October 23, 2024 • 54 mins
"We aren't done with Pee-wee's Playhouse because there's much to learn from sticking with it." So opens Cait McKinney's I Know You Are, but What Am I?, a book that thinks across the ways we remember and misremember Pee-wee. McKinney explores the expansive, mediated landscape of the television show; engages a reparative retelling of the actor Paul Reubens's 1991 arrest in a suburban adult film theater; and gets into the collecting of the iconic Talking Pee-wee dolls and their afterlives on eBay and YouTube. Here, McKinney is joined in conversation with John Stadler.
Cait McKinney is associate professor in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University.
John Stadler is assistant professor of film studies at North Carolina State University.
I Know You Are, but What Am I?: On Pee-wee Herman is available from University of Minnesota Press as part of its Forerunners series. An open-access edition is available to read free online at manifold.umn.edu.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Cait McKinney (00:05):
We are living through, like, what I think is a
very similar moment to thenineteen eighties in terms of
the attacks that we're seeing ontrans and queer kids.
John Stadler (00:15):
It was during year one of COVID that I purchased my
own Pee Wee Doll and reallystarted to become quite
nostalgic for my childhood.
Cait McKinney (00:28):
Hi, John.
John Stadler (00:29):
Hey, Kate. How's it going?
Cait McKinney (00:31):
I'm doing well. Thank you for doing this.
John Stadler (00:34):
Of course.
Cait McKinney (00:34):
Looking forward to it.
John Stadler (00:36):
Absolutely.
Cait McKinney (00:37):
Let's start by introducing ourselves. So my
name is Kate McKinney. I wrotethe book, I Know You Are, But
What Am I? On Pee wee Herman. Ithink by the time this podcast
comes out, I'll be an associateprofessor.
John Stadler (00:51):
Oh, congratulations.
Cait McKinney (00:52):
Thank you. In the school of communication at,
Simon Fraser University. And Iwork on queer media history,
which is kinda how I met you,John.
John Stadler (01:03):
Yeah. Absolutely. I am John Stadler. I am a an
assistant professor of filmstudies at North Carolina State
University, and my research iscentered on queer media with a
strong focus on pornography,although I'm moving into other
realms as well. I'm so excitedto be diving into the Pee wee
(01:25):
Herman universe with you today.
So, yeah, thank you forincluding me. I know we've often
seen each other at conferences,so it's really lovely to get a
chance to kind of talk aboutyour work.
Cait McKinney (01:37):
Yeah. When when Maggie Sattler at University of
Minnesota Press asked who Iwould wanna do this with, you
were the first person who cameto mind for a couple of reasons.
Like, first, I've always admiredyour work and your work in the
field of queer porn studies. Andthis book is not a porn studies
book per se, but there's a wholechapter about Paul Reuben's
arrest for indecent exposure ina, adult cinema, and that's part
(02:02):
of part of what we're talkingabout today. And also when I was
presenting on this work at theSociety for Cinema and Media
Studies Conference, you came tothe paper and I kinda realized
in talking to you after that youwere a big Pee wee fan.
So it felt like a good match.
John Stadler (02:16):
Yeah. I was obsessed with the show as a kid.
So my my siblings, my mybrothers in particular, Saturday
morning, we would all racedownstairs to watch the
cartoons, and my brothers alwayswere watching, you know, like, X
Men and Transformers and allthese other shows that I I sort
of was just this begrudging,viewer of. It was like, my
(02:39):
brothers got to pick that. Butwhenever Pee wee Herman came on,
that was that was my show.
And they they often didn't sitto watch it. So my my brothers
would leave, and I got to watchPee wee Herman by myself. And
it's only, you know, much later,you know, coming out, in my
twenties that I realized what asort of formative role this show
(03:00):
played in in my sort of veryearly proto queer childhood.
Right?
Cait McKinney (03:06):
Yeah. So, Pee Wee, was your, like, early gay
Saturday morning screen time?
John Stadler (03:10):
It really was. I can't even think of another show
that comes close to to being asformative for me. Right? And as
just like, it was my safe spaceto watch this show. Just
watching some man boy misbehaveand be wacky and have fun felt
so comforting to me.
Cait McKinney (03:28):
Yeah. It was the same for me, and I think so much
of what the show did as a, like,queer text was make this kind of
world
John Stadler (03:37):
Yeah.
Cait McKinney (03:38):
That we could be in. The whole show takes place
in the space of Pee wee'splayhouse. So it's, like, very
contained, and the playhouse isthis, like, live action set full
of humans and also puppetsthat's, like, just absolutely
wildly styled and quitespectacular and very expensive
to produce in a way that youdon't see on children's
(03:59):
television anymore. Right? Like,shows today, like, Paw Patrol,
for example.
They're, like, deliberatelyextremely inexpensive to
produce, but this was, like, ahigh budget kind of world, that
we could just, like, spendthirty minutes in every week.
And there was something reallyspecial about that, I think.
John Stadler (04:16):
Yeah. It was delightful. A delightful sort of
escapist world to exploredifferent possibilities in.
Cait McKinney (04:23):
I thought, John, I could kick us off by reading
the first, page and a half ofthe book.
John Stadler (04:28):
I would love that.
Cait McKinney (04:30):
Though I ought to be done with a television show I
loved in the first grade, Ican't seem to let go of Pee
wee's Playhouse. The show was aportal for a lot of queer kids
of my generation who grew up inthe nineteen eighties. We could
spend Saturday mornings with ahyperactive weirdo in a tight
fitting suit who looked andacted a bit gay, transgressed
gender norms, but had foundfriends, safety, and a home of
(04:54):
his own to play in like no onemean was watching. Week after
week, Pee wee Herman, played byPaul Reumens, arrived in the
playhouse, said good morning tohis toys and technologies, and
played along with viewers athome, children and adults alike.
From 1986 to 1990, the thirtyminute live action program
(05:14):
became one of the most popularchildren's television programs
in history, winning 15 EmmyAwards and inspiring films,
merchandise, and a newschoolyard comeback for any
insult.
Pee wee's catchphrase, I knowyou are, but what am I, said in
a silly nasal voice was used toshut down bullies everywhere.
(05:35):
The show landed within anunfolding AIDS crisis that was
reshaping sexual politics in TheUnited States and Canada,
including through violenthomophobic backlash. Against
this cultural backdrop, Pee Weewas wacky, wild, and
unapologetically himself and hegave audiences permission to be
that way too and this matteredin the late 1980s when queer
(05:56):
people's intimacies and veryways of being and emoting in
public were under attack. Peewee's Playhouse ended in flames
alongside the first public sexscandal I can remember. Just
before the show was to startsyndication, Paul Reubens was
arrested in a suburban porntheater for exposure of sexual
organs, a phrase that Pee wee'sPlayhouse could have turned into
(06:19):
a whole bit about a horny pianoif the show wasn't for kids and
hadn't already wrapped monthsbefore the arrest.
This kind of porn theater stingoperation was common in 1991, a
calculated, stigmatizingresponse to HIV AIDS aimed at
rooting out public sex culturesthrough raids on bathhouses,
theaters, and bars with backrooms, often under the guise of
(06:41):
what we call public health. Fromthe state's perspective, the
practice had the added bonus ofraising real estate values
through gentrification asunseemly businesses closed under
pressure from police harassmentof patrons and owners. News
media fashioned Reubens, thechildren's entertainer, as a
risk taking pervert. He becamethe butt of late night TV jokes,
(07:03):
and his career suffered in themonths and years that followed.
Queer people, kids and adultsalike, stuck with PeeWee through
it all.
Kids staved fans despite parentswho threw out their PeeWee dolls
and bootlegged VHS tapes, whileadults defended Reubens against
the false associations withpedophilia that attached to the
story. The show's ongoing cultstatus decades later speaks to
(07:26):
the main contention of thisbook. We aren't done with Pee
wee's Playhouse because there'smuch to learn from sticking with
it. I look back at Pee wee as anexpansive mediated scene that
moves from television screens tothe domestic technologies inside
the playhouse to the porntheater as an otherwise space
under attack. Thinking acrossthese scenes in the ways we
(07:47):
remember and misremember Pee weeoffers lines of flight for queer
understandings of media, ways ofmoving between the real and the
fictive, complicating ideasabout adults, children, and
technology, and knowing historythrough speculation and against
causality.
John Stadler (08:03):
Thank you so much for for reading that for us,
Kate. It's such a beautiful andcompelling introduction to your
book. I love the way especially,I think it's so important that
you contextualize this moment,because for people who didn't
grow up at this period, if youwere a young queer person, the
(08:24):
way in which you understandqueerness or or homosexuality or
any kind of sexual or genderdeviance is through through the
AIDS, epidemic. Right? Like, themy first association with
queerness was with death, and Ifelt it especially pronounced I
I grew up in Indiana where atthe same time that Pee wee
(08:47):
Herman was coming out, RyanWhite was dying of of AIDS.
And so we saw it on our news allthe time that that local local
child dying, of AIDS, I believeit was through a a blood
transfusion. But it all got sortof wrapped up in this
pathologizing of of queerness,as queerness as illness,
(09:10):
queerness as disease. Soreminding us that PewDiePie,
occupied a space that wasinformed by this is, I think, so
important. I just wanted to inaddition to discussing how
lovely it is that you'vehistoricized this, I I wondered
if I could just ask you whatbrought you to this project?
(09:31):
Because it's it's so timely, ofcourse, you know, and and
tragically because Paul Rubensdied last year.
But I don't imagine you werewriting this with any sense of
knowledge that that would thatwould happen. And so I I would
just love to know a little bitabout what brought you back to
Pee wee, you know, in '20 Idon't know when you started
this, 2022, '20 '20 '3, wheneveryou were writing it.
Cait McKinney (09:55):
Yeah. I mean, I finished the book about a month
before he died, and I'm sure hisfriends and family knew that he
was ill, but fans didn't. Right?So it was a surprise to me, and
I ended up having to, revise thebook. So I went from kind of
this author, like, nervous thatthe person who their book was
about would, like, read it andhate it, hopefully love it, to
(10:18):
somebody who was as a fan kindof, like, mourning this
person's, passing along with,like, all kinds of other queer
fans who are really, like,devastated by Reuben's death in
the summer of twenty twentythree.
And, I think a lot of us wentback to sort of revisit the show
and what it had meant to us inthat moment. I have always
wanted to write something aboutPee wee's Playhouse. I think it
(10:41):
was the, like, freedom and spaceopened up by going up for tenure
and feeling like I had the roomto write about an object that
maybe some people wouldn't takeas seriously in the field of
academia. And I also, like,wanted to work on writing
scholarly work that was moretrue to me and who I am and
(11:05):
where my voice and my presencewas more there in the writing.
And it felt like a perfect sortof object to do that with
because my relationship to itis, like, so personal because of
what it meant to me as a kid.
So I kinda I decided I wanted towrite about the show, and
initially, I wanted to writeabout the playhouse itself as
this magical interior space thatis radically separated from the
(11:27):
world out there. So Pee wee inthe show almost never leaves the
playhouse. There's no regularexterior set. You are contained
within the space. And I wasthinking about that, like in the
sort of deep depths of COVIDlockdown Yeah.
And what what it means to beinside. Right? And that's how
the work started.
John Stadler (11:45):
Yeah. I would that's amazing. I was I was
thinking too about how thepandemic informed my own
relation to Pee wee. I knowwe'll talk about this later, but
it was during, I think, year oneof COVID that I purchased my
own, and I'll show this,although the podcasters can't
see it, my own Pee wee doll, andreally started to become quite
(12:05):
nostalgic for my childhood. Andand there were a number of
reasons why that is.
My, my dad got sick, and Ihelped my my parents move out of
our childhood home. So I wasquite literally going through my
bedroom at the time and clearingout things that I probably
should have cleared out yearsago. But, yeah, it it I feel
like COVID produced thepossibility for, for a kind of
(12:31):
deep contemplativeness that Ihadn't really given myself space
for before. Right? There wasjust nothing to do.
