Here's a smart message from Michael Grabowski. I'm going to interject between some of his paragraphs so don't get confused as to which of us is speaking. I'm the one with the wider margins…
To start, I'm okay with any company deciding how it wants to use or no longer use its characters and trademarks. I get a bit nervous when they do that out of cultural pressure rather than commercial pressure, though.
I get a bit nervous about that too but I also think it's sometimes hard to tell the difference between cultural pressure and commercial pressure. Some TV stations said they wouldn't carry reruns of The Cosby Show because they didn't want to be putting money in his pocket or suggesting that his sex crimes didn't matter and it was fine to promote the image of the man as America's Dad. Other stations decided no one would want to watch him now, and apparently some did polls and surveys that shaped this decision. So is The Cosby Show not around much now due to cultural pressure or commercial pressure? I sure can't separate them.
I vaguely remember the Dr. Seuss books under fire as ones I read as a kid but never got around to revisiting when my kids were Dr. Seuss-ready age. I remember the premise of On Beyond Zebra fondly, but I don't recall the specifics.
I have copies of all the Dr. Seuss books up to a certain point in his output. Of the six that have been withdrawn, On Beyond Zebra was the only one I would consider a major work of Seuss. In a couple of the articles about this entire matter, I've read that all six of the books have sometimes been outta-print for long periods with no one noticing. I have a hunch this one will soon be back with some art corrections.
I think Pepe LePew is a bit more marketable than you give it credit for. I have a Pepe necktie bought from a Warner Bros. mall store in the 90s that I still wear every Valentine's Day, and I have a Looney Tunes DVD from about ten years ago that featured a dozen or more of the Pepe shorts. No idea how those items sold relative to, say, the Sylvester or Foghorn Leghorn DVDs or Taz ties, but the character still had commercial worth and entertainment value (in moderate doses).
I'm told by a person involved with Warner Home Video that none of the DVDs of classic Warner Brothers cartoons are selling too well these days but when they did that Pepe one, it sold worse than most of the others. This might have been because of the seduction aspect of the material but I'd be more inclined to think it was because no one wanted to watch a collection of cartoons that were all the same story over and over again.
I once bought a Pepe LePew video collection and never got around to taking off the shrink wrap and watching it…and I'll tell you how far before the "Me Too" movement this was: Not only was this a videotape but, so help me, it was on Beta.
The same person connected with Warner Home Video told me Pepe merchandise never did well for them; not as strong as the "first tier" characters (who I believe are Bugs, Daffy and Tweety) and not as strong as most of the "second tier" ones, which I guess would be Porky, Foghorn, etc.
All that said, you seem to be saying that it's ok for these books and that character to disappear from modern culture in part because their copyright owners haven't realized much commercial potential from them lately, or they're not really cherished by the intended audience the way other, more memorable such characters and books are.
(To take it to another category for a moment, we live in an age where we can't see Fatty Arbuckle shorts or get a decent Blu-Ray of Woody Allen's Everyone Says I Love You, because the probably undeserved scandal around their names wasn't and isn't worth the hassle for such limited commercial potential. Meanwhile, Michael Jackson's hits will never get off the radio — and I'm not saying they should — despite concerns about him, because those songs still have tremendous commercial value.)
I think it's okay for a private company to say "We're not going to put this out because we think we'll lose money on it or not make enough to make it worth the effort." That to me is a totally valid reason and there are zillions of books that are not in print and oodles of movies and TV shows that are not available on home video for that reason.
The fact that someone someplace may find the material offensive may or may not have anything to do with that. I worked on some TV shows that have never been issued on DVD because no one thinks they can make a buck doing that. Are you suggesting that if someone thought there was something offensive in those shows, some company would have some obligation to invest in their release?
I also don't think material disappears from modern culture just because you can't order it off Amazon at the moment.
Are we really far from the day when it's decided that Elmer Fudd's speech impediment is no longer funny, or that the hunting and gunplay in those cartoons are no laughing matter? Will their commercial potential be enough for WB to stream those cartoons still, or will they get locked up with Coal Black? I'm glad I'll still have all those DVDs if that becomes the only way to watch them. (Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs probably deserves to stay out of public view. Elmer Fudd and Pepe LePew are nowhere near that class of bad taste and deliberate harm.)
See? Here's what I meant about things that aren't available on Amazon at the moment. Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs is not out of public view. There are probably a hundred copies of it — some from a really good transfer — on the Internet at the moment. Now, if you want to argue that it deserves better treatment, okay.
But this is not a terrible situation. While the folks at Warner Brothers probably don't officially like the idea of their property being bootlegged, someone there's gotta be pleased they're sidestepping controversy. They're not preventing anyone who wants to see it from seeing it…so there aren't angry mobs denouncing them for suppressing and "canceling" a wonderful cartoon. But if other angry mobs are outraged about its content…well, WB isn't responsible for it being seen.
Fatty Arbuckle shorts have long been hard to view…and I say that as someone who was searching for them back in the sixties. Again, this gets to the muddle between things becoming unavailable due to cultural objections or commercial problems. For seventy or eighty years, there was no market whatsoever for Arbuckle movies so no one invested the funds to preserve and restore them. As we mentioned back here, they're becoming a little more available. And Turner Classic Movies has even run a few of his movies as mentioned here. I'm going to guess there was not a huge tune-in and that if there had been, we'd see more of him there.
As for the Pepe shorts, their biggest crime is their repetitiousness. I'm pretty sure Pepe never gets the girl. The whole bit is about all the suffering he endures while being such an obvious creep. As with Wile E. Coyote, no one roots for him to succeed. The whole gag is about the constant and crazy failures, as in most of the WB cartoons, to get what they want. It's just a different kind of hunt theme, and I didn't need anyone to tell me that Pepe LePew wasn't a role model.
I have no outrage over this issue, but definitely concern. Can't we develop a better sense of perspective about the things in our culture we think others might take social cues from? I'm okay with WB not making any new use of Pepe LePew if they choose not to, but can't we also make it clear that Pepe LePew is not Cosby, Weinstein, Trump, or Cuomo? Thanks as always for thoughtful, entertaining blogging.
And thank you for a thoughtful, entertaining message. I wish people didn't take umbrage at some kinds of humor…but then again, I think people these days are more sensitive about some serious issues like alcoholism and sexual exploitation. It's possible, I believe, to crack down on the Harvey Weinsteins and that kind of behavior towards women and still enjoy a performance of "Baby, It's Cold Outside" or a Pepe LePew cartoon but I recognize that might not be as easy for some people as others. When wrongs are righted, they're sometimes righted too much for a while.