There is a tendency for the phrase "All art is Political" to cause arguments. Sometimes, I think it's people who are arguing in bad faith, and can more or less be ignored. Sometimes though, I do sense some actual confusion in some corners. So, let's assume good faith and make a genuine attempt.
I think when some people say "All art is political" some people hear "All art is propaganda" rather than "All art is reflective of the politics of the society in which it was created." That's certainly more accurate, but it's a bit of a mouthful.
Granted, some art is actually propaganda, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. While the modern definition is generally understood to be some art that intentionally influences or even manipulates you into believing the ideas of one organization or another, the original idea behind the word is just to spread the idea. To propagate it in an intentional manner. But I am not discussing propaganda, just art that is reflective.
If you watch a lot of Soviet movies you can see how even the fairy tales are just existing within that worldview. Merchants are greedy and scheming, workers are noble, loyalty and community are valued highly. You almost never actually get explicit statements about how the motherland needs the proletariat to continue the fight against the west or to spread the message to the workers of the world. You do get a lot of people who want riches for the sake of riches depicted as bad people. People who fail to have community spirit are frequently the bad guys, but it's just part of the understood landscape. It's part of what you're meant to understand.
I have had a theory for years that disposable entertainment (pulp stories and topical shows, ect) provide a better context for how people viewed a period in history than all the documentaries in the world.
Because it's contemporaries talking to each other and just getting their thoughts out there. Something that was meant to be watched, read, or listened to once in the moment and then set aside are some of my favorite things. When something isn't created with the idea that someone may need to watch, read, or hear this later then it frees the artist to narrowcast like crazy.
Fred Allen was great form this because any time he'd go down to Allen's Alley, they'd ask the characters about one of the big stories of the week. So you can hear exactly what they were thinking the day it was happening with no other goal than to connect with the audience and make a joke. So not only do you get how people were feeling in the moment, with all the fears and uncertainty laid bare, but you could gauge the resentments and frustrations. Why isn't the economy better? Why is there still a housing crisis? When will my husband come back from the war?
With all that said I would like to talk about the Warner Brothers Short Feature from 1940 "A Wild Hare" which was directed by Tex Avery for the Merrie Melodies series. It's considered to be the first official appearance of Bugs Bunny, although there were earlier versions where the character was not quite yet Bugs. Further, I would like to take the time to try and explore what the political environment was as a piece of amateur cultural anthropology.
The cartoon opens in a forest, it appears to be autumn and Elmer Fudd is tip toeing through the forest while carrying a double barreled shot gun. He breaks the fourth wall to ask us to be quiet, as he is hunting rabbits and here we perhaps have our first few hints of the politics of the society that created this piece of art. Solo hunting is an acceptable pastime, gun ownership is permitted, private hunting is permitted. Depending on where in the world you live, these are not necessarily automatically things you are permitted to do. This is probably my own prejudice, but I always got the impression that shooting game was a group activity in England. Always seems to be in the detective and comic novels I read as a kid.
Elmer is dressed in what appears to be a pretty standard hunting jacket with brass buttons and pants as well as a shooting cap with the ear flaps tied up above his head. He also has a turtle neck sweater, high boots and what I assume to be red wool socks that have been pulled over the pants and then rolled down to avoid things getting into the boots. It may be that those are part of the boot, but the pants are definitely tucked in. The point here is that Elmer is likely not a subsistence hunter who has to hunt to get meat, but a recreational hunter. He is not wearing his every days clothes, he has specific clothes to wear while he engages in hunting. Granted, he may still be hunting to get meat as wild game like rabbit may not be readily available for purchase, but I suspect a middle class sportsman.So we have a society that contains a middle class, who hunt for recreation, and are allowed to own firearms and can hunt small game.
