Why I Hate Tweety

When I was a kid, I always hated Tweety Bird. I never understood why everyone thought that little yellow bird was so innocent. There was also the question people seemed to ask forever: was Tweety a boy or a girl? Tweety was a boy, although you could understand the confusion. He had the eyelashes, baby voice and, in some cartoons, even wore traditionally feminine clothes. A 1952 cartoon was even called Ain’t She Tweet, which played with the whole idea.

But what really bothered me was the way Tweety treated Sylvester. Sylvester was usually just trying to satisfy his hunger, while Tweety seemed to enjoy making the poor cat suffer. Sylvester spent years screaming “Sufferin’ succotash!” while Tweety watched him struggle and then cheerfully delivered his famous “The poor putty tat.” That’s not innocence. That’s enjoying the suffering.

The more I watch the old Tweety and Sylvester cartoons, the worse Tweety looks. He baited Sylvester, set traps for him and sometimes seemed to enjoy giving the cat a little extra punishment after the danger had passed. In Birds Anonymous, Sylvester actually tries to give up chasing birds, only for Tweety to tempt him back into the cycle. Maybe Tweety wasn’t the victim after all. Maybe he just had the better publicist.

The Road Runner makes Tweety look even worse. Wile E. Coyote is usually a victim of his own obsession. He orders the Acme contraption, miscalculates the explosion, runs off a cliff or finds some spectacular new way to destroy himself. The Road Runner’s great crime is being faster. Sylvester is different. He certainly brings trouble on himself by trying to catch Tweety, but Tweety often seems to enjoy what happens next. It’s almost the cartoon equivalent of The Sopranos: spend enough time with the supposed villain and you start wondering if you’ve been rooting for the wrong guy.

And here’s another thing I find interesting. Tweety eventually became almost inseparable from Sylvester, while Sylvester had a life outside Tweety. Sylvester appeared with Porky Pig, Foghorn Leghorn, Elmer Fudd, Hippety Hopper, Daffy Duck and Speedy Gonzales. Tweety had other cats before Sylvester, including Babbit and Catstello in his 1942 debut, A Tale of Two Kitties. But after Tweetie Pie introduced the famous Tweety and Sylvester pairing in 1947, Sylvester became Tweety’s defining opponent. Tweety had Sylvester. Sylvester had everybody.

Even Tweety’s history is strange. Bob Clampett introduced Tweety in A Tale of Two Kitties as a pink, featherless baby bird. Early production material identified him as Orson, and this original Tweety was considerably more aggressive than the sweet-looking yellow canary we remember. The familiar Tweety emerged later, and Tweetie Pie turned his rivalry with Sylvester into one of Warner Bros.’ most successful cartoon formulas.

Maybe that’s why I still hate Tweety. He looked innocent, sounded innocent and played the victim, but the cartoons kept showing us something else. Sylvester was hungry, frustrated and usually getting the worst of it, while Tweety seemed perfectly happy to watch the whole thing unfold. I don’t hate Tweety because I misunderstood the joke. I hate him because, even as a kid, I thought Tweety was getting away with something. Poor Sylvester was just hungry, and Tweety knew exactly what he was doing.