Right? So I was really kind of,reworking my thoughts on on
childhood and and such. So it'sreally interesting to to see
these parallels, especially withspatiality and the show's own,
(12:54):
inward and sort of in enclosedquality, especially when you
think about it against thefilms, which are so much about
going out into the world for themost part. Right? They they do
often have moments of, like,interiority, but it's usually
about Pee Wee exiting a house orexiting a space.
Cait McKinney (13:14):
Against his will too. Yeah. Like, he doesn't he
doesn't wanna leave. He getsforced out into the world in
those films,
John Stadler (13:21):
Right. Which I find so interesting. I'm I'm
just really curious. I I wishRubens were still here for us to
ask him or to to contemplate whywhy this this very, stark
division between space from thethe TV show to the to the films.
Cait McKinney (13:39):
I mean, I imagine some of that distinction is
about budget. Right? Like, youhave a huge budget to make a
film, and and you do have asmaller budget to make episodic
children's television. AlthoughPee wee's budget was huge, like,
CBS was spending, like, $300,000an episode on that show in the
later season, which was unheardabsolutely unheard of at that
time. Right?
John Stadler (13:57):
Yeah. That's true.
Cait McKinney (13:57):
I think part of it's budget, but I think it's
also, like, it's the character.He is a creature of habit, of
routine, and of his space. Andso a really compelling plot
point for the films is to usethat budget in that, you know,
hour and a half to see whathappens when you take Pee wee
out of this world in which hemakes sense into this, like,
(14:19):
outer world in which he doesn'tmake sense and sort of mayhem,
ensues. And I think we learn alot as characters who have no
schematic for understanding PeeWee come into encounter with
him.
John Stadler (14:33):
Was that a conscious decision in the book,
to focus primarily on the show?
Cait McKinney (14:39):
Yeah. It was it was absolutely a conscious
decision because I wanted tolike, what for me is really
interesting about the show is ithad this first of all, it's on
network television, so it hadreally wide viewership. It was
on CBS. And second, it had,like, no other children's
television programs, a realmixed audience of adults and
children. So about a third ofregular viewers on Saturday
(15:03):
mornings were adults.
And I was really interested init as this, like, episodic
network shared text and what itmeant for both adults, most of
whom were queer queer adjacentin some way to share this text
with, like, just regular six,seven, eight, nine year olds of
all life experiences. I I wantedto, like, be with that
(15:25):
experience of of the show forsure. And I think also, like,
that's primarily how Pee wee isknown. Like, the the films were
a bit more cult y. People whoare Pee wee fans are very
familiar with the films and lovethem and I love them, but I
think it's the show that reallyhad this wider appeal, and it
was what people went to afterthe porn theater sex scandal.
(15:45):
The show was, like, the targetfor people's anger and and
homophobia in the aftermath ofthat.
John Stadler (15:51):
I was wondering if I could follow-up with another
thing that you said in thisintroduction, which is PeeWee
offers lines of flight for queerunderstandings of media, ways of
moving between the real and thefictive, complicating ideas
about adults, children, andtechnology, and knowing history
through speculation and againstcausality. I'm really latching
(16:12):
on to the notion of speculationand against causality and
another word that you usedearlier about misremembering.
Cait McKinney (16:21):
Mhmm.
John Stadler (16:21):
And so one of the things that I love about the
book and that I hope you canspeak a little more about is the
way that you turn to friends,family, colleagues, and just do
this really lovely, almost likea kind of oral history of
people's, memories of the show,but also of their
misremembering? You know? And Iand I'm wondering what you think
(16:43):
the value or the place ofmisremembering is for fans of
the show, because I think you'reaware I have my own
misrememberings of this show,that I told you about briefly,
which which include, like,misremembering the ending of the
show where Pee wee jets off onhis scooter out of the house, or
out of the playhouse rather. AndI misremembered that as him
(17:08):
riding his bicycle through thesky and flying. And so, you
know, it's I don't know whatthat says about me or about my
relationship to the show, but II am really struck by the
methodology that you deploy inthe book.
I feel it's it's so innovative,and I wonder too just because
it's this cute, adorable littlebook that has, you know, little
(17:28):
chapters. You know, it's not thetypical monograph style. I'm
just wondering, you know, Iguess it's a two part question.
I'm wondering aboutmisremembering, and the place of
that, but also just about theformat of these books within
academia. Hopefully, that's nottoo boring of a question.
Cait McKinney (17:46):
Yeah. I mean, no. No. That's a great question,
John. I think first with the thequestion about misremembering.
A lot of the approach I take inthe book, like, at some point in
the book, I call it, like, badresearch methods and, like,
leaning into, like, bad andsquare quotes research methods
that
John Stadler (18:00):
Right.
Cait McKinney (18:01):
I would never be allowed to teach, like, graduate
students of my program, forexample.
John Stadler (18:05):
Yeah.
Cait McKinney (18:06):
But, like, as I was working on the book and
people would ask me what I'mworking on and I would tell
them, so many, like, queer folkswho are friends of mine would
respond with this reaction of,like, interest, but also
something like grief or sadness,which was interesting to me
because it's, like, such ajoyful and funny show. And I
kinda realized the profoundnessof what was taken away from
(18:31):
people of our generation. I I'mborn in 1983. John's born
around, the same time, so we'reboth sort of in our early very
early forties right now.
John Stadler (18:40):
Very early.
Cait McKinney (18:41):
We're we're we just turned we're barely. We're
basically we're basically about39.
John Stadler (18:47):
Basically.
Cait McKinney (18:48):
We're in. But, like, what was taken away?
Right? And and so I startedasking people, like, well, what
do you remember about that timewhen when Reubens was arrested?
And for lots of reasons, theprimary one being, like,
homophobia, for most of us,like, no one was talking to us
about what happened to Reubens,which is, like, he was arrested
(19:11):
for doing, like, a really normalbanal thing that lots of men do.
He was in a porn theater, whichexists for people to watch porn
in. And if they want to tomasturbate in, it's not harming
anyone. There's a
John Stadler (19:24):
Right.
Cait McKinney (19:25):
Social contract in that space, and that's
something that as queer adults,we all understand now. Right?
But at the time, no oneexplained that to us, and it was
part of this moment of homo andAIDS phobia of just, like,
shaming and erasing Paul Reubensfrom existence. And so I became
really interested in what peopleunderstood when they were kids
at the time that it happened andwhen they realized that that
(19:49):
information was wrong, which forme was in at some point in my
twenties, I was like, oh, thatwas really messed up and
homophobic. Right?
What what happened to thistelevision character that I
love? But I think, like, am Iinterested in the in the
misremembering is I think thatthere's a lot of learning to be
had in leaning into thatmisremembering because it tells
(20:10):
us something about the functionof homophobia around cultural
texts and how culturalsuppression works. And we need
to think about that right nowbecause we are living through
like what I think is a verysimilar moment to to the
nineteen eighties in terms ofthe attacks that we're seeing in
on trans and queer kids and theways that those attacks, like,
(20:31):
are strategically trying to cutthem off from relationships with
queer and trans cultural textsor trans and queer adults. So
that was my interest in themisremembering is, like and I
think that we have to understandthe show Pee wee's Playhouse
only through its entanglementwith what happened to Reuben's.
Like, we can't know the showotherwise.
It was just so significant. Andthen, I mean, the format of
(20:53):
these forerunners books thatMinnesota does, which are
acquired by, Leah Pennywork,who's an incredible editor,
they're, like, 25,000 ish words,so they're quite short. They're,
like, really long essays, morethan books, so they are, like,
bound like a book. So I can be,like, it's a book, y'all.
John Stadler (21:13):
It is a book.
Cait McKinney (21:14):
It is a book. But it's, like, it's kinda perfect
for this format because it's,like, long enough to be serious,
but it's accessible. You canread it in a few sittings, and I
I wanted to give people a kindof, like, accessible experience
of diving into this the story ofwhat happened and some ways of
revisiting and rethinking aboutthe playhouse as a space.
John Stadler (21:33):
Yeah. Accessibility here, I think, is
so key to the book and to theseries. It it really is
something you can sit down andread in a couple of sittings,
and it's it's quite justenjoyable. Right? It doesn't
read with the same oh, I don'twanna be too despairing of
academia, but it doesn't feel sostuffy.
Right? It it feels a lot moreinviting. The other thing that
(21:54):
you said that I reallyappreciated about this book was
the salience that it brings toour current moment, regrettably
in indeed. And we don't have tobelabor the point, but the way
in which the trans communityright now is experiencing such
strong phobia, transphobia, andits own kind of sex panic, we
(22:15):
even see this happening at theOlympics quite literally right
now, is quite stark. One of thethings I really appreciate about
the book is that it lendsinsight and a window onto an
earlier sex panic.
And it's it's so fascinating toothe way the book, the way that
Pee wee is queered. Right?Because I think a lot of people,
when they hear queer,immediately assume a kind of
(22:37):
sexual queerness. And certainly,there there is, to a degree,
that at play in the variousshows and and films. But I think
what the book really illustratesfor me is just how queer the
gender is of Pee wee Herman andjust how nonnormative and
(22:58):
against the grain he was.
You know? And that's, I think,on some level, what I found so
compelling as a kid, if I if Ihad to put words to it, was this
is basically a a sissy. This islike a fae boy who is not
subscribing to the normativestandard of what it means to be
masculine or to be male, and heis allowed to be that way. No
(23:21):
one is stopping him, policinghim, telling him he has to be a
different way. And and there areother kinds of challenges, like,
and we can talk about this if wehave time, the way that Pee wee
is constantly being paired withgirls and women who have
attraction to him that he, oneway or another, you know, gets
out of that scenario where he'ssort of paired up to have the
(23:44):
kind of heteronormative pairing.
And in one way or another, heusually evades it. But for me,
what was so striking about thebook was really thinking about
gender and the way that genderis being thwarted or played
with.
Cait McKinney (23:58):
Yeah. I mean, you have raised the important point
that sex panics are cyclical.They're not a thing from the
history that we have moved past.They come and go, and the reason
that they come and go is becausethey're doing cultural work in
relation to a particularpolitical movement and how it
desires for the world to change.So we're seeing sex panics right
(24:21):
now in in relationship to rightwing movements, a kind of anti
internationalism, antiimmigration, white supremacy,
and the entanglement of all ofthese things.
Right? Like, trans folks are aconvenient object in order to
justify the move towards, like,fascism and normalization. But
at the time of Pee wee, what theshow was responding to with the
(24:43):
sissy character was Reaganismand this, like, autonomous
rugged vision of whitemasculinity that was similarly
tied to, like, white flight, thedestruction and abandonment of
cities and the black and brownfolks who call them home. And so
there's, like, something similargoing on here, right, with,
(25:03):
like, this policing of gender asa way of, like, producing a kind
of violent and fascist world.And, yeah, he was, like, the
perfect sissy.
Like, what a lovable sissy hewas. I like to think that
there's more room in the worldfor people who are understood to
be boys or think of themselvesas boys as to be sissies. Now
(25:24):
but I don't know that that'sactually true. I think we're in
another moment of a real kind ofnarrowing of what it means to do
gender. That is sort of anothersad thing that this book brought
me to is drawing thoseconnections between the 1980s
and the present.
John Stadler (25:39):
Yeah. Well, and and you've, you know, named it
yet again. I know I talked toyou about this earlier, but I
was feeling such a strong senseof both nostalgia, but also
melancholy when I was preparingfor this. And and it was bound
up with joy too. It was, youknow, remembering the joy that
this character used to bring tome, but also feeling this real
(26:00):
loss about the, you know, theway that the show was sort of
evaporated from my consciousnessnever to be found again.
And then going back to it in myalso my late teens and early
twenties, not necessarily to theshow, but just going back to the
scandal, right, thatprecipitated the end of the
syndication of it. So, yeah,it's a real mixed emotional
(26:23):
quality or feeling to to returnto this. I wanna maybe, if it's
okay with you, touch on just thethree chapters that you have
here where you you talk aboutthe playhouse, the porn house,
and and the doll. If you are upfor it, I was wondering if just
to get the ball rolling, wecould think about what some of
your favorite scenes are fromthe actual TV show and the
(26:46):
playhouse. You know, one of thelovely things about the first
chapter is the proliferation ofobjects, most of which are
animate, that occupied the thespace of the playhouse.
