General Looney Tunes / Assorted WB Animation (that isn't DC) Thread.

It's kinda disturbing that the very last appearance of Pepe in probably any media is him literally getting erased out of existence in Animaniacs (2020).

And again, just because ONE NYT columnist decided to do an article on him being problematic for his old shorts (even though they were moving away from that with him in more recent cartoons before getting rid of him altogether) and got Twitter riled up. WB were fine with using him for decades until that article.

Edited by CookingCat on Jun 24th 2022 at 2:55:30 AM

Why do you care so much for one character?Genuinely asking

I have always hated pepe, the creep who can't take a hint and leave a girl alone.

How would you like it if one of your favorite characters from a cartoon got permanently cut from a series after decades of appearances because one person complained about stuff they did 60 years ago?

Edited by CookingCat on Jun 24th 2022 at 3:04:33 AM

OK,so he's your favourite character,so your reaction is understandable,but like there are better Toons like..Bugs or Daffy,what does he have they don't?

My rage is more because of the high possibility of Fifi (who I like a lot more than Pepe, even though Pepe is one of my favorite Looney Tunes) not being in Tiny Toon Looniversity since they also cut Penelope simply for being associated with Pepe (so there is nothing stopping them from doing the same to Fifi), but they could have done what they did with him in Odor of the Day or continued with the James Bond parody they made him in New Looney Tunes instead of deleting him altogether because one person complained about him in a newspaper and got idiots on Twitter to pressure the company.

Edited by CookingCat on Jun 24th 2022 at 9:10:16 AM

Why is your response, "ok, you like this character...but there are other characters?"

Typically, people who only watch old things to talk about how problematic they would be today aren't worth caring about.

WB could've done other things with him, that would be part of the appeal of Modern Looney Tunes...but oh well.

Edited by randomness4 on Jun 24th 2022 at 6:28:31 AM

There are other characters,better characters,funnier characters,why choose to die on that hill over a character whose never really been that funny?

Because there are worse and less funny characters than him that are still around in Looney Tunes.

Like who?

Tweety, for one.

Nah,I don't think so,far from it

Unless you mean Grainy or that cat of hers

Yeah, Granny is a good example. Also, the new Looney Tunes cartoons have horrific shit like this in it, yet Pepe is somehow going too far:

Edited by CookingCat on Jun 24th 2022 at 3:39:53 AM

They got rid of Pepe a year before the article was written over a joke that wouldn't have been very funny anyway.

But the announcement that WB won't be using him in any future Looney Tunes projects came out after the article, plus them editing him out of the Annecy version of "Happy Birthday Bugs Bunny!".

Not to mention, the NYT weren't even the first people to bring it up. Dave Chappelle brought it up in one of his stand-up routines over two decades ago:

Although let's be honest, there's more valid reasons to hate Chappelle nowadays.

Difference is, Chappelle didn't get the character outright erased from existence.

Sometimes it happens that multiple people find a character problematic and it takes having one person on a big enough platform to make those in charge think twice about using some characters (like apu on Simpsons) and sometimes the character would have been phased out anyway regardless of critical input.

I think pepe would headed out the door soon anyway. It's amazing to me he even lasted as long as he did, dude always made me uncomfortable and I hated his shorts.

He didn't last that long...

He only got cameo appearances since the original run of shorts.

Like I said, my worry is that they'll erase Fifi from Tiny Toon Looniversity simply because she's based on Pepe despite her popularity, even though if she were to be in it, they could make it a point of distinguishing her from Pepe and making her her own separate character free of the controversies that surround him. They were already doing that in the original by giving her more characterization than him and having her do a lot more than just chase boys around.

Edited by CookingCat on Jun 24th 2022 at 4:10:51 AM

Where?

Where did this alleged backlash even happen?

I keep hearing people talk about this, about Twitter supposedly being full of backlash or whatever, but like...I've seen more people *complaining* about a backlash existing than any actual backlash to Pepe or Speedy Gonzales in the first place (and I mention Speedy because I recall the NYT article talking about him as well).

I genuinely think that the "backlash" narrative is a bunch of bullshit. Maybe there were some people saying shit (it's Twitter, you can find ANYBODY saying the weirdest shit on there), but I have not seen any widespread backlash towards Pepe, just people *talking* about a backlash existing and not citing anything beyond that one NYT article.

Edited by Diana1969 on Jun 24th 2022 at 10:03:41 PM

As I recall, the backlash didn't, actually, happen at all.

What happened is an columnist made an article about Pepe that went entirely ignored for over a year.

Then, some time later, iirc one of the Looney Tunes projects (Looney Tunes Cartoons, I think) revealed that they weren't doing anything with Pepe, resulting in a backlash that included that random article getting shared - with the anti-cancel crowd creating a narrative that the media was going after Pepe when nothing of the sort actually happened. The actual choice not to use Pepe had jack all to do with that random article whatsoever - let alone anything on twitter.

Or in short: like a lot of "X character is getting cancelled" crazes, it was an overblown twitter fearmongering session cultivated largely by the anti-cancel crowd themselves.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Jun 24th 2022 at 5:19:31 AM

I just think its stupid to let a couple of angry people on twitter have this much power.

Once again, this claim with no evidence to back it up.

There was no Twitter backlash to Pepe. It was people complaining about an article and pretending a backlash existed. It was a manufactured non-controversy.