"The cartoon was made during World War II, and reflects the United States' attitude towards one of its main enemies at the time, Japan. In the cartoon, Bugs Bunny lands on an island in the Pacific and is pitted against a group of highly stereotyped Japanese soldiers. Bugs shows no mercy against the Japanese soldiers, greeting them with several racial slurs such as "monkey face" and "slant eyes", making short work of a large sumo wrestler, and bombing most of the Japanese army using various explosives, including grenades hidden in ice cream bars. The cartoon's title is a play on the verb "nip" as in "bite" and "Nip" as in "Nipponese", equivalent to the then-widely used slur "Jap" for "Japanese".
The Film Daily called the seven minute short "good fun", and gave the following synopsis:
"Bugs Bunny, castaway on a Pacific isle, thinks the setting is ideal until he finds his paradise infested with Jap soldiers. How he single-handedly exterminates the enemy makes for a laugh-filled few minutes of typical Bugs antics, off-screen remarks and action in this Technicolor cartoon produced by Leon Schlesinger."
Ah; delightful. From 1944 the infamous Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips
No comments:
Post a Comment