Speedy
Gonzales (González), "the fastest
mouse in all Mexico". Speedy's major traits are
his ability to run extremely fast stereotypical Mexican
accent. He usually wears an oversized yellow sombrero
and a white shirt and pants.
Speedy debuted in 1953's Cat-Tails for Two, directed
by
Robert McKimson. This early Speedy was
a meaner, skinnier, rattier-looking creation with
a sizable gold front tooth. It would be two years
before
Friz Freleng and animator
Hawley
Pratt redesigned the character into his modern
incarnation for the 1955 Freleng short, Speedy Gonzales.
The cartoon features
Sylvester
the cat menacing a group of mice. The mice call in
the plucky, excessively energetic Speedy to save them,
and amid cries of "
Arriba! Arriba! Ándale!
Ándale!" (courtesy of Mel Blanc),
Sylvester soon gets his painful comeuppance. The cartoon
won the 1955 Academy Award for Best Short Subject
(Cartoons).
Freleng and McKimson soon set Sylvester up as Speedy's
regular nemesis in a series of cartoons, much in the
same way
Chuck Jones had paired
Wile
E. Coyote and
Road
Runner in his
Road Runner cartoons.
Sylvester is constantly outsmarted and outrun by the
mouse, causing the cat to suffer all manner of pain
and humiliation from mousetraps to accidentally consuming
large amounts of hot sauce. Other cartoons pair the
mouse with his cousin,
Slowpoke Rodriguez,
the "
slowest mouse in all Mexico."
Slowpoke predictably gets into all sorts of trouble
which only Speedy can get him out of. In the 1960s,
Speedy's main nemesis became
Daffy
Duck -- a move which some fans consider an unusual
combination (Sylvester's appropriateness, being a
cat, was never questioned) and as depicting the already
morally ambiguous duck as excessively malicious.
Speedy's cartoons have come under fire in recent years
for their alleged stereotypical depictions of Mexicans
and Mexican life. Mice in the shorts are usually shown
as lazy, womanizing and hard-drinking while Speedy
wears a huge sombrero and sometimes plays in a mariachi
band (although Speedy's only real vice is implied
to be a weakness for pretty girls; in one cartoon,
other mice instigate a war between Speedy and Sylvester
to keep Speedy from stealing all the girls in town).
It was this criticism that prompted Cartoon Network
to largely shelve Speedy's films when it gained exclusive
rights to broadcast them in 1999. However, fan campaigns
to put Speedy back on the air, as well as lobbying
by The League of United Latin American Citizens, who
argued that Speedy's cleverness and personality was
a positive depiction of Mexicans, turned the tide
in his favor, and in 2002, "the fastest mouse
in all Mexico" was put back into rotation.
It should also be noted that while Speedy spoke with
a Mexican accent Sylvester spoke English with an American
accent.
In 2003, he made a cameo appearance in the film
Looney
Tunes: Back in Action, making fun of his politically
incorrect status. At around the same time, he also
made a non-speaking cameo appearance in an episode
of Mucha Lucha!
Speedy Gonzales has appeared in a couple of video
games, similar in design to the Sonic the Hedgehog
games (some were even transformed into pirate Sonic
games), for Super NES and Game Boy.
Learn more about
Speedy
Gonzales !
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