Writes Jason Zinoman in "In Pee-wee Herman, Joy and Fun Got Flat-Out Weird/Paul Reubens committed to profound silliness without ever going mean or dark — though some peers were disappointed that he focused on one character" (NYT).
That awful arrest took place in 1991, O'Connor's tearing of a photograph of the Pope happened in 1992. If you lived though that era — the NYT considers it an entire "age"! — do you remember with any specificity the kind of "moralizing"? I remember the Robert Mapplethorpe photographs and the obscenity case against 2 Live Crew. I remember "Pornography is the theory, rape is the practice." If the "age" that is 1991-1992 is expansive enough to go back to 1985, I remember when 11-year-old Karenna Gore activated her mother by playing Prince's "Darling Nikki."
If only there were blogging back then! The "dopey moralizing scandals" — is that the right phrase? — of the time had to do with fearsome sexuality. I don't think it's wise to explain them as transitory dopiness. We can always predict that 3 decades later we will look back and think we were dumb, but it's also dumb to think that there's no worthy morality, just "dopey moralizing."
By the way, the opposite of "dopey" — which means stupefied by sleep or a drug — is "woke."
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37 comments:
"Indecent exposure in a porn theater"
I was birthing and nursing children in the '90s. I'm always surprised at how much of that decade is a blank to me.
“dopey moralizing scandals" a thing of the past?
Jeffery Toobin?
Pee-Wee started out with an adult humor parody of a school nerd. See HBO's Pee-wee Herman Show circa 1981, as well before his mainstream family film Pee-wee's Big Adventure (1985). If he'd stayed in adult humor the 1991 porn stuff wouldn't have mattered.
He'll probably be remembered for foreshadowing the 2020s push to have drag queens and other sexual content in elementary schools. But, he expressly toned it down to innocence as a non-groomer of nonsexual children. Will historians say "wise elder Pee-wee" in 1,000 years?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pee-wee_Herman
The specifics may change from decade to decade, but dopey moralizing scandals are always with us.
BTW, the 2 Live Crew hysteria birthed my favourite quote about free speech, from an Op-Ed published in The Gainesville Sun: “heroes of the first amendment are always inconvenient.”
Moralizing? I remember that not yet President guy didn’t inhale. I remember Tipper stickers. I remember President Didn’t Inhale did not have ‘sex’ with ‘that woman’.
The NYT doesn’t. To quote the great moralizer of the time How Convenient…
Google ‘Satanic Panic’ and ‘McMartin Preschool’ for a dopey extravaganza exceeded only by the Salem Witch Trials three hundred years previous. American dopiness is simultaneously transitory and timeless.
Our memories, like our love lives and eating habits, are selective.
Paul Reubens was an intelligent and engaging artist. He should have gotten better treatment, both for his foibles and his illness. When you sacrifice your anonymity for fame you are expected to be a saint, especially if you appeal to children.
Harsh and sad, but true. Humans are brutal.
Here's an early stage performance of Pee Wee's Playhouse featuring the sorely-missed Phil Hartman, another dead guy whose passing I regret.
The loss of Reubens to cancer now leaves only one practitioner of meta-comedy standing. (Or slithering, depending on one's tastes.) Too bad it's Sasha Baron Cohen. I must admit his insanity knocked me out of my seat -- once, only once -- but Pee Wee Herman was always delightful in a confusing sort of way. To me, watching Pee Wee's Playhouse was like sex with a girl that didn't exactly kindle my fire, if you know what I mean. I'd sit there, with the end credits rolling, and I'd realize I enjoyed the previous half-hour without actually laughing.
"“dopey moralizing scandals" a thing of the past?"
He didn't say that. He said “dopey moralizing scandals" are not just a thing of the present.
He said “dopey moralizing scandals" are not just a thing of the present.
Today they mostly come from the Progressives, but I doubt that’s what he means.
“By the way, the opposite of ‘dopey’ — which means stupefied by sleep or a drug — is ‘woke.’”
Heads you win, tails I lose.
A rare sighting of "pounced" not preceded by "republicans."
Male sexual faux pas and oddities are denigrated. Women's are celebrated. The sexual needs of the white male must be denigrated, made especially easier if they're prurient in any way.
The media pounces.
What separated the 1991/1992 era of moralizing from what we've got today is Bill Clinton. The dangers of sex were aggressively forgotten and it became you have a problem if you have a problem with blow jobs.
Althouse writes, "What separated the 1991/1992 era of moralizing from what we've got today is Bill Clinton."
