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My views on the whole Space Jam 2 Pepe thing
4 years ago
BISMUTH SPEAKS TO YOU. HIS CHOSEN ONES.
I know this is pretty late, but I had no idea how I was going to word this until today. Anyway, I've decided to state what I just said in the title. My views are that, while I'm okay with Pepe not being in Space Jam 2 (seriously, I'm a lot more disappointed that the Dover Boys aren't getting in like they did last time, especially given how much the internet likes them) or future WB projects until further notice due to the nature of the original animations he's from possibly coming off as disturbing or sexist in today's world, I can, at the very least, understand the people who feel like removing him was misguided, feeling like reworking rather than removing him would be ideal (while still understanding that that reworking would have been harder than removing); that said, I find it really frustrating that so many people on the internet care more about a company deciding not to use a character they own for certain projects due to them feeling that the character's original schtick might not come off the same way to modern audiences that it did to older audiences than they do more serious issues.
Firstly, I'll state my reasons for agreeing with WB's decision: Times change, audiences change, people's views change, and in order to keep with the times, media has to change. I'm not saying every work of media has to follow the "we're still relevant, dammit" trope and jump on every single new fad and movement, but creators need to understand when a character's schtick might be dated and come off as insensitive instead of funny/cool/cute/interesting/whatever. The newer James Bond movies, for instance, have called some of the older movies and novels' less PC elements into question, and IMO it works because the character in question and what made them cool is still there (and if any of you think that Bond's archaic views on women, non-white people, and LGBTQ people in the older works were what made him cool instead of him being a badass super-spy, please seek help), but certain aspects of the character that might not come off as acceptable in the modern day are reworked and removed (it helps that he initially has the archaic views and stuff and is then called out on it in-universe) so the character can be enjoyed by more people. A similar thing happens with Lovecraftian horror: Lovecraft himself was afraid of minorities, the "horror" in some of his works coming from the fact that characters connected to the various evil gods and monsters in his stories weren't straight white (and this is going by his time's idea of "white," where it discluded Jews, Irish people, and basically anyone from south/east Europe) cis men, but even people who dislike Lovecraft's racism can still enjoy the idea of "big freaky entity from space that can make people's brain crash if they even look at it and is planning on doing (sometimes literally) unspeakable things" that he came up with. It's a lot harder to do this with a character intended to be funny, especially one whose whole joke is based on ideas that can seem insensitive these days and especially when the character themselves has sometimes been portrayed in a positive-ish light like Pepe has. In fact, WB was originally planning on Pepe being in a scene where he'd be brought up to speed on things like consent, but they cut it for (I think) being too preachy, and I think that the people complaining about his removal probably would have probably complained about him being taught about consent unless the scene had the person telling him about consent being portrayed as some prudish/oversensitive killjoy who was in the wrong.
On the other hand, I think that removing Pepe entirely wasn't exactly ideal (though I acknowledge that ideal isn't always achievable) and they could have reworked him somehow (even if it was hard to do so) to have a lot less values dissonance (as TVTropes puts it) which they actually kinda managed to do in Wabbit (in which Pepe is a (possibly affectionate) parody of spy fiction), or, failing that, they could just have him as a cameo or something.
And on third hand, I just want to bring up the fact that people care more about A GODDAMN CARTOON ABOUT ANTHROPOMORPHIC ANIMALS PLAYING BASKETBALL (I don't even think Pepe had all that big a role in Space Jam 1 IIRC) than they do about real issues: We're killing our homeworld through incompetence, ignorance, lack of environmentally-friendly tech due to unfounded fears (fears of it being unprofitable, less functional, or actually unfriendly to the environment (there are people who claim to be environmentalists yet believe a system in which solar and wind are backed up by either huge expensive batteries (which would almost certainly require a lot of child labor to get the materials required because we're too scared of AI turning on us to even make remote-controlled mining robots) or fossil fuels whenever the wind isn't blowing enough/the sun isn't shining enough is better than one where we use nuclear power plants improved to avoid a lot of the issues older ones have) leading to fewer people trying to make eco-friendly tech, hence why virtually nobody's come up with things like more eco-friendly jet propulsion or methods of recycling single-use plastic (well, things like those that are likely going to see widespread implementation, anyway)), and people deliberately harming the environment just to annoy people who say they care about it; very real and very concerning issues regarding police accountability, trust, and training, especially around minorities, leading to equally real and equally concerning polarization among many influential people where some believe that the police are always wrong and should be replaced by either mob justice (sometimes literally, believing that street gangs would be better than the police) or a complete lack of law enforcement (or at least law enforcement equipped to handle certain crimes) and some believe that the police are always right and their job isn't just to enforce the law, but make and interpret the law on the spot, leaving very few influential people who believe that while the actions by police that led up to this polarization are reprehensible, police still have a place in our world and shouldn't be gotten rid of, only reformed; poverty, starvation, disease, unemployment, bigotry, war, terrorism, crime, totalitarianism, and all sorts of other horrible things exist, but no: these people would rather complain about a GODDAMN CARTOON SKUNK NOT BEING IN A GODDAMN CARTOON BASKETBALL MOVIE. I really hate people sometimes...
