{"id":28,"date":"2005-02-16T09:07:20","date_gmt":"2005-02-16T13:07:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.harrymccracken.com\/hgr\/?p=28"},"modified":"2005-02-16T09:07:20","modified_gmt":"2005-02-16T13:07:20","slug":"daffy-desecrated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/harrymccracken.com\/blog\/2005\/02\/16\/daffy-desecrated\/","title":{"rendered":"Daffy Desecrated?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Wall Street Journal<\/em> is reporting that Warner Bros. is readying a new show called Loonatics<\/em> for the WB Network. The show, which is set in 2772, applies the same sort of “reimagining” to the Looney Tunes characters that Warner has inflicted on Superman, Batman, and other characters.
\n(Cartoon Brew has an image of the new Bugs<\/a>. So does Mike Barrier<\/a>, who’s either back from his travels or so horrified that he’s blogging from the road.)<\/p>\n

If you’re a fan of the vintage Warner cartoons, your impulse is to be revulsed by this news. That was certainly my reaction when I laid eyes upon someone else’s copy of the Journal<\/em> during a meeting this morning. On reflection, though, I ended up with a somewhat contrarian reaction: This isn’t necessarily any worse treatment than Warner’s has given the characters for years.<\/p>\n

Or at least I’ll reserve judgment until I’ve seen the results (assuming I get around to it, that is). I’ve sometimes argued that there’s no artistic upside in producing any<\/em> new cartoons with classic characters. But if new cartoons are to be made, you could argue that it’s better to start fresh than to make slavish, less-than-brilliant copies of the old shorts–and how many of those<\/em> have we seen over the past thirty years?<\/p>\n

Also, I can’t claim that I’ve never liked a reimagining of old characters, given that I was actually tickled by the Asian-ized versions of Disney characters and Olive Oyl which I saw in Hong Kong last year. (Side note: My local Disney Store has started stocking some of the Asian products–which are a heckuva lot more appealing than most of the other items it sells.)<\/p>\n

And it’s not like the characters didn’t get reimagined back in the old days; if they hadn’t, Daffy Duck would still be a squat, genial, nutcase, rather than a taller, sour-tempered-but-sane fellow. If he hadn’t evolved back then, he probably would have ceased to exist in about 1942.<\/p>\n

But the old reimaginings clearly had one purpose: to entertain the people who made the films. Unfortunately, the Journal<\/em> story is for paying subscribers only, so I can’t link to it (Mike quotes a fair chunk if it). But it’s a good piece which explains exactly why the characters are being reimagined right now–which involves issues such as declining advertising on children’s TV.<\/p>\n

Then there’s the tail that clearly wags, er, the wabbit–the bucks to be made from merchandising, spinoffs, and other side effects of a hit show. The article ends with a quote from a WB exec: “That’s the ultimate goal of all kids’ programming…if we score, it’s a gold mine.” Leon Schlesinger might have voiced similar sentiments back in the day…but I’m pretty sure that Chuck Jones, Tex Avery, and Bob Clampett wouldn’t have.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Warner Bros. is readying a new show called Loonatics for the WB Network. The show, which is set in 2772, applies the same sort of “reimagining” to the Looney Tunes characters that Warner has inflicted on Superman, Batman, and other characters. (Cartoon Brew has an image of the … Continue reading “Daffy Desecrated?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/harrymccracken.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/harrymccracken.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/harrymccracken.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harrymccracken.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harrymccracken.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/harrymccracken.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/harrymccracken.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harrymccracken.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harrymccracken.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}