The long-awaited revival of the cult-classic animated comedy Clone Excessive is ready to debut on HBO Max on Could twenty third, 2023, however one character from the present’s preliminary run on MTV gained’t be in it. Mahatma Gandhi, one of many important characters of Clone Excessive‘s first season, has been faraway from the sequence due to the controversy surrounding him. For brand spanking new followers who need to know what their elders are upset about, here’s a abstract of the controversy surrounding Clone Excessive‘s interpretation of Gandhi.
Why Was Clone Excessive’s Depiction of Gandhi Controversial?
Like each different teenage character in Clone Excessive, Gandhi is a self-aware clone of the well-known historic determine he shares his title with. Serving because the present’s main type of comedy aid, Clone Excessive’s model of Gandhi was a hyperactive occasion animal who jumped at any alternative to let unfastened. Each time he was alone together with his greatest good friend Abraham “Abe” Lincoln, nonetheless, Gandhi was proven to be deeply insecure about his standing as a clone and terrified that he would by no means be capable to reside as much as his genetic template’s legacy.
Sadly, Whereas Gandhi shortly turned a fan-favorite amongst Clone Excessive‘s rising viewers, he would ultimately turn into the epicenter of an surprising controversy. Whereas the primary season of Clone Excessive solely aired in Canada and the USA on Teletoon and MTV, the existence of Clone Excessive ultimately turned identified to India by means of an unrelated incident involving an unflattering depiction of Gandhi being featured in a problem of the grownup journal Maxim. As one would count on, Clone Excessive’s tackle the person who led the marketing campaign that gained India’s independence from the British Empire quickly sparked outrage.
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To protest towards Clone Excessive‘s depiction of Gandhi, 100 and fifty folks, together with a number of members of the Parliament of India and Gandhi’s great-grandson Tushar Gandhi, staged a starvation strike outdoors the headquarters of the Indian department of MTV’s mother or father firm Viacom’s headquarters. Tom Freston, then-CEO of Viacom, was visiting India and was allegedly trapped inside the constructing by the protest. Freston would later declare that protesters threatened to launch a marketing campaign to revoke MTV’s Indian broadcast license if Clone Excessive was not canceled.
Within the wake of the protest, executives at MTV requested Philip Lord and Christopher Miller, Clone Excessive‘s creators, to pitch a second season of the present that didn’t function Gandhi. Whereas Lord and Miller have been in a position to craft two pitches for Clone Excessive‘s second season, together with one the place Gandhi can be revealed to be a clone of comic Gary Coleman, the choice was ultimately made to cancel the present outright.
Whereas MTV publicly claimed that they canceled Clone Excessive as a result of the present had been receiving low scores, it’s clear that the controversy surrounding Gandhi performed a task in that call. Even earlier than the upcoming second season was greenlit, Lord and Miller acknowledged that Gandhi wouldn’t be featured in a possible Clone Excessive revival. Fortuitously for older Clone Excessive followers, Gandhi’s function as comedic aid might be crammed by a clone of the Chinese language thinker Confucious.
– This text was up to date on Could ninth, 2023
