Anyone who likes to root for the underdog will be happy to see him back on screens in “Coyote v Acme”, which opens in cinemas on August 28th. In this wacky, often amusing film, Coyote is not merely a hapless hunter. He is also a plucky plaintiff, suing Acme for its faulty products. With the help of his lawyers and a whistleblower (Bugs Bunny), as well as other characters from Looney Tunes, Coyote raises awareness of cartoon injuries and is celebrated as a hero. (The screenwriters based the film on a humour piece in the New Yorker and took inspiration from legal dramas such as “Erin Brockovich”.) Though Coyote has never caught the Road Runner, he has captured the hearts of viewers. That is perhaps surprising: Chuck Jones, his creator, insisted that Coyote should be a “fanatic” and fail because of his own “ineptitude”. Jones thought he was a tragic figure, nearly naming him Don Coyote after Miguel de Cervantes’s hapless knight. Yet Jones also wanted audiences to side with the canine. He saw Coyote as Sisyphus: an absurd hero, showing joy and hope in the never-ending struggle of pushing a boulder uphill (or chasing a bird). “Coyote v Acme” offers plenty of nods to the myth, with its central mystery dubbed “Project Sisyphus”. Getting the film into cinemas also became an uphill struggle. In 2023, after “Coyote v Acme” was completed, Warner Bros Discovery shelved it for a tax write-off. People posted online with the hashtag #SaveCoyoteVsAcme; one fan dressed up as Coyote and stood outside the Warner Bros studios with a sign saying “RELEASE ME!!!” All this generated buzz for the film, which was eventually acquired by a small distributor, Ketchup Entertainment. Coyote has become famous partly because of the simple conceit that animates his life on screen. Though each of the cartoons has a distinctive title, the plots are similar: in “To Beep or Not to Beep”, Coyote gets hit by boulders and falls from the sky; in “War and Pieces” the same thing happens but with rockets. In addition to gags, Coyote and the Road Runner provide a generational pulse-taking. Should one cheer for the blundering Coyote or the clever beeping bird that keeps evading his traps? In 2000 Henry Allen, a journalist and lecturer, argued that baby boomers who came of age in the raucous 1960s identified with the Road Runner. To them Coyote was the
establishment (“cops, parents, the draft board”); they felt that the Road Runner thought outside the box. However, Mr Allen’s Gen X students identified with Coyote. They believed boomers (and the bird) had it too easy. Coyote worked hard, always against the odds. Today people are Coyote fans for different reasons. His willingness to fight a corporation resonates at a time when big business is as unpopular as a massive boulder to the head. And his never-ending struggle with various gadgets reflects people’s own tech troubles. (Online memes compare Coyote’s anger at Acme products to the rage people feel when interacting with ineffectual customer-service AIs.) All this makes Coyote’s determination seem less unhinged than upbeat. He may be a loony animal risking death for a bird, which doesn’t seem to have much meat on it anyway. But he is also enthusiastic and hopeful in the face of failure. “Not all underdogs are dogs,” reads the film’s marketing slogan. Some are coyotes; others are screenwriters and viewers, who all need something to laugh about. ■ This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com/culture/2026/08/27/the-resonance-of-wile-e-coyote-from- loony-to-loved
What the dead can teach you about life Hurry up: both to make your mark and to cherish your loved ones Aug 27th 2026 Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, did not die in 1888. But his brother, Ludvig, an engineer, did. In a mix-up, a French newspaper published an obituary of the wrong Nobel, calling Alfred a “merchant of death”. Chastened and fearing for his reputation, he endowed the prizes awarded in his name. This is one of many droll anecdotes in “Are They Dead Yet?”, a memoir and meditation on obituaries by Sam Roberts, a veteran writer of them at the New York Times. Nobel’s tale quirkily captures the deep purpose of reading about the deceased. At bottom, obituaries are less records of the end of another person’s life than lessons in how to live your own.
