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Brandon Jones
Rob Sloane
ACS 3000
March 4, 2015
Whats Opera, Doc? No, Really, Whats Opera?
Regarded by animation historian, Jerry Beck, as the greatest cartoon of all time,
Whats Opera, Doc? (1957) is considered a novel take on incorporating music in
animation. The cartoon, directed by Chuck Jones, is an interesting take on Richard
Wagner operas. Whats Opera Doc? clashes the high art appeal of opera with Merrie
Melodies perceived low art appeal. The cartoon is viewed as one of Jones darling as
seen in the extra amount of time put into production to create it. This extra amount of
time is due to the fact that Jones took the challenge of making a cartoon based on Richard
Wagners opera, Ring of the Nielbungen, very seriously and wanted to give the opera the
respect it deserved in its parody (Goldmark, 146). Whats Opera Doc? is an incredibly
intricate piece of animation that effectively parodies the commonly perceived notion of
opera, but plays around with its gags to call into question the meanings of Bugs drag
along with his relationship with Elmer.
The cartoon starts with a gigantic shadowy figure appearing to manipulate the
weather in a ferocious. The camera pans down to reveal that it is tiny, little Elmer Fudd in
Nordic warrior gear. Elmer reveals to us in a slightly off-pitch singing voice to be very
quiet for he is hunting wabbits. After which, Elmer begins his hunt for wabbits as he
sings Kill the Wabbit to the tune of Ride of the Valkyries, thus alerting Bugs of
Elmers intentions. Bugs singingly asks Elmer, in his operatic voice, his catchphrase,

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Whats up, Doc? To which, Elmer shows off his new spear and magic helmet that can
manipulate the weather in a violent fashion, while he remains unaware that Bugs is
indeed a wabbit. Bugs runs off as Elmer chases him through the forest. Elmer finds
Bugs, on top of a disproportionate horse, cross-dressing as a Nordic woman named
Brunnhilde. Elmer is swooned as begins to sing about his admiration for
Bugs/Brunnhilde. The two perform a moving ballet together as Elmer romantically
chases Bugs/Brunnhilde to large structure on top of a hill. As Elmer is holding
Bugs/Brunnhilde in his arms, Bugs helmet falls off revealing that he is in fact no
Brunnhilde. Elmer becomes infuriated and uses his magic helmet to kill Bugs. After
Elmer kills Bugs, he becomes stricken with remorse and carries Bugs off to a tower with
the sunlight focused on them. As he is being carried off, Bugs looks into the camera and
says: Well, what did you expect in an opera? A happy ending?!
The first initial question I asked myself after watching Whats Opera Doc? was
whether or not Jones was aiming to make fun of high art in general? Honestly, this
question becomes incredibly intricate to answer. On one hand, Jones admits to having put
in an incredible amount of effort into this production with his team, even to the point of
cutting short their work on the next Road Runner cartoon (Goldmark, 146). Jones wanted
to take this process as seriously as he could: Despite the fact that he was producing a
cartoon, Jones, along with the cartoons writer, Michael Maltese, approached Wagner
carefully. Jones once explained, Many cartoons using classical music have failed
because they dont take the music seriously enough. I always felt that Bugs and Elmer
were trying to do the opera right. Jones also told me, We didnt want people to laugh at
the music, we wanted them to laugh at what was interpreted by Bugs and Elmer.It

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seemed to me that we were paying great respect to the music itself, but were saying that
if you put a bunch of clowns in front of it, it will be a lot different. (Goldmark, 133).
Despite this desire to respect the art form, Jones admittedly knew very little of about
opera, or music for that fact. His interpretation rather is reliant on stereotypes: Such
ignorance may well have worked to their advantage: rather than focusing on details, the
cartoon director relies on familiar references and broad, sweeping generalizations to
create humor based on stereotypes. (Goldmark, 134). The juxtaposition between these
two quotes lead me to believe that the reality of Whats Opera, Doc? could be poking fun
at high art rather than embracing it in the cartoon.
I find that it would be hard to properly satirize a subject based purely on images
from the outsider perspective. One example from the cartoon that problematizes the idea
of this being a respectful gesture to high art is the addition of ballet in it. Ballet and opera
are two separate art forms, yet here they are linked in that ballet helps play out the
narrative, romantic chase within the opera. The troublesome part arises in that since these
two arent necessarily linked except by being high art. Therefore, the links of high art
with the buffoonery of Elmer and Bugs could lead one to believe this cartoon as leveling
high art with low art. However, I do believe that the buffoonery of Elmer and Bugs
actually lends respectability to opera as Jones intended. This reasoning is because is that
the gags are merely that Elmer and Bugs do not quite fit into opera, rather than that opera
and high art is not as respectable as they seem.
Instead of putting down opera, Jones sought to reinterpret it in the Merrie
Melodies realm:

