Ba-dee, a dee, that’s all, Pepé!
This week, Pepé Le Pew, the handy French skunk of ‘Looney Tunes’, became the latest cultural tool to get the guillotine when he was filmed from the upcoming film ‘Space Jam: A New Legacy’, amid screams that the cartoon character is a rapist.
Dave Chappelle first showed Pepé’s manners in a 2000 comedy special called “Killin ‘Them Softly”. The comedian makes a funny joke about him, we laugh and everyone moves on.
I admit to you, some of the Pepe-old Pepé episodes can make you cringe these days as if they were part of a documentary about Albany in 2021.
But before Warner Bros. turned the guy into roadkill, could they not even try to change the character’s image for the sequel to LeBron James? He is reportedly going to learn something about permission on the cutting scene. Pepé could turn into a harmless flirt or a pretentious Frenchman instead of a lech.
Not this time. Le Pew is history. And, as you might think with an animation program that started in 1930, just about everything and everyone in ‘Looney Tunes’ is offensive by today’s puritanical standards.
Take Lola Bunny. In the new film, the hazy bomb is robbed of her hourglass figure and wears less shapely clothing to “de-sexualize” her. Name her Gertrude Hare. There are also claims by New York Times columnist Charles Blow to nix Speedy Gonzales, a cute Mexican mouse.
The comedian Gabriel Iglesias, who speaks Speedy in ‘A New Legacy’ and whose parents, unlike Blow, are from Mexico, defends his beloved rodent on Twitter.
“You can not catch me canceling the culture,” he said. “I’m the fastest mouse in all of Mexico.”
So far, Warner Bros. Speedy retains in the film, but do not let your hopes rise. The opinions of audiences no longer matter to Hollywood. Studios are bowing to left-wing columnists and deputy professors now for fear they could be canceled as well.
Hollywood will soon see that canceling old comics is a touch of a hole.
Consider the cast of characters in the first “Space Jam” movie. There’s Elmer Fudd, a hunter who turns a gun around while trying to kill Bugs Bunny comically. We can ‘t have him glorifying gun violence, can we? Speaking of the sneaky rabbit, in a racist propaganda episode of World War II of 1944, called ‘Nips the Nips’, Bugs says to a Japanese soldier: ‘Here you go, squinting eyes!’
OK, so Bugs and Elmer are fired. Who leaves it at that?
Daffy Duck is not squeaky clean either. He attempted suicide in the 1950 episode of The Scarlet Pumpernickel. The bird plays a screenwriter who did not write his film Warner Bros. can sell, and says, ‘The Scarlet Pumpernickel did nothing but blow his brain out’ and pulls the trigger. Luckily the bullet misses his head and goes straight through his hat. Yet we will have to give Daffy the joke with suicide.
Save us, friendly, innocent, noble piglet! Sorry, guys. Adorable Porky is especially known for its stuttering, a condition that has been in the news a lot lately. President Biden, who has made the fact that he has mostly overcome his own speech impediment a strange selling point of his campaign, will definitely come out and condemn poor Porky.
There are so few pure “Looney Tunes” left, that maybe WB should cancel “A New Legacy” altogether. Tha-tha-this is all people!