It's a mix of both. I'm glad to see a lot of more MODERN children's cartoons (such as that CGI Winnie the Pooh Squad show on Disney) having an educational bend to them where the characters meet a skunk and believe the BS stereotypes until they are put in danger and see the skunk spray defensively, and warm up to them. A lot of the older stuff was just "Ewww they stink and enjoy being stinky/gross, and/or are total French stereotypes". Sadly, there's still the occasional cartoon where skunk antagonists maliciously use their spray to be assholes (Poochini comes to mind). Those give me hope, because frankly I can hardly talk about skunks to anyone (ESPECIALLY from outside the fandom) that doesn't judge skunks based entirely on misinformation they've heard as kids or from other people that had bad experiences with them (which is usually their idiot pet/kid's fault anyway for antagonizing the skunk).
It's a mix of both. I'm glad to see a lot of more MODERN children's cartoons (such as that CGI Winnie the Pooh Squad show on Disney) having an educational bend to them where the characters meet a skunk and believe the BS stereotypes until they are put in danger and see the skunk spray defensively, and warm up to them. A lot of the older stuff was just "Ewww they stink and enjoy being stinky/gross, and/or are total French stereotypes". Sadly, there's still the occasional cartoon where skunk antagonists maliciously use their spray to be assholes (Poochini comes to mind). Those give me hope, because frankly I can hardly talk about skunks to anyone (ESPECIALLY from outside the fandom) that doesn't judge skunks based entirely on misinformation they've heard as kids or from other people that had bad experiences with them (which is usually their idiot pet/kid's fault anyway for antagonizing the skunk).