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Carrot and Shtick
A Looney question: Can we claim Bugs Bunny as Jewish?
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More in Arts & CultureFor many years of my life, I worried about American poetry and German philosophy. Now that I have kids, I worry about more pressing things. Like religion. Like ethnicity. Like cartoons. Since it’s August, and everyone is on vacation, my editor is feeling more permissive than usual. It seems like a good time to pose a question that has been plaguing me for months: If Michael Landon and Kirk Douglas are Jews, why can’t we claim Bugs Bunny as well?
Here’s the thing: The spirit of Jewish vaudeville inhabits Bugs’s slight frame, down to the lightning puns, double-meanings and gloriously underhanded tricks that he’s lifted from folks like Groucho and Chico Marx, as well as the manic physical mayhem that typified acts like the Ritz Brothers. (And Bugs’s threat, “You know, this means war,” was lifted right from Groucho himself.) Nor should we forget the dead-on parodies of high art in “Looney Tunes” shorts such as “The Rabbit of Seville” and “What’s Opera, Doc,” which made mincemeat of postwar German productions of Wagner. They all seem happy to indulge in that gleeful Yiddish sport of cutting pretension down to size, of treating all contenders like Moishe Pipik. Bugs also has that gift for mimicry that antisemites, most notably Wagner himself, have always attributed to Jews. This ability is central to Bugs’s success in undoing Elmer’s most nefarious plots. Bugs, who is particularly good at cross-dressing, is, as the saying goes, remarkably “passable.”
But hold on, buddy. Comic books might have been created by Jews; Hollywood might have been invented by Jews; the Warner brothers who put out the “Looney Tunes” shorts might themselves have been Jews, but the creators of Bugs Bunny were not. Sure, Mel Blanc, “the man of 1,000 voices,” was Jewish, as was the director Friz Freleng, but we have to concede that most of the writers and directors were decidedly not. Look at their names: Chuck Jones, Michael Maltese, Tedd Pierce. Look at Tex Avery, a director with an exquisite sense of both timing and the gloriously absurd. No self-respecting Jew, not even Kinky Friedman, ever called himself “Tex.”
As if this weren’t enough, Bugs’s creators originally tried to call him Happy Rabbit, a totally goyish name. (Think Happy Rockefeller.) Thankfully, Mel Blanc suggested “Bugs Bunny.” “Bugs” as in crazy. As in crazy like a fox. As in — just maybe — Bugsy Siegel.
Can we find the rabbi in the rabbit? As far as I can tell, Bugs never uses a word of Yiddish, but he does have a yidisher kop. He has the gift of gab as well as a fine command of Acme products. Poor Elmer — was there ever a Jew named Elmer? — never stands a chance. Of course, it is well known that Bugs comes from a long line of tricksters. He is an Eastern Anansi, an American Hershele Ostropoler. He’s even distantly related to Isaac Babel’s Odessa gangster, Benya Krik.
But as a genius of the genus lepus, his most important relative — father? uncle? — is, of course, Br’er Rabbit, though he’s Br’er Rabbit with a New York accent. And that accent turns out to be the most important clue to his identity because in that great imaginary melting pot that was Hollywood in the 1940s, there weren’t a lot of overtly Jewish characters. To find the covert traces of yidishkeyt in the movies of the period you have to look for the barely visible markers, like accent.
During the golden age of Warner Brothers cartoons, the only other characters with marked accents were Pepé Le Pew and Speedy Gonzales, and they were foreign. The rest of our banner favorites — Elmer, Tweety, Sylvester and their ilk — tended to have speech impediments. (According to Chuck Jones, Sylvester’s lisp was actually a take-off of the much-disliked producer Leon Schlesinger. Schlesinger didn’t get it.) Bugs is pure New Yawk, a fine mixture of Brooklyn and the Bronx. Not for him the posh elongated vowels of a Roosevelt (“I hate wahhhhhhr”). Rather, his are the clipped nasal sounds of a smart-aleck rabbit of the streets (“Ain’t I a stinka?”). Nothing patrician there. Bugs is a bunny of the people, a working-class hero who clearly isn’t Irish and is hardly Italian.
