Goodbye to Pepe Le Pew
Some of the things that we may want to remember about the character Pepe Le Pew are those very things that are being swept under the carpet. Pepe Le Pew should be a role model and a perfect example of how NOT to act in social situations. Perhaps a great opportunity has been missed by simply not allowing the skunk to demonstrate the many ways he is not politically correct.
Who was this character anyway? Le Pew began as a satire, poking fun at such great ‘lovers’ onscreen as Charles Boyer in the film, “Pepe Le Moko,” or the popular French actor Maurice Chevalier. Chevalier was considered a ham by most Americans who saw him onscreen in his later years. He had become a good character actor and appeared often in light comedies and musicals made in Hollywood. But his overly theatrical gestures and exaggerated emphasis on “L’amour’ were seen as irritants for the beefcake male image that was favored in the Western theaters.
And so it was inevitable that the comedic style of Mel Blanc became a perfect foil as he began to perfect his satire of a drippy Frenchman. The women that Pepe went after were usually just innocent house pets, often cats that accidentally had a white stripe down their back which made Pepe mistake them for female skunks. The satire also allowed for the effects of the skunk odor to permeate the air surrounding the amorous skunk.
More than once, Pepe would chase the females down and around as they scurried away, often with “Le Puff” /”Le Pew!” as the added bonus that these were French speaking animals! It was always amusing to see this over-confident skunk chasing women and just not taking ‘no’ for an answer.
Some of the funniest scenes included the trademark lines he would deliver. He would say, “You can call me streetcar because of my desire for you.” And after being hit on the head, cartoon-style, with deadly force, he simply smirks into the camera and drawls one word: “Flirt!”
The women invariably got away and Pepe was always an unsuccessful lover. But the times have changed, so alas, with the woke culture the content of these cartoons will be shelved for another day. But there is a lesson in Le Pew.
He was also someone who never had success with his outdated and outmoded style of dating. And if someone was smart enough to just utilize this boorish and outmoded attitude and turn it into a scene of learning and growth for the unsuccessful skunk, then Pepe Le Pew could be a valuable learning tool for many. And in the end, we can still laugh at the very unsuccessful antics of this skunk from another place and time.
