![]() ![]() “The Simpsons,” “Family Guy,” and “SpongeBob SquarePants,” with their breakneck pacing and throwaway absurdities, owe Reubens a debt, too.Īt the center of this cheerful frenzy was Pee-wee: pale of face, red of bow tie, and dressed in a suit several sizes too small. The series’ archness drove its rat-a-tat-tat rhythms-Hi, Chairry! Hi, Conky! Let’s dance! Tito, what’s shaking? How ’bout a cartoon?-which either mimicked or induced short attention spans. Nearly every corner of the Playhouse was animate: Mr. There was also Pterri (a pterodactyl), Conky (a robot), Randy (a pugnacious red-headed marionette), and Globey (a globe). Green Jeans, Bunny Rabbit-Pee-wee had dozens upon dozens: the aforementioned Tito, Miss Yvonne (“the most beautiful woman in Puppetland”), Captain Carl, Cowboy Curtis, the King of Cartoons, Reba the Mail Lady, Jambi the genie. ![]() The show was aware of its own tropes, a pioneer of TV irony alongside “Late Night with David Letterman.” Where Captain Kangaroo had a handful of sidekicks-Mr. Did kids watch it, too? They must have, since CBS kept it on for five seasons with all due respect to Reubens and Pee-wee, there couldn’t have been that many young adults willing to watch TV at ten o’clock on a Saturday morning. “Pee-wee’s Playhouse” was my and many of my cohort’s first acquaintanceship with so-called appointment television. ![]() The medium, in those days, was still mostly in thrall to mediocrity. I was in my late twenties when Reubens’s series began its Saturday-morning run. Just as “Barbie” (in tandem with “ Oppenheimer,” its marketplace Ken) appears to have reawakened a love of moviegoing, “Pee-wee’s Playhouse” was a reminder in its day that TV could be worth watching-at least, it was if you were me. I should also note that the series’ proudly ersatz vibe emerged not in a vacuum but rather from a contemporary atmosphere thick with retro New Wave bands, Kenny Scharf paintings, Pyramid Club drag shows, and zines full of clip art. Pee-wee’s lifeguard pal Tito, evincing no personality beyond shirtlessness, has a dollop of Ken in him-the circle of kitsch, if you will. Barbie predated Pee-wee Herman by several decades, and the Dreamhouse aesthetic was certainly part of the plastic postwar clutter that inspired the Playhouse. Influence can be a two-way street, however. The show, which aired on CBS between 19, was funny, knowing, refreshing. Back in the nineteen-eighties, when postmodernism was still fresh and dewy, “Pee-wee’s Playhouse” staked out similar territory: a self-conscious riff on mid-century children’s television and, simultaneously, a relatively sincere reboot of the genre. With a Pepto-Bismol-meets-aspartame production design and an arch, winking take on both Barbieland and the so-called real world, the film is at once a sendup and an earnest tribute to (not to mention a two-hour commercial for) a sixty-four-year-old toy. Think of Gerwig’s Barbie as Pee-wee Herman’s great-niece. There is a debt, conscious or not, small but true. Greta Gerwig’s spectacularly popular film wouldn’t exist in quite the same way, I don’t think, without the example of “Pee-wee’s Playhouse,” the ostensible kids’ show that Reubens created and starred in as his signature character and seeming alter ego, Pee-wee Herman. ![]() I hope Paul Reubens was well enough to see “Barbie” before he died this past Sunday, at the age of seventy, following six years of privately battling cancer. ![]()
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