Speedy Gonzalez - Banned in the USA

Hispanic Online ^ | 3/27/02 | VIRGINIA CUETO

[Landru]

"We will bend over backwards to make sure you're not offended..."

Thanks for the alert, sweetie.
But...I do believe they'd *prefer* us bending over the other way?

Devil's in the details -- I know.

[oyez]

These people live off the control of other people.

[Landru]

"These people live off the control of other people."

So true; a real mouthful you say there.
IMO that kind of bent is just about as evil as a person or person(s) can possibly get & yet?
The forces responsible for this whackery?
They'll surely find a way, & with help from our government, for all of us to be forced to pay for their folly.

Now, does that little aspect (about America) scream out to be *fixed*, or what?

[gc4nra]

This is a good start! Now if we could just get rid of all the other illegals.

[oyez]

There is a definate new dark age on the horizon. (or its already here for that mater)

[Tumbleweed_Connection]

What programs does Turner rerun over his networks which are hypocritical to his Gonzales cancellation?

[mc5cents]

Come out of there ya danged PC cruds sos I can BLAST ya!!

[majordivit]

This is just the tip of the icebox. Just wait until the third world becomes a majority of the American population. You will never see images of western civilization shown in a positive light.

[let freedom sing]

The Death of the West

Adios, Senor Speedy

[oyez]

Yikes! A man of Western European extraction with guns. Nothing is politically incorrect as that image.

[germanicus]

You're right. How insensitive!

[BluesDuke]

I'm a great fan of the Warners Brothers cartoons (Bugs is my all-time favorite cartoon character), but you are so wrong when you state that every one of their toons is superior to Rocky and Bullwinkle. Artistically and laughwise yes...but they were never as intelligent or witty as moose and squirrel.

To each his own, of course. But aside from the innate superiority of the wit and sutbleties of Looney Tunes over moose and squirrel, Rocky and Bullwinkle accomplished the dubious feat of making terrible animation hip. I wouldn't trade one "Dough For The Do-Do" or "Duck Amuck" for the entire log of moose and squirrel.

[driftless]

That's what made Rocky and Bullwinkle so great: lousy animation, superior stories and dialogue. You're overestimating Warner Bros amigo. They had great toons, but they also had their share of stinkers even during their golden era. And the W BRos toons greatness only went up to the late fifties. After that their toons were very poor, art and story. Moose and squirrel maintained a consistency of quality in storylines and dialogue until the end.

[BluesDuke]

That's what made Rocky and Bullwinkle so great: lousy animation, superior stories and dialogue.

This, unfortunately, is like calling Le Corbusier a genius because he showed the world how to become a great architect without building buildings. (Thank you, Tom Wolfe!) If you could have taken the Rocky and Bullwinkle stories and repartee and run it through the best of the Warner Brothers animation and direction, man, you would have yourself something unsinkable. I mean, just imagine Chuck Jones or Friz Freleng or Robert McKimson doing moose and squirrel! (For one thing, the Looney Tunes crew would have put a lot more subtlety into moose and squirrel, without killing the essence of their storylines and repartee. But that is probably a question of personal taste more than anything.)

I tend to agree, the Warner Brothers cartoons began deteriorating around the time Chuck Jones left over a tiff the details of which escape me (he went from there to produce a very good round of Tom and Jerry cartoons for MGM) and one David DePate joined the crew, basically bowdlerising the Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies concepts and characters - the credit usually read David DePate and Friz Freleng, but I find it hard to believe Freleng's name was there for that much more than just the name boost, these cartoons were so far beneath his best work.

On the other hand, now that Chuck Jones has gone to his richly deserved reward, it seems the baseball movie which is just dying to be made can never be made, because Chuck Jones was the single most qualified director to make a film about the 1962 New York Mets!

[BluesDuke]

How about Fog-Horn Leg-Horn, who does a passable imitation of Fritz Hollings.

*sputter...choke!....Communist!.....Bolshevik!....Square-dance Caller!!....You'd better have meant, instead, that Fritz Hollings does a sorry-@$$ed imitation of Foghorn Leghorn, doo-dah doo-dah!

[Hemlock]

As a white American, I resent Yosemite Sam! He's a trigger-happy, loud-mouthed, belligerent, domineering, crass know-it-all. We can't have these stereotypes! Somebody might think they're true (and secretly, that's exactly what I believe about "my people" and myself). In other words, I AM A SELF-HATING RACIST! Uhhhh...oh, we're talking about Speedy Gonzales and Mexicans here. Sorry, I got confused!

[luigi]

NEW YORK — It's still harder to find Speedy Gonzales on the Cartoon Network than Elmer Fudd on the winning side of a Bugs Bunny movie, but the Fastest Mouse in all of Mexico now has a high-profile lobby on its side.

The League of United Latin American Citizens, the United States' oldest Hispanic-American rights group, has publicly come out on the side of cartoon fans who want Speedy back on the airwaves.

"Viva Speedy!" LULAC director of policy and legislation Gabriela Lemus said. "Give the mouse a chance."