We wonder what Althouse the feminist thought of other feminists offering blow jobs as rewards for defending abortion?
I actually prefer dopey moralizing about sexual behavior and misbehavior to dopey moralizing about what words you use. In the case of sexual misbehavior, at least some of the time there is an actual wrong to be righted. Pornography, for instance - yes, I know there are "legitimate" porn actors. But in the Internet age, can there be any doubt that a huge amount of "hot amateur pron" is coerced, and with underage participants? I'm contrast, point me to the "actual harm" behind calling a person who presents publicly as a butch woman "she." Or behind asking whether a history class is being taught through a CRT lens. Or behind questioning the advisability of pushing a slogan that, if implemented, would result in reducing policing in high-crime neighborhoods.
OTOH, what would constitute wise moralizing? Especially in a society in which we no longer have shared morals? I know the New Atheists with the human thriving and all have believed "we" can develop them without recourse to religion, but at least some of those folks are realizing now that in the absence of religion, you get woke, or green, or other ersatz religions that haven't been pummeled by time and crisis into something that more or less works to guide people's behavior constructively, and the payoff is terribly destructive behavior instead.
Generation Democrat Swine!
Long live Pee Wee!
The dangers of sex were aggressively forgotten and it became you have a problem if you have a problem with blow jobs.
Clinton was the straw that broke the camel's back, but the aggressive forgetting came with the Pill, ISTM. I'm a broken record on this subject (I recently asked my kids if they knew exactly what that phrase meant, and then explained it, because they didn't), but - the Sexual Revolution redounded to the benefit of men, not women. It just meant that women were expected happily to give the milk away for free, which - there's another phrase my kids probably don't know the whole of.
And then it became not just giving the milk away in terms of vanilla sex, but if you didn't participate in whatever kinks, you were (are) no longer the "frigid" of the '50s and prior, but hopelessly "upright," probably mentally troubled, certainly an object of derision (as opposed to frustration, like the frigid girls). And now? Hey, lesbian, if you don't want to have your kind of sex with a person whose dead-end vagina was made from an inside-out penis and who has to take daily hormones to fend off five o'clock shadow, you're a bigot! Hey, straight guy, if the woman you pick up in a bar or pay for a quick backseat BJ (you know, "sex work is work," respect "sex workers," calling them "prostitutes" is bigotry) happens to have a dick and that kills the moment for you, you're a bigot!
Jordan Peterson, among others not expressly affiliated with him, would say that the Sexual Revolution benefited high status men, who now have access to all the - digging deep for old terminology here - poontang they want because even the high-status women can no longer refuse sex (the message being "Yes, I'm worth even more than you think") lest they be mocked and pitied for their lack of "sex positivity" and personal liberation from the chains of the patriarchy.
Grrrr.
Paul's indecent exposure stint happened here in Sarasota. I lived here previously 30 or so years ago (back now for good). 30 years ago this was a very small town, extremely quiet for the most part. I remember that theater (no longer there) from the outside only. It held a certain fame around here while it was up. But...he was well-loved here. Still is. Local mags and news are all writing nice things about him.
Reviewing clips of him remind me just how funny, and brilliant, his act was.
Too bad you weren't blogging back them. No doubt many of your commenters would want to castrate him and hang him by his dick.
imagine, i you CAN..
An era when people had to leave their homes to be able to masturbate to porn?
An era when porn didn't follow you home?
An era when encouraging 11 & 12 year olds to dress as drag queens, and twerk for tips WASN'T acceptable?
I first encountered Pee Wee Herman in two Cheech and Chong movies, in Next Movie, 1980 & Nice Dreams, 1981.
I recall thinking the scene set in a Chinese restaurant late at night, with everyone wasted on pot and Pee Wee taking them under the table to do some blow, while ordering more Chinese food from the unflappable waiter, as being hilarious to me back then. It all worked out in the end, though .
So when Reuben's kid's show first came to my attention, I was a bit amused at the casting.
Looks like those were all indeed the slippery slopes moralists warned us about. We've fallen down them and can't get up.
What was great about Pee Wee was his confidence in his vision and his absolute obliviousness to judgment.
Looking back from today's insanity, pedophilia, naked bike parades in front of children, and grade school tranny shows...today, it certainly feels like Pee Wee was a victim of stone throwing.
Feel bad for him. But, at the time, although speckled with adult humor, Pee Wee's Playhouse was kind of a kids show. Imagine if Captain Kangaroo or Mr. Rogers got arrested masturbating at a porn house?