And I love the way that youbring them into conversation to
what we today would think of asthe smart house since so many of
these objects can speak andseemingly think and engage with
(27:08):
Pee wee. Do any scenes orobjects within the playhouse
really jump out to you or orstill speak to you today and and
and why?
Cait McKinney (27:17):
Yeah. I'm I mean, I'm really drawn into any scene
in the show that involves thesefour characters who I write
about at length in the firstchapter of the book as the sort
of computational characters inthe Playhouse. So Pee wee lived
in a world called puppet land,and his sort of friends in the
playhouse are a mix of humancharacters and actors who visit
(27:39):
the playhouse and then thepuppets who live inside of it.
And there's there's many ofthese puppets, but the four who
I'm especially interested inwere kind of like proto I think
of those proto smart hometechnologies or like networked,
objects. So the first one is,Conky two thousand who's like,
this kind of DIY robot lookingcharacter.
(27:59):
At the beginning of everyepisode of the show, Conky gets
unplugged. He's been chargingovernight. He boots up, and he
has this dialogue with Pee Weewhere he spits out what's called
the word of the day on a pieceof, like, receipt paper. Pee Wee
reads the word of the day. It'salways like a commonly used word
that you're gonna inevitably sayin a sentence a few times
(28:21):
throughout the rest of theepisode.
Anytime the word is said, byanyone in the Playhouse,
everybody else has to screamreally loud, and the viewers at
home are supposed to scream aswell. So Conky is this sort of
rope interactive robot whose,work in producing the secret
word produces these, like,interruptions of chaos
(28:42):
throughout each episode of theshow.
John Stadler (28:44):
I almost feel like we should have one. I I mean,
can we possibly have a podcastabout Pee Wee Herman and not
have a word of the day?
Cait McKinney (28:52):
We it's just a bummer when only two people are
screaming.
John Stadler (28:55):
It's true. Yeah. It would probably be a little
obnoxious for the listeners.
Cait McKinney (28:58):
Yeah. I did do a secret word at the, like, in
person book launch I had, whichDo you? A lot of people at that.
Yeah. The secret word was gay.
Ah.
John Stadler (29:09):
I love it.
Cait McKinney (29:09):
And that was fun because you had this, like,
chorus of, you know, 75 peopleor whatever screaming every
time.
John Stadler (29:15):
Yeah.
Cait McKinney (29:16):
Shrinking.
John Stadler (29:16):
Yeah. That's lovely.
Cait McKinney (29:18):
But, yeah, I I mean, Conky, I love, like, the
sort of mutual chaos that he,produces. And and there's three
other, technologies that aresimilarly, like, early network
computers that I write about. Sothey're magic screen, which is
like a tablet, kind of like aniPad with, like, arms and legs
and a and a persona. Mhmm.There's PicturePhone, which is
(29:38):
like a photo booth that allowsPee wee to have video conference
calls with other people, andthen there's Globey, who's this,
like, humanoid globe, with aface and a voice who does kind
of geographic, like, GoogleMappy sort of stuff Mhmm.
For Pee wee. And I thinkrevisiting the Playhouse is
important because it's thisqueer vision from the past of
(30:02):
what a networked smart homemight have become, like, could
have become, but didn't, andalso, like, couldn't because it
wasn't profitable, or rational.And also Pee wee is not treating
these characters as his servantsor as, like, objects. He's in
mutual relationships ofreciprocity and care with them.
(30:24):
So they determine activities inthe playhouse together.
So it's a really differentvision than what we have today
of people yelling at Alexa orSiri or whatever the other ones
are called to buy stuff or or dostuff for them. It's this, like,
other way of thinking about howwe want to be in relationship
with, technologies that I thinkwe can use to critique the
(30:47):
present that we actually have,and imagine digital worlds
otherwise.
John Stadler (30:54):
What do you think the relation is between the Rube
Goldberg machines that I I thinkof as maybe more in the films,
but you could correct me if I'mwrong. Maybe they appear in the
TV show as well. And these morenetworks, maybe more digital,
characters from the TV show. Doyou have any thoughts on that?
Because I I I seem to recall, atleast with the first film, maybe
(31:18):
even the opening sequence is,Pee wee waking up and and
getting breakfast made for himby a Rube Goldberg machine,
which seemed to be so common inso many different films and
shows of the nineteen eighties.
And I'm just wondering ifthere's some kind of statement
(31:39):
or allegory going on across thethe networked characters from
the show and the Rube Goldbergmachines from the from the
films.
Cait McKinney (31:48):
Yeah. The the Rube Goldberg machine is, what
opens Pee wee's Big Adventure,which is the, Tim Burton
directed, first Pee wee filmfrom 1985.
John Stadler (31:58):
And that came out, like, a year before the show.
Right?
Cait McKinney (32:00):
Yeah. It was before the show started. So he
had had, like, a Broadway show,like, a live show and then the
film, and then he got thetelevision contract. But the
it's like this absurd andextremely analog, perpetual
motion machine that makes Peewee's breakfast. So it juices
oranges, perpetual motionmachine that makes Pee wee's
breakfast.
So it juices oranges, it mixespancake batter, flips pancakes,
(32:21):
feeds his dog, all while Pee weeis, like, sort of free to do
other stuff while this machineis running. The machine, like,
doesn't work very well. It'slike all these juices
everywhere, many pancakes arestuck to the ceiling, but, like,
that's not the point of thetechnology. Like, the point is
the kind of joy of it. It's,like, meant to do a task, but
it's also, like, wildlyirrational because it would be
(32:42):
easy for easier for him to justdo the task himself.
And I think at the heart of yourquestion, like, what is a
technology like this RubeGoldberg machine have to do with
these computational charactersin the playhouse is, like, he's
not drawing a line between thosethings. Like, there is, at every
stage in this character's life,just this desire to be in
(33:05):
relationship with gadgets andtechnologies and contraptions
and animate objects that existand function on terms that
aren't about, like, fulfilling atask or aren't about efficiency.
John Stadler (33:18):
Yeah.
Cait McKinney (33:18):
It's like this kind of, like, joy and play.
John Stadler (33:21):
Yeah. No. That's lovely. Yeah. That that's very
helpful.
Maybe if you're down for it, I Iwould love to think a little
more about the second chapter,the porn house. Although I don't
wanna I don't wanna stop us ifwe have more to say about the
playhouse because I think it'sit's lovely writing and lovely
work that you have there.
Cait McKinney (33:40):
Yeah. Let's talk about the let's talk about the
porn house. I would love to.
John Stadler (33:43):
Yeah. Let's talk about the porn house. You know,
I I'm so struck by is so much ofthe the drama and the the crisis
and the the conflict around thearrest, probably hinges to some
degree on on the fact that PaulReubens was often just conflated
with his character and was sodevoted to the character of Pee
(34:03):
wee that I think you wrote aboutthis. He would make sure that no
one ever, for instance,photographed him in character,
when not being filmed and andwhile smoking a cigarette.
Right?
Because he didn't want anyone toview Pee wee as Paul Reubens.
And precisely, I think, whatanimates the the sex panic here
is that people do do that. Theydo conflate Paul Reubens, the
(34:26):
adult, the human, with Pee weeHerman, the character. And I'm
thinking too about the way inwhich a porn house is really a
playhouse for adults. Right?
And the and the sense that porn,as an object, is is one of the
realms that adults have toexperience play and pleasure,
but we don't treat it the sameway, obviously, that we treat
(34:49):
play that that a child wouldhave. And so I'm really struck
by the through line here ofplay. Right? Paul Reubens is
quite literally playing. He ishaving a good time, but this is
a good time that is offensive tosome, right, or is impossible to
square with the persona that hehas developed for Pee wee.
And so, yeah, I'm not sure wherewe wanna take this, but I'm
(35:12):
really struck by the space ofthe porn theater as also being
quite similar to the playhouseas this isolated space that is
not, you know, it's I I don'tknow. I would question what we
mean by public indecency. Whatwhat constitutes the public with
within the space of the porntheater?
Cait McKinney (35:33):
Yeah. So Reubens never appeared as Paul Reubens
in public or in news mediainterviews during the time that
the show was on. Right? So if hewas he he did an interview,
like, with Rolling Stone,whatever, he showed up to the
interview as Pee wee Herman andgave the interview as Pee wee
Herman. So the public did notunderstand Pee wee Herman and
(35:56):
Paul Reubens as separate peopleeven though, of course, they
were.
So when when Reubens wasarrested, and this was wild to
me going back to, like, newsarchives and seeing this, but
the press, like the Wall StreetJournal, the New York Times
covered this story in ways thatconflated Reubens with Pee wee
Herman. So for example, therewas a Associated Press wire
(36:18):
story that was published in, youknow, most papers of record in
The United States and Canadawhere the journalist interviewed
child psychologists about how totalk to your children about Paul
Reuben's arrest. But the articleinstructs parents to tell
children, like, that Pee wee haddone something bad, that, you
(36:40):
know, Pee wee Pee wee regretsdoing this, that it was wrong,
but people make mistakes, whichis, like, wild to me that the
advice to parents wasn't like,tell your kids that this is an
adult man actor and that hissexuality exists. Right? Like,
to to tell kids about this in adevelopmentally appropriate way,
(37:03):
but that, like, clearly makes itmakes it clear that there is,
like, a television character whois this boy man child who they
love and then an actor who playshim.
Right? Like, how much is thatgonna mess up your kids if
you're not, like, making thatclear? So the the, like, deep
seeded sort of homophobia ofwanting to understand Reubens as
(37:23):
Pee wee Herman in order to markhim being in this porn theater
as this, like, transgressioninstead of this, like, actually
quite banal and boring thing.Like, yeah, he watches porn at a
at a porn theater. Like, whocares?
Right? It was, like, so so deepseated. But, yeah, like, the I
mean, porn theaters are reallyinteresting spaces in the sense
(37:45):
that, like, any movie theater,you kind of disappear into them.
Right? They're, like, dark.
The seats are soft. You can'tsee who's around you. It's this
exit from the world outside, andit's summer right now while
we're recording this. So you canimagine, like, going back out
into the parking lot and the airconditioning is this even
climactic shock from inside tooutside. It really marks this
(38:07):
theater as this space apart andspace away.
I think about what it must havebeen like for someone like
Reubens to have been living inpublic as this character for so
many years. Right? And how, youknow, exhausting that must have
been become at times. So hisarrest in the summer of nineteen
(38:27):
ninety one, he had actuallyalready decided to end the show
about a year earlier because hewas just burnt out and exhausted
from playing the character. Andhe had, like, grown his hair out
long because they were not gonnabe shooting again and I think
was just, like, kind of tryingto live more as himself in this
town where he grew up that hewas back visiting.
To me, like, that the fact thatReubens was kind of experiencing
(38:50):
this freedom from the characterand then was arrested and and
shamed publicly for masturbatingin the theater, like, as the
character is one of the mosttragic parts of how the story
was framed.
John Stadler (39:02):
Yeah. And I I think it's important as as
you're alluding to note thechanging understanding of the
space of the porn theater. Sohardcore porn was had only been
showing in in theaters in a in avery public, way since the early
nineteen seventies. So we're,you know, about twenty years
into that, but the AIDS epidemicis is already informing the way
(39:29):
that people understand thisspace, which in the seventies,
you know, you would seecelebrities in the in the
magazines and in the news goingto porn theaters. You would you
would hear about, like, JackNicholson takes date to porn
theater.
And so it was quite well knownthat, you know, celebrities and
(39:49):
and famous people were going toto these theaters, and it it was
not career ending for them. Butby the early nineteen eighties,
porn theaters were beingshuttered. They were they were
seen as vectors for for disease.You know, sorry. Samuel Delaney
has this delightful book, TimesSquare Red, Times Square Blue,
(40:10):
where he writes all about theDisneyfication of Times Square,
the closing of all the porntheaters, as well as the this
really interesting concept thathe develops of of contact in the
way that porn theaters become aspace for interclass primarily,
but, interrace contact of peoplewho would not normally engage
(40:33):
with one another.
