Bushy Hare (1950)
Directed by Robert McKimson
Written by Warren Foster
Animation by Phil De Lara, J.C. Melendez, Charles McKimson, Rod Scribner
Music by Carl Stalling
On several occasions, the Warner Bros. animators placed Bugs Bunny up against one-shot foes designed to plumb humor from politically incorrect stereotypes. In “Bushy Hare,” the antagonist is supposed to be an Aboriginal Australian. However, the Termite Terrace gang obviously knew nothing about Aboriginal Australians and instead created an all-purpose (albeit light tan skinned) wild man in a red loincloth who sports bushy hair and a beard and throws a boomerang and a spear while screaming unintelligibly. No one in America seemed to mind or notice any problems until June 2001 when Cartoon Network pulled it from its “June Bugs” marathon along with other shorts featuring racial and ethnic stereotype characters.
But if you are not offended by the unlikely Aboriginal Australian character (which was obviously not created with malicious intentions), it is easy to embrace “Bushy Hare,” which is one of the most amusing Bugs Bunny cartoons.
“Bushy Hare” opens in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, where Bugs emerges from his hole-in-the-ground residence for a stroll. He encounters an Italian balloon vendor (yes, another stereotype) who asks Bugs to hold his wares while he ties a shoelace. Bugs takes hold of the balloons and is carried up into the sky and across the Pacific. While over Australia, he floats into a cloud and collides with a stork carrying a baby kangaroo. Bugs winds up as the stork’s delivery while the little kangaroo happily floats away while holding the balloons.
The stork deposits Bugs with a mother kangaroo, and he initially tries to convince her that he’s not her baby. When she starts crying, he reluctantly agrees to her maternal bond and she stuffs and zips him in her pouch, taking him on a wild bouncy ride. After getting out of the pouch (and continuing to bounce from the after-effects of the ride), Bugs encounters the Aboriginal character whom he dubs “Nature Boy” and insults in a mock-native conversation rooted in the phrase “unga bunga bunga.” (Okay, I have to admit that exchange doesn’t play so well in 2024.)
The multiple attempts by Nature Boy to capture Bugs inevitably fail, with the predator always getting embarrassed by his prey – most amazingly when the two emerge together in a canoe from a watery cave featuring a “Tunnel of Love” banner, with Bugs teasing the hunter’s alleged romanticism (much to the man’s shock and anger). Bugs and Nature Boy have a final clash inside the mother kangaroo’s pouch (of all places) before the maternal marsupial kicks him off a cliff. When the baby kangaroo drifts back into the picture, the mother volunteers to become a makeshift vessel to bring Bugs back to America – she has an outboard motor tied to her tail while Bugs and her baby ride in her pouch.
Some sources insist the baby kangaroo is Hippety Hopper, the silent bouncing nemesis of Sylvester the Cat, but this wee fellow is much smaller and has a line of dialogue. Nature Boy’s aggressive and noisy bellicosity could be seen as a forerunner of another antipodean adversary, the Tasmanian Devil.