Guided Muscle (aka Incredulous Coyotes Need Not Apply)

If I were to pick out one short that, for me, represented the absolute cream of the Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner crop, I'd inevitably go to Chuck Jones' 1955 masterpiece Guided Muscle, a choice that I'll confess has relatively little to do with the coyote's endeavours to stop that infernal ground cuckoo in its tracks. Guided Muscle is like an exquisite sandwich, its filling wedged between two particularly flavoursome slices of bread. The filling is still an essential and gratifying part of the experience, but it's the bread I'm really here for. As a young child, I had Guided Muscle on a VHS tape along with eight other Coyote and Road Runner shorts (part of a series of Looney Tunes releases put out by Videolog to coincide with Bug Bunny's 50th birthday); it always stood out to me as the single biggest oddity of that collection, all on account of how it was bookended, with an opening sequence I found strangely unsettling (in the best possible way) and a closing punchline that for a long while just left me baffled. We might as well start with the ending, for it is the juicier of the two - after suffering one defeat too many in his ever-fruitless pursuit of the road-runner and becoming charred by an explosion he had devised, set up and activated, a visibly irate Wile withdraws from the chase, producing a sign that reads, "Wanted: One gullible coyote. Apply to Manager of this theater." He then signs off by pulling the "That's All Folks!" card across the screen. Cue "Merry-Go-Round Broke Down".

What's going on here might seem blatantly obvious to adult eyes, but appreciate that, at seven years old, this was a difficult joke for me to wrap my head around for three different reasons:

1. I was unaware of some of the ways in which American English differed from British English, and couldn't be 100% certain that a "theater" was actually the same thing as a "theatre". On top of which, I would have been thinking of a theatre in terms of a playhouse rather than a cinema.
2. At that age, I also had no idea what "gullible" meant.
3. Like a lot of children who grew up watching Looney Tunes shorts on television or VHS, I had little inkling of how old they actually were, or of the fact that they hailed from another era completely, where cartoons were screened theatrically before feature films. I would have assumed that they were made for television like every other cartoon I was in the business of watching. Gags where characters interacted with a film strip and a white screen still made a degree of sense (I appreciated that the characters were bending reality and going beyond the confines of their world), but something like this I had no real reference for.

Eventually I figured out that what Wile was doing here was tending his resignation, and over time all of the other details became clear. It (briefly) put the fanciful, none-too-serious notion into my head that it wasn't necessarily the same coyote we saw chasing the road-runner in every short - Guided Muscle was only the third cartoon on this tape, so did that mean for that the remaining six we were seeing how that gullible new applicant was faring? A darker thought crossed my mind that the coyote perhaps wasn't surviving some of the more extreme of his backfired schemes and was being repeatedly replaced by lookalikes in between shorts (I mean, doppelgangers were out there - just look to the Ralph Wolf shorts). On that note, how could I be certain it was even the same road-runner being chased every time? What if the coyote was obtaining the occasional victory when no one was watching and new specimens were coming along to fill the void? After all, this is the closest a Looney Tunes series got to replicating the kind of set-up you saw in nature documentaries (the constant use of Acme products notwithstanding) - the subjects didn't talk and were observed in their natural habitat, engaging in the same age-old battle of hunger vs elusiveness that's defined the rhythm of life for countless generations of predator and prey. The individual participants were constantly changing, even if the basic narrative remained the same. Obviously, I appreciate that none of that idle thinking holds water, for Looney Tunes shorts typically adhere to their own self-contained continuity. What happens in one is unlikely to have any direct bearing on the next. Case in point, Guided Muscle was already the seventh of the coyote vs road-runner shorts, yet the opening sequence gives the impression that Wile is encountering Road and getting acquainted with his incredible acceleration for the very first time. In that regard, I like the way in which it tells a complete story and how the opening and closing sequences, while they may not directly echo one another, show Wile's fixation coming full circle. 