And he makes the argument thatthat that there's a kind of
social good that comes out ofbringing together people who
would not normally exist in thesame social spheres. So one of
the things that that Iappreciate about about your book
is that you were helping to pushagainst the grain of the more
(40:55):
normative, or standard argumentabout what the porn theater is,
which is always, you know,predetermined as deleterious,
and pathologizing. And and here,I think you're right to call it
just rather mundane. This is arather mundane activity. You
know?
I can think of far more,explicit events that occur
(41:16):
within porn theaters, andmasturbating does not, come even
close to them. So it is helpfulto remind ourselves at the same
time that, you know, porn wasmoving, into video at this
point. So I I think some peoplehave written about, well, why
wasn't he just you know, if youhave to watch porn, why don't
(41:37):
you just watch it at home? And Ithink that that's an interesting
question because it it againbrings up this concept of space
that that has kind of beenhovering around this whole
conversation and this notion ofwhat private space is and where
sex can exist within space, Evenif it's self serving sex, even
if it's masturbation, where whatspace is is that allowed to be
(42:00):
in? And I think it's importantto note too, I'm going to forget
the Supreme Court case, but atthe time, any kind of same sex
sexual activity is going to bequite literally illegal within
these spaces.
Cait McKinney (42:14):
Yeah. It was Bowers versus Hardwick.
John Stadler (42:17):
Yeah. So there's a lot historically to think about
in this moment, but one of thethings that the the book
hopefully reminds us is that theconversation that was being had
with children, with people ofour age, these elder
millennials, was, kind of quitequite messed up, quite
(42:37):
conflating of the character withthe person. Or in the case for
me, was just a non was a nonconversation. It was Pee wee
Herman and Pee wee's Playhousewere in my life for five or so
years, and then suddenly it wasgone. You know, and I never got
an explanation of what PaulReubens had done until, you
(42:59):
know, my my late teen years.
And then it was it was, as thebook notes, often quite
erroneous in the way that it waspresented. It was that, you
know, spoken as though Pee weeHerman had done this thing and
oftentimes presenting it as anaffront to children as though
somehow his masturbation in atheater had been put to the end
(43:23):
of trying to, corrupt children.Right? The this notion that him
masturbating in the theater wassomehow related to, I guess,
what we would today call the thekind of groomer language or the
the groomer panic.
Cait McKinney (43:37):
Yep.
John Stadler (43:37):
And I'm I'm just curious what you think of or
what you found in your researchwith with people recalling this
event and how it is bound upwith those those fears about
being about adults groomingyoung children.
Cait McKinney (43:51):
Yeah. I mean, people, were circulating rumors
that he was caught masturbatingin a regular cineplex or at a
Disney film. How I understood itas a kid was that he had done
something sexually inappropriatewith children. That was how
people in my, like, schoolyardunderstood it. My parents never
explained it to me.
(44:12):
These, like, rumors circulated,like, precisely as you pointed
out as part of what we wouldtoday call groomer discourse.
Right? So this is abouthomophobia, and it's about AIDS
phobia and this what you talkedabout earlier in our
conversation about, like, queerpeople being sort of
fundamentally associated withdeath and dying and the negative
(44:34):
in the public imagination atthis time. Right? So this
construction of perversion.
And all of that is to, like,make an argument to parents that
you ought to keep your kids awayfrom gay people, which is, like,
a fear that is even moreheightened when you have a kid
like myself or I would guessyou, John, too, who's, like, at
(44:57):
that age, like, you can tellthere's something queer about
that kid. So it's like that.Those are the kids like you and
I are the ones who are, I think,are suffering the most from the
sort of straightening impulsesand the, like, cultural violence
that comes out of this kind ofstory and the the backlash that
it engenders.
John Stadler (45:16):
Well, I hope you are down for a conversation
about dolls now because the thethird and final chapter here is
this delightful chapter aboutthe pee wee dolls, which became
collector's items. In part, Ithink we could argue because of
the cancellation of thesyndication, right, that all the
toys were pulled off the shelvesof Toys R Us and other toy
(45:39):
stores. And before we fully jumpinto it, I do have an anecdote,
which is that as a six or sevenyear old, I was begging my
parents for a pee wee doll forChristmas one year, and I got
one. I got one not from myparents, but for my aunts and
uncle. Aw.
But here's an example of howbratty I was, which maybe it was
(46:01):
informed by pee wee's sometimesbrattiness. I did not get a
speaking doll. I guess they werealso producing non speaking
dolls in the mid to lateeighties.
Cait McKinney (46:11):
Because a lot of parents do not want a loud toy
electronic toy that talks attheir house, which is very fair.
John Stadler (46:18):
Very understandable, but I was so
ungrateful. I, like, receivedthis delightful gift from my
relatives, and I just, like,immediately was like, where's
the pull string? It doesn'tfall. What what why would you
give me this? So, and I onlyremember that because my my aunt
told me that I was ungrateful,and I was so embarrassed as an
(46:39):
adult to be like, oh my god,Antlyn.
I'm so sorry. But, you know,since then, I have, remedied
this oversight on my relatives,and I have purchased, you know,
one of the original dolls thatthat should speak. But as your
chapter, astutely points out,almost none of the dolls today,
(46:59):
whether they originally spoke ornot, speak today. Right? But and
that's because they they haveall, for the most part, broken.
And you do this really amazingreading questioning that
brokenness. And and so I I'mwondering what brought you,
first of all, to want to acquireone of the dolls because it's
it's my understanding maybe webought ours at approximately the
(47:22):
same time, early twentytwenties. Yeah. And then how you
came to learn about, like, thehistory of their of their very
brokenness.
Cait McKinney (47:31):
So my partner, Hazel, has a non talking pee wee
doll that I've lived with alongwith her for ten years or so.
And when I started writing thisbook, I wanted a talking one. So
I ordered one on eBay around thesame time as you, John, and I
thought I knew that they wereall broken, but I hadn't kinda
thought about what that means.And I thought I would buy the
(47:54):
doll and maybe take it apart andrepair it and write something
about that process. And there'sall these, like, people online
who have fans who have tutorialsabout how to repair your broken
talking pee wee doll.
And the doll came, and I spent alot of time with it and sort of
researching the history of thesedolls and how they were
(48:17):
disappeared from toy storeshelves, but also became really
desired collector items amongstadults at the time that Paul
Reubens was arrested. So people,like, really adults really
wanted these dolls and wanted tokeep them and hold on to them.
And they're all broken in thesame way because okay. The dolls
have a tiny, like, phonograph orrecord player inside them made
(48:37):
of plastic. And what makes arecord spin at an even rotation
when you play it is a devicecalled a governor.
It just, like, makes the speedconsistent. So the governors in
all of these talking peeweedolls were basically, like,
defective. They were built insuch a way that they, like,
untensioned and stopped workingpretty quickly. So, like,
everyone's peewee doll isbroken, and all the ads on eBay
(48:58):
reselling these dolls are, like,you know, people have got
grabbed them at estate sales orpicked them from thrift stores
or whatever and are resellingthem to fans. They're like, the
doll is broken.
The voice sounds unintelligible.The doll screams. It's like his
voice is a nightmare. All thesedescriptions of this broken,
shrill, I think, like, quiteactually queer voice. So they're
all broken in the same way, butpeople hold on to them still.
(49:21):
And I was interested in the bookabout, like, thinking about what
it means to hold on to this,like, broken, worn out object
and to keep it and to care forit. And the doll bearing these
signs of, like, wear and of notbeing treated well, as a sort of
analogy for what happened to toReubens as well. Right? And the
desire that queer fans have to,like, keep the doll and hold on
(49:43):
to the broken doll is a way ofsort of holding on to the memory
of what happened to Reubens andwhat happened to Pee wee, in the
wake of the sex scandal whenthis show that was so important
to so many people kind ofdisappeared from the public
imagination.
John Stadler (49:58):
It's really beautiful, the the chapter and
the way that you you tie ittogether to the the controversy
around his arrest. My own doll,actually, also, the paint is
coming off on
Cait McKinney (50:08):
the top.
John Stadler (50:09):
Yeah. So he's actually a little bit bald,
which for the listeners, youwon't know this, but I'm a bald
man. So
Cait McKinney (50:15):
Oh, you match.
John Stadler (50:16):
Having a bald pee wee makes me love him even more.
Like, oh, he's just like me.
Cait McKinney (50:22):
Where where do you keep him normally, John?
John Stadler (50:24):
In my office.
Cait McKinney (50:25):
At work?
John Stadler (50:26):
Yeah. On campus. I keep him in my office. He
actually, you can't see it, butthere's, I have a shelf above my
desk, and he just sits therewatching me the whole time.
Cait McKinney (50:35):
Yeah. That's where I keep mine too. He sits
in my office just looking down.It's a nice, like, object that
students often ask about.
John Stadler (50:43):
Yeah. Very few of my students seem to know who Pee
Wee Herman is, so I was I wasactually struck by the fact that
some of yours did at least alittle bit. I imagine maybe some
of my older grad students mighthave some vague recollections to
him. But,
Cait McKinney (50:58):
It's not that they necessarily, like, know who
he is. They're just like, what'sthat weird doll?
John Stadler (51:03):
Yeah. What's that what's that weird doll? And
Cait McKinney (51:05):
then I get to explain it, which is a pleasure.
John Stadler (51:09):
Absolutely. I don't know. Are there things
that we haven't touched on? Ifeel like this has been really
informative and and delightfulto run through some of the the
highlights of the book.
Cait McKinney (51:20):
Yeah. I mean, I feel like we've covered a lot,
and it's been, like, a realpleasure to get to talk to you
about the book and, like, tosituate Kiwi's Playhouse and
queerness and our relationshipsto it past and present to get to
do that with you.
John Stadler (51:35):
I've enjoyed it so much. I I do have a final
question, though.
Cait McKinney (51:38):
Okay.
John Stadler (51:39):
Where do you think, like, the scholarship on
Pee wee Herman goes from here?Because Because I think you've
laid down a really amazingfoundation to think about Pee
wee. And one of the things thatthe book did that I was so
appreciative of was to point tothe, you know, somewhat limited
amount of scholarship that hasbeen done on him. You know, I'm
seeming to recall that there issome scholarship that occurred
(52:02):
in the in the nineteen eighties,but in the same way that Paul
Reubens kind of went away ordisappeared from the the popular
cultural memory. Seems likescholarship on him also kind of
Cait McKinney (52:14):
Mhmm. Disappeared for
John Stadler (52:15):
a while, which is why this book is so exciting to
have have out here in the world.Are there things that you wish,
like, you could have turned yourattention to or unwritten topics
that that you think wouldfollow-up from this?
Cait McKinney (52:30):
I mean, I would love to see, like, more people
do work on Pee wee's Playhouseand Pee wee Herman. I think
there's, like, a ton there, andI think it gets not taken up
because of the silence thathappens in response to the AIDS
crisis. It's not just cultural.It happens in academia too.
Right?
So I think this is a great textfor folks to return to, but I
(52:51):
hope that more than anything,what this book does is it gives
other scholars, especiallyyounger folks, like, permission
to sit with and think reallyseriously about things that they
love that might seem silly
John Stadler (53:04):
Yeah.
Cait McKinney (53:04):
Or not serious and to take them really
seriously, but to also, like, intheir writing and their analysis
to save space for their owndelightful and loving
connections to those texts.Like, I I would like this to
open up carve out morepermission for people to get to
do that because I think that'swhat keeps queer media studies
weird.
John Stadler (53:24):
Absolutely. And we need it to stay weird.
Cait McKinney (53:27):
Yes. Even though, weird as a word is maybe being
stolen by
John Stadler (53:32):
Oh, yeah.
Cait McKinney (53:33):
The Democrats right now.
John Stadler (53:35):
Yeah. It's a new insult, I guess.
Cait McKinney (53:37):
No. But I'm I'm gonna keep using it. So whatever
they can't they can't have it.
John Stadler (53:42):
They I mean, they can do what they want with it,
but I'm gonna keep it weird overhere.
