There’s an old folk story which has lodged itself in the public consciousness for some time now. A coy and wily rabbit evades a bitter old hunter, time and again escaping his murderous threats by the narrowest of margins. The 1950’s which gave birth to this narrative was an era of clear-cut enemies, of fascist threats on every inch of the globe, a world in which Elmer Fudd was an easy direction to cast our pent-up hatred. But the last seven decades have taught us nuanced laws of empathy, and a casual revisit plus some due research reveals a more complicated dynamic.
Poor Fudd
Fudd and Bunny stood alongside Tom & Jerry as archetypical enemies. A hyper-aggressive codependency which staked all semblance of passion and focus on the destruction of the other, but only to the point where the other may still return, at full strength and with a renewed vigor. Were one character ever to finish off their foe, not only would the series end, but the hero would find themselves at a loss for meaning. Much like the delusional American public, which relied on a common enemy, the death of their aggressor would eradicate any sense of purpose in their own life, and would resemble, in effect, a suicide.
In Elmer’s first appearance on screen, Elmer’s Candid Camera, we get the clearest picture ever offered of this mistakenly simple character. Elmer is entering the first stages of the latter half of his life, and the details of his backstory are easily deduced. He is a victim of the first world war, the modern era’s first glimpse into the true heinousness of life. After years of failed re-integration into society, Elmer finds himself one of the lucky few veterans to be chosen by our government’s limited efforts to restore humanity to its patsies in the European theater. This included housing, career opportunities, and a community of fellow vets. Soon after, however, the program is abused as an open source for experimentation, and as Elmer is fired again and again for his recurring “episodes” thanks to his government-issued PTSD, he is chosen as one of the earliest recipients of two new and widely unpredictable procedures: Insulin Shock Therapy, and Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT).
While the latter has survived today as a legitimate and helpful means of soothing painful neuroses, the former is now ubiquitously regarded as inhumane and extremely violent, and despite ECT’s long and successful development, in the earliest stages it was a brutal process akin to the lobotomy. This is the explanation for Elmer’s pure bald scalp and detached, blurry demeanor in Candid Camera, where for the first time he has decided to stop binge-buying from mail-in catalogs and finally enter the world to exercise his passion from childhood: photography.
As war raged across the world and food shortages led to spikes in the consumption of wild rabbits, Fudd took it upon himself to become a pseudo-conservationist. He set out into the wilderness, away from the world which had worn him down, in order to take pictures of the majestic creature in its natural habitat. He planned on selling these photos to popular magazines, to show the world the playful and loving side of the furry critter in order to curb the rampant poaching which had decimated their population. He was going to shoot some rabbits.
If this was Fudd’s original sin, the foundation of all the hatred that was soon to be dumped upon him by the heartless consumer public, then I submit that we lift his charges, allow Fudd to re-enter society. The story complicates from here, but it should never be forgotten these peaceful and altruistic origins. It’s true: as he is repeatedly scorned and duped by Bugs his anger grows. But where was the hare’s appreciation for Fudd’s passion, a mutually advantageous one at that? Why must he revert to escapades rather than allow the poor vet to exercise his hobby? This leads us to the radicalization of Fudd, a point I don’t wish to dwell on. As he faces Bugs’ ridicule it is easy to see why Fudd took to the gun, and why he surmised that with this one rabbit out of the way he can return to what originally inspired him. The gun was how he was raised, was how he is defined, and was how our government taught him to communicate.
Consider 1957’s What’s Opera, Doc?, a rather cruel homage to the work of Wagner considering Fudd’s uneasy relationship with German sympathizers. Our two foes steep deep into the classic canon, with Fudd vigorously outperforming the hare. Fudd’s portrayal of the Dutchman in Wagner’s Der Fliegende Holländer has what the character deserves: heart. Meanwhile, Bunny’s ironic detachment and general malaise deprive his character of any Wagnerian spirit, besides that of rampant racism, perhaps. When Bunny seeps into drag in an attempt to pull off the nuanced Princess Elisabeth, the Landgrave's niece, there is none of the character’s tact; her barbarian roots are leaned upon in a weak attempt to put baby in the corner, so to speak. His alto is a weak soprano, choosing to remain well within his limited tessitura. His garb is anachronistic, and he is an insult to the role.
