It seems that mainstream TV shows these days are crafted to ensure that no one – not one single person – ever has their feelings hurt or their views challenged. A common refrain that you’ll hear in huddles around office kettles, or repeated ad infinitum in online forums, is: “They’d never be able to make that show today. Everything’s too ‘woke’ now.”
It’s those words, and others like them, that have brought me to Elmer Fudd’s penthouse office. I want to know what the surviving stars of cartoon’s golden era – the anarchic, devil-may-care, sometimes armed, often violent, occasionally cross-dressing Looney Tunes’ gang – think of their legacy, and the ‘woke’ modern world in which they’ve come of age. I want to know how they feel about some of the stunts they pulled, and particularly the infamous ‘Censored Eleven’ cartoons that were yanked from the Warner Bros canon for being too explicitly racist or otherwise problematic.
That’s what I want to do. Of course, I have to console myself with the fact that Elmer Fudd might be my only interviewee. To say that tragedy has befallen most of the Looney Tunes gang since the apex of their fame in the mid-20th century would be something of an understatement. Most of them are dead, or certainly their careers are dead. And nowhere is that illustrated more plainly than in the case of Looney Tunes’ most famous desert-based duo.
In the 1980s, after a life-time of being pursued by Wile E Coyote and a host of back-firing ACME products, Roadrunner – real name Garibaldi ‘Gary’ Runnerio – finally succumbed to a different acronym: AIDS.
His death was kept out of the newspapers, and, in subsequent appearances – most notably the Space Jam movies – Roadrunner was quietly replaced with Gary’s twin brother, Rod. Tragically, poor Rod also died senselessly. He met his doom in a bar-fight in Cape Town just after discovering that ‘meep-meep’ translates as ‘Your mother sucks harder than a Dyson’ in at least 12 tribal languages.
In the wake of Gary’s death, Wile E Coyote bought a farm in the Arizona desert and transformed it into a ranch for orphaned roadrunners. He told the New York Times in 1989: “After a life-time of trying to kill roadrunners on screen, it feels nice to be able to give something back, and I know my old friend Gary will be smiling down on me.”. Tragedy, though, was lurking on the periphery, waiting to strike, which it did in 1990. A misfiring stick of ACME TNT destabilised a nearby rocky outcrop, causing a giant slab to fall on top of the farm and hammer all of the little roadrunners into the ground like tent-pegs. There were no roadrunner survivors.
Now a broken coyote, Wile E later told the LA Times: “At night, when it’s quiet, I can still hear their haunting final meep-meeps.” Filled with shame and guilt, Wile E joined the German porn industry, and spent the following decades turning out mucky videos on fairy-tale and canine themes. His most noted works to date are ‘Little Red Riding Splooge’, ‘The Girl Who Thighed Wolf’, and ‘I’ll Huff and I’ll Puff and I’ll Blow Your Blouse Down.’ At the time of writing, Coyote’s 97th film, ‘The Wolf of Hole Street: Beads is Good’ had just gone into production.
Porky Pig – real name Jimmy Ferguson – was another casualty of the Toon Town curse. After losing millions in revenue thanks to a pork-based boycott by the Jewish and Islamic world, he filed for bankruptcy in 2005, and later committed suicide, leaving behind only the heart-breaking final words he managed to scrawl in his suicide note: ‘A be-beh-beh a thee-thee-thee a the-the-the-a a- That’s all, folks.’
Elmer Fudd said at the time: “Why the fuck would he have witten wike he spoke?”
We’re in Elmer Fudd’s penthouse office, the bay window behind him overlooking the sun-drenched sprawl of downtown LA. Fudd is perched high on his leather swivel chair, its central pole having been extended to its maximum height. How did he get up there? How will he get back down again? His vast mahogany desk stretches out below him like a continent.
The questions swirl around my head and notepad like Christopher Lloyd’s manic cartoon eyes at the end of Roger Rabbit. Are the Looney Tunes’ performers casualties of progress – a simple case of steam trains making way for electric carriages? Are they out-dated demons who have been rightly displaced by the gods of a more tolerant and progressive era? Or are they victims of a cultural coup: heroes suddenly black-balled by a culturally totalitarian regime?
“I’m vewy, vewy wich,” says Fudd with a joyless grin. I notice a row of flightless darts, the sharp ends pointing skyward, protruding from the top pocket of his shirt. I’m just about to ask him why he’s got them, and what he intends to use them for, when I get my answer.