The illustrious dead are intimidating. As Mr Roberts says, it is dispiriting to compare their exploits with your own piffling achievements. Especially if you are over 37: that is the average age at which, one analysis shows, people manage the feat that earns their obituary. Why them, you wonder, and not you? Then again, the dead might ask the same question of the living if they could. Mr Roberts quotes David Hirshey, an American writer: “No matter how accomplished you were, if I’m reading your obit, I’m doing better than you are.” Besides supplying a shiver of relief, the venerated dead teach you how to earn society’s esteem. The entrance criteria for the obituarised elite vary over time. The deaths of athletes and entertainers, for instance, were more noteworthy in the late 20th century than at the start. In the past women and minorities were unfairly overlooked (not only because they were unlikely to hold positions of power). “To be valued,” writes Mr Roberts, “one first has to be noticed.” If the dead reveal how posterity measures achievements, they also suggest how to balance personal merits against mistakes. It is a consolation to learn that many great careers included failings and lapses. “When does an error define the arc of a life,” Mr Roberts inquires, “and when does a person defy it?” He cites Irving Kaufman, a judge who in 1951 sentenced the Rosenbergs to death for espionage, but was also a free-speech champion. Sometimes it is hard to adjudicate between virtues and flaws. “Say what you like about Boris Yeltsin”, began one obituary of the sozzled Russian leader, “and you’re probably right.” In general, death is the least interesting thing about the dead. “Death is not an event of life,” argued Ludwig Wittgenstein, and, mournful as the form seems, it is scarcely a feature of obituaries either. Typically, writes Mr Roberts, they “mention the word died only once”. They are much less funereal than much of the news, which routinely focuses on murder, war, natural disasters and other lethal woes. “Obits are about lives, not deaths,” Mr Roberts summarises. And lives are not like tight basketball games, the upshot determined at the finale. The ending does not outweigh what went before; last words rarely express a person’s essence. The author is sceptical of supposed deathbed aphorisms.
Did Groucho Marx really quip, “Die, my dear? Why, that’s the last thing I’d do!” A baffled plea ascribed to Pancho Villa, a Mexican revolutionary, is more plausible: “Don’t let it end like this, tell them I said something.” The sense that a life’s closing scenes are just one detail in a longer story, crystallised in obituaries, is sometimes felt keenly by the bereaved. Distant, half-forgotten memories of a loved one flood back, seeming as real as their recent illness and decrepitude. And they are as real: the elderly father who dribbled in a care home is no truer a version of him than the vigorous figure who carried you on his shoulders. Newspapers often run pictures of wizened octogenarians with their obituaries, but choosing earlier ones is fine. The dead are no more 80 than they are 18. A final lesson of obituaries concerns sequencing. Hardly any of their subjects get to read them—though Mr Roberts recounts cases in which wise guys tried to vet tributes prepared in advance of their demise, or even to write them themselves. Approaching his last bow in 1891, P.T. Barnum, an American showman, yearned to see his obituary. The New York Evening Sun obliged: “GREAT AND ONLY BARNUM. HE WANTED TO READ HIS OBITUARY; HERE IT IS.” This logical hitch is a disappointment of eulogies, too: the dead don’t get to hear how adored and revered they were. It may be too late to emulate the glorious deeds immortalised in obituaries, but, happily, this is a problem you can help fix. Tally up the people you love and admire—and tell them so now. ■ This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com/culture/2026/08/25/what-the-dead-can-teach-you-about-life
Why Dolly Parton mattered to America She was brave, decent and unapologetically herself Aug 27th 2026 When Dolly Parton was in her 20s, she rejected Elvis Presley. She had written a wonderful song, “I Will Always Love You”, and the King wanted to cover it. His manager demanded that she sign over half the rights to the tune, because Elvis was huge and she was not. She said no. It must have taken nerve, for a woman who grew up in a one-room shack without electricity in Tennessee, to tell Elvis to get lost. But it made her millions. The version sung by Whitney Houston, many years later, was one of the bestselling tracks of all time. (The Arabic version ripped off by Saddam Hussein for a campaign song is best forgotten.) Ms Parton became a megastar, with 25 number-one hits on Billboard’s Hot Country chart and 11 Grammy awards. Yet what was striking about her