Saturday Morning Cartoons--Hillbilly Hare

This is just a classic Bugs Bunny cartoon--Hillbilly Hare. This is one of those cartoons that I especially remember being aired during the Bugs Bunny Show on ABC during Saturday mornings in the 1970s.

Wikipedia has this interesting detail regarding Hillbilly Hare:

Because of the easily imitatable gun and fire gags (and the actions in the square dance song stanza shown above), this short was heavily edited on some TV channels, specifically ABC, until it was banned outright in the mid-1990s. It has been shown (with offending parts intact) on Cartoon Network and now on the Golden Collection DVD set (volume three; disc 1).

I didn't know that this particular cartoon was banned outright in the mid-1990s because of the guns and the actions in the square dance stanza. I wonder if that is censorship overkill here? There were only three scenes involving gunfire, when each hillbilly fired his gun at Bugs, plus the one scene where Bug's carrot is shot off on both ends. In fact, there is more gunfire taking place in Chuck Jones masterful "Hunter's Trilogy" of Rabbit Fire, Rabbit Seasoning, and Duck! Rabbit! Duck! than what you would find in Hillbilly Hare. As for the square dance sequence, its violence is still an absurd violence, similar to the stuff you would see in any other Warner Brother's cartoons, or even in any Tom and Jerry cartoon. Maybe it was the combination of both that scared the networks into banning this cartoon.

Here is HillBilly Hare on YouTube:



And now you're home;
Bow to your partner,
Bow to the gent across the hall,
And that is all.