When Brünnhilde rides her golden calf into the gaze of Fudd, we see the former photographer’s love for what it really is: a repressed homo-erotic obsession for his sole passion. That wascawwy wabbit. The two drift naturally into an erotic dance and we see what paid Bunny’s bills all those years, his pure grace of movement. Fudd is clearly a career beer drinker, and his only source of exercise is the occasional hike. He plays a modest straight man here, while the rabbit twirls in and out of the set pieces, wielding his body for the pristine tool that it is. But Bugs is a cruel lover. At the peak of their courtship Bugs’ body is nestled in Fudd’s arms and the two have proclaimed their affection:
Return my love, I need you beside me
made for you and for me.
Return, won’t you return, my love,
for my love is yours.
In this most tender of moments, it is Bugs Bunny who pulls Elmer Fudd’s helmet over his eyes. It is Bugs Bunny who breaks his promise and flees their terrace. Fudd yells his threats, as he does, but the betrayal is entirely in the hands of Bugs, and the promises of cruelty lodged at the beast is only Fudd’s attempt at keeping their lives entwined. He will endure that pain, will accept it, as long as it means that Bugs will remain in his life.
When Elmer Fudd calls upon the heavens to strike down the rabbit, he does so unaware of his own power. This move is petty, and surely a sign of his deeper fear of abandonment. But he does not realize what it will actually do, because Bugs has never been vulnerable enough to show Elmer the power he actually has. The lightning strikes, and Bugs’ body is left lying on the rocks as a light rain falls upon him, slain. Elmer is horrified, not by his own power, but in fear that he has destroyed the one thing meaningful in his life, the thing he had no clue he was capable of destroying. He rushes to Bugs’ body, takes a trembling knee, holds the furry little bastard in his arms, and weeps. “What have I done? I’ve killed the wabbit.” No, Elmer, the wabbit was dead long before. The wabbit died when Hitler sent millions to die. The wabbit died when Eve bit the apple, when Cain slew Abel. The wabbit has been dead as long as humans have felt pain. You could not have killed the wabbit, old Fudd, because the wabbit was incapable of wuv, and thus incapable of wife.
Au Revoir, Messieur Fudd
This was Elmer’s last appearance in any of the original Chuck Jones’ cartoons. It was no solace that the short was the first animated piece of art to be deemed by the Library as Congress as “culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant,” nor that it tops nearly every significant list of the top cartoons of all time. Without the rabbit, there was no Fudd. We can imagine his life after these traumatic events. In rural 1950’s America there was likely no community for the man, and we can assume that after a quick attempt at hunting again, at maybe finding an equally meaningful partner, he was quickly met with the emptiness of the world. It wouldn’t have been long before it dawned on him that he’ll never have what he had with Bugs again, that most of us aren’t blessed enough to find it even once. The bias against therapy and the lack of a sympathetic civic bloc to turn to, as well as the subsequent repression of these heavy heavy thoughts, would soon drive Fudd to the bottle.
It wouldn’t be a decade before the bank would foreclose on his house leaving him destitute, dependent upon liquor, and entirely alone. Fudd, we can assume, would meet his own end far less glamorously than the rabbit, likely in an alleyway somewhere, covered in years of accrued filth and without one person to identify his body. He would be buried in an unmarked grave, in a plot of land which would quickly be purchased for a Walmart parking lot. His skeleton would be crushed repeatedly by the hulking machines of a mafia-run construction company, and it would be years before some local teenagers would stumble upon his tibia and jokingly toss it to their drugged out rottweiler. Off in the distance, some war vet of Fudd would breath his final breath, muttering faintly a final credo: “That’s all, folks.”
Fudd only wanted to shoot. And his message was absorbed and flipped and implemented as a tool of terror. The entire paradigm was put into effect and orchestrated in one massive strike. A strand in the mane of the broom of the system. And now he is a villain. No, now we are villains.