Anvils, Mallets & Dynamite

Jaime Weinman, in his book Anvils, Mallets & Dynamite:  The Unauthorized Biography of Looney Tunes (Sutherland House, 2021) takes a deep dive into the legendary and wildly popular Warner Brothers cartoons created between 1930 and 1963 featuring Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Sylvester and Tweety, and the irrepressible Foghorn Leghorn among a host of others.  The cartoons were created to be the hors d’oeuvre to the main course of whatever Warner Brothers picture was scheduled at the local movie theater, but most of us of a certain age remember Bugs and company from Saturday mornings on one of the big three networks back in the day.

I have some specific memories of these beloved cartoons.  While my mother slept in, I would take some money from her purse and bike to the local Alta Dena bakery for a dozen chocolate and a dozen powdered donuts.  While my siblings and I munched away, we watched the Road Runner continually outwit Wile E. Coyote, leaving him smashed, bashed, and broken.  We watched while Bugs dressed as a woman to seduce the rather thick Elmer Fudd and send him off to hunt Daffy instead of Bugs, thoroughly convinced it was duck season instead of “wabbit” season.  No Beanie and Cecil for me, and Scooby Doo’s stoner act got old quickly.  Bugs Bunny, the trickster extraordinaire, never seemed tired.  Considering we were watching cartoons created in the 1940s and 1950s, our interest never waned even as we watched from the far future of the late 1960s and 70s.

Looney Tunes could be violent, and the popular characters rarely faced consequences for their actions, but we loved them.  Weinman theorizes that kids did not always connect with Looney Tunes characters “because we know that nothing has consequences for them, and they seem to know it too.”  I admired Bugs’ facility with words, his ability to con Porky or Elmer or Daffy, and always come out on top.  Rarely is he flustered or thrown off his game.  Weinman believes the cartoons adopted an “anything for a laugh” philosophy, which “isn’t what we expect of first-rate art.”  Is a cartoon first-rate art?  Arguably, yes!

Weinman goes on to write that “To celebrate the greatness of works of art, you have to acknowledge their limitations, the sides of the world that they don’t or can’t see.  Looney Tunes cartoons leave out a lot of human experience, and speak to only one kind of mood.  But what we ask of art is not that it tell us everything, but that it tell us something, that it have a style and a viewpoint that makes sense to us.  Every good Looney Tunes cartoon has that.”

The book offers a deep and well-researched history of the cartoons, along with how characters were perceived by the public, which ones became popular, and which ones were eventually phased out.  There were also several instances in their long history that characters were subtly, or even dramatically altered when different animation teams and producers took over.  Many of the most successful characters had speech impediments exploited for humor, something in our more careful age would not fly.  But these “vocal quirks” endeared them to audiences over generations.  It is also interesting to note which characters the studio thought would be the breakout stars.  For instance, they placed their faith in Daffy Duck as the definitive Looney Tunes cartoon character.  Of course, Bugs Bunny changed that.  The cartoons also attacked common themes in the culture, like hunting as a sign of manliness.  Porky Pig destroyed that fanciful notion, as did Elmer Fudd in his hunting cap, chasing both Bugs and Daffy with disastrous results.  However, Weinman points out that what makes Looney Tunes great is the ability of the writers and artists “to portray the maximum amount of comedy violence while still being charming, fun, family entertainment.”

Of course, the cartoons were produced during some of the most fraught times in the twentieth century, and they often reflected those crises specifically or tangentially.  When the cartoons were combined into packages and sold into syndication, several were removed for their overt racism.  They were singled out for their racist stereotypes and black-face gags, wholly inappropriate today and in the late 1960s and 1970s when they were a major block of Saturday morning programming for kids.

So what happened to Bugs and the gang?  Well, the syndication packages were divided and reassembled and then redivided again.  Many are available on YouTube.  Check your local listings, as the saying goes.  The characters did return to prominence in the Space Jam movies, the most successful project for Looney Tunes since the original Warner Brothers cartoon studio shut down.

