"Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips" Merrie Melodies series Merrie Melodies end title Merrie Melodies is the name of a series of animated cartoons distributed by Warner Bros. ...
Directed by	I. Freleng
Produced by	Leon Schlesinger
Story by	Michael Maltese
Voices by	Mel Blanc
Music by	Carl W. Stalling
Animation by	Gerry Chiniquy Virgil Ross
Distributed by	Warner Bros. Pictures The Vitaphone Corporation
Release date(s)	April 22, 1944 (USA premiere)
Color process	Technicolor
Running time	(one reel)
IMDb profile

Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips is a Merrie Melodies animated cartoon directed by Friz Freleng, produced by Leon Schlesinger Productions, and released to theatres on April 22, 1944 by Warner Bros. Pictures and The Vitaphone Corporation. Image File history File links Size of this preview: 224 × 169 pixelsFull resolution (224 × 169 pixel, file size: 68 KB, MIME type: image/png) Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips title card. ... Isadore Friz Freleng (August 21, 1906[1]–May 26, 1995) was an animator, cartoonist, director, and producer best known for his work on the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons from Warner Bros. ... Leon Schlesinger (1884 - December 25, 1949) was a producer at the Warner Bros. ... Michael Maltese (February 6, 1908 - February 22, 1981) was born on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York. ... Melvin Jerome Blanc (May 30, 1908 – July 10, 1989) was a prolific American voice actor. ... Carl W. Stalling (1888–1974) was the most famous composer and arranger of cartoon music. ... Germain Adolph Gerry Chiniquy (June 23, 1912 - November 22, 1989) was an American animator. ... Virgil Walter Ross (August 8, 1907 - May 15, 1996) was an American artist, cartoonist, and animator best known for his work on the Warner Bros. ... Warner Bros. ... Vitaphone was a sound film process used on several features and shorts produced by Warner Brothers in the late 1920s and early 1930s. ... is the 112th day of the year (113th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1944 (MCMXLIV) was a leap year starting on Saturday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Logo celebrating Technicolors 90th Anniversary Technicolor is the trademark for a series of color film processes pioneered by Technicolor Motion Picture Corporation (a subsidiary of Technicolor, Inc. ... Merrie Melodies end title Merrie Melodies is the name of a series of animated cartoons distributed by Warner Bros. ... The bouncing ball animation (below) consists of these 6 frames. ... Isadore Friz Freleng (August 21, 1906[1]–May 26, 1995) was an animator, cartoonist, director, and producer best known for his work on the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons from Warner Bros. ... Warner Bros. ... is the 112th day of the year (113th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1944 (MCMXLIV) was a leap year starting on Saturday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Warner Bros. ... Vitaphone was a sound film process used on several features and shorts produced by Warner Brothers in the late 1920s and early 1930s. ...

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", a then-widely used slur for Japanese people. Combatants Allied powers: China France Great Britain Soviet Union United States and others Axis powers: Germany Italy Japan and others Commanders Chiang Kai-shek Charles de Gaulle Winston Churchill Joseph Stalin Franklin Roosevelt Adolf Hitler Benito Mussolini Hideki Tōjō Casualties Military dead: 17,000,000 Civilian dead: 33,000... Bugs Bunny is an animated rabbit/hare who appears in the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of animated films produced by Warner Bros. ... For other meanings of Pacific, see Pacific (disambiguation). ... A Norwegian soldier (a Corporal, armed with an MP-5) A soldier is a person who has enlisted with, or has been conscripted into, the armed forces of a sovereign country and has undergone training and received equipment to defend that country or its interests. ... A sumo match Sumo (相撲 Sumō), or sumo wrestling, is today a competition contact sport wherein two wrestlers or rikishi face off in a circular area. ... Missing image Ice cream is often served on a stick Boxes of ice cream are often found in stores in a display freezer. ...

The Film Daily called the seven minute short "good fun", and gave the following synopsis: The Film Daily was a daily publication that existed from 1915 to 1970. ...

"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."^[1]

Summary

Somewhere in the Pacific, Bugs is floating in a box, singing to himself, when 'the island that inevitably turns up in this kind of picture' turns up. Bugs swims towards it, and admires the peace and quiet, when bombs start going off. Bugs ducks into a haystack, and soon comes face to face with a Japanese soldier. The soldier chases Bugs to a rabbit hole, where the soldier dumps a bomb inside. However, Bugs manages to blow the soldier up with the bomb. When the soldier tries to pull Bugs out, Bugs appears as a Japanese general, but is soon recognized by his trademark carrot eating, prompting one soldier to ask him "What's up, Honorable Doc?"

