Pepé gets nixed
Cancel culture strikes again! This time Warner Bros. and Pepé Le Pew are in the crosshairs. After a NYT columnist accused the skunk character of promoting rape culture, the pressure mounted for Warner Bros to wipe the stinky lover from their cartoon catalogue.
Pepé Le Pew was deleted from the upcoming Space Jam 2 film and there won’t be any further inclusion of the character in any upcoming Warner Bros. TV projects. The iconic character is most known for chasing a black female cat with romantic overtures that prompt some critics to call his behavior “rapey”.
Even though Warner Bros. claims to have cut Le Pew from Space Jam 2 a year ago, the most recent witch hunt began last week with New York Times columnist Charles Blow. He leveled some serious claims against Warner Bros.
Blow wrote that Pepe Le Pew “normalized rape culture” and Speedy Gonzalez and his friends “helped popularize the corrosive stereotype of the drunk and lethargic Mexicans.” Well, everyone is entitled to their point of view and opinion, but Blow doubled down on Twitter.
RW blogs are mad bc I said Pepe Le Pew added to rape culture. Let’s see.
1. He grabs/kisses a girl/stranger, repeatedly, w/o consent and against her will.
2. She struggles mightily to get away from him, but he won’t release her
3. He locks a door to prevent her from escaping. pic.twitter.com/CbLCldLwvR— Charles M. Blow (@CharlesMBlow) March 6, 2021
In a subsequent tweet, Blow noted “This helped teach boys that ‘no' didn’t really mean no, that it was a part of ‘the game', the starting line of a power struggle. It taught overcoming a woman’s strenuous, even physical objections, was normal, adorable, funny. They didn’t even give the woman the ability to SPEAK.”
Some might think this all some sort of joke. First Speedy Gonzalez, Dr. Seuss and now Pepe Le Pew? But this isn’t a joke. Shows, movies, organizations, and characters are all being audited these days. This is certainly a time for media giants to re-evaluate the culture sensitivity of their intellectual properties. But is this really necessary?
It’s a bit of a reach to assume that Pepé Le Pew taught boys anything at all. It’s just a cartoon skunk. Perhaps, Charles Blow missed the joke or maybe the joke itself has fallen out of a relevance. You see, Pepé Le Pew is a smelly skunk who fancies himself a lover boy.
Le Pew is so adamant about his own romantic charms that he never relents in his pursuits of the female character, in this case, a black female cat who he mistakes for another skunk. Le Pew, believing that the cat is a skunk, assumes that she is just playing hard to get, not knowing that she’s an entirely different animal. That was the crux of the comedy of Pepé Le Pew.
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Charles Blow assumes that first….children are still watching old Looney Tunes cartoons and secondly that boys don’t have a moral compass in differentiating right and wrong behavior toward the opposite sex. Thirdly, Blow eliminates the role of the parent in interpreting the character and taking his actions as a teaching moment against such behavior.
Therein lies the problem with cancel culture in general. By removing all references of Pepé Le Pew society misses the opportunity to have a constructive discussion about his behavior. This character might model some “rapey” actions, but it’s important to use that behavior as a teaching model for the opposite approach.
By simply deleting Pepé Le Pew from our cultural lexicon society is forcing media companies to create and promote tasteless and bland stories that have no significance at all simply to not offend anyone. Everything is becoming vanilla ice cream.
Well, not everyone was on board with Charles Blow’s critique of Pepé Le Pew. Many people came to the character’s defense on social media. One such person was director Tim Soret. He wrote:
The search from pernicious "intellectuals" of the absolute most uncharitable interpretation of art to score easy social justice points needs to stop.
This is not progressive, this helps no cause & nobody. pic.twitter.com/GNfYQnYm1S
— Tim Soret (@timsoret) March 7, 2021
He went on to write: “It's an insult to the artists, animators & writers of these cartoons to profess that they didn't know their responsibilities toward kids' education. They expertly navigated that fine line between the moral & the outrageous, that specific humor making cartoons absurdly funny.”
For some, Pepé Le Pew was the opposite of how Charles Blow described him. The character wasn’t reinforcing rape culture, he was a glaring refutation of it. Pepé Le Pew was repugnant, stinky and obnoxious. His actions were the worst way to go about dating someone you have a crush on.
Pepé Le Pew was never meant to be emulated. He was a model for the problem, but canceling the character is hardly the right solution. His absurdity was overkill, but apparently modern cancel culture lacks the intellectual nuance to properly interpret the comedy.
