Gay radio station Gaydar has named Bugs Bunny "at number five in their Top 10 gay cartoon characters," reports DailyRecord.co.uk. The #1 spot (no surprise) is Waylon Smithers, Monty Burns' assistant on The Simpsons. Also included are "He-Man, Yogi Bear, Velma from Scooby Doo, Snoopy's pal Peppermint Patty and the entire cast of South Park."
London paper The Evening Standard expands on this story, adding that Bugs Bunny's attributes that supposedly make him "gay" are: "He cross-dresses, he loves opera and has a very cute behind. What's not gay about that?"
''Maybe we're projecting our own fantasies on to [these characters]," Gaydar says. "But they are the gayest cartoon characters in the world.''
Thing is, Bugs went for the ladies more than once in his WB cartoon career. He had a very hetero sex drive. As for cross-dressing, usually it was done not to achieve a sexual thrill, but to foil Elmer Fudd. And there's nothing gay about loving opera!
Peppermint Patty and Marcie, though...Mad ran a very funny piece when Schulz died, of the "Peanuts strips that never got published," in which Charlie Brown collects his payoff from the Mob for throwing all those baseball games, among other things. One of the strips showed Pappermint Patty and Marcie (who continually calls PP "Sir") packing up the Melissa Ethridge albums on their way to San Francisco.
I've always thought that pondering about a cartoon character's sexual preference was an exercise in futility. It's just tongue in cheek and not really meant to spend time dwelling on.
It's just some small radio station getting more press than I'm sure they'd imagined from some flippant remarks.
Nevertheless, I cannot support the claim Bugs is gay.
Bugs does cross-dress sometimes -- usually as part of some clever deception, although sometimes I'm puzzled why he finds cross-dressing specifically to be a necessary part of his scheme. I mean, why is it necessary? In any case, the success of Bugs' cross-dressing demonstrates that -- in his world --heterosexual men are fools, easily duped by literally anything in a skirt (even a rabbit).
A far greater number of comedy heroes would use cross-dressing as a ploy against their opponents if they shared Bugs' advantage; Bugs is a cartoon. Successful cross-dressing is much more easy for a cartoon rabbit than it would be for, say, George Clooney or Bruce Willis. A square jaw and sun-kissed skin makes it much harder for a real-life human male to crossdress effectively on screen, so they don't do it.
Bugs does occasionally lay a fat smooch on on his opponent. Is that gay? What does it say about Bugs' sexual preferences? Much as I love Elmer Fudd or Porky Pig as a person, I do not find either of them a likely object of lust. (Apologies to any piglovers or Fuddsuckers who may be reading.) Bugs is not kissing Elmer because he lusts after him, but to assert his complete disrespect and fearlessness toward him. Just as "rape is violence, not sex," Bugs' kiss is a slapstick flourish to violate Elmer's dignity, not an act of sex.
Bugs does whistle lustfully after the occasional "yummy chick" (to use the term I learned at The Kubert School) or the occasional bomb dressed as a "yummy chick." He does not whistle lustfully after any Prince Charming or gorgeous blond wrestlers. I must infer from this that the Bunny is all about the honeys and not about the dippers.
In conclusion: cross-dressing and making out with guys does not make Bugs gay. No, all it makes him is what it makes anyone else who cross-dresses and makes out with guys: extremely cool by me.
<< I encourage fans to argue about Warner Bros. cartoon continuity, such as Bugs' marital status. Or whether Yosemite Sam is a prospector, a pirate or a bedouin carpetmonger. >>
This message has been edited by HadjiWannabe on Jan 29, 2004 11:52 AM
<<Bugs is married with children. People tend to forget that.
JB-)>>
True! Also, Yogi Bear?!?!? Okay, Peppermint Pattie, Velma, okay, whatever, I guess, but He man? Yogi? What are they trying to say about him and Boo boo?!?!?! -Rick
I don't think I'd call it a crush. I think that "Chuck" was just a kindred soul to whom she could confide her anxieties and insecurities. Perhaps because she felt a boy, rather than a girl, would understand? Was she perhaps ultimately questioning her own sexuality?
As far as crushes go, I'd have to list Lucy's for Schroeder, Sally Brown's for Linus ("I am not your sweet baboo!"), and, the paradigm of unrequited love, Charlie Brown's fixation on that Cute Little Red-Haired Girl.
And now, I welcome the next poster to say "For God's sakes, people! It's a cartoon! It's only lines on paper!"