Depending on who you talk to, Elmer's speech impediment is intended to make the character more comic. So we may be dealing with a world where using a speech difficulty is used as a joke. I wouldn't put it past us, but I also know that in voice work there are limited ways to make an individual character. And while it may be a way of coding him I'm not sure I'm equipped to talk about that. Anyway, Bugs has a Bronx accent and at the time that was meant to indicate that he was a scrappy character who would tell you exactly what he thought and wouldn't take no guff. Considering later iterations would state that Elmer is a millionaire (who owns a mansion and a yacht), this sets up the class struggle between the working class forest animal and the rich hunter who only seeks to kill him and exploit his remains for food and possibly a small but attractive hat.
And you may be thinking "Aren't you reading too much into that?" Where as I say that the class struggle is the most obvious and easily recognizable part of the politics of this cartoon. The scrappy underdog who makes a fool of the person who can bring lethal force to harm them is a well established piece of popular entertainment. American audiences particularly made stars of smart-ass characters who could run circles around characters who were understood to have some amount of power over them.
These are things that would have been merely understood to the audience and I think for the most part they are still understood. While the short snatch of the song "The Fountain in the Park" that plays while Bugs' fingers try to act casual while grabbing the carrot may not be instantly recognized by current audiences, the implication are pretty clear. In many ways, almost you rarely actually see hunters wearing hunting caps with ear flaps, and almost never ones with ties (Velcro took over that job years ago) Elmer is still the Ur hunter for many of us. We understand that this is what a hunter looks like because we've all seen him dress like this for so long.
Bugs' first line "What's up doc?" is something that's thought to be individual to him. However, Tex Avery said that in Texas calling someone 'doc' was a common practice. Avery understood 'doc' the way people in other parts of the country might say 'buddy' or 'pal' or 'bro' whatever. However, it was not universally understood, because calling people went on to think "What's up doc?" was a BB original. This is similar to the Nimrod issue. Nimrod being a great hunter in from The Bible, but many people now think its a word for idiot because Bugs used it as an insult once. Everyone missed the biblical implication and thought it just meant dummy. This also tells you something about the people who received the cartoons and how familiar they were with biblical stories.
I have been writing this thing for a little while now, and I’ve only just gotten to Bugs’ first line. I don’t think it would help to examine every joke and the possible meanings behind them. However, I find it interesting that Bugs kisses Elmer once on the lips and once on the nose and neither carries the sting of homophobia. Yes, that a male character is kissing another is seen as a joke, and Elmer is annoyed and wipes his face off, but there is no panic. It’s clear it’s just being done to annoy in the vein of assumed intimacy. This may speak more about a level of discomfort that lands at “Just ignore this moment” but it’s never actually hateful about it.
The last joke has some interest to me though, because of how often the image behind the last joke is used. Bugs annoys Elmer to the point that Elmer leaves the forest ranting and raving to the sky. Bugs then says “I think the poor guy’s screwy” and then places his carrot to his face as if he were playing a flute. At that point the flute part for "The Girl I Left Behind Me" plays and Bugs sort of limps away in what would have been a pretty well understood reference to the painting The Spirit of ‘76. And I only bring this up because The Spirit of ‘76 gets referenced an awful lot in Warner Brothers cartoons.
It’s an image that was well known and understood to the audience that would be seeing this cartoon. The image is about the Revolutionary War, but it tends to be used in these cartoons as a sign of having overcome the odds. Even in the caricatured world of this cartoon, the patriotism and perseverance is carried through, albeit to make a joke. But the politics here are that everyone is behind the patriotism. The Second World War may have started, but America wasn’t part of it yet. There was a different variety of understood home-spirit patriotism in those days. Being cynical about America and the government would enter the lexicon until the post war period and in 1949 Bugs would go to war with America in “Rebel Rabbit”.
None of this is attempting to propagate and ideas, it’s merely telling jokes the filmmakers believed their audience would understand. But it can tell us something about the politics of the time and place. It can give us an idea of what the expectations were and how things were expected to work. And in that, it has politics, not intentionally injected but they are there nevertheless. And if you extend out from here, you can learn a great deal about the time from consuming it’s most disposable entertainments.
