Duck Amuck and Corn, Chickens and Government share certain characteristics and do not share others. They are both animated cartoons with funny looking characters and a slapstick humour however, the underpinnings of these shorts are quite far from each other. Duck Amuck is an entertaining and witty film while the other is an important warning of a corrupt government.
Duck Amuck is a Looney Tunes short
production directed by Chuck Jones. It is an abstract concept
deconstructing the makings of a cartoon character in his universe. The
scene opens with Daffy Duck dressed in Musketeer garb handling a sword
and battling an unknown second character. As he travels forward dueling
this unknown character, the scenery behind him appears to be incomplete,
as if an artist failed to continue the drawing. Here we enter an
interesting reality in which Daffy Duck is intuitively aware of who he
is and what he is made of and has accepted that a 'greater force' is
setting up and controlling his circumstances. For the rest of the short we
see a struggle between Daffy Duck and the artist. Daffy is attempting to
'get to work' by trying to convince the artist to set up the scenery,
dress him appropriately and create satisfactory camera shots. In turn,
the artist bullies Daffy Duck by taking his requests too literally, even
sarcastically, changing the scenery, Daffy's outfits and even his
entire body characteristics.
Duck Amuck may have been an aim at a large Audience anywhere from childhood to adulthood. We can
assume this because the characters, noises and colorfully expressive
animation is very visually entertaining and uses a 'slapstick' style of
humour. However, the script and story of the short are very adult
concepts that perhaps a young child may not fully understand. How is it
that Daffy Duck is so aware of the details of his existence? How does he
know that he is simply an animated cartoon? Besides being intuitively
aware of who he is he knows what he needs to do. He has a job to
accomplish and that job is performing in an animated cartoon. We can
compare Daffy Duck's position to the position of creatives in any
creative field. As artists and professionals, they have work they need
to do but feel like they are being exploited by the heads of the
companies they work for. Duck Amuck, to children, is a funny cartoon in which an Artist is taking advantage of his position and humiliating his subject while to adults, it is funnier still because it brings in a questioning of reality in a very philosophical sense.
Corn, Chickens and Government is a CIA propaganda cartoon from the 1950s. It opens up with a short Owl, Mr. Owlsley Hoot, running away from a flock of chickens. He jumps into a train and leaves behind Eggville, the town he had just been kicked out of. He then proceeds to explain his situation to another bird (of unspecified breed). He explains that he entered Eggville with a plan to turn around the economy after he overheard some Chickens complaining about the prices of corn. Mr. Owlsley Hoot introduces a plan: The farmers will be paid by the government to sell their supply to the grocer at his price. Then the grocer can sell the supply to the consumers at a low price and everybody wins. There is a catch, however; the government will remove a small tax from the local Doodle-doo egg plant. This catch, of course, goes unnoticed by the town as they blindly trust Mr. Hoot's plan. What happens next is a serious of disastrous events that eventually lead to the bankruptcy of the entire town of Eggville. Corn, Chickens and Government was most likely aimed at young children and perhaps even young adults to effectively and simply communicate the inner workings of the Communist system.
Comparatively, the two differ in the element of their intention. One is to inform while the other is to entertain. Although, it is more complicated than that; Duck Amuck is an abstract concept in itself and is meant to be more of a philosophical pondering while Corn, Chickens and Government was an informative propaganda cartoon meant to simplify the concept of Communism to better reach the understanding of children.
