What Mighty Mouse was to Superman, Speedy Gonzales was to the Flash.
“Possessing the speed of the Road Runner and the quick-wittedness of Tweety Bird, Speedy Gonzales was the mischievous Mexican mouse, jaunty in his chic sombrero, who boasted a spitfire running speed of 100 miles per hour,” noted the Encyclopedia of American Comics.
“He was often paired with Sylvester and Daffy Duck in adventures reminiscent of MGM’s Tom and Jerry cartoons.”
Because of cultural concerns, Speedy has been approached gingerly in recent years, if at all. But as an inversion of stereotypes about Mexicans, Speedy Gonzales necessarily referenced them. That was the joke. Speedy Gonzales satirized the stereotype.
“Like many cartoon characters, the so-called ‘fastest mouse in all Mexico’ wasn’t quite himself in his first appearance,” observed comics historian Don Markstein. “The film that is generally reckoned his initial outing, Warner Bros. Cat-Tails for Two (1953), … shows him looking like a hick, scrawny and buck-toothed. It was in his second cartoon, Speedy Gonzales (1955), directed by Friz Freleng, that he was re-designed as the sleek little speedster we all know today.”
That cartoon won the Oscar, and three subsequent ones — Tabasco Road (1957), Mexicali Shmoes (1959) and The Pied Piper of Guadalupe (1961) — were nominated for Academy Awards.
Speedy starred in one comic book of his own (Dell’s Four Color Comics 1084, March-May 1960) while appearing in back-up stories in a handful of others.
“Despite … controversy over potentially offensive characterizations, Speedy Gonzales remained a popular character in Latin America,” Wikipedia noted. “Many Hispanic people remembered him fondly as a quick-witted, heroic Mexican character who always got the best of his opponents, at a time when such depictions of Latin Americans were rare in popular entertainment. The Hispanic-American rights organization League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) called Speedy a cultural icon.”
For my money, Speedy defanged the offensive stereotype by inverting it. A super-fast superhero can hardly be accused of being lazy.
“(F)ears are apparently misguided, as Speedy is seen by Hispanic Americans as having many positive attributes,” observed Markstein. “He is intelligent, he has a strong sense of justice, he is very good at what he does, and he has a healthy sense of humor.”
The same might not be said of some of his critics.
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