Charles Solomon‘s N.Y. Times piece about how annoyingly verbal animated features have become refers to Chuck Jones’ Roadrunner/Wile E. Coyote cartoons as an example of the non-verbal, all-visuals approach that used to rule in the old says. But hold on…Solomon says the Roadunner cartoons “took place in a silence broken only by music, sound effects and an occasional ‘beep-beep.'” Inaccurate, dawg. The Roadrunner sound is an unmistakable meep-meep. Listen to one closely. At no time do you hear the “b” consonant — it’s totally an “m” thing.