Cait McKinney (53:47):
Yeah. Me too.
John Stadler (53:48):
Kate, thank you so much. This has been a been a
delight.
Cait McKinney (53:51):
Thank you, John. It was a pleasure.
Narrator (53:55):
This has been a University of Minnesota Press
production. The book I Know YouAre, But What Am I? On PeeWee
Herman by Kate McKinney isavailable from University of
Minnesota Press. Thank you forlistening.
We are living through, like, what I think is a
very similar moment to thenineteen eighties in terms of
the attacks that we're seeing ontrans and queer kids.
John Stadler (00:15):
It was during year one of COVID that I purchased my
own Pee Wee Doll and reallystarted to become quite
nostalgic for my childhood.
Cait McKinney (00:28):
Hi, John.
John Stadler (00:29):
Hey, Kate. How's it going?
Cait McKinney (00:31):
I'm doing well. Thank you for doing this.
John Stadler (00:34):
Of course.
Cait McKinney (00:34):
Looking forward to it.
John Stadler (00:36):
Absolutely.
Cait McKinney (00:37):
Let's start by introducing ourselves. So my
name is Kate McKinney. I wrotethe book, I Know You Are, But
What Am I? On Pee wee Herman. Ithink by the time this podcast
comes out, I'll be an associateprofessor.
John Stadler (00:51):
Oh, congratulations.
Cait McKinney (00:52):
Thank you. In the school of communication at,
Simon Fraser University. And Iwork on queer media history,
which is kinda how I met you,John.
John Stadler (01:03):
Yeah. Absolutely. I am John Stadler. I am a an
assistant professor of filmstudies at North Carolina State
University, and my research iscentered on queer media with a
strong focus on pornography,although I'm moving into other
realms as well. I'm so excitedto be diving into the Pee wee
(01:25):
Herman universe with you today.
So, yeah, thank you forincluding me. I know we've often
seen each other at conferences,so it's really lovely to get a
chance to kind of talk aboutyour work.
Cait McKinney (01:37):
Yeah. When when Maggie Sattler at University of
Minnesota Press asked who Iwould wanna do this with, you
were the first person who cameto mind for a couple of reasons.
Like, first, I've always admiredyour work and your work in the
field of queer porn studies. Andthis book is not a porn studies
book per se, but there's a wholechapter about Paul Reuben's
arrest for indecent exposure ina, adult cinema, and that's part
(02:02):
of part of what we're talkingabout today. And also when I was
presenting on this work at theSociety for Cinema and Media
Studies Conference, you came tothe paper and I kinda realized
in talking to you after that youwere a big Pee wee fan.
So it felt like a good match.
John Stadler (02:16):
Yeah. I was obsessed with the show as a kid.
So my my siblings, my mybrothers in particular, Saturday
morning, we would all racedownstairs to watch the
cartoons, and my brothers alwayswere watching, you know, like, X
Men and Transformers and allthese other shows that I I sort
of was just this begrudging,viewer of. It was like, my
(02:39):
brothers got to pick that. Butwhenever Pee wee Herman came on,
that was that was my show.
And they they often didn't sitto watch it. So my my brothers
would leave, and I got to watchPee wee Herman by myself. And
it's only, you know, much later,you know, coming out, in my
twenties that I realized what asort of formative role this show
(03:00):
played in in my sort of veryearly proto queer childhood.
Right?
Cait McKinney (03:06):
Yeah. So, Pee Wee, was your, like, early gay
Saturday morning screen time?
John Stadler (03:10):
It really was. I can't even think of another show
that comes close to to being asformative for me. Right? And as
just like, it was my safe spaceto watch this show. Just
watching some man boy misbehaveand be wacky and have fun felt
so comforting to me.
Cait McKinney (03:28):
Yeah. It was the same for me, and I think so much
of what the show did as a, like,queer text was make this kind of
world
John Stadler (03:37):
Yeah.
Cait McKinney (03:38):
That we could be in. The whole show takes place
in the space of Pee wee'splayhouse. So it's, like, very
contained, and the playhouse isthis, like, live action set full
of humans and also puppetsthat's, like, just absolutely
wildly styled and quitespectacular and very expensive
to produce in a way that youdon't see on children's
(03:59):
television anymore. Right? Like,shows today, like, Paw Patrol,
for example.
They're, like, deliberatelyextremely inexpensive to
produce, but this was, like, ahigh budget kind of world, that
we could just, like, spendthirty minutes in every week.
And there was something reallyspecial about that, I think.
John Stadler (04:16):
Yeah. It was delightful. A delightful sort of
escapist world to exploredifferent possibilities in.
Cait McKinney (04:23):
I thought, John, I could kick us off by reading
the first, page and a half ofthe book.
John Stadler (04:28):
I would love that.
Cait McKinney (04:30):
Though I ought to be done with a television show I
loved in the first grade, Ican't seem to let go of Pee
wee's Playhouse. The show was aportal for a lot of queer kids
of my generation who grew up inthe nineteen eighties. We could
spend Saturday mornings with ahyperactive weirdo in a tight
fitting suit who looked andacted a bit gay, transgressed
gender norms, but had foundfriends, safety, and a home of
(04:54):
his own to play in like no onemean was watching. Week after
week, Pee wee Herman, played byPaul Reumens, arrived in the
playhouse, said good morning tohis toys and technologies, and
played along with viewers athome, children and adults alike.
From 1986 to 1990, the thirtyminute live action program
(05:14):
became one of the most popularchildren's television programs
in history, winning 15 EmmyAwards and inspiring films,
merchandise, and a newschoolyard comeback for any
insult.
Pee wee's catchphrase, I knowyou are, but what am I, said in
a silly nasal voice was used toshut down bullies everywhere.
(05:35):
The show landed within anunfolding AIDS crisis that was
reshaping sexual politics in TheUnited States and Canada,
including through violenthomophobic backlash. Against
this cultural backdrop, Pee Weewas wacky, wild, and
unapologetically himself and hegave audiences permission to be
that way too and this matteredin the late 1980s when queer
(05:56):
people's intimacies and veryways of being and emoting in
public were under attack. Peewee's Playhouse ended in flames
alongside the first public sexscandal I can remember. Just
before the show was to startsyndication, Paul Reubens was
arrested in a suburban porntheater for exposure of sexual
organs, a phrase that Pee wee'sPlayhouse could have turned into
(06:19):
a whole bit about a horny pianoif the show wasn't for kids and
hadn't already wrapped monthsbefore the arrest.
This kind of porn theater stingoperation was common in 1991, a
calculated, stigmatizingresponse to HIV AIDS aimed at
rooting out public sex culturesthrough raids on bathhouses,
theaters, and bars with backrooms, often under the guise of
(06:41):
what we call public health. Fromthe state's perspective, the
practice had the added bonus ofraising real estate values
through gentrification asunseemly businesses closed under
pressure from police harassmentof patrons and owners. News
media fashioned Reubens, thechildren's entertainer, as a
risk taking pervert. He becamethe butt of late night TV jokes,
(07:03):
and his career suffered in themonths and years that followed.
Queer people, kids and adultsalike, stuck with PeeWee through
it all.
Kids staved fans despite parentswho threw out their PeeWee dolls
and bootlegged VHS tapes, whileadults defended Reubens against
the false associations withpedophilia that attached to the
story. The show's ongoing cultstatus decades later speaks to
(07:26):
the main contention of thisbook. We aren't done with Pee
wee's Playhouse because there'smuch to learn from sticking with
it. I look back at Pee wee as anexpansive mediated scene that
moves from television screens tothe domestic technologies inside
the playhouse to the porntheater as an otherwise space
under attack. Thinking acrossthese scenes in the ways we
(07:47):
remember and misremember Pee weeoffers lines of flight for queer
understandings of media, ways ofmoving between the real and the
fictive, complicating ideasabout adults, children, and
technology, and knowing historythrough speculation and against
causality.
John Stadler (08:03):
Thank you so much for for reading that for us,
Kate. It's such a beautiful andcompelling introduction to your
book. I love the way especially,I think it's so important that
you contextualize this moment,because for people who didn't
grow up at this period, if youwere a young queer person, the
(08:24):
way in which you understandqueerness or or homosexuality or
any kind of sexual or genderdeviance is through through the
AIDS, epidemic. Right? Like, themy first association with
queerness was with death, and Ifelt it especially pronounced I
I grew up in Indiana where atthe same time that Pee wee
(08:47):
Herman was coming out, RyanWhite was dying of of AIDS.
And so we saw it on our news allthe time that that local local
child dying, of AIDS, I believeit was through a a blood
transfusion. But it all got sortof wrapped up in this
pathologizing of of queerness,as queerness as illness,
(09:10):
queerness as disease. Soreminding us that PewDiePie,
occupied a space that wasinformed by this is, I think, so
important. I just wanted to inaddition to discussing how
lovely it is that you'vehistoricized this, I I wondered
if I could just ask you whatbrought you to this project?
(09:31):
Because it's it's so timely, ofcourse, you know, and and
tragically because Paul Rubensdied last year.
But I don't imagine you werewriting this with any sense of
knowledge that that would thatwould happen. And so I I would
just love to know a little bitabout what brought you back to
Pee wee, you know, in '20 Idon't know when you started
this, 2022, '20 '20 '3, wheneveryou were writing it.
Cait McKinney (09:55):
Yeah. I mean, I finished the book about a month
before he died, and I'm sure hisfriends and family knew that he
was ill, but fans didn't. Right?So it was a surprise to me, and
I ended up having to, revise thebook. So I went from kind of
this author, like, nervous thatthe person who their book was
about would, like, read it andhate it, hopefully love it, to
(10:18):
somebody who was as a fan kindof, like, mourning this
person's, passing along with,like, all kinds of other queer
fans who are really, like,devastated by Reuben's death in
the summer of twenty twentythree.
And, I think a lot of us wentback to sort of revisit the show
and what it had meant to us inthat moment. I have always
wanted to write something aboutPee wee's Playhouse. I think it
(10:41):
was the, like, freedom and spaceopened up by going up for tenure
and feeling like I had the roomto write about an object that
maybe some people wouldn't takeas seriously in the field of
academia. And I also, like,wanted to work on writing
scholarly work that was moretrue to me and who I am and
(11:05):
where my voice and my presencewas more there in the writing.
And it felt like a perfect sortof object to do that with
because my relationship to itis, like, so personal because of
what it meant to me as a kid.
So I kinda I decided I wanted towrite about the show, and
initially, I wanted to writeabout the playhouse itself as
this magical interior space thatis radically separated from the
(11:27):
world out there. So Pee wee inthe show almost never leaves the
playhouse. There's no regularexterior set. You are contained
within the space. And I wasthinking about that, like in the
sort of deep depths of COVIDlockdown Yeah.
And what what it means to beinside. Right? And that's how
the work started.
John Stadler (11:45):
Yeah. I would that's amazing. I was I was
thinking too about how thepandemic informed my own
relation to Pee wee. I knowwe'll talk about this later, but
it was during, I think, year oneof COVID that I purchased my
own, and I'll show this,although the podcasters can't
see it, my own Pee wee doll, andreally started to become quite
(12:05):
nostalgic for my childhood. Andand there were a number of
reasons why that is.
My, my dad got sick, and Ihelped my my parents move out of
our childhood home. So I wasquite literally going through my
bedroom at the time and clearingout things that I probably
should have cleared out yearsago. But, yeah, it it I feel
like COVID produced thepossibility for, for a kind of
(12:31):
deep contemplativeness that Ihadn't really given myself space
for before. Right? There wasjust nothing to do.
Right? So I was really kind of,reworking my thoughts on on
childhood and and such. So it'sreally interesting to to see
these parallels, especially withspatiality and the show's own,
(12:54):
inward and sort of in enclosedquality, especially when you
think about it against thefilms, which are so much about
going out into the world for themost part. Right? They they do
often have moments of, like,interiority, but it's usually
about Pee Wee exiting a house orexiting a space.
