The Cartoon Closet
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.
Second, 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.
Is 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.
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.
Wertham'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.
Ernie 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 meerkat and a male warthog who live together as a couple in the jungle. In
the 1994 Disney film, the actor Nathan Lane supplied the voice of Timon 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 Timon's even
more exaggerated gay mannerisms.
Or 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!"
It 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 .