The intention behind the opening sequence was much less of a puzzle to me as a child - that Wile was apparently desperate enough to be preparing a discarded tin can as a meal spoke volumes about his impoverishment and how badly he was eating in general - but it always disturbed me, even if he ultimately stops short of attempting to eat this most exotic of delicacies. What makes the sequence so glorious is how beautifully straight it's initially played, with the coyote going about his business with the can as if this were the most normal behaviour on Earth. There's no hint of any kind of craze or desperation in his eyes. It's only when he sits down to try cutting the damned thing with a knife and fork that his expression warps into something significantly more exaggerated, as the grim reality of his situation sinks in. The abruptness of this transition is what really spooked me about this sequence, not least for how Wile breaks the fourth wall, shooting his demoralised gaze directly at the viewer as if the awareness that he's being watched has made him self-conscious of his own wretchedness. There's also an excessive amount of red around Wile's eyes during this particular moment, due to what I presume to an inking error, but ones that adds fortuitously to the overall uncanniness of the scene. Another detail I particularly love is the broken bottle of pink liquid positioned to the right of the coyote's dinner plate that's obviously intended to give the appearance of a fine rosé wine, although who knows it actually contains? Wile discards it along with the can, so whatever it was, it likely wasn't any more palatable.

Wile's assigned Latin name, Eatibus almost anythingus, informs us that he isn't exactly a picky eater, but we've already witnessed where his limits lie. He's not reckless enough to try forcing something as inedible as a tin can (no matter how thoroughly boiled) through his digestive system. By the same token, he decides at the end of the short that he isn't reckless enough to keep pursuing the road-runner and suffering injury after injury in his attempt to pinpoint some kind of fatal chink in the bird's armour - to do so would be as delusional as his prior belief that he could cure his hunger pains by chowing down discarded tin cans. The problem of his hunger remains unresolved, but he he's least seen the futility of his chasing and taken a step back (for now). I will admit, even if the ending is no longer a point of confusion to me, that there is a degree to which I still find it somewhat troubling, specifically in the notice's request for a "gullible" coyote. There is subtle humor in the implication that the hypothetical applicant would have to be self-aware enough to recognise themselves as gullible, but it also indicates that the position is to be regarded as a trap, raising questions about who is the predator in this scenario and who is the real prey. Although Wile initially sees Road as his salvation, he is in fact the perfect bait, luring Wile ever deeper down the path of Sisyphean endeavour. He's on a quest to attain the unattainable, doing things a little differently every time, determined to keep going long after he's exhausted every possible option. It's what makes the scrawny fleabag so endearing. But it's also what, according to Chuck Jones, in the series of (contested) rules he reportedly laid out for the series, makes him such a thoroughgoing fanatic, citing George Santayana's definition of the fanatic as "one who redoubles his effort when he has forgotten his aim."

It's in Wile's apparent resignation at the end of Guided Muscle that we see shades of the grind experienced by the coyote's aforementioned doppelganger, Ralph Wolf, with the implication that his designated role as the predator in this equation is a job like any other. Of course, the Sam and Ralph shorts were entirely firm on where the boundaries lay between the characters' personal and professional lives, by having the wolf and sheepdog drop their antagonistic demeanours the second the clock struck 5pm and head off home to their neat suburban houses, wishing each other well for the evening. In Wile's case, and in spite of Jones' insistence that he could stop any time if he weren't a fanatic, it's not clear if walking away is even an option. Compared to Sam and Ralph, there is no other world for him to retreat to, and no differentiation between the characters' assumed and "real" personas. What does the coyote even have to do in his sparse terrain other than to fixate on catching the road-runner (or experiment with tin cans)? Something I've always enjoyed about the Coyote and Road Runner shorts is their purity - the characters never ventured beyond their stretch of the desert and for the most part seemed to be the only inhabitants that actually dwelt there. Rarely do other parties get involved, the only persistent hint of a world that exists beyond coming in the supply of Acme products that Wile is (inexplicably) able to have sent his way, and even then, their products appear to exist purely in service of the coyote's endeavours, given their peculiar and often niche nature. One of my favourite gags in Guided Muscle occurs when Wile resolves to try tarring and feathering the road-runner and consults a publication entitled How To Tar And Feather A Road Runner; the existence of such a book should be ludicrous enough in itself, but the subtitle indicating that it's already in its 10th printing takes the joke to the next level. Another sequence involves an outside intrusion in the form of the red truck that comes thundering down the narrow road Wile has just greased - although (not unlike the truck from the movie Duel) you get the uncanny impression that the vehicle exists not as a means of mobility for any flesh and blood participant of some wider universe, but as force of calamity pulled from nowhere to inflict further misfortune upon our hero. The road runs throughout the desert, not as a means for travellers to pass through it, but foremost to the lay the grounds for the ongoing chase (such conditions are, after all, demanded by the name one of the parties bears, both as an individual and as a species).

