Duck Amuck

I hope everyone liked the presentation our group gave for Hamlet on the Holodeck. I had a lot of fun--and not just with the wine. I thought it was cool that we could integrate so much real-life stuff into the theoretical dissections of literary development. I am thinking, in particular, of "Duck Amuck"--the Daffy Duck cartoon.

This cartoon was fun to watch because I felt like I was a kid again. That's involuntary, associative memory for you. In another class, I just had to read all about Proust's feelings on the unique power of involuntary memory. For him, it was a cookie, not a cartoon, that brought back childhood memories that he couldn't make himself remember. At any rate, there is power in the object that can do that: awaken emotions and visceral memories that the intellect and just words can't reach.

Nostalgia for this type of remembrance is one thing that I really wanted to explore as a Media Studies major, and Janet Murray allows for that by referencing past media to explain the new. in addition to "Duck Amuck," I remember seeing quite a few cartoons as a kid that also called attention to its creation. The entire series "Animaniacs" was about life at the Warner Bros. studios. I never thought of them as significant. When Murray says that in "Duck Amuck," "all of the elements of cartooning have been deconstructed" (104), its seems so academic. Even moreso when she says, "The brilliant animator Chuck Jones created at the height of his powers a similar virtuoso performance in 'Duck Amuck'" (104). It was a funny cartoon, but I don't know if I'd say "virtuoso." But that's the thing; there is significance in the trivial. I guess I don't have much more to say of that now. It was just a funny paradigm shift for me to see something funny from childhood become something academic and related to my major.