Name: Elmer Fudd.
Age: 83.
Appearance: Hunting gear, brown and red hat, double-barrelled shotgun. Permanently frustrated, frequently injured.
Name rings a bell, remind me. “Shhh. Be vewy vewy quiet, I’m hunting wabbits. Huh-huh-huh-huh.”
Got it! The hunter in Bugs Bunny, right? Right.
What was the name of BB’s other gun-totin’ adversary, with the big droopy orange moustache? Yosemite Sam. This is about him, too.
What is? What’s up, doc? Sam and Elmer are no longer packing.
Not going on holiday? Because of Covid-19? No, they are no long totin’ guns.
They have been disarmed? Who by? Warner Bros, which has just relaunched Looney Tunes, the cartoon series in which they appeared, with a new collection of shorts streaming on HBO Max.
And have Elmer and Sam been stripped of their weapons in response to out-of-control US gun violence? Exactly. “We’re not doing guns,” the executive producer of the new series, Peter Browngardt, told the New York Times.
If they are not doing guns, what are they doing? There is still plenty of “cartoon violence”, Browngardt says reassuringly, acknowledging that the whole thing is based on conflict. So there’s dynamite and explosions, while Elmer’s shotgun has been replaced with a scythe.
That’s pretty violent! Also arguably scarier, with its Grim Reaper associations, than the gun. Not really the point. Scythe culture isn’t a thing in America, nor has scythe crime ravaged the country.
Not yet! But if that happens Looney Tunes will have a lot to answer for. Also, if they are making it more acceptable for a 21st-century audience, could they have maybe changed the name? Or at least corrected the spelling? They couldn’t spell its sister series Merrie Melodies either, remember?
What has the reaction been like? Like all reactions these days – polarised. Some praise for Warner Bros for taking a stance. Plenty of accusations of snowflakery. Dr Jacqeuline Antonovich tweeted: “I can’t believe this needs to be said, but Yosemite Sam and Elmer Fudd were never responsible gun owners anyway.”
Any other examples of franchises making adjustments? Either as recognition that times have changed or political correctness gone mad, depending on which pole you happen to be standing on? As it happens yes. Last year, Disney put warnings on some of its older films, that they “may contain outdated cultural depictions”.
Do say (as Bugs Bunny did): “Don’t take life too seriously. You’ll never get out alive!”
Don’t say: “My wight to bear arms has be viowated. I been tol’ I can’ shoot wittle gway wabbits no more, but I wike this scythe. Be vewy vewy afwaid, say ya pwayers, huh-huh-huh-huh …”