One of the great underlying absurdities of the Sam and Ralph series was in the question of who was actually employing the two canines to go to war with one another on a daily basis from 9 to 5 - the depiction of a sheepdog as a working stiff made a degree of sense, but what kind of sheep farming business would also be hiring a wolf to stir up conflict within that time? One interpretation is that it's all being orchestrated for the benefit of the viewer, so that we could derive amusement from their ostensible enmity, until they've fulfilled the day's quota for cartoon mayhem and get to retire for the night. The ending to Guided Muscle, with its more explicit reference to the physical space from which the short's original audience would have observed the action, suggests that Wile possesses a self-awareness that providing entertainment for the viewer is his own raison d'être, by acknowledging that his giving up on chasing Road Runner would require another coyote to take this place. Such is our fascination with seeing a malnourished coyote suffer endless pratfalls in pursuit of a terrestrial cuckoo. I like to think that by the end of the short he's dropped more than just the delusion that the road-runner is a viable target. Up until now, Wile has obviously regarded the viewer as his ally and confidant, judging by the series of gestures and glances he directs toward the camera while he goes about his business. The first of his ill-fated schemes, which involves affixing an arrowhead to his nose and firing himself with a large bow, contains a particularly harrowing (and hilarious) moment where he turns his head elatedly toward the viewer, expecting them to share in his excitement that things are running according to plan, only to get blind-sided by the saguaro cactus directly in front of him (which proceeds to fall off of a cliff, taking him down with it). His trust in his audience is flagrantly misplaced. In the end, Wile appears to have fallen out of love with the viewer as much as he has the concept of consuming Road, having seen though the intrinsically exploitative nature of the relationship. Any coyote applying to fill in his position would need to be gullible, not just in the belief that they can actually catch the road-runner, but in the belief that showbiz is glamorous and the audience is on their side and not getting a tremendous kick at their expense.

Conversely, the coyote is also the party with whom the viewer overwhelmingly identifies, which makes that relationship a somewhat masochistic one. By now it's pretty well-established that if you were rooting for the road-runner, you were doing it wrong, for it's Wile who possesses all of the attractive qualities. The vulnerabilities, the drive to attain something better than the hand life dealt him, and the dogged attachment to his beloved pipe dream, no matter how thoroughly and repeatedly the universe insists on bending to beat it out of him. He keeps going, hoping that with enough persistence and variation he might procure a better result and taste the kind of success the world seems intent on denying him. For that reason, he has our sympathies, and it's easy to see him as a mirror to our own fallibilities, adding an extra shade to the coyote's final implication of the audience at the end of Guided Muscle. By evoking the audience's own immediate space, and indicating that the application process would be happening right there within that very theatre, he is evoking the possibility that they could be the ones to take his place. The short ends with the insinuation that the viewer, like the coyote, might be at risk of being caught in a trap of their own making. The bait is laid out right in front of them, even if it calls attention to its own baited-ness with the specification for a gullible applicant. Of course, the signage also specifies that the applicant must be a coyote (this part is underlined for emphasis), which would appear to automatically disqualify all of us non-coyotes. But perhaps we could become coyotes, if only a figurative sense. Scrawny little underdogs who believe we deserve better and won't let that light of tenacity go out, even as the odds are perpetually stacked against us. How do we know when we've crossed the slippery line from hard graft and determination into self-destructive obsession? If eating discarded tin cans is our only alternative, does it make any difference either way?