He is enraged, and vows revenge on the bunny/bitch who tricked him into this situation. ![]() Fudd realizes-again, too late-that he has been deceived. While Bugs keeps waiting, somewhat bored, for him to get there.įudd is proclaiming his love to Bugs/Brunhilde as he climbs.įinally, Fudd reaches the top of the peak and embraces Bugs.įor a moment, it appears that they are at the top of the mountain together.īut just seconds into their ecstatic embrace, the helmet falls off of Bugs' head and bounces down the stairs. In which Bugs mounts a pole and tenses with ecstatic glee.īugs is now suddenly at the top of a mountain, lounging in repose and waiting for Fudd, who is still climbing He takes the Valykrie in his arms, and a courtship/foreplay dance ensues Now a slave to his reproductive instincts, Fudd spins in place, flits his toes, and beckons the Valkyrie. The horse presents its hind quarters to Fudd, a sign of courtship in many species, while Bugs coyly walks his/her fingers across the animal's buttcheek. Too late, Fudd realizes Bugs got away.Īct II: Bugs, whose penchant for cross-dressing and gender stereotype-challenging behavior is well documented, now appears as a voluptuous Valkyrie pin-up girl, riding the white horse.įudd is rendered immobile, totally smitten by the warrior goddess's charms. Fudd explains he is going to "kill the wabbit" with his "spear and magic helmet."īugs laughs at Fudd's magic helmet, which enrages Fudd, and he proves the power of his magic helmet by calling down lightning and destroying a tree. Consequence and reason be damned, he begins repeatedly and violently thrusting his spear into the hole.īugs Bunny appears from a different hole nearby, and asks Fudd what he's doing. In psyching himself into an excited, blind frenzy with repeated chants to "kill the wabbit," Fudd comes across a hole. Intro: After creating a giant shadow that exaggerates his size and prowess and sets up unreasonable performance expectations, the camera pans down to reveal a rather timid Elmer Fudd, who is wearing a distinctly missile- or phallus-shaped suit of armor and helmet. I know I should wait for feedback from my American Studies dissertation committee, but here is my Wham Bam, thank you, Ma'am reading of "What's Opera, Doc?" Meanwhile, see the cartoon as you've never seen it before. The best explanation-or the one chosen at random, I haven't decided yet-will win a prize of some kind, probably one of the last "daddy type" t-shirts in the world. If any of you armchair Freudian Cold War scholars has a theory of what all this rage, seduction, betrayal, and wabbit killing tells us about the mid-century American male's view of procreation, share your insights below. While the symbolism is unequivocal, I'll be damned if I can tell you what it all means. Holy Moley, the symbolism's about as hidden as a bolt of lightning, and the sexual subtext's as subtle as a sharp spear thrust into a rabbit hole. Well, when I wrote that, it had been a while since I'd seen "What's Opera, Doc?" So I watched it online. ![]() Īnyway, I joked about the possible hidden pregnancy symbolism in the greatest cartoon ever made, Chuck Jones' classic 1957 Bugs Bunny short, "What's Opera, Doc?" which Elmer Fudd runs around singing "Kill the wabbit!" in Wagnerian drag. This morning I wrote a bit about the origins of the phrase, "the rabbit died," which was a common, if inaccurate, euphemism for a positive result on a pregnancy test, which in post-WWII America was called the rabbit test.
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