Male Duo: Jumba and Pleakley (part the first)

The Franchise

The Lilo and Stitch franchise started with the original theatrical film in 2002, followed by a straight to video movie a year later: Stitch! The Movie. This launched the series (2003-2006) and two more straight to video movies - Lilo and Stitch 2: Stitch has a Glitch (2005), which was written as a direct sequel to the original film, and Leroy and Stitch (2006) which concluded the series. (A Japanese spin-off series, Stitch! began in 2008, but for this post I will be focusing on the American franchise.)


The franchise has been a money maker for the company. At the time of the original films release, Hasbro, which held the master toy license, spoke of how for the first time ever Disney had promised a direct to video sequel before the original film aired (Anne Sherber – Billboard, March 2, 2002) . Sweetening the deal for the company investing in products.


On September third, Lilo and Stitch: The Series aired to much fanfare. In its first month and a half it helped raise Disney’s viewership in children 6-11 62% compared to the year prior. And was “First place among all Monday-through-Friday kids series in key season-to-date ratings.” (Television Week 11/3/2003 Vol. 22 Issue 44, p29).

The title characters, particularly Stitch, have products a plenty, and are the focus of the franchise. In many ways, this allowed the supporting characters of Jumba and Pleakley to fly under the radar. 

Male Duo

Jumba is an evil genius who created Stitch, and many other experimental beings. The Brains of the duo, Jumba is: logical, ambitious, more prone to corruption, smart, and a problem solver. He was also married (and divorced) sometime long before the first movie. Pleakley is the Heart: emotional, artistic, loyal, loving. And he isn't only more likely to portray himself as a female; he spends the majority of the series disguised as Lilo’s Aunt (and wife to Jumba).

Jumba and Pleakley check off a lot of boxes for the traditional animated companion male duo, but unlike most of their nineties counterparts, they are not the primary protagonists of the franchise they come from. Much like Timon and Pumbaa in the Lion King, Jumba and Pleakley are comedic sidekick characters that support the main cast. But, while Timon and Pumbaa were the stars of their tv-show spin-off, Jumba and Pleakley remain secondary supporting characters throughout the franchise.

Uniquely, while comedic relief characters are normally added to cartoons for the benefit of keeping a child’s interest, in this case Jumba and Pleakley delivered many of the campy lines that winked at the older audience.

(click video to view)

“…The notion that media texts are split into different meanings for different audiences, where irony and camp are strategically used to “conceal” meanings from the mainstream, has been noted as an important part of audience identification in gay communities.” (Kids Rule Nickelodeon and Consumer Citizenship Sarah Banet-Weiser pg. 189).

Linear Reality

Unlike other prominent male duos, like Ren and Stimpy, Jumba and Pleakley exist in a linear reality. Things that happen in one episode affect the episodes to come. For instance, one of the shows reoccurring antagonists, Gantu, has repeatedly torn the roof off the home all the character's live in. In response, Jumba builds a hinged roof system (Season 2, Episode 4), so at the very least they won't need to do massive home repairs every time Gantu decides to attack them.  While there isn't much of an overarching story for the seasons, each episode introduces a new cousin that Lilo and Stitch (with the help of Pleakley and Jumba) must catch. These cousins are recurring characters and are remembered from one episode to the next.

Because of the linear reality, consistent characterization holds a different weight for the characters. When certain characteristics are repeatedly enforced, and developed over the course of episodes it's hard to believe that the creators were unaware of the second reading they were creating.

It is worth noting that the series was on television before there had ever been an official out character in a child-targeted american mainstream cartoon. Even if there had been a want to write the characters as a couple they could only have been coded as such.

But...

nothing official has ever been said about Jumba and Pleakley by their creators, so there is no way to guarantee that any of the choices in how the characters are presented are anything more then an untended double reading by viewers. Both Jumba and Pleakley are aliens, so the show plays with the fact that they don't know a lot about human culture and social expectations. Because they are in hiding and their disguise is being Lilo's aunt and uncle, a lot of coded behavior can be hand waved away. Despite the fact that there are many very consistent characterization (that certainly point to a QUILTBAG friendly reading of the characters) there is a safety in how humor is used in the show, so that nothing needs to be taken too seriously.


But, boy is there a lot of consistent characterization. Let's take a look in:

Part 2 - Double Coding

Clarence and Changing Gay Coding

Clarence was influenced by 90s animation, and reflects the zany comedy style of early original Cartoon Network shows. It also received a lot of media attention when creator, Skyler Page, was dismissed from the show due to sexually assaulting a fellow artist. That's not what I'm going to be talking about in this post, but I feel it would be remiss of me not to mention it.

Clarence is a show about a cheerful boy and his two best friends. Jeff is one of these friends, and one of the show's protagonists. In the episode Jeff Wins, we are shown his two mothers.



It is not unusual in shows that are pushing boundaries through coding, to hint at something that's never made explicit. But in case anyone watching Jeff Wins thought perhaps the two women were related in some other way (sisters, friends), in a recent episode Jeff calls them his moms.

Yes, they are queer. Yes, they are a couple. Yes, they are raising Jeff together. It might seem that Jeff referring to them as his moms is simply confirming the obvious, but it is revolutionary for a kids cartoon to cross the line from coded gay character to explicitly canon gay character.

While this in an incredibly huge leap forward when it comes to representation, child-targeted animation still deals with heavy censorship when it comes to LGBTQ characters, and so still must rely on double coding most of the time.