If you are a fan of the cartoons, Jaime Weinman’s book is a must-have.  For the casual cartoon connoisseur, or someone who remembers the taste of chocolate and powdered donuts on a Saturday morning along with the telescoping concentric circles receding into the distance with “That’s all Folks!” that marked the end of each cartoon, this is an insightful and interesting book, as much about childhood and memory as American culture and a rabbit, who despite the odds, always came out on top, the trickster heading off into the sunset, on top of the world.

 

As Time Goes By--Sydney Lotterby (Dir.)

In difficult times, we often crave comfort, the familiar, the hopeful.  I have withstood several challenges in the past by losing myself in the Winter Olympics broadcasts.  Literature, music, and art also offer refuge against the ravages of time and fate.  Lately, I have returned to an old favorite television series to lose myself for a while in the face of Covid-19, raging fires, and a corrupt and dangerous administration.  As Time Goes By, a British television comedy, offers the antics of a cobbled-together family facing age and a changing world and speaks to growing old gracefully without ridiculing anyone or pursuing cheap laughs.  It is real and genuine and heartfelt, as well as timeless.

Unique in comparison to American television, As Time Goes By was written by Bob Larbey and directed by Sydney Lotterby.  That is why the story holds together so consistently—one director and one writer for ten seasons, 67 episodes airing originally from 1992-2005.  The excellent cast also kept the series on an even keel.  Dame Judi Dench, always an inspiration, takes the lead as Jean, a widow who meets again with her long lost love, Lionel, played by Geoffrey Palmer.  He was her first lover on the eve of the Korean War.  They had a very brief romance, and then he went off to fight while she became a nurse.  They promised to write, but through a quirk of fate, the initial correspondence was lost, leading them to believe it was just a fling.  But each of their ghosts haunted the other for decades after the war.

As the first episode opens, we see Lionel trying to rework a manuscript covering his time as a coffee grower in Kenya.  He hires a secretary from Jean’s secretarial agency to help him with the typing, and because of Jean’s adult daughter, he sees Jean again.  They have a confrontation only to discover the lost letter and misunderstanding.  Thirty-eight years later, the two find themselves unsure about what to do.  What they discover is that their love story was one for the ages, that they never left each other’s thoughts.  However, can the romance be rekindled?

Larbey takes his time with the story.  They begin to get the relationship back on track only at the end of season one.  They do not move in together until season three and eventually marry in season four.  However, along the way, the audience knows this relationship will survive and flourish.  History has been made right again with their nuptials.

The cast is rounded out with Jean’s daughter, Judith, played by the expressive Moira Brooker, Philip Bretherton as Lionel’s publisher, Alistair Deacon, and Jean’s pseudo-daughter and secretarial agency office manager, Sandy, who moves in with Jean, Lionel, and Judith, creating a new family.  The late, great Frank Middlemass and Joan Sims play Lionel’s father and stepmother.  Moyra Fraser and Paul Chapman provide comic relief as Jean’s deceased husband’s sister and brother-in-law.

Why is the show comforting?  It depicts a quiet middle age where one can reflect on wisdom while still making adjustments to time and a changing world.  I never tire of the way the characters live and navigate their lives.  There is conflict, but it is clear middle-to-old age is not to be feared.  Dench can be funny with just her face and gestures, often scheming to force Lionel to find out a bit of information from Judith or another character.  She is not subtle, which adds to the humor because the audience can read the scene on Dench’s face.  She is an excellent physical comedian.

The conflicts come with Lionel’s worry that he lacks a pension.  He is afraid his book, My Life In Kenya, is dull and will not sell.  Alistair, ever the optimist, believes with a sexy book jacket everything will be fine.  But Lionel must step out of his comfort zone to shoot the cover with a prop rifle and a half-naked woman clinging to his leg in a non-descript jungle set.  Jean bursts into laughter while Lionel is merely embarrassed.  The book is published, leading to a second windfall when Lionel is hired to write a miniseries about his and Jean’s lost romance.  However, Lionel has free time around these projects, so he throws himself into housework to earn his keep.  He has particular difficulty with ironing bras in this house filled with women.

Jean is not immune to the changes either.  She flirts with retiring and allowing Sandy and Judith to take over the business she built from scratch after her first husband died.  She is afraid to let go because the agency saved her life when she was pierced with grief.  Going to work each day helped her get through a difficult time, and now she is reluctant to abandon her life raft.  Again, Larbey and director Lotterby take their time with the story, allowing the arcs to play out over the seasons.

