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Chapman | George F. Kennan as Represented by Chuck Jones: Road Runner and the Cold War Policy of Containment George F. Kennan as Represented by Chuck Jones: Road Runner and the Cold War Policy of Containment (1949-1980) Roger Chapman TheAmerican television cartoon series RoadRunner and Coyote (1949-1980), created by Chuck Jones, should be regarded as a Cold War cultural text. Some of the episode titles betray the Cold War connection: "Guided Muscle" (1955), "War and Pieces" (1964), "Rushing Roulette" (1965), and "Sugar and Spies" (1966). In the following analysis, I attempt to uncover the "structure offeeling"1 that permeates this cartoon animation , arguing thatitis inharmony withwhatwas the viewpointofGeorgeF . Kennan, one oftheleading architects oftheUS ColdWarpolicy ofcontainment. This structure offeeling is related to ideology, in the sense thatit is about "a system of fundamental, value-laden beliefs thatexplain andjustify apreferred domestic political order (and often, by extension, an international order)."2 The interpretation I offer aboutthis workis thatit served as a "manic moral fable"3 to explain andjustify America's aim to "contain" the Soviet Union. Cartoon animation has too often been neglected in film studies ,4 and virtually ignored by historians. There is perhaps the tendency to equate cartoon shows with child's play, even though it is quite obvious that such programming is laden with ideas and messages that are above the understanding of the average young person . In his analysis of war toys, James Combs perceptively notes that "popular play with war toys is an aesthetic experience that includes the potential for politically-relevant learning."5 Certainly the same could be said forchildren viewing certain animation films. But regardless of the young viewers' aesthetic experience, cartoon productions are created not by children but by adults. Consciously orunconsciously, producers ofanimationfilms infuse their works with adult meanings that are ideological. According to Jean-Luc Comolli and Jean Narboni, all films are political in nature because they are determined by the ideology in which they areproduced.6 Iffilmmaking, based on the "reality" wrought by a camera, is considered by its very nature ideological, then it stands to reason that an animation film, based on drawings, should also have political overtones. Indeed, years prior to the debut of RoadRunnerand Coyote there were times when cartoon programs proved to be highly politicized. Thepoliticizing ofAmerican cartoon animation dates back to at leastWorldWar ?, when the character Bugs Bunny served as a type ofnational mascot. In "Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips" (1944) and "Herr Meets Hare" (1945), the rabbit figure fought against the Japanese and the Germans, respectively.7 Prior to America's involvement in that conflict, an episode of the Porky Pig Show satirized the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact between Germany and the Soviet Union by characterizing the two countries as feuding hillbillies. In that episode, "NaughtyNeighbors" (1939), PetuniaPigMartinand Porky (the Real McCoy) were depicted as making a less thanconvincing peace.8 Such earlier works established a precedent for how some American animators would respond to the ColdWar. One lingering trend that had been developed by Warner Bros, was the chase cartoon, which Joe Adamson describes as a "series of two character battles in a milieu in which passersby are conspicuously absent."9 Examples of such conflict duos inelude Sylvesterthe Catversus TweetyBird, Foghorn Leghorn versus Henry Hawk, Elmer versus Daffy Duck, and Elmer versus Sylvester. Beginning in 1948, coinciding with the early ColdWar years, there was the debut of Marvin the Martian, a space alien who was determined to blow up planet Earth on a whim, but fortunately there was Bugs Bunny to stop him.10 (This was a popular approach to the Cold War, depicting thecommunistthreatas onparwith an alieninvasion.11 ) In such cartoon dramas the world is a stage where two characters are at conflict, but the moral of each episode is that the aggressor always loses. Bugs Bunny, an animation character that reached its height of development under Chuck Jones, was cast as a lover of peace who, through no fault ofhis own, sometimes had to fight. In other words, Bugs Bunny was the "good guy," presumably like Uncle Sam, who never starts conflicts but sometimes has to finish them. Chuck Jones had precise ideas about his Bugs Bunny, which were quite ideological: My...

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