OK, the fun continues!!
The Cartoon Closet
Jerry Falwell doesn't know the
half of it.
By Jacob Weisberg
(Posted Saturday, Feb. 20, 1999)
Tinky Winky
The reaction to the Rev. Jerry Falwell's
outing of Tinky Winky, the purple Teletubby, was
widespread scorn and hilarity. Comedians and
column writers mercilessly ridiculed Falwell for
his paranoia in seeing gays under the crib.
Three comments in defense of Falwell: First, he
didn't write the article in question, which appeared
unsigned in National Liberty Journal, a magazine he
publishes. When asked about the charge, Falwell said
he had never seen Teletubbies and didn't know
whether Tinky Winky was homosexual or not. The
notion of Falwell attacking a cartoon character is too
appealing to liberal prejudices to be easily abandoned.
econd, if you've ever watched Teletubbies, you
might well suspect some kind of subliminal
messaging. The four tubbies have aerials coming out of
their spacesuit hoods, which receive programming that's
broadcast on TV screens in their tummies. As they
prance out of their bunker and around the strange,
apocalyptic landscape where they live, periscope
speakers pop out of the ground and feed them orders.
It's both cute and creepy.
Third, the folks at Liberty College apparently got
their idea about Tinky Winky not from watching the
program but from reading such publications as the
Washington Post and People. On Jan. 1, the Post
included "TINKY WINKY, THE GAY
TELETUBBY" in its annual list of what's "in" for the
New Year. No one got excited. The press, including
the Post, then mocked Falwell as a reactionary hick
obsessed with the sexuality of puppets. Seems like a bit
of a trap.
s Tinky Winky gay? He is not the first cartoon
character to be outed. More often than not it is
homosexuals who claim a character as one of their
own--which also puts the Falwell fuss in perspective.
At the level of the creators' stated intentions, the
Teletubbies have no sexual orientation. The program
tries to recreate the world of toddlers, which does not
involve any level of sexual understanding. But TV
programs are group products, and it's not impossible
that references--Tinky Winky's handbag, his purple
triangle antenna, and the tutu he sometimes wears--are
bits of code included for the benefit of adults. If Tinky
Winky has a bit more spring in his step than Dipsy, the
other male tubby, it may be because the actor who
originally inhabited his costume added that dimension.
Gays in Britain love Tinky Winky, and some protested
outside the BBC when the actor who played him was
fired.
Batman & Robin
Sexual signals can be received without being
consciously sent. The first cartoon characters to be
accused of aberrant sexual practices were Batman and
Robin. In a 1954 book titled Seduction of the
Innocent, a psychologist named Fred Wertham
attacked the sadistic violence and sexual deviance
portrayed in comic books. Batman and Robin, he
noted, were two men living together who liked to wear
capes and tights. Back home at stately Wayne Manor,
they lounged about in dressing gowns. Wertham was a
student of Freud who discovered a message that Bob
Kane, Batman's creator, probably never consciously
intended. But that doesn't mean it wasn't there.
ertham's book led to the adoption of a code of
standards by the comic book industry, which
included, among other things, an admonition that "sex
perversion or any inference to same is strictly
forbidden." After this history, the Batman TV series,
which was made in the mid-to-late 1960s, couldn't
plead the same innocence. Post-Wertham, the
producers were well aware of the gay take on Batman
and Robin. Rather than resist it, they gave a camp tenor
to the whole series. In the 1960s, even most adult
viewers interpreted the program as broad parody. But
once the idea of a gay subtext has been planted, Louie
the Lilac (as played by Milton Berle) isn't just a villain
who likes to wear purple.