Cait McKinney (13:14):
Against his will too. Yeah. Like, he doesn't he
doesn't wanna leave. He getsforced out into the world in
those films,
John Stadler (13:21):
Right. Which I find so interesting. I'm I'm
just really curious. I I wishRubens were still here for us to
ask him or to to contemplate whywhy this this very, stark
division between space from thethe TV show to the to the films.
Cait McKinney (13:39):
I mean, I imagine some of that distinction is
about budget. Right? Like, youhave a huge budget to make a
film, and and you do have asmaller budget to make episodic
children's television. AlthoughPee wee's budget was huge, like,
CBS was spending, like, $300,000an episode on that show in the
later season, which was unheardabsolutely unheard of at that
time. Right?
John Stadler (13:57):
Yeah. That's true.
Cait McKinney (13:57):
I think part of it's budget, but I think it's
also, like, it's the character.He is a creature of habit, of
routine, and of his space. Andso a really compelling plot
point for the films is to usethat budget in that, you know,
hour and a half to see whathappens when you take Pee wee
out of this world in which hemakes sense into this, like,
(14:19):
outer world in which he doesn'tmake sense and sort of mayhem,
ensues. And I think we learn alot as characters who have no
schematic for understanding PeeWee come into encounter with
him.
John Stadler (14:33):
Was that a conscious decision in the book,
to focus primarily on the show?
Cait McKinney (14:39):
Yeah. It was it was absolutely a conscious
decision because I wanted tolike, what for me is really
interesting about the show is ithad this first of all, it's on
network television, so it hadreally wide viewership. It was
on CBS. And second, it had,like, no other children's
television programs, a realmixed audience of adults and
children. So about a third ofregular viewers on Saturday
(15:03):
mornings were adults.
And I was really interested init as this, like, episodic
network shared text and what itmeant for both adults, most of
whom were queer queer adjacentin some way to share this text
with, like, just regular six,seven, eight, nine year olds of
all life experiences. I I wantedto, like, be with that
(15:25):
experience of of the show forsure. And I think also, like,
that's primarily how Pee wee isknown. Like, the the films were
a bit more cult y. People whoare Pee wee fans are very
familiar with the films and lovethem and I love them, but I
think it's the show that reallyhad this wider appeal, and it
was what people went to afterthe porn theater sex scandal.
(15:45):
The show was, like, the targetfor people's anger and and
homophobia in the aftermath ofthat.
John Stadler (15:51):
I was wondering if I could follow-up with another
thing that you said in thisintroduction, which is PeeWee
offers lines of flight for queerunderstandings of media, ways of
moving between the real and thefictive, complicating ideas
about adults, children, andtechnology, and knowing history
through speculation and againstcausality. I'm really latching
(16:12):
on to the notion of speculationand against causality and
another word that you usedearlier about misremembering.
Cait McKinney (16:21):
Mhmm.
John Stadler (16:21):
And so one of the things that I love about the
book and that I hope you canspeak a little more about is the
way that you turn to friends,family, colleagues, and just do
this really lovely, almost likea kind of oral history of
people's, memories of the show,but also of their
misremembering? You know? And Iand I'm wondering what you think
(16:43):
the value or the place ofmisremembering is for fans of
the show, because I think you'reaware I have my own
misrememberings of this show,that I told you about briefly,
which which include, like,misremembering the ending of the
show where Pee wee jets off onhis scooter out of the house, or
out of the playhouse rather. AndI misremembered that as him
(17:08):
riding his bicycle through thesky and flying. And so, you
know, it's I don't know whatthat says about me or about my
relationship to the show, but II am really struck by the
methodology that you deploy inthe book.
I feel it's it's so innovative,and I wonder too just because
it's this cute, adorable littlebook that has, you know, little
(17:28):
chapters. You know, it's not thetypical monograph style. I'm
just wondering, you know, Iguess it's a two part question.
I'm wondering aboutmisremembering, and the place of
that, but also just about theformat of these books within
academia. Hopefully, that's nottoo boring of a question.
Cait McKinney (17:46):
Yeah. I mean, no. No. That's a great question,
John. I think first with the thequestion about misremembering.
A lot of the approach I take inthe book, like, at some point in
the book, I call it, like, badresearch methods and, like,
leaning into, like, bad andsquare quotes research methods
that
John Stadler (18:00):
Right.
Cait McKinney (18:01):
I would never be allowed to teach, like, graduate
students of my program, forexample.
John Stadler (18:05):
Yeah.
Cait McKinney (18:06):
But, like, as I was working on the book and
people would ask me what I'mworking on and I would tell
them, so many, like, queer folkswho are friends of mine would
respond with this reaction of,like, interest, but also
something like grief or sadness,which was interesting to me
because it's, like, such ajoyful and funny show. And I
kinda realized the profoundnessof what was taken away from
(18:31):
people of our generation. I I'mborn in 1983. John's born
around, the same time, so we'reboth sort of in our early very
early forties right now.
John Stadler (18:40):
Very early.
Cait McKinney (18:41):
We're we're we just turned we're barely. We're
basically we're basically about39.
John Stadler (18:47):
Basically.
Cait McKinney (18:48):
We're in. But, like, what was taken away?
Right? And and so I startedasking people, like, well, what
do you remember about that timewhen when Reubens was arrested?
And for lots of reasons, theprimary one being, like,
homophobia, for most of us,like, no one was talking to us
about what happened to Reubens,which is, like, he was arrested
(19:11):
for doing, like, a really normalbanal thing that lots of men do.
He was in a porn theater, whichexists for people to watch porn
in. And if they want to tomasturbate in, it's not harming
anyone. There's a
John Stadler (19:24):
Right.
Cait McKinney (19:25):
Social contract in that space, and that's
something that as queer adults,we all understand now. Right?
But at the time, no oneexplained that to us, and it was
part of this moment of homo andAIDS phobia of just, like,
shaming and erasing Paul Reubensfrom existence. And so I became
really interested in what peopleunderstood when they were kids
at the time that it happened andwhen they realized that that
(19:49):
information was wrong, which forme was in at some point in my
twenties, I was like, oh, thatwas really messed up and
homophobic. Right?
What what happened to thistelevision character that I
love? But I think, like, am Iinterested in the in the
misremembering is I think thatthere's a lot of learning to be
had in leaning into thatmisremembering because it tells
(20:10):
us something about the functionof homophobia around cultural
texts and how culturalsuppression works. And we need
to think about that right nowbecause we are living through
like what I think is a verysimilar moment to to the
nineteen eighties in terms ofthe attacks that we're seeing in
on trans and queer kids and theways that those attacks, like,
(20:31):
are strategically trying to cutthem off from relationships with
queer and trans cultural textsor trans and queer adults. So
that was my interest in themisremembering is, like and I
think that we have to understandthe show Pee wee's Playhouse
only through its entanglementwith what happened to Reuben's.
Like, we can't know the showotherwise.
It was just so significant. Andthen, I mean, the format of
(20:53):
these forerunners books thatMinnesota does, which are
acquired by, Leah Pennywork,who's an incredible editor,
they're, like, 25,000 ish words,so they're quite short. They're,
like, really long essays, morethan books, so they are, like,
bound like a book. So I can be,like, it's a book, y'all.
John Stadler (21:13):
It is a book.
Cait McKinney (21:14):
It is a book. But it's, like, it's kinda perfect
for this format because it's,like, long enough to be serious,
but it's accessible. You canread it in a few sittings, and I
I wanted to give people a kindof, like, accessible experience
of diving into this the story ofwhat happened and some ways of
revisiting and rethinking aboutthe playhouse as a space.
John Stadler (21:33):
Yeah. Accessibility here, I think, is
so key to the book and to theseries. It it really is
something you can sit down andread in a couple of sittings,
and it's it's quite justenjoyable. Right? It doesn't
read with the same oh, I don'twanna be too despairing of
academia, but it doesn't feel sostuffy.
Right? It it feels a lot moreinviting. The other thing that
(21:54):
you said that I reallyappreciated about this book was
the salience that it brings toour current moment, regrettably
in indeed. And we don't have tobelabor the point, but the way
in which the trans communityright now is experiencing such
strong phobia, transphobia, andits own kind of sex panic, we
(22:15):
even see this happening at theOlympics quite literally right
now, is quite stark. One of thethings I really appreciate about
the book is that it lendsinsight and a window onto an
earlier sex panic.
And it's it's so fascinating toothe way the book, the way that
Pee wee is queered. Right?Because I think a lot of people,
when they hear queer,immediately assume a kind of
(22:37):
sexual queerness. And certainly,there there is, to a degree,
that at play in the variousshows and and films. But I think
what the book really illustratesfor me is just how queer the
gender is of Pee wee Herman andjust how nonnormative and
(22:58):
against the grain he was.
You know? And that's, I think,on some level, what I found so
compelling as a kid, if I if Ihad to put words to it, was this
is basically a a sissy. This islike a fae boy who is not
subscribing to the normativestandard of what it means to be
masculine or to be male, and heis allowed to be that way. No
(23:21):
one is stopping him, policinghim, telling him he has to be a
different way. And and there areother kinds of challenges, like,
and we can talk about this if wehave time, the way that Pee wee
is constantly being paired withgirls and women who have
attraction to him that he, oneway or another, you know, gets
out of that scenario where he'ssort of paired up to have the
(23:44):
kind of heteronormative pairing.
And in one way or another, heusually evades it. But for me,
what was so striking about thebook was really thinking about
gender and the way that genderis being thwarted or played
with.
Cait McKinney (23:58):
Yeah. I mean, you have raised the important point
that sex panics are cyclical.They're not a thing from the
history that we have moved past.They come and go, and the reason
that they come and go is becausethey're doing cultural work in
relation to a particularpolitical movement and how it
desires for the world to change.So we're seeing sex panics right
(24:21):
now in in relationship to rightwing movements, a kind of anti
internationalism, antiimmigration, white supremacy,
and the entanglement of all ofthese things.
Right? Like, trans folks are aconvenient object in order to
justify the move towards, like,fascism and normalization. But
at the time of Pee wee, what theshow was responding to with the
(24:43):
sissy character was Reaganismand this, like, autonomous
rugged vision of whitemasculinity that was similarly
tied to, like, white flight, thedestruction and abandonment of
cities and the black and brownfolks who call them home. And so
there's, like, something similargoing on here, right, with,
(25:03):
like, this policing of gender asa way of, like, producing a kind
of violent and fascist world.And, yeah, he was, like, the
perfect sissy.
Like, what a lovable sissy hewas. I like to think that
there's more room in the worldfor people who are understood to
be boys or think of themselvesas boys as to be sissies. Now
(25:24):
but I don't know that that'sactually true. I think we're in
another moment of a real kind ofnarrowing of what it means to do
gender. That is sort of anothersad thing that this book brought
me to is drawing thoseconnections between the 1980s
and the present.
John Stadler (25:39):
Yeah. Well, and and you've, you know, named it
yet again. I know I talked toyou about this earlier, but I
was feeling such a strong senseof both nostalgia, but also
melancholy when I was preparingfor this. And and it was bound
up with joy too. It was, youknow, remembering the joy that
this character used to bring tome, but also feeling this real
(26:00):
loss about the, you know, theway that the show was sort of
evaporated from my consciousnessnever to be found again.
And then going back to it in myalso my late teens and early
twenties, not necessarily to theshow, but just going back to the
scandal, right, thatprecipitated the end of the
syndication of it. So, yeah,it's a real mixed emotional
(26:23):
quality or feeling to to returnto this. I wanna maybe, if it's
okay with you, touch on just thethree chapters that you have
here where you you talk aboutthe playhouse, the porn house,
and and the doll. If you are upfor it, I was wondering if just
to get the ball rolling, wecould think about what some of
your favorite scenes are fromthe actual TV show and the
(26:46):
playhouse. You know, one of thelovely things about the first
chapter is the proliferation ofobjects, most of which are
animate, that occupied the thespace of the playhouse.
And I love the way that youbring them into conversation to
what we today would think of asthe smart house since so many of
these objects can speak andseemingly think and engage with
(27:08):
Pee wee. Do any scenes orobjects within the playhouse
really jump out to you or orstill speak to you today and and
and why?
