The cancellation of some characters has been a consistency this past year and this time it fell on the animated Looney Tunes character, Pepe Le Pew. This happened after an article in The New York Times pointed out this skunk presumably normalizes harassment and rape, which quickly became a trend through social networks, and after these accusations, Linda Jones has come out to defend Pepe Le Pew, created by her father.
The character of Pepe Le Pew was forged by Chuck Jones, which is a skunk that generally falls in love with the kitten Penelope and does everything possible to make her fall in love with him, but his methods of convincing the cat to fall in love, have now been publically deemed as harassment and bypassing consent, according to the article and the opinion of many people. Therefore it was reported that he will not appear in ‘Space Jam 2’ and there are no plans to feature the character in the future, any longer.
After this huge controversy, Chuck Jones’ daughter Linda Jones defended Pepe Le Pew, according to a TMZ report, she stated “the character never assaulted Penelope she doesn’t think anyone who ever watched Pepe was inspired to go out and rape, or even harass, people,” and it was “more about how much he stunk as a suitor, despite thinking he was desirable,” so she strongly disagrees with the cancellation.
In addition to these words, Linda Jones pointed out that this character is the reflection of society in the 50s, 60s and 70s and recalled that he is inspired by a real person, Tedd Pierce, who was a friend of her father, who believed he was a womanizer but actually had little luck with women, so it should be taken as a parody.
Despite defending her dad’s character, Pepe Le Pew will not appear in any Looney Tunes project and everything indicates that he will be forgotten.