I don't think I'd call it a crush. I think that "Chuck" was just a kindred soul to whom she could confide her anxieties and insecurities. Perhaps because she felt a boy, rather than a girl, would understand? Was she perhaps ultimately questioning her own sexuality?
Y'all know I'm a huge fan of PEANUTS. That said, I'll never understand where people get Peppermint Patty being gay. My only explanation is that they are bringing something to the strip from their own life that isn't there. From my years of reading the strip, I've always thought that PP had a crush on Charlie Brown. It plays perfectly into everything Schulz created; everything is unrequited.
From PEANUTS: THE ART OF CHARLES M. SCHULZ: "She really can't help herself," Schulz wrote of Lucy and the football, in 1985. "She is annoyed that it's all too easy. Charlie Brown isn't that much of a challenge. To be consistent, however, we have to let her triumph, for all the loves in the strip are unrequited; all the baseball games are lost; all the test scores are D-minuses; the Great Pumpkin never comes; and the football is always pulled away."
The Peppermint Patty/Charlie Brown relationship is another unrequited love. She's the tomboy of the strip. Charlie Brown prefers the Little Red-Haired Girl. There's your triangle. End o' story.
BTW, here's how Schulz describes the creation of the character:
"I developed the character of Peppermint Patty because I happened to be walking through our living room. I saw a dish of Peppermint Patties and I thought that would make a good name for a character, so I drew the face to match the name. One day I sent her to camp, and a little girl came into her tent one night and she said, 'Sir, my stomach hurts.' That was Marcie."
The simple fact of the matter is, no fictional character is Gay unless the creator of the character says so. Take a look at "Friends". One of the creators of the show is homosexual, and in the early years he took great offense at the Gay community insisting Chandler was Gay. Writers do not like being told who their characters are! I have long been convinced all the Gay jokes that have been played with/about Chandler are directly a result of a kind of "thumbing of the nose" at those who insist the character is something other than what his creator intended him to be.
(When I was doing NEXT MEN I received many letters from fans who wanted one of the guys to be Gay. With only 3 characters to deal with that seemed statistically unlikely, and having created NorthStar and Maggie Sawyer I felt no burning need to revisit that territory any time soon. There were lots of other things I wanted to explore with my characters. Something that deeply disturbed me, tho -- and I commented on this in a letter column at the time -- was how the bulk of the writers who demanded a Gay coupling in NEXT MEN wanted one of the pair to be Danny, the underaged kid of the team. Nathan and Danny -- Jack and Danny -- Anyone. . . and Danny! I wondered how many others would have been quick to accuse me of playing to cliché -- adult male homosexuals as pedophiles -- had I given those letter writers what they wanted. After all, I was applauded for creating the tough, self-reliant, strong and no-nonsense Maggie Sawyer in SUPERMAN -- until I hinted she was Gay, whereupon the letters swung 180° and I was accused of perpetuating a stereotype!!)
Y'all know I'm a huge fan of PEANUTS. That said, I'll never understand where people get Peppermint Patty being gay.
Well, I can certainly understand where people get the idea from. Here you have a tomboy (read: butch) that constantly hangs around another girl, who herself is rather androgynous. You're right, though. You only see a "gay" connection if you bring your own inferences to the table.
What's interesting is that nobody seems to do the same with a certain male PEANUTS cast member. A guy who is quite a Momma's boy, with an overbearing female influence. A guy who clings to his childhood insecurities while at the same time rejecting the constant advances of a pretty girl.
Of course, I'm talking about Linus. But nobody ever called HIM gay. Maybe it's the fundamentalist aspects of his personality.
Well, I can certainly understand where people get the idea from. Here you have a tomboy (read: butch) that constantly hangs around another girl, who herself is rather androgynous. You're right, though. You only see a "gay" connection if you bring your own inferences to the table.
I still don't see it unless you bring your own personal experiences to the strip. Marcie follows Patty around. Often are the times that Patty tries to get rid of Marcie when she's talking with "Chuck." If every tomboy I knew growing up was gay, then there wouldn't have been any straight females in my high school class! To me, it's a preposterous assumption on its' face.
There's also the mentality that "knows" Wonder Woman is a Lesbian, but freaks out if anyone suggests Batman and Robin are anything other than best pals.
Like I say above, it is really pointless to invest fictional creations with any characteristics other than those the authors have made explicit.
