Thursday, March 27, 2014

"Of Mice and Men" and Looney Tunes

I was talking to my friend Diane today about Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck.  (One of her favorite television shows, The Walking Dead, had a storyline based on this book.)  We couldn't remember which character was George and which one was Lennie.  Was Lennie the capable one, or was George?  Which one had the disability?  She thought George was the gentle giant, and I thought it was Lennie.

"Of course," she said.  "It was Lennie!  'I will love him and pet him and squeeze him and name him George...'" She rattled off one of my favorite lines from the Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny cartoon.

"What?" I said.  "I didn't know that cartoon was based on Of Mice and Men."  I knew Warner Brothers based cartoons on opera, but I didn't know they copied literature.  "Wow.  Of Mice and Men is pretty dark."

"Looney Tunes are messed up," she said.

Indeed.

But I still love it.  Like most other children of the 1970's, I remember my brother and I waking up early on Saturday morning to watch Bugs Bunny, the Road Runner, Scooby Doo and other cartoons while my parents slept in.  Little did I know at the time they were parodying a great yet tragic book.

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