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Enter Bugs Bunny: Matador and Star in Bully for Bugs [LA ALTERNATIVA DE BUGS BUNNY, MATADOR Y ESTRELLA EN “BULLY FOR BUGS” (CHUCK JONES, 1953)]

Smith, Susan and Summers, Sam (2017) Enter Bugs Bunny: Matador and Star in Bully for Bugs [LA ALTERNATIVA DE BUGS BUNNY, MATADOR Y ESTRELLA EN “BULLY FOR BUGS” (CHUCK JONES, 1953)]. Revista de Estudios Taurinos, 41. pp. 251-278. ISSN 1134-4970

Item Type: Article

Abstract

In Disney’s 1922 Laugh-O-Grams cartoon Puss in Boots, there’s a scene a third of the way through in
which the protagonist (named simply ‘The Boy’), despondent at the King’s disapproval of him as a
match for his daughter, is persuaded by his feline friend Puss to visit the local cinema. There, they
watch a cartoon billed ‘RODOLPH VASELINO In THROWING THE BULL In Six Parts’, the title of which
unmistakably alludes to Rudolph Valentino’s starring role in the silent version of Blood and Sand
(1922). Here, the cartoonalising of Valentino as Vaselino and the young boy’s emulation of this star
by becoming a masked matador who ends up having to rely on hypnotic help from Puss to defeat
the bull comically deflates this actor’s privileged status as human star by re-presenting him within a
form (animation) traditionally regarded as the poor relation to live action cinema. As such, this
cartoon skit of Valentino in Blood and Sand illustrates animation’s penchant for ‘import[ing] […] nonanimated movie star trappings to re-perform the artifice of stardom’, using ‘parody and creative reperformances of “straight” stardom’.

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Additional Information: Unable to confirm DOI
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Depositing User: Barry Hall

Identifiers

Item ID: 8573
ISSN: 1134-4970
URI: http://sure.sunderland.ac.uk/id/eprint/8573
Official URL: https://institucional.us.es/revistas/taurinos/41/S...

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Catalogue record

Date Deposited: 20 Dec 2017 16:37
Last Modified: 19 Nov 2020 14:04

Contributors

Author: Susan Smith
Author: Sam Summers

University Divisions

Faculty of Arts and Creative Industries

Subjects

Media > Cinema and Film

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