Fudd’s grin morphs into an animated sneer as he snatches one of the darts in his fist and hurls it like the world’s tiniest javelin at the wall behind me. I turn as he throws, and can’t quite believe what I see. The dart embeds itself in a picture of a Mexican immigrant that’s in the process of being hung on the wall by a hapless employee. It lands directly in the centre of the immigrant’s forehead, just below his comically large sombrero. I’m not being wilfully reductive or offensive in my description of the man in the photograph being a Mexican immigrant: I know the picture is of a Mexican immigrant, or that it purports to be, because the man in the picture is wearing a large badge that’s embossed with the words: I AM A MEXICAN IMMIGWANT. Fudd grabs another dart and throws again, this time embedding it in the back of the neck of the man who’s trying to hang the picture of the Mexican immigrant. ‘Ariba!’ he shouts in agony. They’re both the same man. The man hanging the picture is the man in the picture. He’s even wearing the same sombrero. And the same badge.
I look down at my notepad, and the first question I’d planned to ask is staring up at me: “Mr Fudd, would you consider yourself right-wing?”
Just as I’m about to call time on the interview, Fudd grabs another two darts and throws them to the left of the Mexican, in quick succession, this time hitting a white guy, and the picture the white guy is trying to hang of himself. In the picture the white guy is wearing a badge that says I AM A WHITE GUY. The real white guy is also wearing the badge.
“Ow! Oooh, flipping ‘eck, ooooh cripes, missus, that’s gonna smart. I certainly won’t be able to jump after this,” says the white guy, dropping the picture of himself to the floor.
“Now get the buggewy out of my office, you pay of wats!” Fudd hollers at them, as they scurry from the room into the presumably dartless safety of the corridor beyond.
Fudd laughs. “As you can see, Mista Andwew, I’m vewy, vewy equal oppowtunities.”
“Because you abuse white and Mexican members of staff alike?”
“Exactwee. You have no idea who I actu-wee hate. And that’s just the way I wike it. Cwevah, wight? You might even say it’s woke.”
I pause. “Roke?”
He seems irritated. “Woke!”
“Loke?”
“WOKE!”
“Oh, you are actually saying ‘woke’, sorry, it’s a little confusing, with the… em… you know. Speech imp… ”
He makes a grab for his top shirt pocket, and I’m relieved to see that he’s run out of darts. “Mistah Andwew, when will you peepoh wearn that speech pwobwems ah NOT funnee!” he howwers at the top of his wungs.
Undeterred, I pwess on. “What other ethnicities do you have on staff that you routinely throw darts at, Mr Fudd?”
He starts to count on the fingers of one hand, runs out of fingers, starts on the other, runs out again, looks deep in thought for a second, and then looks at his feet with a comically raised eyebrow. A laugh is just fading on his lips as he starts to answer.
“I’ll just give you the high-wights. I’ve got a wittle Jewish one, an Eskimo one, a wittle Fwench one in a stwipy jumpah. My favowite, though, is the wittle Asian one. Owiental!” he asserts, with a note of panic. “I’ve neveh once managed to hit the wittle bastad, I think that’s why I wike him. He’s wike a ninja. One day I’ll get him though, the wittle wascal.” A wistful grin plays across his lips, and he waggles his tiny fist in the air. “One day!”
I feel like every drop of blood is draining down from my skull to the southern end of my body, whirlpooling out through my toes and leaving my face not just white, but Albino Max. Caucasian Deluxe. I look down at my notepad and the second question I planned to ask glares up at me…
“Mr Fudd, would you consider yourself a racist?”
“We did have a bwack guy, but we had to wet him go duwing that whole wace wiots thing, the Bee Ew Em, you wemembeh? I found a good fix and got the white guy to smeeah boot powish on his face twice a day so he could doubwe up as the bwack guy, even doubwed his wages, but human wesowces said that, if anything, that was even MO’ wacist. You beweev that? Thwowing pwojectiles at a white guy who’s painted his face bwack is MO’ wacist than thwowing pwojectiles at an actuwah, WEAL bwack guy?? It’s powitical cowwectness gone mad, it weally is. You can’t thwow dahts at ANYONE vees days.”
“You have an HR department?” I ask incredulously.
“Yes.”
“Who runs it?” The possibilities cycle through my brain. “Marvin the Martian?”
He shakes his head. “Mah-vin the Mas-shin! No, no. It’s Foghon Weghon.” A laugh creases his face. “Ma-vin the Ma-shin our human wesources guy! As if…”
Fudd pauses for a moment, then continues. “He’s ow Chief Divesitee and Incwusion Officah.”
I ask him if he’s got any trans or Muslim employees on staff to run the dart gauntlet, and Fudd almost falls off his chair.
“AH YOU FUCKEN CWAZEE?”
I shoot him a perplexed and vaguely apologetic look. Fudd looks around shiftily and when he next speaks it’s as though he’s doing so to a hidden camera, or god himself. A bead of sweat appears on his tiny brow and drops a mountainous distance to the floor below him, landing with a soundless plop. He starts laughing, nervously and maniacally.
“Eve-wee thing is fine in heeah. No pwoblems. No one mentioned twans aw mooswims in heeah. HAPPY FAMEWEES! HAPPY FAMEWEES”
Fudd wipes more sweat from his head, then looks me dead in the eyes, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Jesus Chwyst, mistah, ah yoo twying to get us wynched??”