In a curious way, gays, their friends, and their
enemies have all collaborated in destroying the sexual
innocence of cartoon characters by making an issue out
of it. When trying to elude Elmer Fudd or Yosemite
Sam, Bugs Bunny is liable to dress up as a woman,
vamp around, or imitate Katharine Hepburn. Is this
meant to indicate that he likes other boy bunnies? Many
of these antics were borrowed from vaudeville comedy,
where a man dressing up as a woman didn't necessarily
imply homosexuality (although the same questions arise
in retrospect). The Warner Bros. studio, where these
cartoons were created in the 1940s and '50s, was an
aggressively heterosexual milieu. Chuck Jones and
other illustrators were mocking stereotyped
homosexual behavior, not winking at homosexuals in a
friendly way. But while a man dressing up as a woman
may not have "meant" anything in the 1940s, it does
mean something in the late 1990s. What has sexualized
these cartoon characters is the change in the culture,
which in the last few decades has become not just
aware of homosexuality but increasingly open about
and tolerant of it.
Bugs Bunny
Ernie and Bert
rnie and Bert are another good example of this
process. When Sesame Street was created in the
early 1970s, no one meant for them to be taken as
lovers. But consider two men living together, sleeping in
the same room, and taking great interest in each other's
baths. Predictably, the "urban legend" that Ernie and
Bert were gay began to spread. In 1994, a Southern
preacher named Joseph Chambers tried to get them
banned under an old North Carolina anti-sodomy law.
(He said they had "blatantly effeminate characteristics.")
The Children's Television Workshop eventually had to
deny the rumors, which have included an impending
same-sex union. But the gay read on Ernie and Bert
isn't wrong because the creators don't endorse it. The
same goes for the Peanuts characters Peppermint
Patty and her tomboy friend Marcie, who always refers
to her as "Sir." When Charles M. Schulz created the
strip, he never imagined that Patty and Marcie would
be claimed as protolesbians.
In recent years, children's entertainment has
contained an increasing number of apparently
intentional or even obviously intentional gay references.
In The Lion King, Simba leaves home and is more or
less adopted by Timon and Pumbaa, a male warthog
and a male meerkat who live together as a couple in the
jungle. In the 1994 Disney film, the actor Nathan Lane
supplied the voice of Pumbaa in much the same style as
his flamboyantly gay character in The Birdcage. When
I saw the Broadway version of the musical, the
audience roared at Pumbaa's even more exaggerated
gay mannerisms.
r consider Pee-wee's Playhouse. Pee-wee
Herman minces about and becomes obviously
infatuated with other male characters who conform to
gay archetypes. While parents may pick up this gay
semaphore, kids aren't likely to. To them, Timon,
Pumbaa, and Pee-wee are just goofy characters.
Elsewhere, the implicit has become explicit. On
The Simpsons, Smithers, the bow tie wearing toady
who trails around after Mr. Burns, has become
increasingly gay. According to Larry Doyle, who writes
for the show, Smithers was originally just a sycophant
in love with the boss. But lately he has taken to cruising
college campuses in his Miata, looking for "recruits." In
last week's episode, Apu, the Indian convenience store
owner, goes down to the docks to donate porno
magazines to sailors. The sea captain calls out to thank
him: "Thank you for the Jugs magazines. They'll keep
my men from resorting to homosexuality ... for about
10 minutes!" The sailors all laugh, and one calls out,
"Look who's talking!"
Pee-wee Herman
t isn't absurd for anyone, including Falwell, to notice
these hints, inferences, and references. But it is
ridiculous to object to them. There's no scientific or
psychological basis for believing that children are
affected in their sexual development or eventual sexual
orientation by exposure to homosexuality--on television
or in real life. If the creators of cartoons are
intentionally or unintentionally giving children the idea
that gay people are part of the big, happy human family,
that's a good thing, not a bad one. (If it weren't for gay
people, there would be no Lion King--or much else on
the all-American cultural front.) The conservative
paranoia about recruiting, which leads them to think
that gay school teachers and Boy Scout leaders present
a hazard to the young is pure prejudice.
Anyway, for the religious right, this battle is
pointless because the war is already lost. Gay themes
are everywhere. Pee-wee's Playhouse runs every day
on the Fox Family Channel, the cable network Pat
Robertson recently sold to Rupert Murdoch. It's just a
couple of hours ahead of The 700 Club.
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