Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips

United States

1944

8 Min

Color

English

Currently 2.7/5 Stars.
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MUSIC Carl W. Stalling, Milt Franklyn

ANIM Gerry Chiniquy, Richard Bickenbach, Ken Champin, Manuel Perez

Synopsis

Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips is a Merrie Melodies animated cartoon directed by Friz Freleng, produced by Leon Schlesinger Productions, and released to theaters on April 22, 1944 by Warner Bros. Pictures and The Vitaphone Corporation.

The cartoon was made during World War II, and reflects the United States’ attitude towards one of its main enemies at the time, the Empire of Japan. In the cartoon, Bugs Bunny lands on an island in the Pacific and is pitted against a group of highly racially-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, based on the fact that the Japanese word for “Japan” is “Nippon” (nowadays, written “Nihon”).

The Film Daily called the seven minute short “good fun”, and gave the following synopsis: “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.”

Director

Friz Freleng

Friz Freleng began animating cartoons with Hugh Harman and Ub Iwerks at United Film Ad Service in the mid-1920s, then moved with his associates to the Disney studios. Freleng left Disney in 1929 and after directing his first cartoon for Walter Lantz at Universal (Wicked West), joined the Warner Brothers animation department. There his black-and-white cartoons of the mid-‘30s showed a special flair for integrating music and action, especially in his “Bosko” series. Freleng began directing Warners’ color series of Merrie Melodies cartoons in 1934 and over the next three decades made many of Warners’ funniest cartoons, creating such memorable characters as Yosemite Sam (said to be a self-caricature) and Speedy Gonzalez, as well as developing the identities of such iconic figures as Porky Pig (Porky’s Hired Hand), Bugs Bunny (Racketeer Rabbit, Rhapsody Rabbit), Daffy Duck (Ain’t That Ducky), and Sylvester and Tweety (Tweetie Pie, Birds Anonymous). After Warners’ cartoon unit folded, Freleng… read more