Cait McKinney (27:17):
Yeah. I'm I mean, I'm really drawn into any scene
in the show that involves thesefour characters who I write
about at length in the firstchapter of the book as the sort
of computational characters inthe Playhouse. So Pee wee lived
in a world called puppet land,and his sort of friends in the
playhouse are a mix of humancharacters and actors who visit
(27:39):
the playhouse and then thepuppets who live inside of it.
And there's there's many ofthese puppets, but the four who
I'm especially interested inwere kind of like proto I think
of those proto smart hometechnologies or like networked,
objects. So the first one is,Conky two thousand who's like,
this kind of DIY robot lookingcharacter.
(27:59):
At the beginning of everyepisode of the show, Conky gets
unplugged. He's been chargingovernight. He boots up, and he
has this dialogue with Pee Weewhere he spits out what's called
the word of the day on a pieceof, like, receipt paper. Pee Wee
reads the word of the day. It'salways like a commonly used word
that you're gonna inevitably sayin a sentence a few times
(28:21):
throughout the rest of theepisode.
Anytime the word is said, byanyone in the Playhouse,
everybody else has to screamreally loud, and the viewers at
home are supposed to scream aswell. So Conky is this sort of
rope interactive robot whose,work in producing the secret
word produces these, like,interruptions of chaos
(28:42):
throughout each episode of theshow.
John Stadler (28:44):
I almost feel like we should have one. I I mean,
can we possibly have a podcastabout Pee Wee Herman and not
have a word of the day?
Cait McKinney (28:52):
We it's just a bummer when only two people are
screaming.
John Stadler (28:55):
It's true. Yeah. It would probably be a little
obnoxious for the listeners.
Cait McKinney (28:58):
Yeah. I did do a secret word at the, like, in
person book launch I had, whichDo you? A lot of people at that.
Yeah. The secret word was gay.
Ah.
John Stadler (29:09):
I love it.
Cait McKinney (29:09):
And that was fun because you had this, like,
chorus of, you know, 75 peopleor whatever screaming every
time.
John Stadler (29:15):
Yeah.
Cait McKinney (29:16):
Shrinking.
John Stadler (29:16):
Yeah. That's lovely.
Cait McKinney (29:18):
But, yeah, I I mean, Conky, I love, like, the
sort of mutual chaos that he,produces. And and there's three
other, technologies that aresimilarly, like, early network
computers that I write about. Sothey're magic screen, which is
like a tablet, kind of like aniPad with, like, arms and legs
and a and a persona. Mhmm.There's PicturePhone, which is
(29:38):
like a photo booth that allowsPee wee to have video conference
calls with other people, andthen there's Globey, who's this,
like, humanoid globe, with aface and a voice who does kind
of geographic, like, GoogleMappy sort of stuff Mhmm.
For Pee wee. And I thinkrevisiting the Playhouse is
important because it's thisqueer vision from the past of
(30:02):
what a networked smart homemight have become, like, could
have become, but didn't, andalso, like, couldn't because it
wasn't profitable, or rational.And also Pee wee is not treating
these characters as his servantsor as, like, objects. He's in
mutual relationships ofreciprocity and care with them.
(30:24):
So they determine activities inthe playhouse together.
So it's a really differentvision than what we have today
of people yelling at Alexa orSiri or whatever the other ones
are called to buy stuff or or dostuff for them. It's this, like,
other way of thinking about howwe want to be in relationship
with, technologies that I thinkwe can use to critique the
(30:47):
present that we actually have,and imagine digital worlds
otherwise.
John Stadler (30:54):
What do you think the relation is between the Rube
Goldberg machines that I I thinkof as maybe more in the films,
but you could correct me if I'mwrong. Maybe they appear in the
TV show as well. And these morenetworks, maybe more digital,
characters from the TV show. Doyou have any thoughts on that?
Because I I I seem to recall, atleast with the first film, maybe
(31:18):
even the opening sequence is,Pee wee waking up and and
getting breakfast made for himby a Rube Goldberg machine,
which seemed to be so common inso many different films and
shows of the nineteen eighties.
And I'm just wondering ifthere's some kind of statement
(31:39):
or allegory going on across thethe networked characters from
the show and the Rube Goldbergmachines from the from the
films.
Cait McKinney (31:48):
Yeah. The the Rube Goldberg machine is, what
opens Pee wee's Big Adventure,which is the, Tim Burton
directed, first Pee wee filmfrom 1985.
John Stadler (31:58):
And that came out, like, a year before the show.
Right?
Cait McKinney (32:00):
Yeah. It was before the show started. So he
had had, like, a Broadway show,like, a live show and then the
film, and then he got thetelevision contract. But the
it's like this absurd andextremely analog, perpetual
motion machine that makes Peewee's breakfast. So it juices
oranges, perpetual motionmachine that makes Pee wee's
breakfast.
So it juices oranges, it mixespancake batter, flips pancakes,
(32:21):
feeds his dog, all while Pee weeis, like, sort of free to do
other stuff while this machineis running. The machine, like,
doesn't work very well. It'slike all these juices
everywhere, many pancakes arestuck to the ceiling, but, like,
that's not the point of thetechnology. Like, the point is
the kind of joy of it. It's,like, meant to do a task, but
it's also, like, wildlyirrational because it would be
(32:42):
easy for easier for him to justdo the task himself.
And I think at the heart of yourquestion, like, what is a
technology like this RubeGoldberg machine have to do with
these computational charactersin the playhouse is, like, he's
not drawing a line between thosethings. Like, there is, at every
stage in this character's life,just this desire to be in
(33:05):
relationship with gadgets andtechnologies and contraptions
and animate objects that existand function on terms that
aren't about, like, fulfilling atask or aren't about efficiency.
John Stadler (33:18):
Yeah.
Cait McKinney (33:18):
It's like this kind of, like, joy and play.
John Stadler (33:21):
Yeah. No. That's lovely. Yeah. That that's very
helpful.
Maybe if you're down for it, I Iwould love to think a little
more about the second chapter,the porn house. Although I don't
wanna I don't wanna stop us ifwe have more to say about the
playhouse because I think it'sit's lovely writing and lovely
work that you have there.
Cait McKinney (33:40):
Yeah. Let's talk about the let's talk about the
porn house. I would love to.
John Stadler (33:43):
Yeah. Let's talk about the porn house. You know,
I I'm so struck by is so much ofthe the drama and the the crisis
and the the conflict around thearrest, probably hinges to some
degree on on the fact that PaulReubens was often just conflated
with his character and was sodevoted to the character of Pee
(34:03):
wee that I think you wrote aboutthis. He would make sure that no
one ever, for instance,photographed him in character,
when not being filmed and andwhile smoking a cigarette.
Right?
Because he didn't want anyone toview Pee wee as Paul Reubens.
And precisely, I think, whatanimates the the sex panic here
is that people do do that. Theydo conflate Paul Reubens, the
(34:26):
adult, the human, with Pee weeHerman, the character. And I'm
thinking too about the way inwhich a porn house is really a
playhouse for adults. Right?
And the and the sense that porn,as an object, is is one of the
realms that adults have toexperience play and pleasure,
but we don't treat it the sameway, obviously, that we treat
(34:49):
play that that a child wouldhave. And so I'm really struck
by the through line here ofplay. Right? Paul Reubens is
quite literally playing. He ishaving a good time, but this is
a good time that is offensive tosome, right, or is impossible to
square with the persona that hehas developed for Pee wee.
And so, yeah, I'm not sure wherewe wanna take this, but I'm
(35:12):
really struck by the space ofthe porn theater as also being
quite similar to the playhouseas this isolated space that is
not, you know, it's I I don'tknow. I would question what we
mean by public indecency. Whatwhat constitutes the public with
within the space of the porntheater?
Cait McKinney (35:33):
Yeah. So Reubens never appeared as Paul Reubens
in public or in news mediainterviews during the time that
the show was on. Right? So if hewas he he did an interview,
like, with Rolling Stone,whatever, he showed up to the
interview as Pee wee Herman andgave the interview as Pee wee
Herman. So the public did notunderstand Pee wee Herman and
(35:56):
Paul Reubens as separate peopleeven though, of course, they
were.
So when when Reubens wasarrested, and this was wild to
me going back to, like, newsarchives and seeing this, but
the press, like the Wall StreetJournal, the New York Times
covered this story in ways thatconflated Reubens with Pee wee
Herman. So for example, therewas a Associated Press wire
(36:18):
story that was published in, youknow, most papers of record in
The United States and Canadawhere the journalist interviewed
child psychologists about how totalk to your children about Paul
Reuben's arrest. But the articleinstructs parents to tell
children, like, that Pee wee haddone something bad, that, you
(36:40):
know, Pee wee Pee wee regretsdoing this, that it was wrong,
but people make mistakes, whichis, like, wild to me that the
advice to parents wasn't like,tell your kids that this is an
adult man actor and that hissexuality exists. Right? Like,
to to tell kids about this in adevelopmentally appropriate way,
(37:03):
but that, like, clearly makes itmakes it clear that there is,
like, a television character whois this boy man child who they
love and then an actor who playshim.
Right? Like, how much is thatgonna mess up your kids if
you're not, like, making thatclear? So the the, like, deep
seeded sort of homophobia ofwanting to understand Reubens as
(37:23):
Pee wee Herman in order to markhim being in this porn theater
as this, like, transgressioninstead of this, like, actually
quite banal and boring thing.Like, yeah, he watches porn at a
at a porn theater. Like, whocares?
Right? It was, like, so so deepseated. But, yeah, like, the I
mean, porn theaters are reallyinteresting spaces in the sense
(37:45):
that, like, any movie theater,you kind of disappear into them.
Right? They're, like, dark.
The seats are soft. You can'tsee who's around you. It's this
exit from the world outside, andit's summer right now while
we're recording this. So you canimagine, like, going back out
into the parking lot and the airconditioning is this even
climactic shock from inside tooutside. It really marks this
(38:07):
theater as this space apart andspace away.
I think about what it must havebeen like for someone like
Reubens to have been living inpublic as this character for so
many years. Right? And how, youknow, exhausting that must have
been become at times. So hisarrest in the summer of nineteen
(38:27):
ninety one, he had actuallyalready decided to end the show
about a year earlier because hewas just burnt out and exhausted
from playing the character. Andhe had, like, grown his hair out
long because they were not gonnabe shooting again and I think
was just, like, kind of tryingto live more as himself in this
town where he grew up that hewas back visiting.
To me, like, that the fact thatReubens was kind of experiencing
(38:50):
this freedom from the characterand then was arrested and and
shamed publicly for masturbatingin the theater, like, as the
character is one of the mosttragic parts of how the story
was framed.
John Stadler (39:02):
Yeah. And I I think it's important as as
you're alluding to note thechanging understanding of the
space of the porn theater. Sohardcore porn was had only been
showing in in theaters in a in avery public, way since the early
nineteen seventies. So we're,you know, about twenty years
into that, but the AIDS epidemicis is already informing the way
(39:29):
that people understand thisspace, which in the seventies,
you know, you would seecelebrities in the in the
magazines and in the news goingto porn theaters. You would you
would hear about, like, JackNicholson takes date to porn
theater.
And so it was quite well knownthat, you know, celebrities and
(39:49):
and famous people were going toto these theaters, and it it was
not career ending for them. Butby the early nineteen eighties,
porn theaters were beingshuttered. They were they were
seen as vectors for for disease.You know, sorry. Samuel Delaney
has this delightful book, TimesSquare Red, Times Square Blue,
(40:10):
where he writes all about theDisneyfication of Times Square,
the closing of all the porntheaters, as well as the this
really interesting concept thathe develops of of contact in the
way that porn theaters become aspace for interclass primarily,
but, interrace contact of peoplewho would not normally engage
(40:33):
with one another.
And he makes the argument thatthat that there's a kind of
social good that comes out ofbringing together people who
would not normally exist in thesame social spheres. So one of
the things that that Iappreciate about about your book
is that you were helping to pushagainst the grain of the more
(40:55):
normative, or standard argumentabout what the porn theater is,
which is always, you know,predetermined as deleterious,
and pathologizing. And and here,I think you're right to call it
just rather mundane. This is arather mundane activity. You
know?
