Looney Tunes Bans Cartoon Guns, Wounds Fans

Elmer Fudd in A Wild Hare, public domain wikimediacommons

The sources are from four years ago.

Looney Tunes decision to remove guns from the cartoon characters Elmer Fudd and Yosemite Sam is not a bad idea. It is positive in ways which are the opposite of what was intended. In an interview, the new Looney Tunes executive producer, Peter Browngart, makes clear the removal of guns from the cartoons was an ideological decision. From the New York Times:

“We’re not doing guns,” Browngardt said. “But we can do cartoony violence — TNT, the Acme stuff. All that was kind of grandfathered in.”

Yahoo published an article with Michael Ruocco, an animation artist who has been working on the new Looney Tunes. Michael opines about fan complaints on the removal of guns from the iconic characters. From uk.movies.yahoo.com:

Taking to Twitter, Michael Ruocco, who’s worked on shows like Bojack Horseman, let fly: “Do you guys SERIOUSLY care whether or not Elmer Fudd has a gun in our shorts? You know how many gags we can do with guns? Fairly few. And the best were already done by the old guys. It’s limiting. It was never about the gun, it was about Elmer’s flawed, challenged masculinity.

“Also, think about context about what’s going on in the world, and how long ago our show started production. Late 2017, early 2018. Right on the heels of a record number of mass shootings, particularly the horrific one in Las Vegas. NOBODY wanted to touch guns working in media.

“I’m not here to put words in other people’s mouths or anything, but as someone who worked for 2 years with these characters, I personally did not care or miss Elmer’s rifle. We got a lot more out of his personality and his lack of wit than any implement in his hands. Move on.”

Michael reveals the obvious: “NOBODY wanted to touch guns working in the media.”   It would be better stated as: People in the old media wants to virtue signal “Guns are bad.” There is a significant amount of groupthink, especially in the old, incestuous, top driven, ideologically lockstep media.

The claim is a bit hyperbolic. There have been many violence drenched movies produced with lots of guns used by bad guys. There has been plenty of coverage making mass murderers into anti-heros, which fuels more mass murder as a way to fame. Numerous studies show media contagion (the copycat effect) is a major contributor to mass murder.

The gist of Michael’s comments reflect his cultural reality. People in old media are punished if they veer off the narrative of “guns are bad”.  The easy fix for Looney Tunes is to remove guns from the series. The backlash is against altering what have become cultural icons.

The decision is ironic. Guns in the hands of Elmer Fudd and Yosemite Sam were early attempts at promoting the “guns are bad” narrative. It was obvious to this correspondent sixty years ago. Elmer was a bumbling fool who never accomplished anything good with his shotgun. Yosemite Sam never hit what he was aiming at, and did nothing but egregious damage with his six shooters. Yosemite was an irresponsible, violence prone idiot.

The cartoon characters were the opposite of the reality this correspondent experienced while growing up in the gun culture in the 1960s. Perhaps that caused most people to laugh at them. Hunters were capable individuals to whom gun safety rules were nearly religious commandments. Good hunters had social status and respect in the community. Handguns were tools used by good guys to protect the innocent, or to humanely dispatch animals. Seeing the idiotic antics of the Looney Tunes characters with guns, the message was as obvious as a punch to the gut: People who have guns are idiots, a variation on the “guns are bad” theme.

The propaganda backfired in the gun culture. The images were outrageously silly. Fudd became a appellation for someone who had little understanding of serious issues, who happened to occasionally hunt.  It is not clear if the images were harmless in the minds of those who had no real world experience with guns or hunting.

Analysis:

The more media depictions veer away from reality, the greater the shock when people experience reality.  Firearms instructors all have stories about the “aha!” moments of students who personally experience firearms after only media depictions.

When your belief structure is based on false assumptions, reality tends to bite. This is happening in the old Media. They are operating in a bubble where their false assumptions about reality and their groupthink are starting to intersect with reality. Their audiences don’t want what they are selling. Profits are plummeting. Their preferred solution: Have the government bail them out with subsidies.

One of the most important and misunderstood features of a market based economy is the right to fail. When ventures fail, more competent hands obtain the resources and make adjustments better tuned to reality. Progressive control of the media is failing. Their preferred solution is tyranny. The next election will determine if they succeed.

©2024 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included.

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