Is it? I like analyzing characters as much as the next guy, trying to figure out "why" someone is doing something, for instance, even tho I know the real reason is that that is what the writer wants them doing ---- but I think some people invest far too much energy in this process. So much so that they become upset when the characters are not what they have decided they are. I mean, hey! I have actually had fans tell me I have handled my own characters incorrectly!!!
"...but I think some people invest far too much energy in this process..."
Oh, hell, I never intended more than a little frivolity along the lines of the Mad article I quoted. Though I thought Mike Brisbois post was very intelligently written.
But I know what you mean: there was a time when you could regularly find in the New York Review of Books a "feminist reading of [fill in the blank]" or "a Freudian reading of [fill in the blank]," in which it was clear that the critic was more interested in furthering his or her own agenda than in appreciating the characters in a given book themselves.
Next: Tom and Jerry--Cute Little Critters, or Metaphor for a Decaying Socio-economic Order?
Yes, i love all those critical scholarly essays that usually make no sense. (Throw enough big words and complex sentences into the fray and voila, it's brilliant!)
One of my least favorite things is when they put dark psychosexual subtexts on books like "Pride and Prejudice." P and P is one of the most delightful and fun reads I ever had, and tearing apart the book to find dark themes of domination is distressing.
The examined book is not worth reading.
As to trying to put more into characters, I am continually embarrassed by the "are they gay?" game because people latch onto it and make a much bigger deal about it. It also makes me sad because it shows how starved the members of the gay and lesbian community are/were for images of themselves. There have been gay and lesbian comic strips for years, but many find them too confining as they exist pretty much in all gay worlds. What's interesting to me was how many people wanted these characters to exist and be gay in a more mixed world. But we can't rely on putting those wishes on established characters (except for Munro on Too Close for Comfort whom they tried to convince us was straight.)
A creator taking on a new character naturally has to muse about what has been definitely established and what has been implied. A creator may come up with new ideas that, although not previously established, seem consistent with what had been.
Did DareDevil have complicated religious feelings before Frank Miller came along? Did Miller "discover" those feelings implied, did he merely make use of an opportunity never before recognized, or did he foist all that Catholic jazz onto Matthew Murdock while Stan Lee tore his hair out? One way or another, Frank made inferences, and those inferences became "the facts."
Because comics is an ongoing medium, readers feel unusually close to the creative process -- as if we're interacting with the creators, and contributing. And since comics contains lots of surprise-ending stories and lots of questions about continuity, readers often feel challenged to "solve the mystery" of what they see on the page. Inference is inevitable. Suspense relies on it, to some degree.
I find it reasonable to entertain the possibility in certain kinds of stories that a character "might be gay." Connor Hawke? It certainly seems as though the question has been raised in the stories. Dr. Mid-Nite? Unless we accept him as a Sherlock Holmesian eunuch, we may reasonably wonder whether their isn't some explanation for his lack of libido.
Ultimately, the truth is whatever prints.
Regarding Bugs Bunny, there is very little chance his owners would ever authorize a story showing him to be homosexual; the subject matter is simply too unlikely in the kids-cartoon genre(s) for me to waste any time worrying about it. It ain't gonna print, so to speak, so the matter is moot.
There is ONE instance at least where I can imagine a reasonable person worrying "whether Bugs is 'gay'," but this post is already too long. If anyone cares, I'd be happy to bore you with my idea about that.
Bugs is not gay! Just because a few people like to dress up in women's clothes because it makes them feel pretty and because no one understands what its like to be misunderstood and because....
Addressing a couple of other toons mentioned in the first post:
Yogi is entirely straight. Boo Boo, however, has had to deal with the deep emotional scars that come ... from his mom naming him Boo Boo!!! Consequently, I suspect he led a very destructive childhood--bingeing and purging (he obviously has weight issues); indulging in black-tar heroin (cheapest kind); and even occasionally experimenting sexually beyond his normal preference (such as attempting bestiality with—gasp!—humans!!) He may have had one or two brief gay flings during this period, but it didn’t really mean anything.
To say that all the characters is “South Park” are gay is absolutely ridiculous! I happen to have a sixth-sense about thing these things, and I can tell you unequivocally that Mr. Garrison, Mr. Slave, and Big Gay Al are as straight as they come...
And yet, no one has commented on the idea that He-Man might be gay. They couldn't possibly be thinking of his alter ego, Prince Adam, as he had quite an unrequited attraction for Teela.
Sounds like an E! True Hollywood story just waiting to happen.