“But why do you throw darts at people? Why darts?”
Elmer shrugs. “Because they hid my guns. I was a tewwible shot anyway.”
I decide its as good a time as any to talk about Bugs Bunny, Fudd’s life-long friend and the actor with whom he’s worked most closely across his career. I want to find out what happened to Bugs, and what Fudd feels about their shared legacy.
I’d already tried and failed to track down Bugs Bunny – undoubtedly the most famous and iconic member of Looney Tunes – but the closest I got to him was a rumour, repeated to me by Sylvester the Cat (running for Governor of California next year), which he’d heard from Tweetie Pie (the current Governor of California), that Bugs had gone off into the wilderness to find himself.
Bugs had certainly lost himself for long enough, as anyone who’s ever picked up a tabloid newspaper in the last few years can attest. Bugs’ narcotics abuse gave rise to red-top headlines like DRUGS BUNNY and WASTED WABBIT. When he was caught in a brothel, they went with THWILL THE WABBIT. And they asked – perhaps rather predictability – WHAT’S UP, DOC? when he was rushed to hospital to have something long and blunt extracted from his throbbing rabbit arsehole.
In many ways, Bug’s trajectory is the greatest tragedy of them all. Up until the end of 2019 things had been going well for him. There’d been a sold-out Broadway and West End run of ‘When it Comes to the Crunch’, a one-rabbit show based upon his life. He’d also just been cast as Hazel in a stage adaptation of Watership Down – really settling into a late career renaissance – when things exploded on Twitter. Disgruntled activists had unearthed old clips of Bugs in his Looney Tunes days, dressed in female clothing and pretending to be a woman, and had plastered them all over Twitter, whipping up fury, outrage and condemnation from every corner of the internet. Suddenly, just at the height of his comeback, Bugs found himself cancelled, and his new career DOA. Or DOE – Dead on Emergence – if you want to keep things rabbity.
Fudd looks grave as we recap Bugs’s downfall.
“The twans wobby accused him of mocking them, so Bugs, who always took these things to haht, decides to twy to save his caweeah by saying that he wasn’t mocking them, because HE was twans. A wady wabbit twapped in a male wabbit’s body. But they don’t beweev him, and it gets out of hand, and he’s undah twendous pwessuah, so he hits the booze pwetty bad and, one night he does something pwetty extweme to convince them. He goes on Facebook Wive and he chops off his bwuddy cock.” Fudd mimics a penis guillotine, which isn’t a sentence you write every day. “WIGHT off. Pooh wabbit couldn’t even WOOK at a cawwot aftah that, much wess munch on one.”
I remembered the aftermath. ‘RABBIT HOLE’ said the headlines.
“So would you consider what you do or what you did in the past to be offensive by today’s standards?” I ask him. I mention, straight off the bat, that fud means vagina in Scotland.
He scratches his head. “So ova heeah fud is nothing and fanny is ass, but ova theya in… Bwitain?…”
“Scotland.”
“…Scotwand, wight…Fanny is ass, and fud and fanny ah both pussy?”
“That’s correct.”
“So Tweetie Pie could say, ‘I tot I taw a fanny cat? I did, I did see a fanny cat!”
“Yes he could. Or a fud cat.”
“Owa fanny pussy,” he says with a grin.
“So, Elmer,” I say. “Were you guys problematic in your heyday?”
He thinks for a moment. “Not as pwobwematic as we could’ve been. Foh instance, Yosemite Sam was owiginawy cawd ‘Antisemitey Sam’.”
At that moment Foghorn Leghorn bursts into Fudd’s office to warn us that protestors were gathering outside the building.
“I say, I say,” he said he said. “Time to cut this interview short, boy, I say, time to cut this interview short.”
Outside on the street there’s a sea of angry faces, blue hair, badges, and placards. DOWN WITH LOONEY TUNES. CANCEL THE WABBIT. FUDD IS WAYCIST. ELMER SHOULD BE VEGETARIAN.
I approach the angriest looking protestor I can find.
“You don’t approve?” I ask.
“There’s no place for this kind of thing in our tolerant age. That’s why we’re going to burn this place to the ground and kill everyone inside.”
“But can’t we just give it its place, preface these cartoons with warnings, but let people enjoy them in context, and keep them around?”
“Mister, my young son watched an episode of Sylvester and Tweetie Pie this morning, and immediately went on to murder our pets. I had to syringe him with ritalin.”
As a hail of darts starts raining from the windows above, amid high-up cries of ‘YOU’LL NEVAH TAKE ME AWIVE YOU WASCALS!’, I head to the nearest bar. I’m off to get drunk with Pepe Le Pew. Drunk as a him.
Click HERE to read ‘AFTER THE BAN’, my interview/feature with cereal mascots like Tony Tiger and the Honey Monster.
