'Looney Tunes' Is Back, But Elmer Fudd's Guns Aren't
Good news for anyone who misses going to the opera: the Looney Tunes are back. Looney Tunes Cartoons on HBO Max is over 1,000 minutes of new Bugs Bunny goodness. And its new creators are assuring longtime fans that the show is 100% inspired by the old school shorts from the forties, right down to the off-white gloves but minus all the toxicity that no longer has a place in cartoons. So no blackface, no rabbits smoking and, oh yeah, no firearms of any kind.
In an interview with The New York Times, showrunner Peter Browngardt confirmed that the only major change he's implemented in the Looney Tunes formula: "We're not doing guns." Not that big of a change, the Looney Tunes' canon of weaponry has always been more about canons anyway. But since this directly affects both the show's Second Amendment stance and its two white boomers, Elmer Fudd and Yosemite Sam, the decision has caused the typical roundup of conservatives, online gun nuts and reactionary fanboys to decry once again how a children's cartoon no longer caters to their sensibilities.
But it's not just about gun rights, they reckon. This is once again typical Hollywood liberals rewriting history, changing set-in-stone characters to match their modern-day politics. What's next? Will these coastal elites turn Elmer Fudd into some sort of sissy wildlife photographer -- like he was in his first ever Looney Tunes appearance? Or make the famed hunter openly weep and blubber at the sight of dead animals, like Fudd did the first time he thought he killed Bugs in 1940? Typical Millennial and Gen Z weakness. In fact, what kind of namby-pamby, snowflake weapon did they wind up giving to this new soyboy Elmer Fu-- cking hell, is that a scythe?!
It's pretty hard to claim that Looney Tunes has become part of the leftist "pussyfication" of the media when it turns Elmer Fudd from a small game hunter into the Grim Reaper. Likewise, while Yosemite Sam isn't a Texan gunslinger anymore, he's something ten times more dangerous and ten times more relatable to your average online gun fanatic -- a carnie:
And a mere glance at the new episodes shows that Looney Tunes is still as gloriously, excessively violent as it always has been (much more than previous 21st-century versions), letting Bugs have all the dynamite he needs to blow Fudd to the moon and back.
So why would the creators of Looney Tunes be specifically anti-gun when it comes to toon-on-toon violence? Conveniently, Browngardt follows up his gun ban quote by elucidating: "we still do cartoony violence -- TNT, the Acme stuff." What's the difference? Kids don't hide in supply closets because of active cannoneer drills or know someone whose dad got dynamited to death by a cop during a routine traffic stop. Cartoon violence is supposed to be absurd and funny and, gosh, the concept of a "crazed gunman" just doesn't fit that bill anymore these days.
For more weird tangents and anti-blunderbuss propaganda, do follow Cedric on Twitter.
Top Image: HBO
