"Not too much culture, please. I'm on my holiday."
George de la Pena, Nijinsky
Let me be the first to come out and say it loud, say it proud: Martha Stewart is, at least for most queers, officially over: over-hyped, over-blown, over-exposed. Although long accused of having notoriously short attention spans (indeed, this is something we are proud to share with our pre-millennial/post-cultural heterosexual counterparts), queers have tolerated la Stewart for longer than humanly possible. We have, thank goodness, finally moved on.
So who is the current flavor of the month for discerning homosexuals? Well, it's not media darling Christopher Lowell, the host of his eponymous decorating show (formerly titled "Interior Motives") on cable's Discovery Channel. Dear Chris started out promisingly enough, quipping that he was "Martha Stewart with a pulse" and setting out to prove it. His television show combines useful, budget-conscious home decorating projects with Lowell's own ebullient personality that was (and still is) a far cry from Martha's eerily subdued ease.
However, as fame is wont to do, Lowell's ego outgrew his show, and his personality turned from self-conscious camp to a grinning stereotype of outright flaming faggotry. As well, Lowell isn't exactly Mr. Inclusiveness with regard to bringing other "family" members onto his show. When he does, Lowell becomes a nauseatingly touchy-feely screaming queen who can't resist referring to his guests as "Miss Thing" or "Girlfriend." For this reason, I'm sure, he doesn't count nor covet overt homosexuals as his audience (not that any self-respecting homosexual would be caught dead publicly admitting that they, for example, used paper grocery bags to stipple-paint their walls).
Lowell, like Stewart, instead panders exclusively to hapless heterosexuals who benefit from his sage advice, knowing in the back of their minds that they are learning from a bona fide expert because, as everyone knows, queers are born with both decorating genes and genius. To hold court with the Queen, therefore (as prince Hamlet put it), is an honor devoutly to be wished.
It may come as a surprise, then, that postmodern queers have moved past the interior design and gracious living showcases that inform daytime television's queer presence in favor of something more surreal, subversive, camp, and most importantly, prime time. 1 We now tune in religiously to the alternately hip, cutting-edge, surprisingly intellectual, but still decidedly hilarious low-brow offerings on Cartoon Network.
Having said this, it is not just queers that are tuning in for a nightly cartoon "fix." Indeed Cartoon Network, the recent (and many would agree, mutant) offspring of venerable cartoon factory Hanna-Barbera and cable giant Time Warner, has amassed a stable full of shows perfectly suited for a broad pre-millennial audience of both kids and adults. These shows, which include "The Powerpuff Girls," "Cow and Chicken," "I. M. Weasel," "Dexter's Laboratory," and "Johnny Bravo," have achieved instant icon status from both Generations X and Y (comprising ages 18-34). Brandweek magazine columnist Becky Ebenkamp notes that "[r]esearch by the Time-Warner network found that the late-night talk show ('Space Ghost') skewed toward an 18-34-year-old crowd (72%), with the remainder split between ages 12-17 (15%) and 35-plus (12%)".2 The talk-show incarnation of "Space Ghost," a true exercise in postmodernity, is a long-running and long-standing success for Cartoon Network, but one can easily surmise that this same demographic is also tuning in to the earlier shows that comprise the prime-time lineup.
What exactly is the across-the-spectrum appeal of these supposed "kiddie" shows? New York interior designer Craig Yoe notes that from a merchandising standpoint, "(t)he toy collector mentality among adults was driven by baby boomers who don't want to grow up and go to work, so they decorate their desks with Happy Meal premiums/ Now, this regressive-comfort trend is being handed down to Gen X and beyond."3 While I believe Yoe's observation to be somewhat oversimplified, nevertheless,
for a wide demographic that encompasses Generations X, Y and Baby Boomers, there is a notable "cool" factor associated with being in tune with "kiddie culture." Far from viewing their predisposition towards cartoons and "kiddie" merchandise
as alternately immature or prematurely nostalgic, this demographic instead per-formatively valorizes these cartoons as something "cool." Viewers are therefore easier able to revel in the subversive elements of "becoming cool," and in so doing, have chosen shows that perfectly encapsulate this predilection.
