Clone Excessive’s Gandhi Controversy, Defined

The long-awaited revival of the cult-classic animated comedy Clone Excessive is about 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 predominant characters of Clone Excessive‘s first season, has been faraway from the sequence due to the controversy surrounding him. For brand 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 reduction, Clone Excessive’s model of Gandhi was a hyperactive get together animal who jumped at any alternative to let unfastened. Each time he was alone along with his finest good friend Abraham “Abe” Lincoln, nevertheless, Gandhi was proven to be deeply insecure about his standing as a clone and terrified that he would by no means be capable of stay as much as his genetic template’s legacy.

Sadly, Whereas Gandhi shortly grew to become a fan-favorite amongst Clone Excessive‘s rising viewers, he would finally develop into the epicenter of an surprising controversy. Whereas the primary season of Clone Excessive solely aired in Canada and america on Teletoon and MTV, the existence of Clone Excessive finally grew to become identified to India via an unrelated incident involving an unflattering depiction of Gandhi being featured in a problem of the grownup journal Maxim. As one would anticipate, 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 in opposition to 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 dad or mum 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 characteristic 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 finally 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. Luckily for older Clone Excessive followers, Gandhi’s function as comedic reduction can be crammed by a clone of the Chinese language thinker Confucious.

– This text was up to date on Could ninth, 2023