I can think of far more,explicit events that occur
(41:16):
within porn theaters, andmasturbating does not, come even
close to them. So it is helpfulto remind ourselves at the same
time that, you know, porn wasmoving, into video at this
point. So I I think some peoplehave written about, well, why
wasn't he just you know, if youhave to watch porn, why don't
(41:37):
you just watch it at home? And Ithink that that's an interesting
question because it it againbrings up this concept of space
that that has kind of beenhovering around this whole
conversation and this notion ofwhat private space is and where
sex can exist within space, Evenif it's self serving sex, even
if it's masturbation, where whatspace is is that allowed to be
(42:00):
in? And I think it's importantto note too, I'm going to forget
the Supreme Court case, but atthe time, any kind of same sex
sexual activity is going to bequite literally illegal within
these spaces.
Cait McKinney (42:14):
Yeah. It was Bowers versus Hardwick.
John Stadler (42:17):
Yeah. So there's a lot historically to think about
in this moment, but one of thethings that the the book
hopefully reminds us is that theconversation that was being had
with children, with people ofour age, these elder
millennials, was, kind of quitequite messed up, quite
(42:37):
conflating of the character withthe person. Or in the case for
me, was just a non was a nonconversation. It was Pee wee
Herman and Pee wee's Playhousewere in my life for five or so
years, and then suddenly it wasgone. You know, and I never got
an explanation of what PaulReubens had done until, you
(42:59):
know, my my late teen years.
And then it was it was, as thebook notes, often quite
erroneous in the way that it waspresented. It was that, you
know, spoken as though Pee weeHerman had done this thing and
oftentimes presenting it as anaffront to children as though
somehow his masturbation in atheater had been put to the end
(43:23):
of trying to, corrupt children.Right? The this notion that him
masturbating in the theater wassomehow related to, I guess,
what we would today call the thekind of groomer language or the
the groomer panic.
Cait McKinney (43:37):
Yep.
John Stadler (43:37):
And I'm I'm just curious what you think of or
what you found in your researchwith with people recalling this
event and how it is bound upwith those those fears about
being about adults groomingyoung children.
Cait McKinney (43:51):
Yeah. I mean, people, were circulating rumors
that he was caught masturbatingin a regular cineplex or at a
Disney film. How I understood itas a kid was that he had done
something sexually inappropriatewith children. That was how
people in my, like, schoolyardunderstood it. My parents never
explained it to me.
(44:12):
These, like, rumors circulated,like, precisely as you pointed
out as part of what we wouldtoday call groomer discourse.
Right? So this is abouthomophobia, and it's about AIDS
phobia and this what you talkedabout earlier in our
conversation about, like, queerpeople being sort of
fundamentally associated withdeath and dying and the negative
(44:34):
in the public imagination atthis time. Right? So this
construction of perversion.
And all of that is to, like,make an argument to parents that
you ought to keep your kids awayfrom gay people, which is, like,
a fear that is even moreheightened when you have a kid
like myself or I would guessyou, John, too, who's, like, at
(44:57):
that age, like, you can tellthere's something queer about
that kid. So it's like that.Those are the kids like you and
I are the ones who are, I think,are suffering the most from the
sort of straightening impulsesand the, like, cultural violence
that comes out of this kind ofstory and the the backlash that
it engenders.
John Stadler (45:16):
Well, I hope you are down for a conversation
about dolls now because the thethird and final chapter here is
this delightful chapter aboutthe pee wee dolls, which became
collector's items. In part, Ithink we could argue because of
the cancellation of thesyndication, right, that all the
toys were pulled off the shelvesof Toys R Us and other toy
(45:39):
stores. And before we fully jumpinto it, I do have an anecdote,
which is that as a six or sevenyear old, I was begging my
parents for a pee wee doll forChristmas one year, and I got
one. I got one not from myparents, but for my aunts and
uncle. Aw.
But here's an example of howbratty I was, which maybe it was
(46:01):
informed by pee wee's sometimesbrattiness. I did not get a
speaking doll. I guess they werealso producing non speaking
dolls in the mid to lateeighties.
Cait McKinney (46:11):
Because a lot of parents do not want a loud toy
electronic toy that talks attheir house, which is very fair.
John Stadler (46:18):
Very understandable, but I was so
ungrateful. I, like, receivedthis delightful gift from my
relatives, and I just, like,immediately was like, where's
the pull string? It doesn'tfall. What what why would you
give me this? So, and I onlyremember that because my my aunt
told me that I was ungrateful,and I was so embarrassed as an
(46:39):
adult to be like, oh my god,Antlyn.
I'm so sorry. But, you know,since then, I have, remedied
this oversight on my relatives,and I have purchased, you know,
one of the original dolls thatthat should speak. But as your
chapter, astutely points out,almost none of the dolls today,
(46:59):
whether they originally spoke ornot, speak today. Right? But and
that's because they they haveall, for the most part, broken.
And you do this really amazingreading questioning that
brokenness. And and so I I'mwondering what brought you,
first of all, to want to acquireone of the dolls because it's
it's my understanding maybe webought ours at approximately the
(47:22):
same time, early twentytwenties. Yeah. And then how you
came to learn about, like, thehistory of their of their very
brokenness.
Cait McKinney (47:31):
So my partner, Hazel, has a non talking pee wee
doll that I've lived with alongwith her for ten years or so.
And when I started writing thisbook, I wanted a talking one. So
I ordered one on eBay around thesame time as you, John, and I
thought I knew that they wereall broken, but I hadn't kinda
thought about what that means.And I thought I would buy the
(47:54):
doll and maybe take it apart andrepair it and write something
about that process. And there'sall these, like, people online
who have fans who have tutorialsabout how to repair your broken
talking pee wee doll.
And the doll came, and I spent alot of time with it and sort of
researching the history of thesedolls and how they were
(48:17):
disappeared from toy storeshelves, but also became really
desired collector items amongstadults at the time that Paul
Reubens was arrested. So people,like, really adults really
wanted these dolls and wanted tokeep them and hold on to them.
And they're all broken in thesame way because okay. The dolls
have a tiny, like, phonograph orrecord player inside them made
(48:37):
of plastic. And what makes arecord spin at an even rotation
when you play it is a devicecalled a governor.
It just, like, makes the speedconsistent. So the governors in
all of these talking peeweedolls were basically, like,
defective. They were built insuch a way that they, like,
untensioned and stopped workingpretty quickly. So, like,
everyone's peewee doll isbroken, and all the ads on eBay
(48:58):
reselling these dolls are, like,you know, people have got
grabbed them at estate sales orpicked them from thrift stores
or whatever and are resellingthem to fans. They're like, the
doll is broken.
The voice sounds unintelligible.The doll screams. It's like his
voice is a nightmare. All thesedescriptions of this broken,
shrill, I think, like, quiteactually queer voice. So they're
all broken in the same way, butpeople hold on to them still.
(49:21):
And I was interested in the bookabout, like, thinking about what
it means to hold on to this,like, broken, worn out object
and to keep it and to care forit. And the doll bearing these
signs of, like, wear and of notbeing treated well, as a sort of
analogy for what happened to toReubens as well. Right? And the
desire that queer fans have to,like, keep the doll and hold on
(49:43):
to the broken doll is a way ofsort of holding on to the memory
of what happened to Reubens andwhat happened to Pee wee, in the
wake of the sex scandal whenthis show that was so important
to so many people kind ofdisappeared from the public
imagination.
John Stadler (49:58):
It's really beautiful, the the chapter and
the way that you you tie ittogether to the the controversy
around his arrest. My own doll,actually, also, the paint is
coming off on
Cait McKinney (50:08):
the top.
John Stadler (50:09):
Yeah. So he's actually a little bit bald,
which for the listeners, youwon't know this, but I'm a bald
man. So
Cait McKinney (50:15):
Oh, you match.
John Stadler (50:16):
Having a bald pee wee makes me love him even more.
Like, oh, he's just like me.
Cait McKinney (50:22):
Where where do you keep him normally, John?
John Stadler (50:24):
In my office.
Cait McKinney (50:25):
At work?
John Stadler (50:26):
Yeah. On campus. I keep him in my office. He
actually, you can't see it, butthere's, I have a shelf above my
desk, and he just sits therewatching me the whole time.
Cait McKinney (50:35):
Yeah. That's where I keep mine too. He sits
in my office just looking down.It's a nice, like, object that
students often ask about.
John Stadler (50:43):
Yeah. Very few of my students seem to know who Pee
Wee Herman is, so I was I wasactually struck by the fact that
some of yours did at least alittle bit. I imagine maybe some
of my older grad students mighthave some vague recollections to
him. But,
Cait McKinney (50:58):
It's not that they necessarily, like, know who
he is. They're just like, what'sthat weird doll?
John Stadler (51:03):
Yeah. What's that what's that weird doll? And
Cait McKinney (51:05):
then I get to explain it, which is a pleasure.
John Stadler (51:09):
Absolutely. I don't know. Are there things
that we haven't touched on? Ifeel like this has been really
informative and and delightfulto run through some of the the
highlights of the book.
Cait McKinney (51:20):
Yeah. I mean, I feel like we've covered a lot,
and it's been, like, a realpleasure to get to talk to you
about the book and, like, tosituate Kiwi's Playhouse and
queerness and our relationshipsto it past and present to get to
do that with you.
John Stadler (51:35):
I've enjoyed it so much. I I do have a final
question, though.
Cait McKinney (51:38):
Okay.
John Stadler (51:39):
Where do you think, like, the scholarship on
Pee wee Herman goes from here?Because Because I think you've
laid down a really amazingfoundation to think about Pee
wee. And one of the things thatthe book did that I was so
appreciative of was to point tothe, you know, somewhat limited
amount of scholarship that hasbeen done on him. You know, I'm
seeming to recall that there issome scholarship that occurred
(52:02):
in the in the nineteen eighties,but in the same way that Paul
Reubens kind of went away ordisappeared from the the popular
cultural memory. Seems likescholarship on him also kind of
Cait McKinney (52:14):
Mhmm. Disappeared for
John Stadler (52:15):
a while, which is why this book is so exciting to
have have out here in the world.Are there things that you wish,
like, you could have turned yourattention to or unwritten topics
that that you think wouldfollow-up from this?
Cait McKinney (52:30):
I mean, I would love to see, like, more people
do work on Pee wee's Playhouseand Pee wee Herman. I think
there's, like, a ton there, andI think it gets not taken up
because of the silence thathappens in response to the AIDS
crisis. It's not just cultural.It happens in academia too.
Right?
So I think this is a great textfor folks to return to, but I
(52:51):
hope that more than anything,what this book does is it gives
other scholars, especiallyyounger folks, like, permission
to sit with and think reallyseriously about things that they
love that might seem silly
John Stadler (53:04):
Yeah.
Cait McKinney (53:04):
Or not serious and to take them really
seriously, but to also, like, intheir writing and their analysis
to save space for their owndelightful and loving
connections to those texts.Like, I I would like this to
open up carve out morepermission for people to get to
do that because I think that'swhat keeps queer media studies
weird.
John Stadler (53:24):
Absolutely. And we need it to stay weird.
Cait McKinney (53:27):
Yes. Even though, weird as a word is maybe being
stolen by
John Stadler (53:32):
Oh, yeah.
Cait McKinney (53:33):
The Democrats right now.
John Stadler (53:35):
Yeah. It's a new insult, I guess.
Cait McKinney (53:37):
No. But I'm I'm gonna keep using it. So whatever
they can't they can't have it.
John Stadler (53:42):
They I mean, they can do what they want with it,
but I'm gonna keep it weird overhere.
Cait McKinney (53:47):
Yeah. Me too.
John Stadler (53:48):
Kate, thank you so much. This has been a been a
delight.
Cait McKinney (53:51):
Thank you, John. It was a pleasure.
Narrator (53:55):
This has been a University of Minnesota Press
production. The book I Know YouAre, But What Am I? On PeeWee
Herman by Kate McKinney isavailable from University of
Minnesota Press. Thank you forlistening.
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