If there is any set of animated characters that have endured in our culture as much as those from Disney, it’s the Looney Tunes. Bugs, Daffy, and the rest have been icons of many childhoods and have defined so much of animated comedy to the point that they have outlived most performers of their time in terms of recognizability.
But, as someone who has loved these characters and the shorts they came from ever since I was a kid, I feel that there is an issue with the franchise’s visibility. What I mean is that for the last 30 or so years, the Looney Tunes have been trying to establish an identity for the modern day, but nothing has really stuck. It’s not that no one understands or cares about the characters. But there is a feeling that the attempts to bring them into new projects as of late have missed the mark of what made them so special.
To start, let’s ask a question. What made these characters so beloved? Firstly, it’s their personalities and the comedy that comes from it. In the 30s and 40s, characters like Bugs and Daffy were novel since they were driven by strong character work and relatable personalities instead of the basic characteristics of many cartoons created before them. People could identify with the conflicts and personality quirks present in the shorts. It also helped that, while slapstick is a defining trait of these characters, the dialog and wordplay also informed a lot of their comedy in a way that was ahead of its time and certainly more ambitious than most. However, alongside the strong characters and comedy, the main reason why the Looney Tunes are loved is that they are timeless. In spite of some dated elements, the base elements present in most of the shorts don’t reflect the period they were made in. Some elements are very of their time, but for most of the shorts, the writing, acting, and comedy feel like they could have been created in any decade. As such, many have become attached to these shorts and these characters. Ever since the rise of television, the Looney Tunes have basically been passed down to new generations through exposure from the ones before. I can attest since my Dad watched them on TV and then showed me on a DVD when I was a kid.
However, as of late, there is a sense that this generational attachment might start weakening. It’s not gone yet since the characters and many of their shorts are still talked about. However, I feel that the way we present any media has changed, resulting in the original shorts being less at the forefront. They used to be a mainstay of television in cartoon programming for decades. Today, they are simply one of thousands of options to show kids. From this angle, I feel that Warner Bros knows this and that simply presenting the shorts isn’t going to cut it in terms of keeping the brand relevant.
With that said, if WB wants these characters to stay relevant, then why have most efforts to bring them to a modern audience floundered? Well, it has to do with intent. The issue is that Warner Bros doesn’t approach the Looney Tunes as individual characters but as a wholesale brand. As I said before, it’s not that selling merch with the characters is the problem. They want Bugs and the rest to become what Mickey and his friends are to Disney: marketable multi-media mascots that can be put in any type of product. It’s why they are the mascots of Six Flags or why Bugs was on WB logos for some of their movies. Now when it comes to marketing and merchandise, it’s not an issue. It makes sense to put a popular character on products to sell merchandise and to promote the studio as a whole even if it does come across as tacky a lot of the time. However, WB wants to have their cake and eat it too here. The studio wants these characters to both be continuously present as a product that can be rebooted and remain and as a malleable brand overall. The issue is that they can’t have both and efforts to try and do so have shown exactly why.
The main issue with trying to make the Looney Tunes into a mascot brand is that they try way too often to ‘modernize’ these characters for new projects. Disney has done this with Mickey and his friends plenty of times. However, there, the characters can fit into those molds due to their simplicity. The Looney Tunes are driven far more by their induvial personalities. As such, attempts to put them in more ‘modernized’ projects end up diluting the characters and their comedy.
Space Jam is a prime example of this. I recognize there is a lot of nostalgia for it, but as someone who is very attached to the Looney Tunes, I just can’t look past how it is basically a commercial as a movie (which was the initial pitch). However, rather than relying on the timelessness of these characters, they simply put them in baggy pants and had them play basketball without asking if that’s what these characters would even do. Chuck Jones, one of the original directors of the shorts and creator of many of the characters, famously said that Bugs could handle the aliens on his own. Bugs relying on trickery and wit would be in character, but the movie simply contrives that he needs Michael to help them. Not because it makes sense for Bugs to do this, but because they need Jordan there for the movie to happen. If it was just the commercials, it wouldn’t be that big of a deal since these characters have been used to sell products since the 60s. However, by putting this mentality in a theatrically released movie that reaches a wider audience, it creates an issue. It presents the Looney Tunes in a big-budgeted film as basically commercial mascots. It doesn’t help that they are basically supporting sidekicks to Jordan rather than the focus of the movie. A movie featuring legacy characters like this should be representative of their strengths, not just simply pasting them into something that would be marketable.
