Entertainment Makes You Queer
This was delayed by the death of Paul Reubens, not because it’s about him, but because I wouldn’t write stuff like this without him. Paul was more welcoming to me than any other CalArts alumn has been, and he was the closest to a representative to check on me when I dropped out, raped, vehicularly-assaulted, and freshly massively in debt with student loans. He was one of the first people I heard talk out loud about queer theory and code-switching and he applied both to all communities. I mean that he applied it this way while speaking to me, privately, or with me there in small groups, but it is also applied to all of his work. The Italian immigrant brothers who can’t shop in the quintessential American small town grocery, from Big Top Pee-wee? That we were never asked to ignore (some sometimes directly reminded) that the Pee-wee character wore (massive amounts of) makeup?
Paul Reubens is one of the happiest reasons I write essays about gay muscle comics, canon Donald Duck sissy hypno cartoons, Mauro Mariotti/Dale Lazarov collaborations, Goofus and Gallant, the original English-language Sailor Moon dub, and in all of that mix, I’m addressing the American CIA, Chilean socialism, Japanese x-gender, adult human insects, and imaginal gender-sexuality matrices the way someone might curate a box of novelties, old photos & semi-pro mail-order zines from the 1960s.
Entertainment does make you queer, and no one can tell you what makes queer.
Click on the pic and read you fools!
(I’m sorry I called you fools. You know I’m fooling, don’t you?)