoon viewers. It’s about as believable as Daffy decking Nasty
Canasta with one punch.
