Pepe Le Pew No Longer Making “Beautiful Musics” With Warner Bros.

SilentPony

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Come to think of it Ed, Edd and Eddy has some real problems with the Canker sisters stalking and sexually harassing the Eds, like trying to blackmail them into doing sexual things they didn't want, or trapping them in a locked room and having some fun with them.
 
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Xprimentyl

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Nothing against you personally, Xprimental. You're my dude. We ride together, we die together, Bad Boys 4 life.

But I don't get how this is cancel culture other than the fact that we can affix that to the shifting of the populous's zeitgeist away from things others might consider benign.

The problem with everything should be allowed due to free speech is that we're allowing a number of 'acceptable' casualties due to capitalistic endeavors. I won't say Gangsta rap made people go shoot up situations. but I knew a good number of people trying to chase that stupid video life instead of paying attention in school that they had to make hard rebounds.

I don't see the issue of reasonable limits of what children can consume based on them not understanding what they are seeing other than exaggerated faces and funny violence that gets them to laugh. I mean, we almost universally know that a 5 year old shouldn't watch porn. We know that forcible assault on a woman isn't suitable for a young mind to associate with.

Hell, we basically teach our younger generation on how to interact with society via what media they consume. And they learn. They just emulate. What's wrong with making sure they are emulating things that are acceptable in society?
We're allowed differing opinions, of course; no need to apologize for feeling differently from me. But yes, Bad Boys 4 Life, indeed.

I say "cancel culture" because I think we've reached a point where any and everyone is actively looking for things to be upset about. Pepe is 75 years old meaning several generations "survived" his existence without adverse effect, including those of more recent memory (i.e.: we're not going back to pre-womens' suffrage/pre-Civil Rights to find find children, boys AND girls, who watched his antics for laughs ignorant of the implications prescribed by "woke" adults,) yet "NOW" we've decided not to change him, but to remove him, casting his legacy in a light of sordidness that was clearly never the intent of his creators. They created a silly, love-struck skunk, and we've turned him into a rapist for all intents and purposes, meanwhile the REAL world is rife with things to be genuinely outraged by and change, but we gloss over those things in lieu of condescending to stuff like this. Basically, as long as I have to explain why my Black life matters as much as any other, a cartoon skunk dishing out unrequited smooches isn't high on my list of priorities. As mentioned in another thread long ago when Family Guy decided to no longer voice Cleveland with a white actor; that doesn't "help," but I guess someone felt the limp-wristed handshake of an act would make them "progressive" in some people's eyes. Anyone know if they agreed to back off the "black" jokes at Cleveland's expense? Because Family Guy has no shortage of those. I suppose they could remove any semblance of humor from the character for fear of "offending," but at that point, the character becomes largely superfluous.

I'm not suggesting Le Pew couldn't have done with a makeover more befitting these hypersensitive times, just that in the end, it wasn't "romance" or "relationships" or "gender interactions" that Looney Tunes was selling; it was the absurdity of a skunk so dense and smitten, he couldn't recognize that a cat wasn't a skunk, a skunk who just happened to be a caricature of the overly-romantic Frenchman seen throughout cinema for decades upon decades. It made kids laugh, just like when Bugs dressed up as a woman and entranced an unwitting male character; are those episodes coming with warning labels, too?
 

Buyetyen

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It made kids laugh, just like when Bugs dressed up as a woman and entranced an unwitting male character; are those episodes coming with warning labels, too?
If it is, I guarantee you it will come from the right.

I still say that "cancel culture" is just a scary name attached to something we've been doing for millennia and pretending it's some new threat to society in general.
 

Hawki

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Cancel culture has it latest victim; the over-the-top French stereotype and his aggressive sexual advances are not slated to be in future Warner Bros. productions.

This is silly. If anyone could make any reasonable correlation between an animated skunk wooing a cat with a stripe accidentally painted on her back and the storied history of sexual assault that extends well before Le Pew’s inception 75 years ago (like, literally since humans have been around,) I’d like to see that data, please. Yes, a lot of older cartoons have a lot of offensive imagery by modern standards, but Le Pew? Was any young boy laying on his stomach in front of the television on a Saturday morning and taking romantic advice away from a skunk that can’t even tell the difference between himself and another species? Are there any sexual assault victims suffering PTSD when they see Le Pew forcing his unrequited smooches on the poor kitty?
Look, I'm of the opinion that cancel culture does exist, and it isn't good, but this isn't really a case of it. Warner Bros owns the character, and they're free to use the character as they see fit.

