Last night while I was at dinner something came up as my usual group was discussing cartoons, and the subject of Pepe Le Pew came up.  Given the course of our conversation about this amorous skunk [1], I quickly realized there was enough material for a personal essay, and so I figured it would be worthwhile to tackle Pepe Le Pew in a variety of perspectives.  I am not sure the extent to which others have thought of this, but one of the ways one can tell a great gulf between past generations and our own is the fact that not too long in the distant past children once laughed to see an amorous skunk with an outrageously stereotypically French accent attempt to romance a somewhat unwilling female domesticated cat.  Just think of what would happen nowadays in that kind of situation, with the skunk becoming subject to some kind of attempt to ruin his opportunities in the cartoon world and view him as an immensely unpleasant sexual predator, where his harassment of female catkind is just too persistent to tolerate.

What does this say about us?  I grew up in a world that subjected all kinds of subjects to dark and sardonic humor, and looking back at my own writings, I can certainly see that tendency began very early.  In high school, for a scored assignment for my International Bacchalaureate program in English, I wrote a pastiche on the famous ending of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House that played incest for laughs in the manner of jokes about the Southern United States.  I might not be the most obvious choice of someone to play incest for laughs, but life tends to present us with a great deal that we have to deal with, and how we choose to deal with it says a lot about us.  There are times to crusade against evil, but there are also times not to take ourselves too seriously.  Pepe Le Pew reminds us that the context of frustrated efforts at love amounts to a great deal of humor provided we do not identify too much with any of the people in it personally.  Humor is often something that exists in potential form in any kind of interaction that is awkward or uncomfortable.  Do we choose to see the humor in it, or do we find ourselves motivated only by outrage and anger?  There is something that is lost when we cannot see uncomfortable situations with any perspective other than outrage, because life gives us much that must be dealt with in ways other than seeking to attack others who are often just as uncomfortable and frustrated as we ourselves are.

It is admittedly unclear whether or not Pepe was ever successful in finding his Fifi.  There was, after all, a younger skunk named Fifi Le Fume who was mentored by Pepe Le Pew and who was obviously attracted to him.  Perhaps there remains to be some sort of happy skunk honeymoon where Pepe finds his love and then manages to sire a new generation of romantic skunks.  This world needs a lot more romance, and skunks are reminders that romantic longings of great intensity often exist in forms that are unpleasant for others to deal with.  This does not make skunks problematic figures, for it is just as frustrating to be a skunk that longs for love and affection, if not more so, than to be someone who simply finds the skunk awkward and unpleasant.  After all, Penelope Pussycat (the name of the unfortunate “mon Fifi”) happens to appear like a skunk, which is certainly all that is necessary to draw the attention of a real one, especially one who is alone.  It is not as if the skunk was looking for trouble or someone to bother, but rather made an honest misinterpretation of admittedly ambiguous evidence.  And who among us is immune from that sort of tendency?  Certainly not me.

[1] See, for example:

A Change In The Nature

Now That You Know

The Norweigian Snow Kitty

Don’t Stand So Close To Me