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Nostalgic Looney Tunes
4 Mar 2023 03:12 pmI saw a recent video about the sad state of the Looney Tunes (ie the lack of good new shorts starting in the 1990s) and from it I learned that there actually are some new Looney Tunes now that are not bad. Warner Brothers apparently commissioned a new series which is now in its third season and can be seen on HBO Max. I had been thinking that recently and I hadn't seen any Looney Tunes in decades, so I watched it this week while furiously knitting.
It actually is pretty good! Some of the shorts (each episode is 11 minutes) are classic quality. Some of them are comparatively boring, but that's the case with the old ones too. They're not all great. I suppose they're all pretty much in character, because I find all the Sylvester and Tweety ones just as tiresome as I ever did. I always disliked most of the Daffy Duck cartoons, but I think in retrospect, and after watching these, it's because he's so irritating, which is obviously how he's intended to be. It's more a question of what your taste in humor is, I mean.
I also noticed for the first time - or maybe it's a feature specifically of these new cartoons? - that the Daffy/Porky relationship is a bit kinky. In one of the new shorts they get married, so. There's that. But most of the time I just find him too mean to Porky and kind of want him to disappear completely. Cartoons where he gets the best of Elmer Fudd or fights with Bugs (and typically loses) are much more my speed. But of course, that genre of humor - where an annoying person torments an innocent and relatable straight man - is also a long-popular genre, and one that I don't like with any other characters either.
That's how I found out that HBO has old Looney Tunes too! I'm pretty annoyed that in this modern era the classics that used to be pretty democratically available because they were rerun on network tv constantly are paywalled by HBO, though. And HBO already bought Sesame Street and paywalled it as well, which is even worse. Anyway, I mostly wanted to see some particular classic shorts, but it isn't that easy to find specific ones. For example, I've watched "One Froggy Evening" several times on YouTube, but I can only find abridged copies of "Rabbit of Seville" there.
As I was turning on the Looney Tunes this morning to start some more knitting, I found myself thinking how peculiar this is compared with ... most of my past watching habits. I'm watching odder and odder things on streaming specifically as a result of the fact that it's more inconvenient to watch DVDs and many of the things I would otherwise rewatch are on DVDs and unavailable via streaming services. We've been knitting so much lately, though, it would probably be worthwhile to set up the DVD player downstairs again so that I could watch it while knitting and babysitting cats.
It actually is pretty good! Some of the shorts (each episode is 11 minutes) are classic quality. Some of them are comparatively boring, but that's the case with the old ones too. They're not all great. I suppose they're all pretty much in character, because I find all the Sylvester and Tweety ones just as tiresome as I ever did. I always disliked most of the Daffy Duck cartoons, but I think in retrospect, and after watching these, it's because he's so irritating, which is obviously how he's intended to be. It's more a question of what your taste in humor is, I mean.
I also noticed for the first time - or maybe it's a feature specifically of these new cartoons? - that the Daffy/Porky relationship is a bit kinky. In one of the new shorts they get married, so. There's that. But most of the time I just find him too mean to Porky and kind of want him to disappear completely. Cartoons where he gets the best of Elmer Fudd or fights with Bugs (and typically loses) are much more my speed. But of course, that genre of humor - where an annoying person torments an innocent and relatable straight man - is also a long-popular genre, and one that I don't like with any other characters either.
That's how I found out that HBO has old Looney Tunes too! I'm pretty annoyed that in this modern era the classics that used to be pretty democratically available because they were rerun on network tv constantly are paywalled by HBO, though. And HBO already bought Sesame Street and paywalled it as well, which is even worse. Anyway, I mostly wanted to see some particular classic shorts, but it isn't that easy to find specific ones. For example, I've watched "One Froggy Evening" several times on YouTube, but I can only find abridged copies of "Rabbit of Seville" there.
As I was turning on the Looney Tunes this morning to start some more knitting, I found myself thinking how peculiar this is compared with ... most of my past watching habits. I'm watching odder and odder things on streaming specifically as a result of the fact that it's more inconvenient to watch DVDs and many of the things I would otherwise rewatch are on DVDs and unavailable via streaming services. We've been knitting so much lately, though, it would probably be worthwhile to set up the DVD player downstairs again so that I could watch it while knitting and babysitting cats.