Bugs then jumps into a plane to get away from the soldier, who jumps into his own plane. However, Bugs ties the soldier's plane to a tree, causing the plane to be yanked out from under him. The soldier parachutes down, but is met by Bugs in mid-air, who hands him some 'scrap iron' (an anvil), causing the soldier to fall. Painting a Japanese flag on a tree to denote one soldier down, Bugs runs into a sumo wrestler, whom he confidently faces off against. After getting temporarily beaten by the sumo wrestler, Bugs dresses as a geisha girl and knocks the wrestler out. A sumo match Sumo (相撲 Sumō), or sumo wrestling, is today a competition contact sport wherein two wrestlers or rikishi face off in a circular area. ... Typical nape make-up Geisha ) or Geigi ) are traditional, female Japanese entertainers, whose skills include performing various Japanese arts, such as classical music and dance. ...

Seeing a bunch of Japanese landing craft making their way to the island, Bugs thinks of a plan to get rid of all of them. He comes out in a 'Good Rumor' (a parody of Good Humor) truck, handing each of the Japanese an ice cream with a grenade inside it. All the Japanese are killed off from the explosions, save for one who was killed after redeeming a 'free' ice cream from Bugs. Having now painted dozens of Japanese flags on the trees denoting all the downed enemy, Bugs comments again about the 'peace and quiet - and if there's one thing I CAN'T stand, it's peace and quiet!'. Good Humor is an American brand of ice cream once sold from the back of refrigerated ice cream trucks with bells to announce their presence. ...

Bugs spots an American battleship in the distance and raises a white flag, yelling for them to come get him. However, they do not notice him and keep going. Bugs is insulted, "Do they think I want to spend the rest of my life on this island?" With this remark, a female rabbit (dressed in a more Hawaiian outfit) appears saying "It's a possibility!" Bugs then pulls down the distress flag, lets out a wolf cry, and goes running after her. Hawaiian could refer to the Hawaiian language the native Hawaiian people within Hawaii. ...

Controversy

Since the 1960s, Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips has become very controversial, because of its portrayal of the Japanese and Bugs' attitude and casual violence toward them. Despite its dated anti-Japanese slant (in the wake of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor drawing the United States directly into World War II against the Axis powers), and because the cartoon was not one of The Censored Eleven, it was occasionally shown on television in syndicated packages with other pre-1948 Warner cartoons that were under the ownership of Associated Artists Productions. It debuted on home video in December 1991 on the first Golden Age of Looney Tunes laser disc collection. The niche market format did not cause a stir, but when the 5 disc set was later issued in the more accessible VHS format on 10 separate tapes, Japanese rights groups protested its distribution, and both releases were withdrawn. Reissues for both formats replaced the cartoon with Racketeer Rabbit. The VHS reissue combined volumes 4 and 7 of the 10 tape set. The Censored Eleven is a group of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons that were withheld from syndication by United Artists in 1968. ... Associated Artists Productions was a distributor of theatrical features and short subjects for television founded in 1953 and headed by Elliott Hyman. ... Pioneers LaserDisc Logo The Laserdisc (LD) was the first commercial optical disc storage medium, and was used primarily for the presentation of movies. ... Racketeer Rabbit is a 1946 animated short film in the Looney Tunes series produced by Warner Bros. ...

This was one of the 12 Bugs Bunny cartoons that were pulled out of Cartoon Network's June Bugs 2001 marathon by order of Time Warner due to stereotypes of Japanese people. Time Warner Inc. ...

This cartoon was shown on a special episode of the Cartoon Network show ToonHeads about cartoons from the World War II era albeit in clips while a voiceover explained how Japanese stereotypes in WWII cartoons tended to be very cruel (as shown in Norm MacCabe's "Tokio Jokio", this cartoon, and clips of WWII-era Popeye cartoons). ToonHeads is an animated showcase of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer & Warner Bros. ... Looney Tunes opening title Looney Tunes is a Warner Brothers animated cartoon series which ran in many movie theatres from 1930 to 1969. ... For other uses, see Popeye (disambiguation). ...

External links

• Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips at the Internet Movie Database

For the in-memory database management system, see In-memory database. ...

References

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Footnotes

1. ^ "Reviews of New Films," The Film Daily. 5/10/44. p.13