If Pepe Le Pew is edited out of prior works and/or those works become unavailable, maybe, but saying you're not using a certain character in future works isn't that big of a deal. Characters in IPs fall out of favour all the time.
 
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TheMysteriousGX

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I mean, he only scored, what, 2, maybe 4 points and almost no defense?

'course they're gonna cut his ass, they got a b-ball game to win
 
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Baffle

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a caricature of the overly-romantic Frenchman
I think there's a bit of an issue there in itself. Were I asked now about Le Pew as a character, I'd say he's a bit rapey. That the caricature of a romantic Frenchman is 'a bit rapey' might be an issue for French people who do not wish be portrayed as a bit rapey.

I think other characters (though I'm not well versed in the Warner Bros canon) are less regionally mocked, or at least not in a harmful way (I don't know if there's any English characters, but I can only imagine they drink tea and have bad teeth, which isn't terribly wounding).
 

MrCalavera

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I found Pepe rather annoying, more than anything, so it doesn't really bother me. Still a pointless move, though.

He was never actually funny though, was he?
He was if you like one joke being repeated ad nauseaum, and find french accent funny.
 

Kyrian007

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The whole idea of "cancel culture" is getting ridiculously loosely defined. So now even when something isn't being actively "canceled," the voluntary non-inclusion of a single secondary character by legal rights owners in the next installment of a franchise... is somehow canceling? I'll answer my own question. No, no it isn't. That's just ignorant. The toymakers decide that the outside of the box of both Mr. and Ms. Potatohead is now just going to say Potatohead (wow now they can put them both in the same box and save printing costs) and that is "canceling" Mr. Potatohead? No, no it isn't. That's just ignorant. The legal owners of Dr. Seuss publications decide to stop printing 6 of his early (and much lesser known and least popular) books because of overtly racist imagery, and that's canceling? I guess someone could argue its closer, but call me in a frothing panic when they start demanding that those books be returned so they can be destroyed. Maybe then I could be persuaded to give a shit. Publishers stop printing thousands upon thousands of books every month for one reason or another. Generally because they will make more money (or at least lose less) if they stop. Why ain'cha cryin bout all those too? Aren't they being "canceled" by capitalists? For the love of god won't somebody think about the leastseller list?

Rightwingers came up with this term "virtue signaling." Caring about so-called "cancel culture..." THAT's right wing virtue signaling.
 

Thaluikhain

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So, a cartoon character won't be in an upcoming movie due to their only thing being about sexual assault being funny? This is news? This is what's wrong with society?

Hey, wasn't there an attempted right-wing coup in the US less than 2 months ago, aren't 120,000+ people dead in the UK because their government gives out contracts to their donors rather than do anything about covid? You want to find something wrong with our society, you're spoiled for choice, you don't have to pretend the PC police are taking over.
 

Dalisclock

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So, a cartoon character won't be in an upcoming movie due to their only thing being about sexual assault being funny? This is news? This is what's wrong with society?

Hey, wasn't there an attempted right-wing coup in the US less than 2 months ago, aren't 120,000+ people dead in the UK because their government gives out contracts to their donors rather than do anything about covid? You want to find something wrong with our society, you're spoiled for choice, you don't have to pretend the PC police are taking over.
Culture Wars are more Important then Covid Deaths and Attempted Coups. Didn't you get the memo?
 
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Hades

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I'm not sure if its due to me being too young or too old that I have absolutely no idea what a Pepe Le Pew is.

In any case I had no idea Le Pew existed until he didn't anymore.
 
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Burnhardt

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Does it really matter?
Been a long time since I saw a Pepe le Pew cartoon. But if my memory serves me correctly, wasn't the situation always reversed at the end with the Cat harassing Pepe?

Ducks, OTOH, are evil little rapist bastards.
And now I cannot watch Duck Tales anymore. At least Della Duck loves her children, and doesn't see them as children of a monster. That or its a hell of an act on her part.
 
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