Pepé Le Pew is an animated character from the Warner Bros.Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons, introduced in 1945. Depicted as a French anthropomorphic striped skunk, Pepé is constantly on the quest for love and pursuit of romance but typically his skunk odor causes other characters to run away from him.[1]
Although initially a feature character with his own series of shorts, Pepé has drawn increasing criticism as treating the harassment of clearly unwilling women as a subject of humor. The female characters in his films often flee in fear of him, and his behavior is seen as a form of stalking and implied sexual assault.
Premise
Pepé Le Pew storylines typically involve Pepé in pursuit of a female black cat, whom Pepé mistakes for a skunk ("la belle femme skunk fatale"). The cat, who was retroactively named Penelope Pussycat, often has a white stripe painted down her back, usually by accident (such as by squeezing under a fence with wet white paint). Penelope frantically races to get away from him because of his putrid odor, his overly aggressive manner or both, while Pepé hops after her at a leisurely pace.
Settings
The setting is always a mise-en-scène echoing with fractured French. They include Paris in the springtime, the Matterhorn, or the little village of N'est-ce Pas in the French Alps. The exotic locales, such as Algiers, are drawn from the story of the 1937 film Pépé le Moko. Settings associated in popular culture with romance, such as the Champs-Élysées or the Eiffel Tower, are sometimes present.[2] One episode was in the Sahara Desert, with Pepé seeking to work as a Legionnaire at a French military outpost.
Narcissism
Pepé describes Penelope as lucky to be the object of his affections and uses a romantic paradigm to explain his failures to seduce her. For example, he describes a hammer blow to his head as a form of flirtation rather than rejection. Accordingly, he shows no sign of narcissistic injury or loss of confidence, no matter how many times he is rebuffed.[2]
Reversals
In a role-reversal, the 1949 short For Scent-imental Reasons ended with an accidentally painted blue (and now terrified) Pepé being pursued by a madly smitten Penelope (who has been dunked in dirty water, leaving her with a ratty appearance and a developing head cold, completely clogging up her nose). It turns out that Pepé's new color is just right for her (plus the fact that the blue paint now covers his putrid scent). Penelope locks him up inside a perfume shop, hiding the key down her chest, and proceeds to chase the now-imprisoned and effectively odorless Pepé.
In another short, Little Beau Pepé, Pepé, attempting to find the most arousing cologne with which to impress Penelope, sprays a combination of perfumes and colognes upon himself. This resulted in something close to a love potion, leading Penelope to fall madly in love with Pepé in an explosion of hearts. Pepé is revealed to be extremely frightened of overly-affectionate women ("But Madame!"), much to his dismay, as Penelope quickly captures him and smothers him in more love than even he could imagine.
And yet again, in Really Scent, Pepé removes his odor by locking himself in a deodorant plant so Penelope (known in this short as 'Fabrette'; a black cat with an unfortunate marking) would like him (this is also the only episode that Pepé is acutely aware of his own odor, having checked the word "pew" in the dictionary). However, Penelope (who in this picture is actually trying to have a relationship with Pepé because all the male cats of New Orleans take her to be a skunk and run like blazes, but is appalled by his odor) had decided to make her own odor match her appearance and had locked herself in a Limburger cheese factory. Now more forceful and demanding, Penelope quickly corners the terrified Pepé, who, after smelling her new stench, wants nothing more than to escape the amorous female cat. Unfortunately, now she will not take "no" for an answer and proceeds to chase Pepé off into the distance, with no intention of letting him escape.[a]
Although Pepé usually mistakes Penelope for a female skunk, in Past Perfumance, he realizes that she is a cat when her stripe washes off. Undeterred, he proceeds to cover his white stripe with black paint, taking the appearance of a cat before resuming the chase.
To emphasize Pepé's cheerful dominance of the situation, Penelope is always mute (or more precisely, makes only natural cat sounds, albeit with a stereotypical "le" before each one) in these stories; only the self-deluded Pepé speaks (several non-recurring human characters are given minimal dialogue, often nothing more than a repulsed "Le pew!").
