Long-Haired Hare 1948 (dir : Chuck Jones)

ahhh Long-Haired Hare, one of my favourite cartoons. Unfortunately it was heavily censored back then, so I never got to watch it properly until now. Although nearly every Chuck Jones/Michael Maltese ( as he wrote the scripts) Bugs Bunny cartoon deals with revenge, this one is pulled off in a spectacular manner.

The cartoon starts off with Bugs playing an old showtime tune, A rainy night in Rio on a banjo. Nearby an Opera Singer is practising for his big night, however Bug's singing is interrupting his rehearsal and he storms over to Bug's warren and destroys the banjo. Bugs then proceeds to annoy him further by playing a harp, in which the singer closes his head in it and then a third time with a tuba ( the opera singer then ties bugs' ears to a tree and pulls his body down causing bugs head to knock against the tree several times). After a pause Bugs states his Groucho Marx pilfered sentence

of course you know that this means war.

cue to the big opera night and the singer is confident and excited about his singing role. As usual if one notices the typical Bugs revenge films, he starts slowly and builds the revenge to a climax. Here the beginning prank is banging the opera room roof so that the singer moves about a bit.

now the pain starts seeping him.

bugs then sabatoages the singer's voice with alum ( and his head shrinks)

pretends to be a female fan ( Bugs in drag again!) and gives the singer a stick of dynamite instead of a pen. You can guess the results, and then as a finale, he dresses up as famous conductor Leopold Stokowski, who used his hand to conduct, (bugs does likewise) and keeps the singer on a high note ( including one highly inspired gag where Bugs keeps his glove in mid air while buying and recieving a pair of mail order earmuffs within 2.5 seconds) until the whole opera house crumbles and bruises the singer completely. When the final boulder falls on his head, Bugs whips out a banjo and strums 'Good Evening Friends'

It's a revenge cartoon, but one thing with bugs is that say unlike Daffy Duck who instigates, Bugs will only react when provoked and even here he shrugs off the opera singer's early bullyings in a very friendly manner.

but when he's riled he will pull off an act of revenge that's extremist and painful. There's one quote in what's up doc where Bugs says that he was a rabbit in a human's world. I think this phrase is excellent in summing up this cartoon as indeed he is one BUT he's always in control, never to be domesticated by us humans.