GLR January-February 2025

Deconstructing Pee-wee

I N A SHARP and succinct monograph, Vancouver-based author Cait McKin ney delves into the late Paul Reubens’ most important achievement, that of creating and sustaining the show starring his alter ego, Pee-wee Herman. The book’s main title, I Know You Are, But What Am I? , invokes one of Pee-wee’s favorite catch phrases. The book serves two main pur poses: it is an eloquent eulogy for Reubens and his importance for the generation that

exclaims, whereupon he marries his bowl of fruit salad on national TV. The author also notes how countercul tural Pee-wee’s Playhouse was in many ways. This was the decade when steroid-in fused macho action stars saturated the cul ture, though they were already something of a throwback to times past. Pee-wee was about as far from Schwarzenegger, Stal lone, and Bruce Willis as one could imag ine. The show premiered in the same year

M ATTHEW H AYS

I KNOW YOU ARE, BUT WHAT AM I? OnPee weeHerman by Cait McKinney University of Minnesota Press 92 pages, $10.

of the Supreme Court’s infamous Bowers v. Hardwick decision (1986), which upheld the states’ right to criminalize sodomy. This was during the Reagan years, when we were told that old fashioned values were back in vogue. Pee-wee parodied these yearnings for yesteryear, exposing them for the performative nonsense that they usually were. The show (and Pee-wee) was one of many jarring contradictions of the era, which saw Boy George and Bronski Beat soar in popularity even while an AIDS-fueled anti-gay backlash unfolded. There was resurgent conservatism and reactionary politics but also vital cultural resistance. Next we enter into the distorted

grew up watching his Emmy-winning show, and for young queer fans in particular; and it provides an overview of critical writing about Pee-wee and his body of work. McKinney had a lot of material to work with. Over the span of five seasons (1986-91), Pee-wee’s Playhouse offered viewers entry into a world that was beautifully childlike and naïve while simultaneously full of sly parodies of gender stereotypes. As McKinney points out, Playhouse was

designed with a postmodern æs thetic, recreating the space of a 1950s house while showcasing the interplay between its mul ticultural cast of humans and various robots and inanimate objects brought to life. The show immediately drew the attention of journalists and aca demics for its audacity, much in the way that such groundbreaking shows as Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman and TwinPeaks wereen tirely distinctive. In a medium fa mous for favoring the generic, there was never anything like it be fore or since. McKinney notes how dis tinctly queer this remarkable bit of performance art was. Pee-wee’s buddies were often musclebound stereotypes or femme gals in drag. Pee-wee himself was a kind of asex ual man-boy, wearing makeup and dressing in a suit two sizes too small. McKinney recalls the episode in which Pee-wee gulps down a bowl of fruit salad, saying how much he loves it. “Then why don’t you marry it?” he is dared by a talking chair using one of his own lines against him. “Okay!” he Matthew Hays, co-editor of the Queer Film Classics book series, teaches film studies at Marianopolis College in Montreal. January–February 2025

horror show that was Reubens’ 1991 arrest for public indecency in a Sara sota, Florida, adult theater. McKin ney painfully recounts the details: the scandal led to Reubens retiring the Pee-wee character for years, even though the incident was rife with misperceptions. The cinema was not one that screened Disney films; on the contrary, it was a porn cinema where men often pleasured them selves or hooked up with other men, and it was the target of repeated po lice sting operations (obviously rooted in homophobia). As many noted in articles after Reubens’ death, this should barely have regis tered at all, let alone damaged Pee wee’s reputation as severely as it did. But it played conveniently into the moral panic of the day. McKinney does an ad mirable job of reframing much of the scandal and paying hom age to the genius of Pee-wee Her man. The book celebrates that such a singular, queer, and transgressive character ever existed, and the au thor’s sadness at Reubens’ passing is palpable. It’s a fitting tribute, one that Reubens richly deserves.

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