On Wile E. Coyote

I tweeted earlier tonight (as T_A_Holmes) that I was watching Road Runner cartoons with my younger children and encouraging them to feel sympathy for the Coyote. The fact is, I didn't have to encourage them all that much. They kept expressing surprise at how things just don't work out for the Coyote, and "poor Coyote" was repeated a number of times. I understand that some people consider Wile E. Coyote a villain, but I just don't buy that perspective.

There's a reason. Wile E. Coyote is an intelligent, inventive character. He comes up with elaborate, creative plans. He has resources at hand to realize those plans. However, no matter how carefully he works, his plans fail.

We have to remember that Wile E. Coyote's problem is not starvation. Clearly, if he has the funds (or at least the credit) to order all those devices and materials from Acme, Inc., he can surely buy food. He makes these plans because he contends with the irrationality of his world; the Roadrunner, who is not the Coyote's enemy, merely represents the capricious nature of the Coyote's world. The Roadrunner, for example, will taunt the Coyote with a placard that says, "Roadrunner's can't read." Random events never help the Coyote. Emotion does not help him--he might get so carried away that he falls prey to one of his own traps, having forgotten that he has planted it. Even his own skills work against him, especially if his plans work much better than he has expected, as when a rocket far overshoots its predetermined trajectory, because even the laws of physics provide no reliable, assured foundation for the Coyote's experience. Capturing the Roadrunner would symbolize the Coyote's victory over the controlling forces of his crazy universe. He persists, he survives, he endures, and he hopes. For all his Rube Goldberg failures, he just will not quit. He is brave in his resistance to despair. Sometimes he is smarter than his own good, and it is painful to watch him foul up, and (especially in the cartoons when he can talk), he can be awfully vain. There are days, though, when he makes perfect sense to me.

Perhaps one of the most highly visible if unacknowledged versions of Wile E. Coyote would be the character Frasier Crane from Cheers and then Frasier. You can see another version in the Sideshow Bob character on The Simpsons (voiced by Kelsey Grammer, who plays Frasier Crane in the two series mentioned previously). If you are interested in a solid metaphysical analysis of Wile E. Coyote, consider looking up Grant Morrison's "The Coyote Gospel," which is issue #5 of his Animal Man for DC/Vertigo; in this story, Crafty Coyote questions what kind of creator would put such a character through such repeated agony, drawing a parallel between Job and Wile E. Coyote. In many ways, we have to give Morrison credit for drawing attention to such an obvious parallel, but we cannot forget that Warner Bros. itself, in the short feature "Duck Amuck" (directed by Chuck Jones, 1953), presents an animated Daffy Duck manipulated by animator Bugs Bunny, who addresses the camera at the end of the torturous exercise and asks, "Ain't I a stinker?" Since we laugh along with him, I guess we all are.