I Know You Are, but What Am I?
On Pee-wee Herman
Seiten
2024
University of Minnesota Press (Verlag)
978-1-5179-1828-6 (ISBN)
University of Minnesota Press (Verlag)
978-1-5179-1828-6 (ISBN)
How Pee-wee and his playhouse help us reimagine our relationships to technology
I Know You Are, but What Am I? explores the cultural legacy of Pee-wee Herman, the cult television star of Pee-wee’s Playhouse. This children’s show—that was also for adults—ran on network TV from 1986 to 1990 and starred comedian Paul Reubens as Herman, a queer man-boy whose playhouse, the set for the show, was tricked out with a profusion of animate computational toys and technologies.
Cait McKinney shows how three defining scenes from the show inform, and even foretell and challenge, our present moment: the playhouse as an alternative precursor to networked smart homes that foregrounds caring and ethical relationships between humans and technologies; a reparative retelling of Reubens’s career-wrecking 1991 arrest for indecent exposure inside a Florida adult film theater as part of an AIDS-phobic, antigay sting operation; and worn-out, Talking Pee-wee dolls and their broken afterlives on eBay and YouTube.
McKinney looks at how queer people who were children in the 1980s remember and relate to Pee-wee now, showing that the moral panic about sexuality, gender, and children from the past can help us refute anti-trans and anti-queer political movements organized today.
I Know You Are, but What Am I? explores the cultural legacy of Pee-wee Herman, the cult television star of Pee-wee’s Playhouse. This children’s show—that was also for adults—ran on network TV from 1986 to 1990 and starred comedian Paul Reubens as Herman, a queer man-boy whose playhouse, the set for the show, was tricked out with a profusion of animate computational toys and technologies.
Cait McKinney shows how three defining scenes from the show inform, and even foretell and challenge, our present moment: the playhouse as an alternative precursor to networked smart homes that foregrounds caring and ethical relationships between humans and technologies; a reparative retelling of Reubens’s career-wrecking 1991 arrest for indecent exposure inside a Florida adult film theater as part of an AIDS-phobic, antigay sting operation; and worn-out, Talking Pee-wee dolls and their broken afterlives on eBay and YouTube.
McKinney looks at how queer people who were children in the 1980s remember and relate to Pee-wee now, showing that the moral panic about sexuality, gender, and children from the past can help us refute anti-trans and anti-queer political movements organized today.
Cait McKinney is assistant professor of communication at Simon Fraser University. They are author of Information Activism: A Queer History of Lesbian Media Technologies and coeditor of Inside Killjoy's Kastle: Dykey Ghosts, Feminist Monsters, and other Lesbian Hauntings.
Erscheinungsdatum | 24.08.2024 |
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Reihe/Serie | Forerunners: Ideas First |
Verlagsort | Minnesota |
Sprache | englisch |
Maße | 127 x 178 mm |
Gewicht | 113 g |
Themenwelt | Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Film / TV |
Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie ► Gender Studies | |
ISBN-10 | 1-5179-1828-6 / 1517918286 |
ISBN-13 | 978-1-5179-1828-6 / 9781517918286 |
Zustand | Neuware |
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