Ba-dee, a dee, that’s it, Pepé!
This week, Pepé Le Pew, the nifty French skunk from ‘Looney Tunes’, became the latest cultural draw to be guillotined when he was dropped from the upcoming movie ‘Space Jam: A New Legacy’, shouting that the cartoon character is a rapist. .
Dave Chappelle first pointed out Pepé’s perverted ways in a 2000 comedy special called “Killin ‘Them Softly.” The comedian made a funny joke about him, we laughed and everyone walked on.
I’ll admit you, some of those filthy old Pepé episodes these days can make you cringe like they were part of a 2021 documentary about Albany.
But before Warner Bros. the little guy turned into roadkill, couldn’t they have tried changing the character’s image first for the LeBron James-led sequel? Reportedly, he would learn something about consent in the cut scene. Pepé could have turned into an innocent flirt, or a pretentious Frenchman instead of a lech.
Not this time. Le Pew is the story. And, as you might imagine with an animated show that started in 1930, just about anything and everything in “Looney Tunes” is reprehensible by today’s Puritan standards.
Take Lola Bunny. In the new film, the fluffy bombshell has been robbed of her hourglass figure and wears less tight clothing to ‘de-sexualise’ her. Name her Gertrude Hare. There are also demands from New York Times columnist Charles Blow to beat Speedy Gonzales, a cute Mexican mouse.
Comedian Gabriel Iglesias, who plays Speedy in “A New Legacy” and whose parents, unlike Blow’s, are from Mexico, defended his beloved rodent on Twitter.
“You can’t catch me canceling culture,” he said. “I am the fastest mouse in all of Mexico.”
So far, Warner Bros. Speedy kept in the movie, but don’t hope. Hollywood no longer cares about the public opinion. Studios are now bowing to left-wing columnists and adjunct professors for fear they too might be canceled.
Hollywood will soon see that canceling old cartoons is a crazy bastard.
Consider the cast of characters in the first “Space Jam” movie. There’s Elmer Fudd, a hunter who lugs around a gun as he comically tries to kill Bugs Bunny. We can’t have him to glorify gun violence, can we? Speaking of the sneaky rabbit, in a 1944 World War II racist propaganda short episode called “Nips the Nips,” Bugs tells a Japanese soldier, “Here you go, slanting eyes!”
OK, so Bugs and Elmer get fired. Who’s leaving?
Daffy Duck isn’t squeaky clean either. He gruesomely attempted suicide in the 1950 episode “The Scarlet Pumpernickel.” The bird plays a screenwriter who did not make his film Warner Bros. can sell, puts a gun to his temple and says, “The Scarlet Pumpernickel couldn’t do anything but blow his brains out,” and pulls the trigger. Fortunately, the bullet misses his head and goes straight through his hat. Still, we’ll also have to give Daffy the boot to make suicide pranks.
Save us, kind, innocent, rimless Porky Pig! Sorry guys. The adorable Porky is most famous for his stuttering, a condition that has been in the news a lot lately. President Biden, who has made the fact that he has largely overcome his own speech impediment a curious selling point of his campaign, is sure to come out and condemn poor Porky.
There are so few pure “Looney Tunes” left that WB may have to cancel “A New Legacy” altogether. Tha-tha-that’s all human!