There was less tolerance for the sexualization of children 30 years ago, or their early exposure to it. Liberals have normalized it which amplifies what happened to Paul Reubens as a gross injustice.
Looking back from today's insanity, pedophilia, naked bike parades in front of children, and grade school tranny shows...today, it certainly feels like Pee Wee was a victim of stone throwing.
Feel bad for him. But, at the time, although speckled with adult humor, Pee Wee's Playhouse was kind of a kids show. Imagine if Captain Kangaroo or Mr. Rogers got arrested masturbating at a porn house?
There was less tolerance for the sexualization of children 30 years ago, or their early exposure to it. Liberals have normalized it which amplifies what happened to Paul Reubens as a gross injustice.
Blogger Ann Althouse said...
What separated the 1991/1992 era of moralizing from what we've got today is Bill Clinton.
Bill Clinton changed everything and exposed left wing feminists for what they really are. Complete hypocrites. At the time the effort to fire men in power positions for playing with the subordinates was in full swing. But Clinton was given a pass by feminists, and Monica was slut shamed by them. Abortion is EVERYTHING.
Clinton's affair with Lewinsky started the trajectory, but feminists but it into warp speed. For them it's not about any type of moral principle. It is about using sexual behavior as a weapon when it suits their purpose.
Somehow the transgenderism and sexualization of children aligns with their current feminist politics.
Paul Reubens was loved in his hometown Sarasota. I'm not one to defend predators. He wasn't one. He was arrested at a virtually quaint, old-school porn theater (he probably stood out in the octogenarian crowd) that required ID to keep minors out. How do I know this? Schoolmates of mine tried to go there for a laugh.
His child porn charge was suspicious too. He collected very old magazines that likely exist in university collections too.
Before either of these scandals, I tried to get him enough votes to be our college graduation speaker. He had legitimate ties to the school, having trained in and supported the theater community nearby that provided us resources and art, and he still spent a lot of time in the city.
But Pee Wee lost out as invited graduation speaker to the defense attorney defending the already-much-released serial sex torturer and later serial killer who had already torn my life apart one night. So instead of joy and happiness, I had to sit on my hands at my own graduation listening to this ghoul literally brag about getting my rapist and others back on the streets, so long as they were black men. Meanwhile, Reubens quietly made a point to hire and promote great black talent, and the A-list of black actors who started on his show is pretty incredible.
I wept when I heard about Reubens' death. Losing him, and Norm MacDonald has taken a weird type of innocence and even weirder type of artistic integrity from us. To me, Reubens will always be a metaphor for the many paths not taken over the last several decades. We had a moment to celebrate joy and community. We chose to fetishize the worst criminals, destroy communities, and ramp up racial animosity.
In 1984, my mother forced us to attend a protest against the Santa suit slasher movie "Silent Night, Deadly Night." The 80s were full of weird moralizing, mostly aimed at fearful mothers like mine.
I'm a cradle-Catholic and mostly didn't care about Sinead's Pope stunt. I thought it was a little weird, but figured the pope could take care of himself. Plus, I didn't give a s*** what some dopey pop singer thought about anything.
It's so charming and sweet to see 'morals' mentioned.
Yes, he got arrested for masturbating in a porn theater in the 90s. Today you can crap on the sidewalk….progress!
"Pee-Wee's Playhouse" was a particularly favorite Saturday morning TV show of mine - in fact I recall it being a favorite among a small number of my classmates at the time. It was cutesy and clean enough for younger children, and campy enough for us high schoolers to find it amusing. I thought it was brilliant. Little did we know that Lawrence Fishburne and Kate Pierson would become household names very shortly. I happily shelled out for tickets to see "Pee-Wee's Big Adventure", taking my sister with me. We loved it.
As for the moralizing trends of the late 80s and early 90s, the whole thing struck me as theater directed at the "rubes in flyover country" (vis a vis anyone with a well-tuned moral compass). It was the same group of people who were on their soapboxes over song lyrics, but then gave full throated support to Robert Mapplethorpe's art shows, and the movie, "The Last Temptation of Christ". These people made fun of the many Americans who saw these things as degenerate and blasphemous, and steppingstones to the point at which we are all now standing.
Even back then as a pre-teen I remember thinking, why didn't he just do it at home with a VHS in private?
Too bad you weren't blogging back them. No doubt many of your commenters would want to castrate him and hang him by his dick.
Your ability to read peoples' minds is incredible. No doubt.
How do you do it?
Am I the only one who thinks of Peter Paul Reubens?
Paul Reubens' Peter.
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