Let us, therefore, take very seriously Lenny Bruce’s great taxonomy of things goyish and things Jewish. New York is always Jewish. And the outer boroughs — particularly Brooklyn — are the most Jewish of them all. On the other hand, Disney, for all its brilliance, is strictly goyish. Godmothers, princesses, Prince Charming — all this is pure goyishe nakhes. William Steig made this abundantly clear by recasting the chivalric fairy tale as a gross-out story in his classic kids’ book “Shrek.” The “Shrek” movie franchise has continued this gambit with its straightforward attacks on Disney’s saccharine pieties. “Looney Tunes” and “Merrie Melodies” were never susceptible to that kind of treatment because they were too fast, furious and just plain funny to be pious in the first place.
Rabbits ain’t kosher, but what does it matter? The “Looney Tunes” shorts in which Bugs appears are always structured around extinction and endurance, the two great poles of Jewish thought and dream. They are purimshpiels in which Haman is played by an amiable stooge with a rifle that chronically misfires. What more do we need? Seventy years is surely long enough. It is time to embrace the Bunny.
David Kaufmann teaches literature at George Mason University.
Comments
Oh ho, a disservice to the American Jewish public! What about Professor Jonathan Sarna's comment quoted by Gary Rosenblatt in the Jewish Week, to the effect that "We've sold American Jews a bill of goods" by suggesting there's no contradiction between Jewishness and Americanness? House Un-American Activities Committee, anyone? But no, this kind of Jewishness isn't "authentic," as measured by the criterion of Martin Heidegger, a German philosopher who was, of all things, a Nazi. By all means, let us pretend that ostentatious piety of the kind displayed by Jack Abramoff and his Christian ally De Lay is really all there is to Jewishness, Yiddishkeit be damned!
Yehuda; You wrote some of the most articuate and intelligent comments that have ever appeared in the Forward website. You should have a blog or be a columnist for the Forward. The Jewish media needs someone like you.
well, I always thought that Bugs was Jewish. But it was only known to people who were Jewish. Otherwise, the initiated jsut didn't get all the jokes. I agree that doing Judiasm, living a Jewish life, takes concerted action and if you aren't involved in doing Judiasm, you aren't living a Jewish life. at the same time, I don't need to have my life mirrored to be by the general media to be affirmed in what I am doing. Even when I enjoy the general media. And I know all the words to The Bugs Bunny Show which I gleefully sang along with Jerry Seinfeld. Mickey is not Jewish. And Uncle Scrooge has never even been considered Jewish by Jew haters.
Perhaps Professor Kaufman has overlooked the direct evidence that Daffy Duck may also be a "Member." Recall that in one cartoon, playing a doctor no less, he wanted to have silence in the operating theater and yelled out, "Zoll zein allemen sha!" He did this while holding up a placard with the word, "Sha," in yiddish.
The point is not that Mickey is Jewish; quite the reverse: Goebbels was called Hitler's "poison mouse." What I hate is the spiritual torpor of those who see only evil in Jewish joie de vivre, or who think that Jewish life can be reduced to religious observance. Yes, I regret if I came off as hateful in my characterization of another commentator's remarks, and I apologize to him if I hurt his feelings. But to pretend that Lenny Bruce, who perhaps originated the "Jewish/goyish" distinction for American purposes, is not great, or that Mel Brooks's "The Producers" is not funny because it deals with Jewish deaths, or that Woody Allen, because he is grossly impious, is also offensive to Jewish sensibility, is to deny an essential aspect of Jewish identity as surely as do those who directly, and unambiguously, equate religion with Nazism.
Must we always draw a dichotomy between Jews or Nazi? Since when is this an acceptable binary? It weakens the argument when leveraged by Jews and non-Jews alike.
