Tunes for 'Toons: Music and the Hollywood Cartoon
Examining cartoons from a musicological perspective, Goldmark does frame-by-frame readings of such works as "What's Opera, Doc?" Occasionally, this approach seems overserious, but it helps explain the artful mechanics behind a classic sequence like that of Elmer Fudd chasing after Bugs while wearing a Viking helmet and singing "Kill the wabbit" to Wagner's "Walkure" leitmotif. Goldmark compares such spirited culture-tweaking favorably with the ponderous high-culture aspirations of Disney's "Fantasia." Elsewhere, discussing cartoons' use of jazz and their frequently racist depictions of black musicians, he draws the provocative conclusion that "cartoons are, in many ways, a natural extension of the minstrel show." He also compares cartoons to ballet, and he quotes a manifesto in which Scott Bradley (the composer of much music for "Tom and Jerry") imagines the "Cartoon Music of the Future": "Think of 'Pelleas and Melisande,'" Bradley wrote optimistically, "and mise en scene by Dali."Copyright © 2006The New Yorker