Variations
Sometimes this formula is varied. In his initial cartoon, Odor-able Kitty, Pepé (who was revealed to be a French-American skunk named Henri in this short) unwittingly pursues a red tabby cat who has intentionally disguised himself as a skunk (complete with the scent of Limburger cheese) in order to scare off a bunch of characters who have mistreated him. Scent-imental Over You has Pepé pursuing a female Chihuahua who has donned a skunk pelt (mistaking it for a fur coat). In the end, she removes her pelt, revealing that she is a dog. However, he then reveals to the audience that he is a real skunk. In Wild Over You, Pepé attempts to seduce a female wildcat who had escaped a zoo (during what is called "Le grande tour du Zoo" at a 1900 exhibition) and painted herself to look like a skunk to escape her keepers. This cartoon is notable for not only diverging from the Pepé/female-black-cat dynamic, but also rather cheekily showing that Pepé likes to be beaten up, considering the wildcat thrashes him numerous times. Really Scent is also a subversion with Penelope (here called Fabrette) attracted to him from the beginning, removing the need for Pepé to chase her as she goes to him. But Pepé's scent still causes a problem for her as they try to build a relationship.
Production
Pepé was created at Warner Bros. Cartoons by animation director Chuck Jones and writer Michael Maltese. Animation producer Eddie Selzer, who was then Jones' bitterest foe at the studio, once profanely commented that no one would laugh at the Pepé cartoons.[3]: 92 However, this did not keep Selzer from accepting an award for one of Pepé's pictures several years later.
Jones wrote that Pepé was based (loosely) on the personality of his Termite Terrace colleague, writer Tedd Pierce, a self-styled "ladies' man" who reportedly always assumed that his infatuations were reciprocated.[3]: 119 In a short documentary film, Chuck Jones: Memories of Childhood, Jones told an interviewer (perhaps jokingly) that Pepé was actually based on himself, except that he was very shy with girls.
The 1944 WB short, I Got Plenty of Mutton, directed by Frank Tashlin and written by Melvin Millar, features a hungry wolf dressing up as a ewe to fool a ram guarding a flock of sheep (a gag later adapted by Jones in his Ralph Wolf and Sam Sheepdog cartoons). The infatuated ram proceeds to aggressively romance the horrified wolf in a style identical to Pepé's, with Mel Blanc using the same faux-French accent and endearments featured in the later Pepé cartoons—the ram even employs the same prancing gait later associated with Pepé for his pursuit.[4] A prototype of Pepé appeared in 1948's Bugs Bunny Rides Again, but sounded similar to Porky Pig. When the character of Pepé was more fully developed for cartoons of his own, Mel Blanc based Pepé's voice on Charles Boyer's Pépé le Moko from Algiers (1938), a remake of the 1937 French film Pépé le Moko.[5] Blanc's voice for the character closely resembled a voice he had used for "Professor Le Blanc", a harried violin instructor on The Jack Benny Program. There have also been theories that Pepé's voice was based on singer Maurice Chevalier.
In Pepé's short cartoons, a kind of pseudo-French or Franglais is spoken and written primarily by adding the French article le to English words (as in "le skunk de pew") or by more creative mangling of English expressions and French syntax, such as "Sacré maroon!", "My sweet peanut of brittle", "Come to me, my little melon-baby collie!", "Ah, my little darling, it is love at first sight, is it not, no?", and "It is love at sight first!" The writer responsible for these malapropisms was Michael Maltese.
An example of dialogue from the Oscar-winning 1949 short For Scent-imental Reasons illustrates the use of French and broken French:
Pepé: (sings) Affaire d'amour? Affaire de coeur? Je ne sais quoi, je vive en espoir… (sniffs) Mmmm m mm… un smell à vous finez… (hums)
Gendarme:Le kittée quel terrible odeur!
Proprietor:Allez, Gendarme! Allez! Retournez-moi! This instonce! Oh, pauvre moi, I am ze bankrupt… (sobs)
Cat/Penelope:Le mew? Le purrrrrrr.
Proprietor:A-a-ahhh. Le pussy ferocious! Remove zot skunk! Zot cat-pole from ze premises! Avec!
Pepé:Quel est? (notices cat) Ahh! Le belle femme skunk fatale! (clicks tongue twice)
Pepé Le Pew's cartoons have been translated and dubbed in French. In the French version, the voice of "Pépé le putois" was dubbed by François Tavares, using a heavy Italian accent in a vocal caricature of Yves Montand.
