Ba-dee, a dee, that’s all, Pepé!
This week, Pepé Le Pew, the beloved Frenchman from “Looney Tunes”, became the latest cultural accessory to get the guillotine when he was retired from the upcoming film “Space Jam: A New Legacy”, amid the cry that the character cartoon is a rapist.
Dave Chappelle first pointed out Pepé’s perverse ways in a special 2000 comedy called “Killin ‘Them Softly.” The comedian made a funny joke about him, I laughed and everyone continued.
I realize, some of those old, stingy episodes of Pepé can make you shudder nowadays, as if it were part of a 2021 documentary about Albany.
But before Warner Bros. to turn the little one into a roadkill, couldn’t he first try to change the character’s image for the sequel led by LeBron James? Looks like he was going to find out something about consent in the cut scene. Pepé could have turned into a harmless 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 began in 1930, almost everyone and everything in “Looney Tunes” is unacceptable by today’s Puritan standards.
Take Lola Bunny. In the new film, the hourglass figure was robbed of its blurred bomb and she wears less suitable clothes to “desexualize” it. Call her Gertrude Hare. There have also been requests from New York Times columnist Charles Blow to nix Speedy Gonzales, a cute Mexican mouse.
Comedian Gabriel Iglesias, who expresses Speedy in “A New Legacy” and whose parents, unlike Blow’s, are from Mexico, she defended her rodent lover on Twitter.
“I can’t get caught canceling the culture,” he said. “I’m the fastest mouse in all of Mexico.”
To date, Warner Bros. they kept Speedy in the movie, but it doesn’t increase your hopes. Public opinion no longer matters to Hollywood. The studios bow to left-wing columnists and adjunct professors now for fear that they too could be canceled.
Hollywood will soon see the cancellation of the old cartoon is a wabbit hole.
Consider the cast of the characters in the first movie, Space Jam. There’s Elmer Fudd, a hunter who spins around a rifle while comically trying to kill Bugs Bunny. We can’t make him glorify gun violence now, can we? Speaking of the cunning rabbit in a 1944 World War II racist propaganda episode called “Nips the Nips,” Bugs tells a Japanese soldier, “Here you are, your eyes downcast!”
OK, so Bugs and Elmer are fired. Who is this going to?
Daffy Duck is not clean either. He tried to commit suicide terribly in the 1950 episode “The Scarlet Pumpernickel”. As a screenwriter who can’t sell his film to Warner Bros., the bird puts a gun to his temple, says, “There was nothing Scarlet Pumpernickel could do but blow his brain,” and pulls the trigger. Fortunately, the bullet is missing his head and goes straight through his hat. However, we’ll have to give it to Daffy, who jokes about suicide.
Save us, kind, innocent, borderless Porky pig! I’m sorry guys. The adorable Porky is most famous for his stuttering, a condition that has been a lot of news lately. President Biden, who has largely overcome his own obstacle in speech, is a strange selling point of his campaign, will certainly come out and condemn poor Porky.
With so few pure “Looney Tunes” left, WB may have to cancel “A New Legacy” altogether. Tha-tha-that’s everyone!