Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Pee-wee's Playhouse as a Queer Text


I used to watch Pee-wee's Playhouse all the time as a child but I was recently re-introduced to it as an adult and I am totally loving it. Why aren't there more queer, or at least ambiguous, children's television shows available? As a child I never read Pee-wee as anything other than a childlike man in an imaginary world with kooky characters. As an adult I see the queer subtext all over. Whether it be the overdone caricature of femininity that Miss Yvonne performed or the almost maternal male femininity performed by Pee-wee, both provided a critique of hegemonic gender by presenting a parody of it. I know a lot of readers of this blog are children of the 1980s and wonder what you all think?

Also, has anyone heard that Pee-wee's Playhouse is going to be made into a movie to come out in 2011?