Pepé was going to have a cameo in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, but was later dropped for unknown reasons.[6]
In the 1995 animated short Carrotblanca, a parody/homage of the classic film Casablanca, both Pepé and Penelope appear. Pepé (voiced again by Greg Burson) as Captain Renault and Penelope (voiced by Tress MacNeille) as "Kitty Ketty" (modeled after Ingrid Bergman's performance as Ilsa). Unlike the character's other appearances in cartoons, Penelope (as Kitty) has extensive speaking parts in Carrotblanca.
A baby version of Pepé Le Pew appeared in Baby Looney Tunes, voiced by Terry Klassen. In the episode "New Cat in Town", everyone thought that he was a cat. In another episode, titled "Stop and Smell Up the Flowers", Pepé Le Pew is shown to be good friends with a baby Gossamer.
Pepé Le Pew has appeared in The Looney Tunes Show episode "Members Only", voiced by René Auberjonois in season one and by Jeff Bergman in season two. He was present at the arranged marriage of Bugs Bunny and Lola Bunny, in which Lola eventually fell in love with Pepé. He also made a short cameo appearance with Penelope Pussycat in the Merrie Melodies segment "Cock of the Walk" sung by Foghorn Leghorn. He appeared in his own music video "Skunk Funk" in the 16th episode "That's My Baby". He also appeared again in another Merrie Melodies segment "You Like/I Like" sung by Mac and Tosh. His first appearance in the second season was in the second episode entitled "You've Got Hate Mail", reading a hate-filled email accidentally sent by Daffy Duck. He also had a short appearance in the Christmas special "A Christmas Carol" where he takes part in the song "Christmas Rules." In "Gribbler's Quest," Pepé Le Pew is shown to be in the same group therapy with Daffy Duck, Marvin the Martian, and Yosemite Sam.
Pepé appeared in Looney Tunes: Rabbits Run, voiced again by Jeff Bergman, as the head of a major perfumery for whom Lola wants to create a signature scent.
The character has been criticized due to his antics being perceived as perpetuating stereotypes of French culture. Amber E. George, in her 2017 essay "Pride or Prejudice? Exploring Issues of Queerness, Speciesism, and Disability in Warner Bros. Looney Tunes", describes Pepé's actions towards Penelope Pussycat as "sexual harassment, stalking, and abuse" and noted that Pepé's qualities mock the French people and their culture.[8]
Linda Jones Clough, the daughter of Pepé's creator, says she does not think anyone would watch Pepé cartoons and be inspired to rape someone, but she saw the choice to give him a break for a while as an appropriate decision. Clough also suggested something that reflected her father's vision, to write him as a job-seeker who keeps getting rejected, but changes up his routine thinking he is perfect.[9]Gabriel Iglesias, voice of Speedy Gonzales in Space Jam: A New Legacy, said that he could not say that he ever saw the character in a negative light and that growing up watching the original cartoons, he said that it was just from a different time.[10] At the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, a slideshow named "Woman in U.S. Animation" shows cartoons that shows "imagery that implies sexual assault", including Pepé Le Pew.[11]
In March 2021, as a result of controversy surrounding the character, Pepé Le Pew was reported to be removed from modern Warner Bros. projects until further notice, starting with Space Jam: A New Legacy.[12] However, the character has been seen in later projects.[7] According to Gabe Swarr, the Animaniacs episode "Yakko Amakko", which featured a cameo of the character, was written before the controversy.[13]
Mark Evanier observed that even Pepé's co-creator Maltese "wasn't (...) too fond of him", and reported Maltese's claim that later Pepé cartoons were the result of the success of the first one.[14]
Cancelled film
In October 2010, it was reported that Mike Myers would voice Pepé Le Pew in a feature-length live-action/animated film based on the character, although no information about this project has surfaced since.[15] In July 2016, it was revealed at San Diego Comic-Con that Max Landis was writing a fully-animated Pepé Le Pew feature film for Warner Bros.[16] The movie was cancelled due to sexual assault allegations against Landis in 2017, and a report that the character has not yet been planned to appear in future Warner Bros. productions leaves the feature film in doubt.[17]
^ abThompson, Kirsten Moana (1998). "Ah Love! Zee Grand Illusion! Pepé Le Pew, Narcissism and Cats in the Casbah". In Sandler, Kevin (ed.). Reading the Rabbit; Explorations in Warner Bros. Animation. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press. pp. 137–153. ISBN978-0813525389.
