Paul Reubens

Artistic genius lies in making the ambiguous meaningful. Paul Reubens, who died on Sunday, achieved this with his most famous role and creation, Pee-wee Herman.

I mean, what is Pee-wee, exactly? Is he a big child? Is he an adult who acts like a child? Is he a slightly perverted and imaginative adult? No one answer fits and arguably the character's appeal went into decline once pop media tried to box him in as a children's character. It's hard to say what the trajectory would have been because his, and Reubens', career was cut off prematurely when Reubens was arrested for masturbating in an adult theatre.

Although he was ridiculed for a long time, there was also a lot of public sympathy for him and, of course, now it seems monstrous that he was even arrested and made to feel embarrassed for something so human and, really, private, even if the theatre was technically public. It's no wonder he felt traumatised for years.

Part of the reason it was such a big scandal was that he was perceived as a children's character. But he didn't start that way. For many years, Pee-wee was an adult act, filled with sex jokes and innuendo.

But then he became a mainstream success. Pee-wee was the main character and Reubens was the star of Tim Burton's debut film, 1985's Pee-wee's Big Adventure, and that's how I discovered him as a kid. I was a big fan of the movie and became obsessed with the song "Tequila" featured in the film. I was six years old and I think I gravitated to the absurdist humour of the film, the surprising route it took through scary scenes and funny scenes and sweetly romantic scenes, the ambiguity in just what kind of story it was and what kind of character Pee-wee was supposed to be. The movie isn't really a "type" any more than Pee-wee and that made it exciting. Nothing fit together in an obvious way and yet it all made perfect sense on a deeper, almost subliminal level.

I appreciate the subsequent TV series, Pee-wee's Playhouse, more as an adult than I did as a kid. Now I can appreciate the ingenuity of its design and format but when I was a kid I usually turned off the TV when it came on, or found something else to do while I waited for The Real Ghostbusters or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to come on. It was a kid's show, it wasn't a dangerous rule breaker like Big Adventure, and I wasn't interested.

Pee-wee finally made a come back of sorts in 2010. It's sad now looking at Wikipedia and the list of all the projects Reubens tried to get off the ground with the character--a Playhouse movie, The Pee-wee Herman Story (a dark take modelled on Valley of the Dolls). I remember Jud Apatow was supposed to direct a new Pee-wee movie and gradually that project was shunted aside until it was taken on by a first time director and released on Netflix as Pee-wee's Big Holiday to little fanfare (I still haven't seen it myself).

To-day, many of Reubens friends and acquaintances are talking about what a good, kind man he was, how he had an extraordinary capacity for remembering people's birthdays. He must have been celebrating other people all year. He's well worth remembering himself.

X Sonnet #1723

A Grecian bladder holds the oats of Scott.
When black replaced the red, a label burned.
Forget the stripe, the crowd demands a spot.
A vase replaced in time's a vessel earned.
Adventures wound the tape for ice and snow.
Prepared to voyage late, she packed a flask.
But bourbon burned the dreamer's only beau.
So gin is all her heart would think to ask.
An errant smell arrests departing words.
But what could lurk beneath the rotten house?
An evil slug accosts the nervous herds.
No path avails the thin and thirsty mouse.
A bike's beyond the grasp of ardent hands.
A desert glow escapes the closing sands.