Pepe Le Pew was removed from Space Jam 2 - Legacy!

[Jayro]

Who's next?
Hulk for being "too violent and angry"?
Scott Lang (Ant-Man) for being too small?
Pikachu for being asian-created and YELLOW?

Cancel culture seriously just needs to fuck off and die.

 

[deinonychus71]

Nobody look at that character and be like "hmm yes, this is how I will behave from now on".
There's countless movies where a killer is "the good guy". Take John Wick for example. He kills tons of people, he's not exactly a good guy either, but we KNOW this behavior would be unacceptable irl, there is no doubt about it.
People who do act like that don't need a stupid cartoon to be assholes, they were assholes before that.

What is crazy, and dangerous to me, is that by calling a fictional character "harmful", we're basically denying people their capacity at exercising critical thinking.

And you know it comes from America because this kind of outrage almost exclusively happen over sexual issues. Cancel fictional rapists, but let's keep all our fictional killers.

This is nuts.

 

[The Catboy]

Nobody look at that character and be like "hmm yes, this is how I will behave from now on".

Men who behave like Pepe La Pew are actually a common occurrence for women (or those perceived as as women,) when working in public jobs like sales or customers service. It’s actually extremely uncommon for women not to deal with creepy men who either violate or attempt to their personal space, sexually harass them, and or other unwelcome advances. Pepe La Pew isn’t a fictional character in many people’s lives when they have deal with men like him.

 

[MikaDubbz]

Who's next?
Hulk for being "too violent and angry"?
Scott Lang (Ant-Man) for being too small?
Pikachu for being asian-created and YELLOW?

Cancel culture seriously just needs to fuck off and die.

This is what I was talking about earlier, crappy characters can't simply be removed anymore without there inherently being some other PC story associated with why they've been dropped. Granted, Pepe Le Pew has been around for ages, so him being removed now certainly raises a few eyebrows, but all the same we can't simply have characters go the way of Poochie anymore without audiences believing that there is some slimy underlying reason of why they had to be cut that we should all get up in arms about. It can never simply be a case that the stats are showing a large portion of the audience simply never enjoyed him or his cartoons so much, that it was time to trim some fat.

 

[Veho]

Pepe got dropped? And nothing of value was lost.

I think I have a related video here somewhere...

 

[Plasmaster09]

Who's next?
Hulk for being "too violent and angry"?
Scott Lang (Ant-Man) for being too small?
Pikachu for being asian-created and YELLOW?

Cancel culture seriously just needs to fuck off and die.

there's a vast gap between these understrawman examples you're pulling out of your ass...
and a commonly despised character whose entire schtick was basically rape

 

[Jayro]

there's a vast gap between these understrawman examples you're pulling out of your ass...
and a commonly despised character whose entire schtick was basically rape

Since when is infatuation rape..?

 

[The Catboy]

Since when is infatuation rape..?

His episodes literally centered on him seeing a women, harassing her the entire episode, coupled holding/kissing her against her will as she tried to escape him. That’s breakdown to every single one of his episodes.

 

[Jayro]

His episodes literally centered on him seeing a women, harassing her the entire episode, coupled holding/kissing her against her will as she tried to escape him.

While I would never condone his actions, that doesn't mean they had to cut his character. They could have just given Pepé better lines instead. Pepé could still talk ann suave and shit like usual, but his content matter would just be normal movie stuff, not kissy face stuff. It's a cartoon character, not a real person, so he can be changed with force. That's the difference here between cancelling Pepé, or cancelling a real person.

 

[Chary]

For every case of say, Apu getting removed from the Simpsons because people can't take a joke anymore, there's also cases of characters that just had their time in the sun, were popular in a certain era, and have outlived their comedic potential, 80 years later.

Pepe le Pew's entire character was fawning over a cat and never taking no for an answer. Given the current climate of the world, the huge upheaval going on right now over men doing similar things decades ago and getting away with it, and how much of a hot-button topic it is...I really don't find it to be much of a problem removing his scenes.

Saying the character "added to rape culture" is a bit over the top though--the moral of the story was USUALLY that Pepe le Pew gets slapstick'd, beaten up, etc by the end of the short. His obsessive behavior is just an avenue for the comedy to work around. Even so, there are a handful of episodes that just...end with him capturing the cat, the cat looking horrified...fade to black. Um... yikes? His actions are never condoned--always seen as awful, but is it really that funny anymore?

I can easily see them not wanting that kind of joke in a movie coming out right now. And really, guys, was he even remotely a major character in Space Jam 1? We're not losing much of value here. If it were Bugs or Daffy, then yeah riot, but he's like a D-list Looney Tune.

 

[The Catboy]

While I would never condone his actions, that doesn't mean they had to cut his character. They could have just given Pepé better lines instead. Pepé could still talk ann suave and shit like usual, but his content matter would just be normal movie stuff, not kissy face stuff. It's a cartoon character, not a real person, so he can be changed with force. That's the difference here between cancelling Pepé, or cancelling a real person.

I don’t oppose them changing the character. But I also see why they would want to distance themselves from a character who’s entire history is built around being a creep.

 

[Julie_Pilgrim]

My brain completely erased my memory of this guy in space jam

 

[Seliph]

Nice!

 

[draftguy]

Well, I have to admit I‘ve never seen it that way, maybe because I‘m male. But okay, I can relate to that he is out of time.

 

[Alexander1970]

Disney made an "Announcement" with the "Muppet Show" and all other Studios "has" to follow with this Policy....

Fuck Disney.....Walt must rotate in his Grave....

 

[AmandaRose]

Wait there is going to be another Space Jam? Another sequel nobody wants because we all know they will fuck it up just like how horrible Coming to America 2 turned out.

With all these characters getting cancelled I fear for this guys future

 

[Plasmaster09]

Disney made an "Announcement" with the "Muppet Show" and all other Studios "has" to follow with this Policy....

Fuck Disney.....Walt must rotate in his Grave....

I don't quite understand how that's relevant to this thread, nor do I understand the specifics, but if the policy is "no more characters whose entire personality is borderline sexual assault played as comedy", I'm all for it.

 

[FAST6191]

Sigh. More censorship.

 

[Eredhel]

I hope they're argument is not "people might act like Pepe Le Pew because he's rapey and people might want to be like him" or the old story of "violent games makes violent people" will rise again (which was already debunked).
I think cutting him down was too much. Yeah, his lines and story is outdated now (I do remember that the show was all about how bad his act was), but they could have changed his character not to be that creepy and obsessive, but still giving the audience a perspective that what he does is wrong. Hell, I grew up watching worst things just to know that those kind of things were not right.
Aside from that, all this "cancel him, cancel that" is worse then the character itself.

 

[VashTS]

he wasn't rapey, he was persistent