I Know You Are, but What Am I?

On Pee-wee Herman

Author: Cait McKinney Series: Forerunners: Ideas First

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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.

Critic Reviews

"McKinney is a true Pee-wee fan, and they write with the queerdo’s avenging righteousness. Their book is as much an elegy as a media history, a requiem for long-gone weekends that are 'equal parts joy and wound.'"-Artforum

"The book celebrates that such a singular, queer, and transgressive character ever existed, and the author’s sadness at Reubens’ passing is palpable. It’s a fitting tribute, one that Reubens richly deserves."-Gay & Lesbian Review

About the Author

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.