David -- it is amazing when you consider the dates in relation to
various European art-house films or American avant-garde films that play
with these ideas. So many of these cartoons from the late 1930's on take
pains to alert the audience of the fact that you are watching a movie
and that it is constructed -- some though references to the process of
projection and the material of film, some through the intrusion of
non-diagetic material into the diagesis, and some through studied
parodies of other films, etc.
The same goes for a certain experimental attitude towards speed and
timing in action and editing.
On 4/19/2011 1:13 PM, David Baker wrote:
> The gag Gregg cites occurred in a slightly different form
> one year previously in 1938's DAFFY DUCK AND EGGHEAD. At one point
> Egghead
> (a shotgun wielding hunter) shoots a troublesome audience member (in
> silhouette) outside the
> fourth wall.
>
> Preceding the French New Wave, Tex Avery's oeuvre is rife with
> instances of cinematic self-reference
> and reflexivity, if not actual references to film as material per se.
>
> In LUCKY DUCKY, two dogs in hunting attire run out of a color film
> ("Technicolor Ends Here") into a black and white picture momentarily.
>
> In HAPPY GO NUTTY Screwball Squirrel and Meathead run right past
> the end title thereafter returning to reexamine their motivations in
> order to reconstitute
> a new albeit loonier ending.
>
> Midway through SCREWBALL SQUIRREL the eponymous rodent
> peels back the entire mise-en-scene so that he and we can see
> what will happen next. Screwball Squirrel consistently breaks the
> fourth wall by talking to the audience.
>
> On and on,
>
> DB
>
> On Apr 19, 2011, at 9:39 AM, gregg biermann wrote:
>
>> Ken,
>>
>> The one with the silhouette of the audience member standing (and
>> interacting with a caricature of Edward G. Robinson in Little Caesar)
>> was an Avery WB Cartoon "Thugs with Dirty Mugs". The silhouette then
>> remains past a cut into a new scene and rats out Edward to the cops.
>> The same cartoon breaks the conventions of split screen when a
>> character
>> moves across the split.
>>
>> As Mark pointed out, in the Avery Cartoon "Magical Maestro" a
>> character
>> grabs what appears to be a hair in the projector gate and plucks it
>> out.
>> That was done at MGM.
>>
>> Medium specificity ... for the sake of humor.
>>
>> Gregg
>>
>>
>> On 4/19/2011 2:17 AM, Ken Bawcom wrote:
>>> There is at least one Tex Avery cartoon where we see the film burn in
>>> the gate. I don't recall the title, or even if it was for WB or MGM.
>>> He did at least one where the character runs off the edge of the
>>> film,
>>> and we see the sprocket holes. I think that one was with MGM.He also
>>> did the hair in the gate thing, and had at least one where a "member
>>> of the audience" stood up, casting a shadow on the film. Sorry, I'm
>>> too lazy to poke around The Big Cartoon Database (www.BCDb.com) and
>>> try to come up with titles.
>>>
>>> Ken B.
>>>
>>>
>>> Quoting David Baker<dbaker1_at_hvc.rr.com>:
>>>
>>>> During the cartoon Duck Amuck by Chuck Jones,
>>>> for a time Daffy is left to prop the film frame up
>>>> with a stick before it collapses in on him entirely.
>>>>
>>>> The film ends by revealing that a paint brush wielding
>>>> Bugs Bunny as animator (outside the film) has been responsible for
>>>> all
>>>> of Daffy's
>>>> phantasmagorical predicaments.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Apr 18, 2011, at 11:51 AM, Myron Ort wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> I like this term "film rupture" for self referential
>>>>> manifestations.
>>>>> In a film I am currently working on, a paint brush wielding
>>>>> character
>>>>> paints himself in a context where the brush strokes show up on the
>>>>> film itself.
>>>>>
>>>>> Myron Ort
>>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> "Those who would give up essential liberty
>>> to purchase a little temporary safety
>>> deserve neither liberty, nor safety."
>>> Benjamin Franklin 1775
>>>
>>> "I know that the hypnotized never lie... Do ya?"
>>> Pete Townshend 1971
>>>
>>>
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>>>
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Received on Wed Apr 20 2011 - 06:36:55 CDT
