MUBI

Duck Amuck is a wholly successful and entertaining loony toon complete with a rather weighty postmodern examination of film and identity. Like Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, the film uses the world of cartoons — who can only exist because of a creator — to question conceptions of art, the worlds we create, and those we don’t. At the hands of a sadistic animator, Daffy Duck encounters various humiliations and tortures that turn his reality upside down. In fact, the “amuck” in the title might more aptly be “adrift” or “unmoored”. At the beginning, he simply can’t keep up with the various backgrounds drawn around him (the animator can’t “make up his mind”), but by the end, Daffy endures the physical ordeals of being a cartoon star as well as some existential crises.

Over the course of the cartoon, Daffy tries admirably to say his lines and act his part in the various Hollywood genres settings in which he finds himself: swashbucklers, aviator pictures, “sea epics”. Like a good actor, Daffy is willing to roll with punches, improvising new action to match his changing surroundings, but whenever a setting is stripped away, he is immediately out of place. His costumes, actions, and lines are no longer appropriate and only expose how hallow his entertaining is. He protests and cites his adherence to contractual obligations, but in what sort of world could a cartoon creation be under contract? The pencil that constantly changes the laws of Daffy’s reality proves he cannot exist outside of this film reality. Like the hand of God, the pencil can upend Daffy’s universe at will, and even erase him completely.

The tortures continue as the animator erases Daffy and draws him again as another creature, a pastiche of monster parts. As the flag attached to the creature’s tail attests, this transformation is yet another screwball. In this world, Daffy can take nothing for granted, including his own physical form. His voice, another facet of his identity, is also taken when then sound cuts out. He asks for the sound to be restored, but when it is, it too conspires against him. He strums a guitar and hears gunfire. All continuity is gone; Daffy can no longer rely on anything to respond to his actions the way he’s used to. Any attempt to influence his world is completely ineffectual.

Daffy’s identity and existence is further questioned in one particularly vivid sequence where the borders of the frame begin to collapse. The scene is fraught with true anxiety and claustrophobia. Like the blurry boarders of shapes that struggle to contain colors in a Rothko painting, the edges of the frame break down and reveal a vast nothingness. The unbearable weight of the blackness and oblivion which surrounds him begins to crush Daffy, threatening to obliterate him. Understandably, Daffy bursts into hysterics, tearing at the “fabric” of the film itself. Beyond the borders of this film, however, nothing can exist, including Daffy. Later, the “film” stops leaving a view of the strip motionless, stuck between two frames. Daffy is above, truncated, yet he still moves. The film itself has broken down, but somehow action continues. This development startles the viewer, used to the image of a film reel at rest, no longer supporting the life it seems to harbor when in motion. For both the viewer and Daffy, any hold on the world has evaporated. Our hero, however, has another shock coming. In the frame below him, another Daffy is ready to take his place when his turn comes. The new Daffy is pulled into the top frame. The two fight and just before the new Daffy can throw the knockout punch, the first Daffy is erased by the animator’s pencil, never to be seen again. The world of this film is cruel, and certainly not big enough for the both of them. Indeed, the first Daffy could never have survived the existence of a second. His frame has come and gone — his existence is fleeting.

At the end, the rabbit behind the curtains is revealed. A familiar white-gloved hand shuts the door on Daffy. After a cut, Bugs Bunny sits at a desk drawing what we’ve just seen. “Ain’t I a stinker?” he asks, winking. He’s been crueler than he knows, simultaneously creating and obliterating the world that contains Daffy. Yet this ending does not answer the question the film raises, it only poses more. If Bugs created Daffy (somehow only with one cel), who created Bugs? Where did the film reel come from? No, the anxiety of this volatile world still remains: the cartoon closes with the end-title screen, “That’s all Folks!”, repeated twice. Beyond Bugs, there are simply more layers of abstraction, not a discernible, single answer.