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Rather than striving for complete historical accuracy using a scene directly
from a Wagner opera with its original music intact Jones and Maltese instead go
for a more entertaining approach: they create a cartoon that is culturally accurate,
satisfying the common notions of what Wagners operas look and sound like.
Nothing that occurs in the narrative of Whats Opera, Doc? is drawn directly from
Wagner all the events are parodies or stereotypes and the cartoon likewise
almost entirely avoids using its own heritage of comedy and timing developed
over twenty-five yearsnothing Bugs or Elmer does goes beyond the bounds of
operatic spectacle. Thus Jones adroitly likens the operatic nature of his own
medium to the cartoonish tendencies of Wagners world perhaps his intent all
along.
This mash-up of two different art realms can be best seen in the condensing of the opera
into the six-minute cartoon format. Writer and lyricist, Michael Maltese and musical
arranger, Milt Franklin, were able to synthesize the 14 hours long opera into a six-minute
cartoon by forgoing a lot of the intricacies of the opera and using only familiar or
stereotyped notions of Wagners opera. Then, the writers were able to make this cartoon
still appear as a classic Merrie Melodies cartoon even without a lot of the same material
used in the past Elmer and Bugs cartoons by simply keeping the heart of their narrative in
tact: Elmer chasing/seeking to kill Bugs. The characters motions and dialogue are then
matched with the music to create gags along with visual tempo to keep the narrative
moving forward with examples being Elmers spear thrusts into the rabbit hole being in
tempo with Ride of the Valkyries and Bugs helmet falling in time with a downward
glissando on the bells.

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Although, a lot of the gags are stripped from the Elmer and Bugs formula, one
vital gag that remains in Whats Opera, Doc? is the gag of Bugs in drag and Elmer
swooning over Bugs. According to Kevin Sandler, cross-dressing in animation has been
meant to reinforce natural gender binaries: Mans inability to master the feminine
threatens his masquerade and occasionally exposes it. By ridiculing the man who dresses
as a woman, the transvestite comedy performs a corrective function, reassigning and
reinstating gender binaries by revealing the absurdity of the feminized man. (Sanders,
164). Usually when Bugs does drag, he is able to revert back to his masculine form
after being exposed and escape. In Whats Opera, Doc?, however, the revelation to Elmer
that Bugs is doing drag actually leads to Bugs ultimate demise. Jones would argue that
this unorthodox narrative plot is meant to highlight Wagnerian tragedy, but the fact that
cross-dressing leads to Bugs downfall is, nonetheless, fascinating to examine. The use of
cross-dressing in Bugs demise could represent a form of vice and encouragement to
avoid the vice of breaking the gender binary. If, according to Sandler, being exposed as a
cross-dresser is meant to reinforce gender binaries, then dying because of cross-dressing
might reinforce the notion that man should avoid cross-dressing altogether.
Whats even more interesting about this segment of Bugs demise after Elmer
finds out he was cross-dressing is Elmers remorse for his actions. Remorse is an
interesting emotion for Elmer to feel after constantly seeking to murder Bugs. Perhaps
this remorse is symbolic. When talking about the symbolic interpretation of Bugs Bunny,
Chuck Jones states: Bugs Bunny is a glorious personification of our most dapper
dreams. We love Daffy because he is us, we love Bugs because he is as wonderful as we
would like to be. (Sandler, 171). If we use this symbolic interpretation of Bugs as being

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the unlimited boundaries of freedom, then we can reasonably assume that Elmers
remorse could be from an acknowledgment that he killed the unlimited freedom that he
wished to have. That sense of freedom could be represented in the relationship between
Elmer and Bugs. Looking back at a previous Merrie Melodies cartoon, Rabbit Seasoning
(1952), Bugs uses drag to fool Elmer again to which Daffy says: Surely, youre not
gonna be taken in by that old gag. Yes, Elmer may represent a nave character, but even
back in 1952, the Bugs fooling Elmer via his drag gag had run its course as being an old
gag.
Elmer seeks freedom in his pursuit of cross-dressed Bugs. Elmer seeks to repress
his want for freedom in his hunt of masculine Bugs. In those few semi-romantic
moments, where Elmer is about to be able to be free with Bugs, he is chasing a fantasy. A
fantasy is all that this chase has always been for Elmer, though. For every time the crossdressing gag is exposed, the gender binaries are reinforced, and Elmer must repress his
feelings for Bugs. When Elmer finally succeeds in his repression of his personal
freedom, Elmer feels something he never expected. He feels remorseful.

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Works Cited
Goldmark, Daniel. "What's Opera, Doc? and Cartoon Opera." Tunes for 'Toons: Music
and the Hollywood Cartoon. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. 132159.
Jones, C. (Director), & Maltese (Writers). (1957). What's opera, Doc? [Motion picture].
United States: Warner Bros.
Sandler, Kevin S. "Gendered Evasion: Bugs Bunny in Drag." Reading the Rabbit:
Explorations in Warner Bros. Animation. Ed. Kevin S. Sandler. New Brunswick,
NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1998. 154-171.
Selzer, E. (Producer), Jones, C. (Director), & Malteese, M. (Writer). (1952). Rabbit
Seasoning [Motion picture]. United States: Warner Bros.
The 50 Greatest Cartoons. (n.d.). Retrieved from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_50_Greatest_Cartoons