Are Pepe Le Pew and Speedy Gonzales canceling?
The two-decade-old “Looney Tunes” characters were recently in danger after a New York Times columnist spoke to them in an op-ed article about six nine Dr. Seuss books.
The essay prompted Speedy’s Latino fans to hit back on Twitter.
“I loved watching Speedy Gonzales grow up,” wrote one user, @soytaquitobelle. “He has always surpassed those who try to catch or attack him. I am Mexican. I do not want him to be ‘canceled’.”
Gabriel Iglesias, a Spanish comedian who will voice Speedy in the new “Space Jam” movie, also called it the “cancel culture”.
REP. MCCARTHY POSTS VIDEO READ DR. SUESS BOOK AFTER CANCELLING 6 OTHER TITLES
“Does that mean they’ll try to cancel Fluffy too?” he tweeted and used a nickname for himself. “You can not catch me canceling the culture. I’m the fastest mouse in all of Mexico.”
Charles Blow, who the dr. Seuss wrote essay, arguing that Speedy Gonzales’ friends on screen “helped popularize the corrosive stereotype of the drunk and hilarious Mexicans.”
NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY WILL DR. SEUSS BOOKS ON ITS SHELVES: WHY
He later tweeted a video of Pepe, a French cartoon, which for many people was too sensitive with females on screen, hugging and kissing a cartoon cat violently as proof that the character had ‘normalized rape culture’.
Speedy Gonzales arrives at the Preview Party of the new Speedy Collection on April 19, 2007 in Los Angeles. (Getty Images)
But Speedy was the self-proclaimed ‘fastest mouse in all of Mexico’ – known for outwitting and exhausting villains while repeating his Spanish mantra: ‘¡Andale! Andale! Arriba! ‘Arriba!’ (“Come! Come! Up! Up!”)
“Really? Are we doing this?” wrote voice actor Victor Melin. “The Speedy Gonzales Discourse? Let me be clear, most, if not most, of us Spanish and Latinos have freaking LOVE Speedy. I grew up in a Mexican / Salvadoran household in which we KILLED him and still do. . He’s not offensive. STOP IT !!! “
“I did not like being called ‘Speedy Gonzalez’ by the white white coaches and teammates in my Y-baseball team while they were ‘ANDA-LAY ANDA-LAY!’,” Moisés Chiullán wrote. “… bc. I’m not Mexican, I’m Cuban. I love Speedy Gonzalez.”
Other people also took the controversy into account.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
“I think most Latin people like Speedy Gonzalez, which is a pretty good argument that he should not be ‘canceled’,” wrote director James Gunn. “But Pepe le Pew is at least offensive to me because of the way on which he deals with that cat. “