Are there elements of performativity and postmodernity in cartoons? Absolutely. Jean-François Lyotard's The Postmodern Condition defines "postmodern" as:
…that which, in the modern, puts forward the unpresentable in presentation itself; that which denies itself the solace of good forms, the consensus of a taste which would make it possible to share collectively the nostalgia for the unattainable; that which searches for new presentations, not in order to enjoy them but in order to impart a stronger sense of the unpresentable.4
Lyotard's "modern" refers to the Marxian historical present in which the postmodern must anxiously coexist as "other" to the modern "self," and what better media, then, to represent or more accurately seek representation of "self" and "other"? Whether or not cartoons are "good forms" is, of course, debatable, but like them or hate them, cartoons have within them a universality that both represents us and allows us to transcend this "representation."
Moreover, the very acts of presentation and representation hinge on the mechanisms of performativity made famous (or, in many quarters, infamous) in philosopher Judith Butler's pathbreaking study Gender Trouble. This performativity entails a multi-level conscious desire for coherence that, in Butler's words, "almost already" presumes a corporeal body from which identities are manufactured and sustained through discourse. Quoth Butler, "reality is fabricated as an interior discourse, that very interiority is an effect and function of a decidedly public and social discourse, the public regulation of fantasy through the surface politics of the body, the gender border control that differentiates inner from outer, and so institutes the 'integrity' of the subject."5 In other words, individual reality is created on the inside but is then subject to "public" concepts of reality. To borrow from Descartes, you may think you are, but that's the extent of it. After the initial conception, "You" become a public creation. Confused already? Don't be.
Lyotard's definition is particularly useful in looking at (on many levels) the innate subversiveness of cartoons in general and, in particular, the prime-time offerings from Cartoon Network. That these shows successfully deploy a curious mixture of puerile "potty" humor and barely sub-textual irony is a testament to both their appeal and continuing "cool" factor. For purposes of further explication, I will look at a cartoon that closely falls within Lyotard's postmodern and Butler's performative paradigms: the Emmy™-nominated "Cow and Chicken."
"Cow and Chicken" begins every three- or four-episode show with a rollicking theme song that beautifully (and simply!) mirrors Judith Butler's identity performativity: "Mama had a chicken, Mama had a cow. Dad was proud, he didn't care how!" Cow is for all practical purposes a model prepubescent "girl", never mind that "she" is also a 600-pound heifer. "Her" big "brother" Chicken is a typical pre-teen "boy" whose two human best friends, Flem and Earl, don't seem to notice or be bothered by the fact that "he" is also… well… poultry. Cow and Chicken's "parents" further project the surreal atmosphere by virtue of their hemispherically-challenged visual rendering (both "Mom" and "Dad" are shown from the waist down and are gender-inflected by virtue of only voice and attire-"Dad" is always "portrayed" with long pants and "Mom" wears a typical suburban housewife frock). Rounding out the list of "regular" cast members is The Red Guy, an ambisexual echt-devil whose sole (albeit hilarious) purpose on the show (he also regularly appears on the "Cow and Chicken" spin-off, "I. M. Weasel") is to seduce the main characters into his various and sundry schemes.
Not surprisingly, the wildly "abnormal normality" of Cow's and Chicken's world has already drawn the attentions and raised the ire of those most "uncool" entities, concerned parents. In a recent George magazine article prominently titled "The New Kiddie Porn," Maomi Wolfs notes that "today's cartoons are purely nihilistic: (t)he kids on Cartoon Network are fre-quently hostile to their parents; the parents are frequently savage and unjust to the kids; the children are cruel to one another; and, believe it or not, the animals have secondary sexual characteristics." Wolfs pays particularly close attention to Cow "and her red udder, whose enormous teats are drawn in such a way that their movement is central to the action," worrying about the messages that Cartoon Network original programs send out to "impressionable" children.6
Wolfs's criticisms about overt depictions of sexuality in cartoons are certainly not new. Hardly a year goes by without the "expert contributors" to various news items voicing concerns about violence in Bugs Bunny and/or Road Runner, subliminal sex messages in Disney Cartoons and so forth. But let's just assume, for argument's sake, that Wolfs's complaints have some validity. Quoting from the "Cow and Chicken" press kit, she notes that "(a)t seven years old, Cow has already achieved physical bovine maturity, as evidenced by "her" well-pronounced udders; however, she maintains the emotional innocence of a little girl." Wolfs rhetorically queries, "Grossed out yet? Worried about your daughters getting early messages from the culture about the value and meaning of their sexual development?"7 Cow's "normal" depiction as a mature cow, coupled with "her" "abnormal" depiction as a little "girl," performatively deconstructs and displaces "reality." This, no doubt, lies at the heart of Wolfs's concerns.