The comfort comes from the realization that life does go on, even as the years pass.  In this moment in time, we observe the changes in ourselves and the way we live.  What endures is family, friendship, gentle humor, and love.  Lionel and Jean lost each other for 38 years, but love cannot be denied.  They lived in the world, separately, during that time, but life has a way of circling back, and things fated to be will be, even in the face of time and tide.  As Time Goes By is a gentle reminder of all the richness life offers even in difficult circumstances.  It reminds us of what is important—the warmth of a family’s embrace, a good custard tart (Lionel’s favorite), and love, and to quote a formerly blind poet-evangelist named Paul, the greatest of these is love.

 

Unorthodox--A Four-Part Film By Maria Schrader

In an age of cacophony, we forget how much emotion and story can be communicated with eyes and body language.  Unorthodox (Netflix, 2020) conveys so much of its power in the faces of the characters, and in scenes that illuminate the strangeness of the Hasidic Jewish community known as Satmar in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.  At the center of the plot is a woman trying to escape and fashion a future for herself in a faraway city in another country.  The miniseries, created by Anna Winger and Alexa Karolinski based on the memoir by Deborah Feldman, and directed by Maria Schrader, rests on the capable shoulders of an extraordinary cast, led by Shira Haas as Esther “Esty” Shapiro.  In the first episode, Esty has decided to run away from her arranged marriage to Yanky, played by Amit Rahav, and seek out the mother she thinks abandoned her when she was young.  Esty’s journey takes her to Berlin, where she finds a new and promising world, one that also includes in its history the destruction of millions of Jewish lives, an event that haunts her and the community from which she is fleeing even now, more than 75 years later.  Can one ever escape the past?  That is the question running through the four-part series.

Shira Haas is transcendent.  She plays a tiny, fierce woman of nineteen who has been denied an education and is forced to live a sheltered, suffocating existence in which bearing children, keeping house, and pleasing Yanky are her sole responsibilities.  When she cannot consummate her marriage and get pregnant, her mother-in-law becomes involved.  She is subjected to uncomfortable and embarrassing sex lessons from a woman in the community charged with educating inexperienced, virgin brides on how to please their men according to the precepts of Torah and Talmud.  The community is claustrophobic, depriving Esty of air.

Esty relies on her non-Jewish piano teacher to help her plan her escape.  She knows her mother, Leah, lives in Berlin, and she has paperwork that will allow her to establish citizenship in Germany.  Her teacher secures an airline ticket and other documents she needs to flee.  Before leaving, the teacher gives her a compass, an important symbol for Esty finding her way.  Yanky and his sketchy cousin, Moishe, threaten the teacher as they attempt to track Esty down and forcibly take her back to Williamsburg.

Once Esty makes it to Berlin, the world seems to open up before her.  She is astounded by all she sees.  Her mother lives with another woman—Esty spies her on the street—a relationship forbidden in her old world.  Feeling she cannot abide her mother’s living arrangement, she instead seeks out shelter at a nearby music school.  There, she meets several students who take her to a popular beach.  After wading into the water and throwing away the awful wig she was forced to wear in her old life, her shaved head and her uniqueness bring her acceptance with these new friends.  She is transformed, baptized into a new life.

The writers and director take the time to develop the reunion between mother and daughter.  Leah is full of remorse for not being part of Esty’s life, but the child was literally ripped from her in a battle with her Hasidic alcoholic husband.  Theirs was also an arranged marriage.  Esty goes through a range of emotions before coming to accept and understand what happened in the past.  Again, her internal conflict between her old and new worlds often plays across her face and in her eyes.

 Meanwhile, in a too-convenient plot point, a professor from the music school offers Esty a chance to audition for a scholarship.  One can overlook the convenience of the plot for the heightened dramatic tension it creates:  Moishe and Yanky stalk her around Berlin; she struggles to rekindle her relationship with her mother; she discovers she is pregnant, which makes Yanky’s mission to get her back all the more urgent.  Having a child raises her value to him and the community.