In an earlier episode, a scene where a gay couple were going to kiss never made it to the screen. Instead, Cartoon Network had the men kiss on the cheek.  In what appears to be an attempt to counteract the censorship and show that the relationship was romantic, the music changes while the men have their European style greeting. The lyrics are: "love is love, lovely love." Making it as obvious as possible that the men are a couple, so that the gentle punchline of the scene still works.




To anyone one out there who hasn't checked out Clarence, it is well worth your time. I'm very curious to see what this show brings us next.


Seriously, it's not just pushing boundaries for representation, it's funny too.

Cartoon Closet Part 4

Part 4: Female Duos (in theory)

But what about female duos? Clearly the comedy tradition is not inherently gendered, and live action comedies like The Heat have done well. While there were a handful of female/male duos like Cow and Chicken or Wanda and Cozmo in the 1990s there were no female duo leads, even while the male duo had a resurgence.

When looking at animated female duos, it is important to look take into account the role of female characters in animation. In 1991, Katha Pollitt wrote an article that helped define a common trope: The Smurfette Principle. In the article Pollitt discusses the tradition of a male cast of cartoon characters having only one female character, who tags along with the boys.

“The message is clear. Boys are the norm, girls the variation; boys are central, girls peripheral; boys are individuals, girls types. Boys define the group, its story and its code of values. Girls exist only in relation to boys.”

Nostalgia Chick has a fabulous video that gives an overview of this phenomenon. As I blog about in more detail HERE, the 80s became a spread of marketing based animated shows. The cartoons also became decidedly gendered, with shows like Transformers for young boys, and My Little Ponies for girls. In the nineties, shows became less product based, and less gendered in their marketing. Cartoon’s became more inclusive for viewers. But as the Nostalgia Chick points out, the result was that in the shows themselves, the majority of protagonists were male. Token female characters would be a part of ensemble casts, but primary female character who carried a show were rare.

Looking at Disney Channel cartoons from 1990-2000 gives a good example of this. 10 out of the 24 shows that aired were ensemble shows with no primary protagonist. Even though these shows had an upward of 8 main characters, and averaged 5 characters per show - no show had more then 2 female main characters.

Of the 24 shows that aired only 2 had female primary protagonist. While 14/24 of the shows had 3 or more male main characters  (including ensembles), only 1/24 shows had at least 3 female main characters (including ensembles).

And Disney was leading the pack. It wasn’t until 1998 that Nickelodeon featured a cartoon with a primary protagonist who was female, The Wild Thornberrys. Similarly, 1998 was the year that Cartoon Network first featured a show with primary female protagonists, with an ensemble cast, The Powerpuff Girls.

It’s probably not surprising then, that while on the rare occasion male/female comedy duos appear, female/female comedy duos don’t. Rarely are there enough female characters to make a comedic duo. Even when there are, female characters are more likely to be daughters, love interests, or sisters to a male character. There is little room for female characters to have a female partner and carry a show, the way male duos did in large numbers during the 90s.  

What would a Female Duo look like if they followed Male Duo traditions?

Two of my favorite web comic artists, Lisa Vandenberg and Rebecca Schauer, co-created an animated web series for a while. It was the first time that I had seen a cartoon that brought the comedy duo to female characters with all of the traditional comedy duo humor (including ambiguous/not so ambiguous relationships). Embracing the hapless idiot and angry friend trope, not only does Nikki and Page embody the best of the “heart” and “brain” characteristics that define male duo comedy in animation – it rises to the standard of bizarre wit that Adult Swim has popularized for older viewers.

Watching this cartoon, is like getting the taste of food everyone tells you can’t be cooked. Of course it can, you’re eating it right now, it’s delicious… but when you try to order it out an a restaurant, everyone simple stares at you blankly and tells you “food like that doesn’t exist.”
Nikki and Page is hysterical, and it doesn’t shy away from overtly “female” comedy. Two shorts in a row joke about menstruation, in the kind of gross-out humor one expects from Ren and Stimpy tradition. Jokes like this don’t fly on mainstream adult targeting animation, humor that deal with “womanly” issues must be coached through a male perspective to be considered universal humor.

Vandenburg  recently posted on Tumblr, about a cartoon that she and Schauer had pitched to Nickelodeon.

“I saw this in my old folder and remembered when me and Becca pitched this show about young lesbian girls who hang out with spoiled snails that have realistic baby faces to Nickelodeon. They didn’t think it was as funny as we did, though.”

#the world isn’t ready for this kind of greatness

…and though the hashtag is intended with humor, she’s absolutely right. But this is exactly the kind of show (in genre) that was being made with male characters in the 90s. Shows like Ren and Stimpy capitalized on the humor that came from the ambiguous relationship of its title characters.  

Vandenberg is now working on Sanjay and Craig as a Storyboard Revisionist. This is a male duo show that matches her comedy style. Seeing an artist like her get an opportunity working for Nickelodeon gives me hope that someday we might see more diverse female characters in shows that are considered not just for female viewers, but for everyone. Maybe someday animated female duos will rise to the ranks of Pinky and the Brain, Ren and Stimpy, and Sanjay and Craig.

Part 5: Female Duos (in practice)

Intended Innuendo

Children's cartoons are by defualt a comedy genre. There is a history of intended innuendo, or adult humor that is hidden along side the humor targeting kids. Here are a few examples showing double coded punchlines (this is a just a small handful of the types of jokes that are in kids shows):

 

Cartoon Network Bumper - Powerpuff Girls (Justice League Spoof)