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SALT LAKE CITY Elmer Fudd is still chasing the silly wabbit. Only hes not carrying a gun. Gone is his extended musket, or what was essentially a hunters rifle. This time, he holds a scythe. Occasionally. Not all the time. Sometimes hes chased around. Sometimes hes in hiding.

Why did animators take away the gun? Gun violence. Peter Browngardt, the executive producer of the new Looney Tunes cartoon shorts on the HBO Max streaming service, told The New York Times that Fudd wont have his traditional weapon in the new version.

Were not doing guns, he said. But, we can do cartoony violence TNT, the Acme stuff. All that was kind of grandfathered in.

Instead, Elmer Fudd embraces the scythe, a tool that cuts crops like grass and wheat. It features a large curved blade at the end of a short handle. You could argue thats also a violent weapon, assuming Fudd is supposed to cut away at the rabbit if and when he catches him.

This brief moment sparked conversation on social media and in national headlines. People wondered why the character would be without his iconic weapon, especially since the new cartoon shorts include a number of other mature moments by Looney Tunes standards. For example, the new series shows a moment where Porky sucks snake venom out of Daffys leg. A ghost of Tweety haunts Sylvester. Satan makes a cameo, too.

Browngardt said the show has some edge.

Some of them have maybe gone a little too far, so they might come out in a different format. Maybe theyll come out packaged for an Adult Swim type of thing.

That might seem like an odd comment about a cartoon for children. But Looney Tunes has rarely been a cartoon for children.

For a brief moment, Looney Tunes joined the culture war. Critics wondered if the show was pro- or anti-gun. Did it represent the movement to eliminate guns from our culture? Or was it just about making a safer show for kids?

It might have been a fleeting moment. We may forget the argument in days ahead. But the brief discussion about Elmer Fudd losing his gun speaks to the current state of child animation and where the industry heads next when creating cartoons and productions for children.

The book Reading the Rabbit: Explorations in Warner Bros. Animation, by Kevin S. Sandler, explains that creator Tex Avery said he leaned more toward the adult audience. And animator Chuck Jones said the cartoons were absolutely made for adults.

So those 1940s Looney Tunes shorts that aired? They were absolutely not for children, said Kyra Hunting, an assistant professor of media and arts studies at the University of Kentucky.

The original shorts were shown before movies, giving people a chance to watch something comedic and lighthearted before movies began. Sometimes they were connected to pretty adult movies, Hunting said.

Warner Bros. evolved over time and the characters became more popular. Spinoffs came next, like Tiny Toon Adventures and Baby Looney Tunes that were family-friendly and oriented toward children.

Hunting has watched the entire new series already. She said the show is really an update to the original version rather than a spinoff or reboot.

The Looney Tunes characters bring a sense of nostalgia for people. Theyve existed for more than 60 years, so it makes sense for streaming services like HBO Max to embrace them, according to Kendall Phillips, a pop culture professor at Syracuse University.

The reason you use a character like Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd is for that nostalgia value ... you know audiences know what these are, theres a certain kind of cultural cachet and recognizable aspect of these characters, Phillips said.

These characters evolve over time and adapt to our changing times, Phillips said. We reboot famous characters to align with modern American culture.

Sometimes that means characters will be intertwined in the ongoing political culture, too, according to Phillips.

Were constantly recycling culture, he said. Were telling the story of whoever again. We tell these stories over and over again. But every time we tell them, we change them because we dont want to just hear the same story. We want to hear the old story adapted to our new situation or new culture or new ideas.

And now, the gun becomes the thing that really is important, Phillips said. That says something about our culture at this moment.

So what does replacing Elmer Fudds gun with a scythe have to say about our culture at this moment? According to Phillips, Warner Bros. has made the decision that gun violence is not something they want to continue to include in their childrens narrative.

The studio didnt make the decision to remove violence altogether. Theres still dynamite. Theres still slapping and punching.

Taking away the gun is a sign that Looney Tunes has joined the culture war, though, Phillips said.

We are at a point where it would be actually difficult to think of what could be an innocent element of pop culture now, because if Warner Bros. had included guns, they would have been making a choice, Phillips said. If they didnt include the gun of the past, they would have been making a choice. So to me, this says less about Warner Brothers and Elmer Fudd and more about where we are as an American culture, where everything has become part of this very difficult partisan divide.

Warner Brothers doesnt seem to want to remove violence, but I think they want to stop normalizing gun culture in America.

For some families, the issue of guns could be a soft spot. Families across the country grow up surrounded by guns. In fact, Phillips said he grew up around guns. The change, he said, could mean that Warner Bros. might want to encourage people to respect guns.

So, in some ways, if you really respect gun and gun culture, you shouldnt want children to think that guns are playthings because ... they are deadly weapons, he said.

Creating an animated cartoon like Looney Tunes that pays homage to its adult beginnings in its new modern child market is difficult, Hunting said.

HBO Max and Warner Bros. need to be careful with how they portray the show, Hunting said, since theres still a lot of Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck merchandise for sale at stores across America. So you have to be mindful of stakeholders. (HBO Max declined to be interviewed for this story,)

And in that way, the new Looney Tunes has done a good job, Hunting said. The show pays homage to the original, while remaining safe for children.

The show must tread that line between really creating value and respect to the original history without going way over the line where kids cant watch it anymore.

Tim Winter, president of the Parents Television Council, said he applauds any corporate commitment from Hollywood to entertain children without gun violence.

I hope that this is the first of many such commitments by the studio to eliminate graphic gun violence, he said.

Winter also said he hopes the same will be considered for all of its programming, not just cartoons, but in all of its programming. If its going to be responsible with cartoons, why stop there?

Its good both for children and for weasley wabbits everywhere, he said. But I hope this is demonstrative of a bigger commitment by the studio to be mindful of its content.

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How Looney Tunes joined the culture wars - Deseret News