Firstly, I'll state my reasons for agreeing with WB's decision: Times change, audiences change, people's views change, and in order to keep with the times, media has to change. I'm not saying every work of media has to follow the "we're still relevant, dammit" trope and jump on every single new fad and movement, but creators need to understand when a character's schtick might be dated and come off as insensitive instead of funny/cool/cute/interesting/whatever. The newer James Bond movies, for instance, have called some of the older movies and novels' less PC elements into question, and IMO it works because the character in question and what made them cool is still there (and if any of you think that Bond's archaic views on women, non-white people, and LGBTQ people in the older works were what made him cool instead of him being a badass super-spy, please seek help), but certain aspects of the character that might not come off as acceptable in the modern day are reworked and removed (it helps that he initially has the archaic views and stuff and is then called out on it in-universe) so the character can be enjoyed by more people. A similar thing happens with Lovecraftian horror: Lovecraft himself was afraid of minorities, the "horror" in some of his works coming from the fact that characters connected to the various evil gods and monsters in his stories weren't straight white (and this is going by his time's idea of "white," where it discluded Jews, Irish people, and basically anyone from south/east Europe) cis men, but even people who dislike Lovecraft's racism can still enjoy the idea of "big freaky entity from space that can make people's brain crash if they even look at it and is planning on doing (sometimes literally) unspeakable things" that he came up with. It's a lot harder to do this with a character intended to be funny, especially one whose whole joke is based on ideas that can seem insensitive these days and especially when the character themselves has sometimes been portrayed in a positive-ish light like Pepe has. In fact, WB was originally planning on Pepe being in a scene where he'd be brought up to speed on things like consent, but they cut it for (I think) being too preachy, and I think that the people complaining about his removal probably would have probably complained about him being taught about consent unless the scene had the person telling him about consent being portrayed as some prudish/oversensitive killjoy who was in the wrong.
On the other hand, I think that removing Pepe entirely wasn't exactly ideal (though I acknowledge that ideal isn't always achievable) and they could have reworked him somehow (even if it was hard to do so) to have a lot less values dissonance (as TVTropes puts it) which they actually kinda managed to do in Wabbit (in which Pepe is a (possibly affectionate) parody of spy fiction), or, failing that, they could just have him as a cameo or something.
And on third hand, I just want to bring up the fact that people care more about A GODDAMN CARTOON ABOUT ANTHROPOMORPHIC ANIMALS PLAYING BASKETBALL (I don't even think Pepe had all that big a role in Space Jam 1 IIRC) than they do about real issues: We're killing our homeworld through incompetence, ignorance, lack of environmentally-friendly tech due to unfounded fears (fears of it being unprofitable, less functional, or actually unfriendly to the environment (there are people who claim to be environmentalists yet believe a system in which solar and wind are backed up by either huge expensive batteries (which would almost certainly require a lot of child labor to get the materials required because we're too scared of AI turning on us to even make remote-controlled mining robots) or fossil fuels whenever the wind isn't blowing enough/the sun isn't shining enough is better than one where we use nuclear power plants improved to avoid a lot of the issues older ones have) leading to fewer people trying to make eco-friendly tech, hence why virtually nobody's come up with things like more eco-friendly jet propulsion or methods of recycling single-use plastic (well, things like those that are likely going to see widespread implementation, anyway)), and people deliberately harming the environment just to annoy people who say they care about it; very real and very concerning issues regarding police accountability, trust, and training, especially around minorities, leading to equally real and equally concerning polarization among many influential people where some believe that the police are always wrong and should be replaced by either mob justice (sometimes literally, believing that street gangs would be better than the police) or a complete lack of law enforcement (or at least law enforcement equipped to handle certain crimes) and some believe that the police are always right and their job isn't just to enforce the law, but make and interpret the law on the spot, leaving very few influential people who believe that while the actions by police that led up to this polarization are reprehensible, police still have a place in our world and shouldn't be gotten rid of, only reformed; poverty, starvation, disease, unemployment, bigotry, war, terrorism, crime, totalitarianism, and all sorts of other horrible things exist, but no: these people would rather complain about a GODDAMN CARTOON SKUNK NOT BEING IN A GODDAMN CARTOON BASKETBALL MOVIE. I really hate people sometimes...