It is this very displacement that opens Cow to widespread cultural identification. Judith Butler, weighing in on gender parody, observes: "This perpetual displacement constitutes a fluidity of identities that suggests an openness to resignification and recontextualization; parodic proliferation deprives hegemonic culture and its critics of the claim to naturalized or essentialist gender identities."8 Simply put, the notion of identity (be it of sexuality, sex, gender, or even "being") isn't fixed, and because of that, identity can be continually re-invented. This calls the very idea of "natural" into question, because nothing can be categorically pigeonholed as de facto "natural." It is therefore perfectly acceptable for Cow to be identified as a mature bovine, a seven-year-old "girl", a combination of both-or as the formation of an entirely new identity outside the performative strictures the viewer, by hegemonic default, imposes on "her."
Having sorted out Cow's performative condition, we can now move to "her" "brother" Chicken. Chicken's persona is that of an 11-year-old "boy," but animator David Feiss ups the postmodern ante as regards his "identity." Because Chicken is on the cusp of puberty, "his" gender identity roles are in a perpetual state of flux. While Cow, viewed age-wise as a seven-year-old "girl," is only infrequently subject to the throes of gender "assignment" ("her" main concerns are finding and keeping best friends, plus occasional fleeting schoolgirl crushes on tacitly identifiable "human" boys), Chicken regularly experiences "normal" pubescent gender crises involving not only "his" "given" maleness but also "his" sexuality.9 Feiss, noting that "the idea for the cartoon emerged out of bedtime stories (I) told (my) daughter," no doubt drew upon these experiences in order to portray Chicken's "teen years." 10
Two "Cow and Chicken" episodes, in particular, eloquently illustrate Chicken's angst-ridden, incipient puberty: "The Molting Fairy" (air date August 5, 1997) and "The Girl's Bathroom" (air date September 16, 1997). While the storyline for "The Molting Fairy" is concerned with Chicken's molting as a sign of maturity, it is handled by his "Mom" and "Dad" as if it were the first (human) chest or pubic hair "stubble." The Molting Fairy, Chicken's version of the Tooth Fairy, is another scheming incarnation of The Red Guy.
Although initially ashamed by "his" copious feather loss, Chicken, noting that Cow gets $1 from the Tooth Fairy for each tooth, unilaterally deduces that the Molting Fairy should pay $1 per feather. In so doing, Chicken assuages "his" pubescent anxiety with something imminently more useful, greed. Thus Chicken, anticipating a financial windfall, begins to collect his feathers and then proceeds to the county fair. "He" runs up a series of hefty IOUs extracted with the promise of repayment after a visit from the Molting Fairy. Not surprisingly, Chicken's money-grubbing scheme backfires (the Molting Fairy pays $1 for all the feathers) and "his" creditors exact ironic revenge: they "tar and feather" "him" using boiling glue pots and the now-worthless IOUs.
Of course for Chicken, the punishment of tarring and feathering befits the "crimes" of displaced puberty and misplaced greed. "He" learns, through pain, lessons about both ill-gotten material gains and bodily awareness, thus echoing Freud's assertion in The Ego and the Id that: "Pain seems to play a part in the process [of bodily self-discovery and ego formation], and the way in which we gain new knowledge of our organs during painful illnesses is perhaps a model of the way by which in general we arrive at the idea of our own body."11 Chicken's physical and mental "maladies" (typified by his pubescent anxiety and creditor troubles) performatively emerge as Freudian "illnesses" that bring about an apotheosis of pain. Thereby, the experiences both with pain and of pain subsequently heals, and as a result, makes Chicken more representationally aware of "himself."
While "The Molting Fairy" is masterfully executed, "The Girl's Bathroom" episode is, for Chicken, a performative tour de force. Ostensibly, the plot hinges around "normative" pubescent curiosity and peer pressure to answer the age-old question, "What's so special about the girls' restroom?" Chicken, along with friends Flem and Earl, dare each other to "be a man" and enter the forbidden territory, with Chicken being the "lucky" one who takes up the dare (after drawing-literally-the best "straw"). That "he" is the only one "man enough" to enter the decidedly off-limits area is, in itself, quite ironic, but once Chicken enters, "he" is overawed all levels by his exposure to difference. After mounting a Tom Cruise/"Mission Impossible"-type infiltration, Chicken radios to the waiting Flem and Earl, "I think I've found the Queen's Throne!" Climbing into this "special" toilet stall, "he" notices a tasseled cord which, of course, "he" pulls. Chicken is spun around on the toilet seat, covered in lipstick and rouge, and his chicken "comb" is coiffured into a fetching 'do, instantly transforming "him" into a Shirley Temple-esque creation, complete with lollipop.