It’s clear that the studio was chasing trends rather than letting the strengths of the original shorts play out and because it was such a huge hit, it became a primary source of recognizability in the public eye. This creates an issue where one of the most well-known pieces of media featuring these characters does a disservice in terms of representing them. However, because it was a hit, WB has tried to repeat the success with similar reinventions.
The second movie with these characters, Looney Tunes: Back in Action, was a high-profile bomb that was a production struggle between director Joe Dante, who wanted to make the “anti-Space Jam” as he put it, and the studio wanting to make another Space Jam. The result was a movie that, while more faithful to the characters, was robbed of its potential under executive meddling that wanted to tap into the audience that loved Space Jam which resulted in the Looney Tunes again playing second fiddle to celebrities and trends. TV shows like Baby Looney Tunes, a clear attempt to cash in on Muppet Babies far too late, and Loonatics Unleashed, a straight-up superhero cartoon that leaned heavily into dated tropes of the early 2000s, feel like executive decisions that, instead of looking at where these characters could work in, ignores their pre-existing strengths to find what sells in the short term. Efforts like these resulted in the characters being less represented by what made them beloved in the first place and more by outdated and rushed projects that, being shown as larger products, reached a wider audience and was viewed more critically as a major source of representation.
One could argue that this isn’t a big issue since the shorts are still visible both on television and home media. However, as I’ve said before, due to recent changes in media markets, the negative representations are a larger threat to the image of the Looney Tunes. The shorts aren’t being shown on TV as often and there is a chance that, as generations pass, these characters could fade a bit. They will never disappear, but they could end up like say Woody Woodpecker. A character who was extremely popular at the time, but whose lack of upkeep resulted in them becoming hollow mascots that people only tend to recognize from that angle.
It doesn’t help that genuinely successful efforts to reboot these characters have been given less attention overall. The Looney Tunes Show, a 2010s sitcom reboot, managed to retain the personalities and dynamics in a suburban environment, but was hit with a mixed reception at the time due and only got recognition from the public years after it was canceled. There was also the recent 2020’s reboot, Looney Tunes Cartoons, that was produced to emulate the shorts down to the length and style of animation. While this is probably the closest we have gotten to classic Looney Tunes shorts being produced today, it is unfortunately buried in the Max streaming service and is not that promoted. As such, even the most genuine and earnest attempts to bring these characters to life are stifled and the inaccurate efforts get more attention.
This is apparent with the release of Space Jam: A New Legacy which not only continues the pattern of short-term trend fixation but also shows that Warner Bros is still committed to this mentality in spite of its failures. The film uses the Looney Tunes to show off the studio’s library and have them around mostly to spout recognizable lines or reference other media. It is notable that the first director hired, Terence Nance, wanted to have a more satirical angle with the film that was more in line with the Looney Tunes. He was fired and the satire was removed, making the film basically a commercial in a way that feels even more blatant than the first.
With this and the fact that the shorts don’t have the reliable outlet of exposure that they used to have, there’s a concern that the mascot-centric approach might take over the characters, and over time they might become a fixture of the nostalgia circuit. However, I feel that there is a simple way to approach this issue. Simply put, the Looney Tunes don’t need to be constantly rebooted every few years. The merchandise and exposure of the characters in other outlets do the job that these shows and movies do without overexposing a flimsy image. The shorts, while not as prevalent, are still accessible, and not putting new shows and movies in front of them constantly might allow new generations to discover them first. The characters and original shorts should be presented in new ways to ensure that future generations do have connections with these characters. It’s the exact reason why they are cultural icons because those shorts were accessible and presented to kids as they were. Even if their exposure won’t be as strong as before, giving the shorts a platform would do wonders for their visibility. Constantly trying to modernize or change these characters has the potential to weigh them down into irrelevance bit by bit. If there needs to be a new show or movie, put in the effort to actually represent these characters and their comedy rather than inserting them into whatever recent trend is going on.
I know that a lot of this discussion seems a bit much and that’s true. Every character and franchise gets rebooted and misrepresented at some point or another. I guess it’s both a sense of close attachment to these particular characters and the fact that cartoon characters don’t get as much respect compared to those from live-action films and shows. The Looney Tunes are a major aspect of our culture though and they do deserve to be treated better given their influence and history. I feel that my own experience watching them growing up made me appreciate film and animation a lot more and I know that can happen with many others too. Hopefully, we can have more people fall in love with Bugs because of his humor and wit, and not because he plays basketball.
