Wile E. Coyote and Me
The two fictional characters I identify with most are Wile E. Coyote and Charlie Brown when he’s getting ready to kick a football, only to have it yanked away at the last moment.
What Wile E. Coyote and Charlie Brown in football mode have in common is that they are losers. They don’t lose some of the time or even most of the time. No, they never win. Not even once. Losing and failing is so hardwired into their creative DNA that if Wile E. Coyote were to catch the Roadrunner and feast upon his delicious flesh and Charlie Brown were to finally kick the football, it would be seen as an unforgivable violation of the characters.
A Wile E. Coyote who caught Roadrunner wouldn’t be Wile E. Coyote anymore, just as Charlie Brown wouldn’t be Charlie Brown if he didn’t fall flat on his ass after Lucy tricked him yet again.
Losing isn’t just a feature of these way too relatable characters: it’s their defining characteristic. Losing and failing isn’t something that they do; losing is who they are on an existential level.
Wile E. Coyote and Charlie Brown are cursed. They can’t win. The universe stubbornly refuses to give them what they want. Yet they somehow manage to get up every morning and conjure up the energy and willpower to keep on losing.
As an unemployed, autistic husband and father to two neurodivergent children in 2024, I feel like I know exactly what Wile. E. Coyote and Charlie Brown are going through.
Wile E. Coyote is always on my mind. For example, a few months back, I was watching an episode of the transcendent first season of True Detective, and Woody Harrelson had a monologue about feeling like Wile E. Coyote when he ran off a cliff. If he doesn’t look down, he’s fine, but if he does look down, he immediately becomes aware of the danger that he’s in and plummets to the ground.
I’ve used that metaphor countless times. I damn near feel ownership of it, but I guess I just have to come to terms with other people having a weirdly parasocial relationship with a cursed cartoon animal.
Wile E. Coyote has been back in the news lately because the monsters over at Warner Brothers Discovery decided that they would shelve a live-action/animated feature film based on Ian Frazier’s Coyote V. Acme for tax reasons. They then reversed course, then reversed course again. Will Coyote V. Acme ever be released? I have no idea, but I am rooting for it, just like I root for all of the losers, underdogs, scrubs, and Juggalos out there.
Warner Brothers/Discovery previously did that with the finished, nearly one hundred million dollar Batgirl movie. The studio helpfully explained that it was not releasing Batgirl because it fucking sucked, and everyone would have hated it had it been released.
That, thankfully, does not seem to be the case with Coyote Vs. Acme. The buzz for the film has been overwhelmingly positive and it has apparently been testing through the roof.
It nevertheless makes a strange kind of sense that a movie about Wile. E. Coyote would get shit-canned. Losing is what Wile. E. Coyote does. He fails every time he tries.
What’s inspirational about one of the biggest losers in all of pop culture is that even though he CANNOT win, Wile E. Coyote never gives up. Wile E. Coyote never loses faith in himself no matter how many times he fails miserably. There’s always some part of him that genuinely thinks that the next time will be the one. I envy that determination and that willpower.
That is legitimately aspirational. Wile E. Coyote’s heroically deluded example helps give me the energy and will to get up every morning and keep on going.
That warms the hearts of perennial losers like myself. I’m so proud of my furry doppelgänger. Heck, he may even win the lawsuit that gives the movie and the piece that inspired it its name.
Hell, Wile E. Coyote may even catch the Roadrunner at some point. Nah, that will never happen, but it could, and that’s reason enough for Coyote to keep on trying until the end of time or until he dies, whichever comes first.
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