After this initial "change" two other ropes subsequently appear bearing signs reading "Pull THIS ONE" and "NOT THIS ONE." Chicken, of course, reacts angrily to this "challenge," responding "Oh YEAH?" and pulls the forbidden rope. The "consequences," not surprisingly, are swift. After some ominous whistles and bells, followed by another sign that reads "You Asked For It," the toilet makeup mechanism goes into overdrive, repeatedly spinning Chicken around, only stopping long enough to show off his reincarnations as cartoonish femme fatales ("he" "becomes" an erstwhile Hillary Rodham Clinton, Meryl Streep, and Jessica Rabbit, among others). Rather than reacting with horror in response to his desexualization and recontextualization, Chicken views "himself" in a mirror and purrs, "Not bad!"
The scene then flash-forwards to the next morning, with Cow and a line of girls waiting outside the "Queen's stall." To Chicken's obvious horror, Cow attempts to enter, forcing "him" to find the only "logical" exit-flushing "himself" down the toilet. Rather than being humiliatingly "flushed out" by the girls, "he" is instead expelled into the school sewer system where "he" re-emerges in a fetid containment pond. After exposure to the sugar-and-spice world of the girl's bathroom, the newly revealed Chicken is hence lurched back to "normality." "His" punishment per se of being in deep shit (no pun intended) can therefore be read on two levels: for every gender "crossing" there are dire consequences, or, on a more simplistic level, "his" odoriferous re-emergence reifies his "boyish" "normality."
Given the broad appeal and concomitant criticism of Cartoon Network's cartoons, it is evident that they do not exist merely on a single visual level. Instead, there is within these shows a considerable visceral subtext, that while not overtly directed at the viewer, is nevertheless omnipresent. Each cartoon carries with it a "message" that can easily be transported and transmuted by the individual, constructing for the viewer a unique version of "representation." The "task" of Cartoon Network's performative postmodern condition, thus, becomes "not to celebrate each and every new possibility qua possibility, but to re-describe those possibilities that already exist, but which exist within cultural domains designated as culturally unintelligible and impossible."12
Therefore, through openness and tacit acceptance of the "abnormal normality" extant within the boundaries of these "simple" cartoons, individual and group "realities" can thus be re-created, re-signified, and re-presented. Tune in next time to see for yourself!
1 There is something to be said, however, for the television show "Men in Toolbelts" currently running on cable's The Learning Channel (TLC). Rather than working within the stereotypically queer field of interior design, hosts Ed Feldman and Joe L'Erario (who can also be found at ) are trade carpenters and general handymen who bring to their show an overtly campy humor. While Feldman and L'Erario are not "out" nor identifiably gay, their hilarious banter replete with references to show tunes, homages to pop icons such as Bettie Page, and winking comments such as "We're measuring this for a queen-sized bed. Oh, and speaking of queens…!" marks them as definitively queer.
2 Becky Ebenkamp, "Subtextual Cels," Brandweek 40.23 (1999): 38.
3 Ibid., 38.
4 Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1997): 81.
5 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble (New York: Routledge, 1990): 136.
6 Maomi Wolfs, "The New Kiddie Porn," George 4.2 (1999): 42.
7 Ibid., 42.
8 Butler, 138.
9 The only episode that overtly addresses Cow's gender "identification" is "Horn Envy." Cow has developed a crush on human boy Craig but cannot seem to capture his attention because, as Cow's girlfriends ribbingly suggest, "her" "horns" aren't big enough. From this point forward, Cow becomes obsessed with getting bigger "horns," and this quest culminates when "she" steals a pair of deer antlers from the "Racks Museum." Cow arrives at school wearing the oversized horns only to discover that one of "her" girlfriends has already captured Craig's heart. This leads Cow to histrionically cry out, "Ann has stolen Craig from me, AND SHE DOESN'T EVEN HAVE ANY HORNS! I will NEVER LOVE ANOTHER BOY AGAIN EVER!!!!!" However, she instantly calms down and remarks to another girlfriend, "Let's go play jump rope," thus suggesting that (at least to "her" seven-year-old mind) in the grand scheme of things, love is just another game played with no lasting consequences.
10 qtd. in Wolfs, 42.
11 Sigmund Freud, The Ego and the Id, trans. Joan Rivere (New York: Norton, 1989): 25-26.
12 Butler, 148-149.