The rapid rodent's films have been deemed to contain offensive ethnic stereotypes of Mexicans, and Speedy has been off the air since the cable network became the sole U.S. broadcaster of old Warner Brothers cartoons in late 1999.

"I've never heard any Mexican-American complain about him," Lemus said in a telephone interview from Washington, D.C. "I grew up in Mexico, I watched it with my grandmother and we weren't offended. How far do you push political correctness before you can't say anything about anything anymore?"

LULAC now joins thousands of fans who say the high-speed character is a cultural icon who deserves to be saved. Fans have gathered on animation-fan Web sites to debate and organize movements to bring him back.

Cartoon Network spokeswoman Laurie Goldberg said LULAC and other Speedy fans won't necessarily change the Atlanta-based network's Speedy course.

Cartoon Network "If there's space for Speedy on our air or on (sister network) Boomerang, the programming department will consider it and make that decision. Just like when we get petitions from any group."

The network, however, remains very aware that a loyal fan following for a particular cartoon doesn't necessarily translate into ratings success, Goldberg said.

"A few years ago, there was an outcry to put on Speed Racer," she said. "We put on Speed Racer and it did terribly."

She said an e-mail petition of 1,000 names the network received Thursday morning was the very first fan comment on Speedy's absence. Before that, she said, there wasn't "a peep" about the missing mouse.

In his adventures, the sombrero-wearing mouse sports an over-the-top Mexican accent and uses his super speed to foil foes like the "Greengo Pussygato" Sylvester. Speedy is sometimes aided by a coterie of drunken, tobacco-smoking Mexican mice who lounge around the village, or by his lazy cousin Slowpoke Rodriguez, as slow-witted as he is slow-footed.

"The cartoons are still funny and it's a disservice and disgrace to the original animators to never show them again," said Geoff Mukhtar, an Indianapolis publicist and Speedy fan. "These cartoons reflect the time they were created and we're trying to impose modern standards on them."

There evidently wasn't a problem with the Mexican caricatures at the beginning of Speedy's career. The 1955 animated short "Speedy Gonzales" won an Academy Award, and two other cartoons, "Tabasco Road" and "The Pied Piper of Guadalupe," were nominated for Oscars in 1957 and 1961.

But the outdated messages in cartoons like Speedy aren't appropriate in the 21st century, Goldberg said last week in a previous interview.

"We're not about pushing the boundary. We're not HBO," she said. "We have a diverse audience and we have an impressionable audience."

Networks like the Cartoon Network have edited out scenes from or simply refused to show animated movies with now-questionable gags or behavior like smoking or drinking since the 1980s. Among the most taboo of Warner Brothers cartoons are the "Censored 11," which depict blacks as fat-lipped minstrels or cannibalistic savages.

And though adult fans may bemoan the fact their favorite rodent has been sent to broadcast limbo, they ought to consider most of the viewers are children, Los Angeles psychologist Robert Butterworth said.

"These stereotypes are ingrained when we're young. And what do kids watch? Cartoons," he said. "I know the adults are saying, 'Oh God, it's just Speedy Gonzales,' but these are impressions that are put in very early and very hard to pull out. I'm the last person to hold a sign for political correctness, but kids absorb this thing on a preconscious level."

Fans aren't buying that argument and ask where you draw the line with a medium that, by its nature, relies on caricature for humor.

"What about Pepe LePew? His chasing of unwilling females surely sends the message to children that's it's OK to stalk and attack them if they resist," Mukhtar wrote in an e-mail. "Plus, because he's French, does this mean that all Frenchmen are sexual predators?"

Speedy boosters shouldn't expect to see their furry hero to be back regularly anytime soon, at least in the United States, although he will appear in reruns of the full-length Warner Brothers movie "Fantastic Island" later this month, Goldberg said.

But there is a place where Speedy can still be found regularly zipping across TV screens — and, presumably, where the crude stereotypes he embodies don't touch a cultural nerve.

That place: The Cartoon Network Latin America, where, ironically enough, Speedy Gonzales is "hugely popular," Goldberg said.

[Kimchica]

The ironic thing is that political correctness is rooted in lessons taught by cartoons like Speedy Gonzalez. Children learn about the variety of human attributes that we value, and which ones cause problems for others. Plain and simple, cartoons stereotype people into The Good Guys and The Bad Guys. That grouping crosses all cultural, ethnic or racial lines. The most interesting thing is that kids are most drawn to cartoons that most completely portray the traits most valued by all cultures (I know, that's a lot of "mosts," but it's true). I think kids have an innate sense of justice, and they seek reassurance that The Good Guys will win -- that's why they're so drawn to certain characters and stories. That's why certain cartoons become popular. By banning Speedy and characters like him, PC adults are depriving kids of all cultures of the message that Mexicans are as fully human as Gringos -- some good, some bad... but most importantly, that Mexican Good Guys have a fully developed sense of justice and concern for other humans, and they're likable people too.

[ChefKeith]

In reference to your homepage

[hoosierham]

In a related note,if not for the highly questionable and retroactive extension of copyright law pushed through the U.S> Congress in the 1980s these cartoons and many others would have passed into the public domain, out of the cluthes of evil controlling socialist capitalists like Ted Turner.