Bosko Bitch

THE BOOZE HANGS HIGH — not just a terrible pun, but one that doesn’t even work — is the fourth Looney Tune ever made or released. It begins in the darkness of a cow’s ass, slowly emerging into daylight as the cow saunters away from the camera, now irrevocably soiled and fit only for photographing Chester Morris.

The cow starts dancing with our protagonist, Bosko, a little dog/monkey/blackface minstrel boy. Then the cows skin trousers fall down, along with the udder attached to them, exposing the bovine bloomers beneath. Seems like Termite Terrace had their thing worked out pretty good from the start. Of course the more familiar characters haven’t been dreamed up yet, but the grotesque, vulgar surrealism is front and centre.

Soon Bosko is playing his horse’s tail like a fiddle, in the animals-abused-as-musical-instruments motif popularized by Mickey Mouse. (Mickey is clearly going to grow up to be a psychopath.)

The idea that animals are all secretly wearing clothes continues — perhaps the secret of cartoon anthropomorphism is that they’re all people wearing animals costumes — or at least, DRAWINGS of animal costumes. A duckling has to go poop so the parent duck lowers its backflap to reveal the duckling’s tiny human arse.

The plot — the thing to do with booze — doesn’t start until the toon is halfway over, with the discovery of a black bottle of XXX by a happy piglet. Soon the swine are swallied, or sloshed if you prefer. The large pig throws the bottle away and glasses poor Bosko in the best Begbie tradition. This of course makes Bosko drunk, all though concussion may also be playing a role.

When the pig pukes up a corn on the cob, he reinserts it through a door in his abdomen, which throws my theory about cartoon animals being people in drawn animal costumes into confusion. Apparently cartoon animals are really buildings.

The film ends, as mysteriously as it began, with Bosko singing with the inebriated pigs. But it appears we now have an explanation for the iris ending of most WB cartoons — it’s a call back to the film’s opening, a reverse angle — the cow is now behind the camera, backing into it, and its rectum is decisively enclosing the lens in its Stygian grip.