On a lighter topic, I'll tell you who the lead goyish cartoon characters are of the classics: Foghorn Leghorn, with his barrel chest, bravado, and bullhorn voice, and Porky Pig (he's treyf, need we say more?).
Prof. Kaufman, I've quoted you on my blog, but I'd like to put a link to your name. Do you have a professional website or somewhere else that serves as a click-through? Thank you for the entertainment and interesting discussion.
That's all folks.
Maya Norton The New Jew: Blogging Jewish Philanthropy www.TheNewJew.wordpress.com
Reference: http://thenewjew.wordpress.com/2007/08/10/bugs-asserting-the-jewishness-of-this-funny-bunny/
When you have to search so hard to find even a small shtick that maybe smells a little Jewish, you have a hard time convincing people he is Jewish. But leave him be. Bugs is funny, and New Yorkish. Senuff. It takes a little more to be Jewish.
donald Duck, Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny, Where all created by my grandfather a Cartoonist Named Joe Gross. He Was originally Born Near Munkach, (Carpat) Moved to Scranten P.a. as a Child, Later to Crown Hights "Brooklyn' Than to the Bronx for a while. He worked for Disney, and the rest is hostory; We do however have the Original Drawings;
Actually, Bugs did use some Yiddish. In one episode (which one escapes me) involving a card game, he offers, "I played Old Maid once - and pische peysche." Having learned this game from our grandmother, my sister and I always thought this subtle bit of Yiddish hysterical.
Funny that Kaufmann asks, "was there ever a Jew named Elmer?"
Actually, Elmer Bernstein, the soundtrack composer of "Magnificent Seven" etc, is the only American i can think of named Elmer.
The tradition of the hare in Jewish culture can even be attested in the illustrated Ashkenazic haggadot of the 15th century on, of the hare hunt, associated with the mnemonic of the sedeer 'YaKhNeHaZ'(an acronym for Yayin - Kiddush - Ner - Havdalah - Zeman), a pun on 'Jag den Has' (hare hunt). Even prior to these are the 14th century Spanish, and particularly Catalan Haggadot: the famous Barcelona Haggadah manuscript—among others of the period—contains in its margins a fantastic series of humoresques involving hares, hounds, and hunters. Yet, these scenes do not reflect the collections of fables read in Jewish communities of the period (for example, Meshal ha-kadmoni or the Mishle shuʻalim). On the other hand, it would be a stretch, I think, that most American Jews of the 1940s and 1950s would have recognized any type of Passover hare. He is that distinct New York breed whose coming of age in the 1940s may best explain his Yiddishkeit.
Emmes! Thank you!
As a thinly veiled Jewish parody thick with foreign accent went: "Very interesting," For more context, David Kaufmann is invited to read several article that I wrote.
There is a guy in YU studying for semicha whocomesfromDallas and is called "Tex' by his friends. Rabbi Elmer Berger,founder and head of the anti- Zionist organization, the American Council for Judaism,was Jewish,though some of his opponents may have argued otherwise. On the other hand, Bugs is banned from Lubavitch homes and events,so how Jewish could he really be?
Let's make things even easier. Since there have been Jewish baseball stars, baseball (the "national pastime") is Jewish. Since there are so many Jewish congressman, beyond the percentage of Jews in the American population, let's decide that the Congress is now a Jewish phenomenon. In short, why merely claim that "New York is always Jewish"? America is always Jewish! Now, you don't have to deal with such trivial matters such as Hebrew schools and participation in the community. Jewishness thrives if you merely have the right accent...
Well, being Jewish has always been a distinctive identity. It's having your own language; it's having a connection to a particular history; it's having your own way of life. It means having a cultural point of reference that is outside of the Anglo-Saxon world. To maintain such a distinctive identity means hard work - qualitative Jewish education with real results. It's not easy. It's a disservice to the American Jewish public to pretend that being Jewish is as effortless as watching a cartoon.