The conclusion is stunning.  The surprises regarding her audition are unexpected and transformative.  The showdown between Yanky and his now very different wife reflects the hard choices we must make between happiness and family duty.  It is exhilarating to see Esty’s story play out in Berlin, a welcomed change from the closeness of her Brooklyn life.  One of her new music school friends asks her why she did not go to one of the excellent music schools in New York.  Sometimes even a big city can be a small world when one is a prisoner.  Berlin, a city of tragic history for Esty, also offers a brave new world that she can make her own on her own terms.

 

Mindhunter

Recently, in this very hot summer in Los Angeles, I found myself up late one night binge-watching the David Fincher-produced Netflix show, Mindhunter (2017).  From the credits, I was led to two books that tell a reader everything about the development of the FBI Behavioral Science Unit and how agents profile killers by studying the crime scene, talking to witnesses, and interviewing past serial killers in prison to understand their behavior and thinking.

Robert K. Ressler and Tom Shachtman in their book, Whoever Fights Monsters (St. Martin's Paperbacks, 1992) traces the development of the BSU and focuses on interviewing some of the “monsters” who kill.  We see how the agents in the unit build their profiles and assist police agencies in running down clues and ultimately, locking these disturbed individuals away from society.  The cases are gripping, as one might expect, and not for the squeamish.  We also get a healthy dose of cultural criticism and criminal detection history.

Many of the perpetrators of these heinous crimes live in relative anonymity.  Neighbors often do not realize the horror next door.  But the writers take pains to debunk the bulging-eyed monster killer as a construct of horror films.  “Most people conceive of the murderer as being a kind of Jekyll and Hyde,” they write.  “One day he’s normal and on the next a physiological drive is taking hold—his hair is grown, his fangs are lengthening—so that when the moon is full, he’ll have to seize another victim.  Serial killers are not like that.  They are obsessed with a fantasy, and they have what we must call nonfulfilled experiences that become part of the fantasy and push them on toward the next killing.  That’s the real meaning behind the term serial killer.”

We learn how a case is broken down into four phases: precrime behavior, commission of the crime, disposal of the body and evidence, and postcrime behavior.  There are also two kinds of perpetrator approaches to the murder:  organized and disorganized.  This goes to motive and premeditation.  The organized killer comes prepared for the crime and has studied the situation over a span of time to figure the best method of execution.  A disorganized killer is one who murders on impulse, in the moment.

The writers see criminal profiling as an art, not a science, although there are aspects of science present, especially psychology.  It is true, though, that some people are good at putting themselves inside the head of the killer and the victim to fully understand how the horrific scene went down.  The investigators often suffer from burnout, PTSD, and physical manifestations of their intensive, job-related stress resulting in debilitating illness.

Mindhunter:  Inside the FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Unit (Gallery Books, 1995), by John Douglas and Mark Olshaker, was used as the foundation for the Netflix show, and Ressler and Douglas are the models for the central characters.  Many of the same cases are covered in both books, but the differing points of view, and the individual characters of these two detectives are interesting in comparison and worth the reading of both books.

Douglas and Olshaker touch upon the cultural aspects that make these true crime stories so interesting to the average person.  It is not all blood splatter and tragedy, or monsters who come alive in our dreams and haunt the earth.  Murder originates in the human condition:  a lovers’ quarrel, a neighbor dispute, a cheating spouse, a need for drugs or money.  Serial killers are different.  Over the years, the profilers found that the three most common motives for these crimes are domination, manipulation, and control.  The murder is usually set off by a triggering event, like losing a job or breaking up with a lover.  These commonalities, when compiled, help law enforcement capture the culprit before he can kill again.  By nature, a serial murderer is manipulative, narcissistic, and egocentric.  He will tell people what they want to hear, and he is an expert at aping human emotion and normal behavior in an effort to control the situation and the participants involved.  The FBI’s BSU focuses on a simple equation:  Why + How = Who.  The agents ask themselves:  What took place?  Why did it happen?  And, who would have committed this crime for those reasons?

Behavioral science is an important tool in solving these murders.  These books present a full analysis of cases and techniques used to catch the perpetrators.  The reading is grisly but interesting, a rare look inside both the minds of killers and the detectives who chase them down and bring them to justice.